The Linguistics Stack Exchange Site is a Q&A for linguists, language enthusiasts and people who have some interest in how languages work. What is Linguistics? It is the scientific study of languages.
If you have a question about...
- any natural language from a linguistics point of view
- Linguistics phenomena during history
- the Linguistics subcategories
- currents, theories, and their applications in actual languages
- linguistic analysis of specific language features or examples
- papers/articles on a given topic
- Sign Languages and writing systems
... and it is not about...
- Advice or help on learning a foreign language — Consider Language Learning Stack Exchange instead
- "Please make me a syntax tree" — Because there are so many different approaches to syntax and its graphic representation, questions about syntax trees have no answers acceptable to everyone. In addition, most questions about such trees are homework, specific to one class, and homework questions are off-topic here. Your teacher would be the best person to ask. You can ask for help here if you show an attempt at analysis using the syntactic theory you're interested in, and explain what in particular you are having problems analyzing with that theory.
- Identification of a language or a script based on specific samples and/or its translation — Questions about the scholarly aspects of translation and language identification are still welcome.
- Fictional/constructed/planned languages — Consider Constructed Languages Stack Exchange instead
- Language-specific grammar and usage questions — These are off-topic unless primarily concerned with linguistics rather than usage. There are many language-specific sites where such questions are welcomed; see: http://stackexchange.com/sites
- anything not related to/treated by Linguistics
... then you're in the right place!
If you have questions about grammar, usage, etc., this might not be your place; in case you're sure, or if we confirm that your question would better be asked in another site, consider visiting the Language related StackExchange sites (Search "Language" in the search bar). Also, make sure your question is reasonably scoped, it shows research effort on your part and is not a "do this for me" question.
Any doubts/questions you might have you can read more here, ask us in Chat or Meta!
Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s also OK to ask and answer your own question.
If your question is not specifically on-topic for Linguistics Stack Exchange, it may be on topic for another Stack Exchange site. If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may commit to or propose a new site at Area 51, the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically created.
For more help, see "What types of questions should I avoid asking?"