Gothic languageGothic is an extinct East Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizeable text corpus. All others, including Burgundian and Vandalic, are known, if at all, only from proper names that survived in historical accounts, and from loanwords in other languages such as Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Occitan and French. As a Germanic language, Gothic is a part of the Indo-European language family.
Reciprocal pronounA reciprocal pronoun is a pronoun that indicates a reciprocal relationship. A reciprocal pronoun can be used for one of the participants of a reciprocal construction, i.e. a clause in which two participants are in a mutual relationship. The reciprocal pronouns of English are one another and each other, and they form the category of anaphors along with reflexive pronouns (myself, yourselves, themselves, etc.). Reflexive pronouns are used similarly to reciprocal pronouns in the sense that they typically refer back to the subject of the sentence.
Binding (linguistics)In linguistics, binding is the phenomenon in which anaphoric elements such as pronouns are grammatically associated with their antecedents. For instance in the English sentence "Mary saw herself", the anaphor "herself" is bound by its antecedent "Mary". Binding can be licensed or blocked in certain contexts or syntactic configurations, e.g. the pronoun "her" cannot be bound by "Mary" in the English sentence "Mary saw her". While all languages have binding, restrictions on it vary even among closely related languages.
Voice (grammar)In grammar, the voice (aka diathesis) of a verb describes the relationship between the action (or state) that the verb expresses and the participants identified by its arguments (subject, object, etc.). When the subject is the agent or doer of the action, the verb is in the active voice. When the subject is the patient, target or undergoer of the action, the verb is said to be in the passive voice. When the subject both performs and receives the action expressed by the verb, the verb is in the middle voice.
Old ChineseOld Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 1250 BC, in the late Shang dynasty. Bronze inscriptions became plentiful during the following Zhou dynasty. The latter part of the Zhou period saw a flowering of literature, including classical works such as the Analects, the Mencius, and the Zuo zhuan.
PossessiveA possessive or ktetic form (abbreviated or ; from possessivus; κτητικός) is a word or grammatical construction indicating a relationship of possession in a broad sense. This can include strict ownership, or a number of other types of relation to a greater or lesser degree analogous to it. Most European languages feature possessive forms associated with personal pronouns, like the English my, mine, your, yours, his and so on. There are two main ways in which these can be used (and a variety of terminologies for each): Together with a noun, as in my car, your sisters, his boss.
Singular theySingular they, along with its inflected or derivative forms, them, their, theirs and themselves (also themself, and theirself), is a gender-neutral third-person pronoun. It typically occurs with an indeterminate antecedent, in sentences such as: "Somebody left their umbrella in the office. Could you please let them know where they can get it?" "My personal rule is to never trust anyone who says that they had a good time in high school." "The patient should be told at the outset how much they will be required to pay.
Anaphora (linguistics)In linguistics, anaphora (əˈnæfərə) is the use of an expression whose interpretation depends upon another expression in context (its antecedent or postcedent). In a narrower sense, anaphora is the use of an expression that depends specifically upon an antecedent expression and thus is contrasted with cataphora, which is the use of an expression that depends upon a postcedent expression. The anaphoric (referring) term is called an anaphor. For example, in the sentence Sally arrived, but nobody saw her, the pronoun her is an anaphor, referring back to the antecedent Sally.
