Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun That which is not a language.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

non- +‎ language

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word nonlanguage.

Examples

  • For several weeks already, students in Soweto schools had disputed a policy change that would have forced them to study certain nonlanguage subjects such as mathematics through the medium of Afrikaans.

    'I Saw a Nightmare …' Doing Violence to Memory: The Soweto Uprising, June 16, 1976 2005

  • Ten Things You Should Never Do in an Arab Country In This Chapter Following proper greeting etiquette Respecting places that are off-limits Displaying appropriate behavior during the holy month of Ramadan Being a good guest ross-cultural dialogue isn't only spoken; nonlanguage signs are equally important in communicating and building bridges between cultures.

    Arabic for Dummies Bouchentouf, Amine 2006

  • Whatever they are, our brains are able to make the right division between language and nonlanguage -- presumably the reason we can do that much is because Moth is humanoid -- but that's as far as we can go.

    Analog Science Fiction and Fact 2004

  • It blustered theatrically, bawling him out in its active nonlanguage.

    Quozl Foster, Alan Dean, 1946- 1989

  • The accumulation of many observations of this kind where left, but not right, focal damage destroys the comprehension, as well as the expression, of language helped to give rise over the years to the so-called classic view in neurology of a dominant or major, left, language hemisphere and a subordinate, or minor, nonlanguage hemisphere.

    Roger W. Sperry - Nobel Lecture 1981

  • Figure 5.5 illustrates some of the intra—and interhemispheric connections that explain the nonlanguage features sometimes accompanying Broca’s aphasia.

    The Neuropsychiatric Guide to Modern Everyday Psychiatry Michael Alan Taylor 1993

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.