Language structure

See also: Part of speech, Morphology, Grammatical category, and Ontology

Verbs form the backbone of language and of reality itself.

* An event is an instance of a verb in the same way that "John" is an instance of "human".

Reality is made up of

* Objects (nouns)
	+ The attributes of an object are adjectives
* Actions (verbs) which alter the attributes of objects
	+ The attributes of an action are adverbs
* Rules
	+ Events cause other events according to precise rules.

Objects and actions with similar attributes belong to the same type. Sometimes a type is just a single property (solid, liqid, gas). Common attributes are:

* Location
* Velocity
* Type of motion
* Size
* Shape
* Composition
* Color
* What is it a part of
* What objects are part of it
* Who owns it

Objects are named for:

* What action happened to it that caused it to exist
	+ Sedimentary rocks: rocks created by an act of sedimentation
* What action it does, or makes other things do, that makes it useful (and which is usually what caused it to exist)
	+ screwdriver: tool created by someone that needed to drive screws

Even adjectives are verbs in disguise:

* hungry: to hunger

Adjectives are modified by adverbs:

* he is exceedingly quick (he runs quickly)

Attributes are the subject of pure science

* length, shape, velocity are the subject of geometry.

Real world objects are the subject of applied science.

Many words can be broken down into simpler words:

 Where
 Here
 There
 Yesterday
 Today
 Tomorrow
 My
 His

The obvious question, of course, is what is the simplest set of words that can form a language. What are the atoms of the language universe.

Most of the words below are from Wikipedia:Appendix:Basic English word list

#### Demonstratives

* this, that, these, other, same
* such,
* next, previous

#### Possessive determiner

Possessive is not just used for buying and selling. For example: He possesses great courage. His great courage is an attribute that "belongs" to him.

* of

#### Quantifiers

* 1, 2, 3,
* 4, 8, 12,
* 16, 256,
* all, every, most, some, no, (time, place, one, thing, occasion)
* many, few, several,
* much, little,
* enough

#### Distributive determiners

* each, any,
* either, neither

### Pronouns

Personal pronouns

* First person
	+ I, me
* Second person
	+ you (you)
* Third person
	+ he, him, she, her, it (they, them)
* First + Second person
	+ we, us
* First + third person
	+ we, us
* First + Second + Third person
	+ we, us

Possessive pronouns

* First person
	+ my
* Second person
	+ your
* Third person
	+ his, her, its

Reciprocal pronouns

* each other, one another

Misc

* same
* other

### Prepositions

See also: Preposition
Besides their literal use to indicate direction prepositions are also used to create Phrasal verbs. The meaning of a phrasal verb often cannot be inferred from the meaning of the individual words.

* Throw up
* look after
* pick on
* take after
* pass for
* stand by

Idiom: An established expression whose meaning is not deducible from the literal meanings of its component words, often peculiar to a given language.

#### Motion

through, throughout
to, toward, towards
during, while
till, until

#### Directions

* up, down
* forward, back
* right, left, sideways
* north, south, east, west,
* parallel

#### Top

* above, over
* atop, ontop
* upon

#### Bottom

* below
* beneath
* under, underneath

#### Front

* before
* opposite

#### Back

* after,
* behind
* beyond
* past

#### Inside

* among
* between
* in, inside, into
* within

#### Outside

* around
* out, outside
* without

#### Near

* about
* at
* by
* near

#### Touching

* across
* against
* along
* on, onto
* off

#### Misc

* for
* as, like
* of
* than
* with

### Conjunctions

See also: Conjunction
* Coordinating
	+ For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So, Consequently
* Correlative
	+ either...or
	+ not only...but (also)
	+ neither...nor
	+ both...and
	+ whether...or
	+ just as...so
	+ the...the
	+ as...as
	+ as much...as
	+ no sooner...than
	+ rather...than
* Subordinating
	+ after, although, as, as far as, as if, as long as, as soon as, as though, because, before, even if, even though, every time, if, in order that, since, so, so that, than, though, unless, until, when, whenever, where, whereas, wherever

### Auxiliary verbs

* start, begin,
* continue, persist
* stop, finish, end, cease

* intend,
* dare,
* tend,
* try,
* seem,
* choose,
* help

 will have

 make

 slight force causing

 Conditional

### Sentence words

* ouch,
* wow,
* damn,
* hey, hi
* bye,
* okay,
* oh,
* m-hm,
* huh,
* uh, \*er, \*um
* yes, no
* okay,
* please,

### Particles

* approximately
* undoubtedly
* surprisingly

## Verbs

* Change: behave, act

* Information (true/false): assert,
	+ Set theory (set of all objects for which something is true):
* Graph theory (see also: Line graph): arrange, connect, sort
	+ Number theory: extend, add, count, increase, number,
* Time: wait,
* Space: cover (over), come, go, send, put,
	+ Move: distribute, drop, fall, flow, fly, gather, move, roll, scatter, transport, turn, meet,

* Substance: boil, exist, freeze, melt, burn, heat, cook,
* Interact: affect, cause, compare, depend, experience, react, relate,
* Phenomena: wave
* Physics: blow, expand, hang, lift, measure, rub, shake, shock, slip, support, touch, twist,
	+ Force: attract, pull, push,

* Structure: contain (within), fold, join, stretch, wash,
	+ Destruct: break, crush, cut, divide, smash,
* Life: bear, die, grow, live, reproduce,
* Body:
	+ bite, cough, drink, kiss, smile, talk, voice, whistle,
	+ breathe, sneeze,
	+ cry, laugh,
	+ digest,
	+ grasp, grip,
	+ jump, kick, run, step, walk,
	+ rest, sleep,
	+ swim,
* Sense:
	+ feel,
	+ hear,
	+ look, observe, see, view,
	+ smell, taste,

* Mind:
	+ believe, deceive, discover, doubt, dream, expect, know, opine, pretend, reason, surprise, think, trick,
		- investigate, test,
	+ decide, select,
	+ amuse, care, desire, enjoy, hope, love, respect,
	+ fear, hate, regret,
* Signs: represent, signal, sign language
* Words: agree, answer, argue, discuss, point, question, request, say, sing, state, suggest,
	+ Educate: learning, teaching,
* Drawing: draw, mark, print,
	+ Write: read, record,
* Organize: approve, control, direct, govern, guide, judge, lead, manage(r), protest, rule, serve,
	+ Punish: attack, fight, wound,
* Play:
* Commerce: get, give, have, keep, lose, offer, take,
	+ Money: exchange, own, pay, reward, trade, value,
	+ Business: compete, contract, demand, insure, marry, supply, waste,
* Make: develop, invent, produce, work, fix, replicate
	+ Clothing: stitch,
* Transportation: journey,
* Tools: adjust, drive, operate, use,

## Nouns

Thing

Set theory: group

Quantification: Number, amount

Animal: body, food, clothing, shelter, senses, locomotion (slide, crawl, wiggle)

Human:

Words: education, knowledge, writing, math, science

Civilization: authority, law, judge, police, punishment, religion, society

Money: occupation, buy, sell, business, profit, value

Transportation: vehicle

Tools:

### Physics

#### Time

time

* hour, minute, second
* day, night, morning, evening
* week, month, year, decade, century
* spring, summer, autumn, winter

#### Space

* distance, position, place, size, space, velocity,
* slope, angle, direction
* ball, circle, curve, form, line, square, ring, round, shape,
* front, middle, back, edge,

#### Substance

substance: elements, mass, material, weight,

* gas: air, steam
* liquid: water, oil, ink, paint
* jelly:
* solid: ice, glass, stone, chalk, salt, coal
* powder: dust, sand
* metal: brass, copper, gold, iron, silver, steel, tin,
* life: cotton, wood, wool, leather, linen, paper, silk, wax, sugar, cork,

#### Nature

* sky: sun, moon, star, planet
	+ weather: cloud, thunder, rain, snow, wind
* earth: country, field, land, mountain
	+ life: forest, garden
* water: sea, harbour, island, river

### Structure

* container: bag, basin, basket, bottle, box, bucket, cup, kettle, pot, part
* fasten: screw, nail, hook, knot
* break:
* parts: board, brick, frame

#### Reproduction

family

* parent: father, mother
* child: son, daughter
* sibling: brother, sister

##### Plant parts

* branch, stem, stick
* root: potato
* grain: rice, seed, nut

#### Animals

* bird: fowl
* pet: cat, dog
* insect: ant, bee
* farm: cow, goat, horse, pig, sheep
* reptile: snake
* other: monkey, rat, worm
* egg

##### Animal parts

body:

* upper part: head, eyes, mouth, ear, chin, face, nose, neck, throat, tongue, lip
* front part: chest
* back part: back, tail
* extremities: arm, finger, hand, thumb, wing
* lower part: leg, foot, knee, toe
* exterior: skin, hair, feather, horn, tooth,
* interior: muscle, blood, bone, nerve, heart, stomach, brain

##### Food

food: meal

* bread, cake
* dairy: butter, cheese, milk,
* fruit: apple, berry, orange,
##### Clothing

cloth:

* head: hat
* torso: shirt, coat,
* waist: trousers, dress, skirt
* hand: glove
* foot: sock, shoe, boot, stocking
* part: collar, pocket, thread

##### Shelter

structure

* building: door, floor, room, roof, window, wall, arch

### Humans

person

* baby
* child: boy, girl
* adult: man, woman

acquaintance: friend, enemy

#### Mind

mind:
attention, comfort, disgust, humour, idea, interest, memory, mind, music, pain, pleasure, purpose, shame, surprise,

##### Writing

* book, pen, pencil, letter, page, note, prose, story, verse, language, news

#### Authority

authority, crime, law, nation, peace, society, war,

#### Money

money:
business, company, credit, debt, industry, market, money, price, profit, property, receipt, secretary, tax,

##### Places

* church: place of worship
* farm: place of agriculture
* hospital: place of healing
* house: place of residing
* library: place of reading
* school: place of learning
* store: place of buying
* town: place of living
* prison: place of imprisonment
* office: place of officiating

### Tools

* apparatus, instrument, machine,

Time:

* watch, clock

Space:

* brake, spring

Structure:

* sewing, needle

Animal:

* spoon, fork, plate, tray

* hammer: hammer
* cut:knife, blade, scissors
* dig:spade
* farm: plough
* brush: brush
* comb: comb
* pump: pump
* catch: net
* threaten: whip, gun, army
* rain: umbrella
* lock: lock, key
* sound: band, bell,
* ornament: jewel

#### Furniture

bath, bed, clock, curtain, drawer, oven, shelf, table, chair

#### Transportation

Vehicle:

* water: boat, ship
* air: plane
* rail: train
* road: carriage, cart,

##### Infrastructure

structure

* path: road, bridge, rail

### Uncategorized

* bulb, button,
* camera, card, chain, cord, cushion,
* drain,
* flag,
* hole
* map, match,
* parcel, picture, pin, pipe,
* rod,
* sponge, stamp, station,
* ticket,
* wire,

* account, advertisement, art,
* balance, base, bit, burst,
* canvas, chance, colour, committee, condition, crack, current,
* damage, danger, degree, design, detail,
* error, example, expert,
* fiction,
* harmony, history,
* impulse,
* level, limit, list,
* mine, mist,
* noise,
* ornament,
* paste, poison, porter, power,
* quality,
* range, rate, ray, rhythm,
* scale, seat, self, sense, sex, shade, sign, smoke, soap, sound, stage, system,
* trouble,
* unit,
* way, weight,

## Adjectives

able, acid, alike, angry, automatic

beautiful

cheap, chemical, chief, clear, common, conscious

elastic, electric, equal

fat, fertile, flat, free, frequent

general, great

healthy, hollow

important

medical, military

natural, necessary, normal

physical, political, possible, present, probable

quick

ready, regular, responsible

separate, serious, sticky, stiff, sudden

thick, tired

violent

young

### Opposites

bent, straight
(better, worse)
bitter, sweet
certain,
cold, hot
complete,
cruel, kind
dark, bright
dead, alive
dear,
deep, shallow
delicate,
dirty, clean
dry, wet
false, true
feeble, strong
foolish, wise
full, empty
future, past
good, bad
ill, well
last, first
late, early
left, right
loose, tight
low, high
male, female
mixed,
narrow, wide
old, new
opposite,
public, private
right, wrong
rich, poor
rough, smooth
sad, happy
safe,
sharp, dull
short, long
shut, open
simple, complex
slow, fast
small, large
soft, hard
solid,
special,
strange,
thin, wide
warm, cool

### Numbers

number:

* first, second, third, fourth (item number one, item number two...)

### Colors

* blue, green, yellow, orange, red
* white, grey, black
* brown

## Adverbs

Adverbs are considered a part of speech in traditional English grammar, and are still included as a part of speech in grammar taught in schools and used in dictionaries. However, modern grammarians recognize that words traditionally grouped together as adverbs serve a number of different functions. Some describe adverbs a "catch-all" category that includes all words that do not belong to one of the other parts of speech

* near, far
* upward, downward
* forward, backward
* northward, southward, eastward, westward
* then
* there
* so
* very
* quite
* well
* almost
* even
* only
* again
* ever
* still
* together
* approximately
* undoubtedly

## Negation

* no
* not
* un-
* anti-
* in-, im-, il-, ir-
* dis-

## Noun Declension

The word "sheep" is its own plural. To indicate more than one sheep we would say "multiple sheep". In some languages all the words are their own plurals.

From Wikipedia:Declension:
number

* singular
* dual
* plural

case

* nominative case
* accusative case
* genitive case
* dative case
* ablative case
* instrumental case

gender

* masculine
* neuter
* feminine

### Intransitive verbs

Does not have a direct object

* The boy wept.

### Transitive verbs

Has a direct object

* My friend read the newspaper

### Ditransitive verbs

Has a direct object and an indirect object

* The players gave their teammates high fives

### Double transitive verbs

Has a direct object and a complement

* The young couple considers the neighbors wealthy people

### Linking verbs

Can't be followed by an adverb or end a sentence, but instead must be followed by a noun or adjective

* Josh remained a reliable friend

## Verb conjugation

From Wikipedia:Grammatical conjugation:

voice

* active, passive, self

tense

* past, present, future, infinitive
* (earlier, now, later)
* (just earlier, right now, just about)

aspect

* in progress, completed,

 now
 later

mood

* indicative,
* subjunctive, Conditional, optative, imperative, Jussive, potential, hypothetical, Inferential,
* interrogative, injunctive,

case

* nominative, accusative, dative and genitive

person

* I, you, he

number

* single, plural

gender

* male, female

possession

* possessor, possessed

definiteness

* a, the

politeness

* tu, vos

causativity

* causation (rise → raise)

clusivity

* inclusive "we", exclusive "we"

interrogativity

* question

transitivity

* direct objects

valency

* impersonal, intransitive, transitive, ditransitive, tritransitive

polarity

* affirmation, negation

telicity

* complete, incomplete (John built a house in a month vs John built houses for a month)

volition

* intentional, unintentional

mirativity

* surprise

evidentiality

* hearsay, personal observation

animacy

* how sentient or alive the referent is.

associativity

* group associated with X

pluractionality

* Plural

reciprocity

* each other

Frequentative

* routine habit

## Language types

See also: Morphological typology
From Wikipedia:Isolating language

Historically, languages were divided into three basic types:

* Isolating
* Flectional (Fusional languages)
* Agglutinative

The traditional morphological types can be categorized by two distinct parameters:

* Morpheme per word ratio (how many morphemes there are per word)
* Degree of fusion between morphemes (how separable words' inflectional morphemes are according to units of meaning represented)

The English term "rice" is a single word consisting of only one morpheme (rice).

* This word has a 1:1 morpheme per word ratio.

In contrast, "handshakes" is a single word consisting of three morphemes (hand, shake, -s).

* This word has a 3:1 morpheme per word ratio.

The Russian word vídyat/видят 'they see' has a morpheme per word ratio of 2:1, having two morphemes:

* The root vid-/вид-, which conveys the imperfective aspect meaning,
* The inflectional morpheme -yat/-ят which inflects for four units of meaning (3rd person subject, plural subject, present/future tense, indicative mood).

Effectively, it has four units of meaning in one inseparable morpheme

From Wikipedia:Morpheme:

**Derivational morphemes**, when combined with a root, change either the semantic meaning or part of speech of the affected word.

* Happiness: changes the word from an adjective (happy) to a noun (happiness).

**Inflectional morphemes** modify a verb's tense, aspect, mood, person, or number, or a noun's, pronoun's or adjective's number, gender or case, without affecting the word's meaning or class (part of speech).

* Waited: changes to past tense without changing the meaning of "wait".

### Analytic language

From Wikipedia:Analytic language

An **analytic language** is a language that primarily conveys relationships between words in sentences by way of helper words (particles, prepositions, etc.) and word order, as opposed to utilizing inflections. An analytic language can lack inflectional morphemes yet still have derivational morphemes.

#### Isolating language

From Wikipedia:Isolating language

An **isolating language** is a type of language with a very low morpheme per word ratio and no inflectional morphology whatsoever. In the extreme case, each word contains a single morpheme.

### Synthetic language

From Wikipedia:Synthetic language

A **synthetic language** uses inflection or agglutination to express syntactic relationships within a sentence

#### Agglutinative language

From Wikipedia:Agglutinative language

An **agglutinative language** is a type of synthetic language with morphology that primarily uses agglutination. Words may contain different morphemes to determine their meanings, but all of these morphemes (including stems and affixes) remain, in every aspect, unchanged after their unions.

#### Fusional language

From Wikipedia:Fusional language

**Fusional languages** or inflected languages (or inflectional or flectional in older terminology) are a type of synthetic language, distinguished from agglutinative languages by their tendency to use a single inflectional morpheme to denote multiple grammatical, syntactic, or semantic features.

#### Polysynthetic language

From Wikipedia:Polysynthetic language

**Polysynthetic languages** are highly synthetic languages, i.e. languages in which words are composed of many morphemes (word parts that have independent meaning but may or may not be able to stand alone). They are very highly inflected languages. Polysynthetic languages typically have long "sentence-words"

#### Oligosynthetic language

From Wikipedia:Oligosynthetic language

An **oligosynthetic language** (from the Greek ὀλίγος, meaning "few" or "little") is any language using very few morphemes, perhaps only a hundred, which combine synthetically to form statements. Oligosynthesis is almost entirely theoretical and would depend heavily on the creation of lengthy compound words, to an extent far exceeding that of natural polysynthetic languages

## Word frequency

See also: Wikipedia:Most common words in English
From Wikipedia:Brown Corpus:

One interesting result is that even for quite large samples, graphing words in order of decreasing frequency of occurrence shows a hyperbola: the frequency of the n-th most frequent word is roughly proportional to 1/n. Thus "the" constitutes nearly 7% of the Brown Corpus, "to" and "of" more than another 3% each; while about half the total vocabulary of about 50,000 words are hapax legomena: words that occur only once in the corpus.

This simple rank-vs.-frequency relationship was noted for an extraordinary variety of phenomena by George Kingsley Zipf, and is known as Zipf's law.

The word "the" forms 0.07 of the words in an average text. 1/0.07 = 14.2857142857

### Most common words in English

A list of 25 words that occur most frequently in written English is given below, based on an analysis of the Oxford English Corpus.

### By parts of speech

The following is the list of most common written words subdivided by part of speech.

2. person
3. year
4. way
5. day
6. thing
7. man
8. world
9. life
10. hand
11. part
12. child
13. eye
14. woman
15. place
16. work
17. week
18. case
19. point
20. government
21. company
22. number
23. group
24. problem
25. fact
2. have
3. do
4. say
5. get
6. make
7. go
8. know
9. take
10. see
11. come
12. think
13. look
14. want
15. give
16. use
17. find
18. tell
19. ask
20. work
21. seem
22. feel
23. try
24. leave
25. call
2. new
3. first
4. last
5. long
6. great
7. little
8. own
9. other
10. old
11. right
12. big
13. high
14. different
15. small
16. large
17. next
18. early
19. young
20. important
21. few
22. public
23. bad
24. same
25. able
2. of
3. in
4. for
5. on
6. with
7. at
8. by
9. from
10. up
11. about
12. into
13. over
14. after
2. and
3. a
4. that
5. I
6. it
7. not
8. he
9. as
10. you
11. this
12. but
13. his
14. they
15. her
16. she
17. or
18. an
19. will
20. my
21. one
22. all
23. would
24. there
25. their

## Phonology

External link: MRI's of speech and IPA
Typical speech is about 10 phonemes per second. English averages about 4 syllables per second.

### Consonants

See also: Place of articulation and Manner of articulation
From Wikipedia:Template:IPA pulmonic consonants:

## vowels

See also: Epiglottic vallecula & Arytenoid muscle

## References

1. ↑ *-enda* is a borrowing from Ido. It is often equivalent to the nonce passive conditional participle: *pagenda* 'payable', *paguta* 'that which would/should be paid'.