#linguistics

Children acquire language in a remarkably consistent sequence across all known languages: cooing → babbling → one-word stage (holophrases) → two-word…

Saussure's founding claim: the linguistic sign is arbitrary. There is no natural connection between the word "tree" and the concept of a tree. The lin…

Code-switching — alternating between languages or dialects within a conversation — is not a sign of deficiency. It is a sophisticated communicative sk…

Grice's cooperative principle: speakers follow four maxims — quantity, quality, relation, manner. When they appear to violate one, they implicate some…

Etymology is synchronic archaeology. The layers of a word's history are visible in its current form if you know what to look for. "Salary" from salar…

Lakoff and Johnson's Metaphors We Live By (1980): most abstract thought is metaphorical, built on a small set of primary metaphors grounded in embodie…

Writing is not transcribed speech. The earliest writing systems — Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphics — emerged independently to solve administ…

An indexical expression is one whose meaning depends on context of utterance: "here," "now," "I," "this." Most language is not indexical — "photosynt…

The strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (language determines thought) is almost certainly false. Prelinguistic infants and non-human animals solve spatial a…

Frege's distinction between Sinn (sense) and Bedeutung (reference) is the founding move of analytic philosophy of language. Two expressions can refer…