47th Day of Ashan
718th Arc
718th Arc
Virikai sat once more with a pile of unmarked parchment in from of him, and a damaged book to one side. He certainly could not say that he liked copying books, mundane as it was. To preserve such knowledge beyond the lifespan of the paper was an important and sacred task, but it was a task for green students and Assistant Researchers… not him. But Cognitive Linguistics was an excellent choice of book, and not only because he had not been told which book he had to copy down. The choice was his to make, and so he had chosen something that would help him in his studies, rather than wasting time transcribing something that would ultimately be useless to him.
It wasn't as if copying out the book would be exactly like those hours spent on his knees in front of the fire, pouring over whatever his father had forced him to read anyway. Virikai carefully opened the book, and winced at the damage on the first page. Some words were barely legible - it was as if some barbaric sod had used the old tome as a coaster. sighing, he began to copy out the decipherable parts of the Table of Contents. many of the words were deformed beyond recognition, but he would know them when he hit the relevant chapters. Dreary and dull work, when he thought about it, being a scribe. But Virikai was in no rush, and was excited at the prospect of expanding his own knowledge.
The book turned out to be a sort of encyclopaedia, with a page or two dedicated to each of the major concepts within the world of linguistics. It was huge. He knew that copying it out would be no mere night's work. At least, the young scholar thought to himself as he reached for a new piece of paper, there were no illustrations. Had this been a medical text book, with drawings of the anatomy, or plant sections, Virikai would not have enjoyed this nearly as much.
Linguistics was a vast area of study, he was fast discovering, with a hierarchy of concepts that built a language. First, the smallest units of language were grouped into the categories “phonology” and “phonetics”. Phonology was about the sounds of a language, and how they could be used to convey meaning, an abstract concept: the internal linguistic patterns of sound. Phonetics was slightly more concrete: a term used to describe the sounds of speech, taking into account individual variation, as well as the study of physical production, like manner and place of articulation.
Then came syntax and morphology: the smallest units of… Virikai frowned and stopped writing, confused. He had just written that phonemes were the smallest units, and now this page was telling him something different? He flicked between the pages a few times before uttering a sound of dawning comprehension. Morphology was about grammatical meaning. Morphology described the changes words undergo to reflect meaning in different contexts, whereas syntax denoted the ruled which govern the structure of a language.
It wasn't as if copying out the book would be exactly like those hours spent on his knees in front of the fire, pouring over whatever his father had forced him to read anyway. Virikai carefully opened the book, and winced at the damage on the first page. Some words were barely legible - it was as if some barbaric sod had used the old tome as a coaster. sighing, he began to copy out the decipherable parts of the Table of Contents. many of the words were deformed beyond recognition, but he would know them when he hit the relevant chapters. Dreary and dull work, when he thought about it, being a scribe. But Virikai was in no rush, and was excited at the prospect of expanding his own knowledge.
The book turned out to be a sort of encyclopaedia, with a page or two dedicated to each of the major concepts within the world of linguistics. It was huge. He knew that copying it out would be no mere night's work. At least, the young scholar thought to himself as he reached for a new piece of paper, there were no illustrations. Had this been a medical text book, with drawings of the anatomy, or plant sections, Virikai would not have enjoyed this nearly as much.
Linguistics was a vast area of study, he was fast discovering, with a hierarchy of concepts that built a language. First, the smallest units of language were grouped into the categories “phonology” and “phonetics”. Phonology was about the sounds of a language, and how they could be used to convey meaning, an abstract concept: the internal linguistic patterns of sound. Phonetics was slightly more concrete: a term used to describe the sounds of speech, taking into account individual variation, as well as the study of physical production, like manner and place of articulation.
Then came syntax and morphology: the smallest units of… Virikai frowned and stopped writing, confused. He had just written that phonemes were the smallest units, and now this page was telling him something different? He flicked between the pages a few times before uttering a sound of dawning comprehension. Morphology was about grammatical meaning. Morphology described the changes words undergo to reflect meaning in different contexts, whereas syntax denoted the ruled which govern the structure of a language.