Caleb's Blog: Linguistic Thoughts and Other Musings

Blog #4: Pragmatics   Introduction👀 Don't get alarmed or scared by this one, folks. Pragmatics, in the wide wide world of linguistics, is just the study of how specific context contributes to a word's meaning. Piggybacking off of the last blog's topic with semantics, it only makes sense to explain and learn about pragmatics next. If semantics is the meaning of words and how we know what they're trying to convey, as well as the subcategories of semantics, what is pragmatics? With the help of the following sources, we'll find out: "15 Pragmatics Examples" by Chris Drew, "Pragmatics Gives Context to Language" by Richard Nordquist, and "Master Communication: Learn Pragmatic Language Skills" by Rajini D.  Chris Drew's article comes from HelpfulProfessor, a website that has been used in this blog previously, and is therefore, a trusted source. Actually, his article is the perfect companion to last blog's "18 Semantics Examples...

  Blog #3: Semantics Introduction Stop me if you've heard this one before: " It's just semantics"  or " Just arguing semantics." You probably heard someone say this, but maybe you're not sure what semantics even is. Well, semantics is a branch of linguistics, our favorite subject here, that refers to the meaning and interpretation of words. Lot to chew on, huh? Well, anyway, after scouring the internet for some reliable sources, which was harder than I'd thought it would be, this blog entry will be citing "Semantics: Crash Course Linguistics #5", "How Semantics Works" by Emily Sobo, and "18 Semantics Examples" by Viktoriya Sus.  Crash Course is a YouTube page ran by author John Green that has consistently posted educational videos on various subjects in different content areas, from English to world history to science, for over a decade. Sobo's article was found after much Google searching, but has a thorough explana...

Blog #2: Syntax The definition of Syntax (Malo). Introduction Syntax is something we're all familiar with, whether we're aware of it or not. In simple terms, syntax is how words are "arranged" in sentences, as well as consisting of the rules that set these arrangements (Malo). Linguistically, English syntax is usually understood in word order, for example—subject, object, verb. So, if a sentence says "The dog ate his biscuit," the dog is the subject , ate is a verb , and biscuit is the object . Most English sentences adhere to that specific subject, object, verb rule, although different languages have different word orders. Of course, that's a simplification. We'll dive more into syntax in a second. Citations used for this blog entry were "What Is Syntax - Definition, Examples, & Why It Matters" by Dominique Malo, "What Is Syntax?" by Dr. Tekla Bude, and "Syntax: Definition and Examples" by Richard Nordquist. Malo...

Blog #1 : Frames of Reference Intro In this blog, I'll be exploring spatial frames of reference in linguistics, which are "frames" we use to communicate directions to objects in relation to us from our point-of-view or from a fixed point (such as a building).  It's just a topic that I found to be interesting, and after doing something of a day's bit of research into it, I thought it would make a good first blog. As far as my sources, I did more reading than just the three sources I have cited, but for the purposes of this blog, I only paraphrased or directly quoted those listed. I cited a scholarly article called "Frames of Reference in Spatial Language Acquisition", which was very well researched; "What Is Linguistics?" from SIL Global to break down linguistics and connect it to frames of reference in simple terms; and I cited "#Literacytip: Spaces and Places" from Thompson-Nicola Regional Library because it was published from a Cana...