InterpunctAn interpunct , also known as an interpoint, middle dot, middot, centered dot or centred dot, is a punctuation mark consisting of a vertically centered dot used for interword separation in Classical Latin. (Word-separating spaces did not appear until some time between 600 and 800 CE.) It appears in a variety of uses in some modern languages and is present in Unicode as . The multiplication dot (Unicode ) is frequently used in mathematical and scientific notation, and it may differ in appearance from the interpunct.
DissimilationIn phonology, particularly within historical linguistics, dissimilation is a phenomenon whereby similar consonants or vowels in a word become less similar. In English, dissimilation is particularly common with liquid consonants such as /r/ and /l/ when they occur in a sequence. The phenomenon is often credited to horror aequi, the principle that language users avoid repetition of identical linguistic structures.
Ancient GreekAncient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (1400–1200 BC), Dark Ages (1200–800 BC), the Archaic or Epic period (800–500 BC), and the Classical period (500–300 BC). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers.
SandhiSandhi (सन्धि sɐndɦi, "joining") is a cover term for a wide variety of sound changes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. Examples include fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of one sound depending on nearby sounds or the grammatical function of the adjacent words. Sandhi belongs to morphophonology. Sandhi occurs in many languages, particularly in the phonology of Indian languages (especially Sanskrit, Tamil, Sinhala, Telugu, Marathi, Hindi, Pali, Kannada, Bengali, Assamese, Malayalam).
Vowel hiatusIn phonology, hiatus, diaeresis (daɪˈɛrəsəs,_-ˈɪər-), or dieresis describes the occurrence of two separate vowel sounds in adjacent syllables with no intervening consonant. When two vowel sounds instead occur together as part of a single syllable, the result is called a diphthong. Some languages do not have diphthongs, except sometimes in rapid speech, or they have a limited number of diphthongs but also numerous vowel sequences that cannot form diphthongs and so appear in hiatus.
Clipping (morphology)In linguistics, clipping, also called truncation or shortening, is word formation by removing some segments of an existing word to create a synonym. Clipping differs from abbreviation, which is based on a shortening of the written, rather than the spoken, form of an existing word or phrase. Clipping is also different from back-formation, which proceeds by (pseudo-)morpheme rather than segment, and where the new word may differ in sense and word class from its source.
HypercorrectionIn sociolinguistics, hypercorrection is non-standard use of language that results from the over-application of a perceived rule of language-usage prescription. A speaker or writer who produces a hypercorrection generally believes through a misunderstanding of such rules that the form is more "correct", standard, or otherwise preferable, often combined with a desire to appear formal or educated. Linguistic hypercorrection occurs when a real or imagined grammatical rule is applied in an inappropriate context, so that an attempt to be "correct" leads to an incorrect result.
SynaeresisIn linguistics, synaeresis (sɪˈnɛrəsɪs; also spelled syneresis) is a phonological process of sound change in which two adjacent vowels within a word are combined into a single syllable. The opposite process, in which two adjacent vowels are pronounced separately, is known as "diaeresis". For any given word, speakers generally hold a traditional view about the standard pronunciation of that word. When realized in a careful reading style, each particular word is associated with this single, standard phonetic form.
Fusion (phonetics)In phonetics and historical linguistics, fusion, or coalescence, is a sound change where two or more segments with distinctive features merge into a single segment. This can occur both on consonants and in vowels. A word like educate is one that may exhibit fusion, e.g. /ɛdjʊkeɪt/ or /ˈɛdʒʊkeɪt/. A merger between two segments can also occur between word boundaries, an example being the phrase got ya being pronounced like gotcha /ɡɒtʃə/. Most cases of fusion lead to allophonic variation, though some sequences of segments may lead to wholly distinct phonemes.
Mexican SpanishMexican Spanish (español mexicano) is the variety of dialects and sociolects of the Spanish language spoken in the United Mexican States. Mexico has the largest number of Spanish speakers, with more than twice as many as in any other country in the world. Spanish is spoken by just over 99.2% of the population, being the mother tongue of 93.8% and the second language of 5.4%. The territory of contemporary Mexico is not coextensive with what might be termed Mexican Spanish, since linguistic boundaries rarely coincide with political ones.
