ENThe Concise Oxford Dictionary of LinguisticsOxford University PressOxford University Press

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics

© Oxford University Press 2000, 2003
Published by Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP
Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organisation. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department Oxford University Press.

Look up a word or term
Look up an abbreviation
Look up a person
Look up an affix
Look up a foreign word

Directory of Symbols
Symbols and other forms of notation are explained in entries headed by their names: for example, for the uses of ‘[]’, see the entry for ‘square brackets’. The complete list is as follows.

FOR

SEE

´

acute

<>

angled brackets

, ?

arrow

asterisk

¯

bar, macron

{ }

braces

breve

ˆ

circumflex

–

dash

#

double cross

!

exclamation mark

?

existential quantifier

`

grave

, ß, …

Greek letter variables

-

hyphen

‘ ’

inverted commas

a, b, …

italics

lambda operator

µ

mu

+

plus sign

?

question mark

( )

round brackets

sigma

/

slash

A, B, …

small capitals

[ ]

square brackets

>, <

tailless arrow

˜, ˜

tilde

?

universal quantifier

', ,

vertical line

Ø

zero

A

A.

1 = adjective.

2 = agent (2); cf. P, S (3).
Top

3 = argument, as A-bound.
Top

Back  -    New Search

abbreviated clause

= reduced clause.

Back  -    New Search

abbreviation.

See acronym; blend; clipping.

Back  -    New Search

abbreviatory convention.

Any convention which allows a generative grammar to be shortened by collapsing two or more rules into one. E.g. a phrase-structure rule A' A + Comp (a constituent within an adjective phrase can consist of an adjective plus a complement) can be combined with a rule A' A into the single expression A' A (Comp). By the relevant convention ‘A (Comp)’ is understood as ‘either A or A + Comp’.
The abbreviated expression is technically a rule schema.

Back  -    New Search

abduction.

Process of reasoning by which, e.g. from ‘All dogs bark’ and ‘This animal barks’, one draws the conclusion ‘This animal is a dog’.
Central, in one view, when people develop their native language. E.g. they may learn that if a noun has the ending -s it is plural: so, as one premiss, ‘All noun forms in -s are plural’. They may then want to use some noun in the plural. Call the form required f: so, as a second premiss, ‘f is plural’. By abduction, the conclusion will be ‘f is a form in -s’: therefore, all else being equal, a form in -s is what they will use. In this process of reasoning the conclusion does not necessarily follow: thus the noun in question might have a plural that does not end in -s. But as the result of it the language may change, with -s generalized to nouns that did not previously have it.
Abductive change is change due, it is claimed, to abduction. Abduction as a process of reasoning was distinguished by Peirce, who stressed its role in human life in general.

Back  -    New Search

abessive.

Case indicating that someone or something is absent: e.g. schematically, I came money-ABESS ‘I came without money’. From Latin abesse ‘to be away, be absent’.

Back  -    New Search

Abkhaz.

North West Caucasian language, spoken between the west end of the Caucasus Mountains and the coast of the Black Sea.

Back  -    New Search

ablative (ABL).

Case whose basic role, or one of whose basic roles, is to indicate movement away from some location: thus Latin cedit Rom (‘departed Rome-ABLSG’) ‘He left Rome’.

Back  -    New Search

ablative absolute.

Absolute construction in Latin in which a participle and its subject are in the ablative case and are subordinated, with no other mark of linkage, to the rest of the sentence: e.g. in the sentence urbe capta ‘(the) city-ABLSG having-been-taken-ABLSG’ Caesar recessit ‘Caesar withdrew’.

Back  -    New Search

ablaut.

Morphological variation, in Germanic and other Indo-European languages, of a root vowel. E.g. in Ancient Greek the root of the verb ‘to leave’ appeared in three forms: leip- in the present; loip-, in the perfect or in the adjective loipós ‘left over’; lip-, in the aorist or as the first member of compounds. This illustrates the three original ‘grades’ of ablaut: the e grade, the o grade, and the zero or reduced grade, with neither e nor o.
Similarly, in English, of vowel variations in strong verbs (e.g. drive, drove, driven) or between verbs and nouns (sing, song), whether or not they derive directly from the Indo-European system.

Back  -    New Search

A-bound.

Bound (2) by an element in the normal syntactic position of a subject or other argument of a verb. E.g. in I saw myself, the reflexive myself is A-bound by its antecedent I.
A term in Government and Binding Theory, where it is claimed that some elements, like reflexives, must be A-bound. Other elements need not be: when they are bound by an antecedent not in such a position they are said to be ‘-’ or ‘A'-bound’ .

Back  -    New Search

abrupt.

Distinctive feature in the scheme proposed by Jakobson. Characterized acoustically by ‘a spread of energy over a wide frequency region’: thus, in particular, a feature of oral stops as opposed to fricatives. Also called ‘discontinuous’ or ‘interrupted’ : opp. continuant.

Back  -    New Search

ABS

= absolutive.

Back  -    New Search

absolute.

(Syntactic element) not accompanied by an element to which one might expect it to be linked. E.g. in This is bigger, bigger is an absolute comparative , not linked, as other comparatives are, to a standard of comparison (bigger than …); in His is bigger, his is similarly an absolute possessive , not linked, as possessives in general are, to a noun (his garden, his kitchen, …). An absolute case , e.g. in Turkish, is so called because it is realized by a root alone, unaccompanied by an affix.
An absolute construction is one in which a subordinate element is not linked by a conjunction or in any other specific way to the rest of a sentence. E.g. in We left, the wine having run out, the last five words stand in an absolute relation to we left: cf. We left because the wine had run out (with the conjunction because), or We left, having finished the wine (with a direct relation between having and we).
From Latin absolutus ‘freed from linkage’.

Back  -    New Search

absolute neutralization.

Term in Generative Phonology for the suppression in all contexts of an underlying difference between elements. E.g. in a language with vowel harmony, a single open vowel might relate sometimes to front vowels and sometimes to back vowels: a distinction might therefore be established between a front ‘a’ and a back ‘’, which undergoes absolute neutralization after the rules for harmony have applied.

Back  -    New Search

absolute synonymy.

See synonymy.

Back  -    New Search

‘absolute universal’.

A linguistic universal that is genuinely universal: i.e. that holds for all languages, without exception. Opp. relative universal, statistical universal.

Back  -    New Search

absolutive (ABS).

Case which identifies both the patient in a basic transitive construction and a single argument or valent in an intransitive. E.g. schematically, men bread-ABS ate ‘The men ate the bread’; bread-ABS disappeared ‘The bread disappeared’. The agent in the transitive construction will then be ergative: bread-ABS ate men-ERG. The case is called ‘absolutive’ because, in many languages, it is distinguished by the absence of an affix.
Thence in general of syntactic elements that unite the same roles, whether or not the language has cases.

Back  -    New Search

‘absorption’.

1 Used variously of phonological changes or processes in which one element is seen as incorporated in another. Thus ‘tonal absorption’ is a process in some languages of West Africa by which the ending of a contour tone (rising , falling ˆ) is ‘absorbed’ by a following syllable whose tone is at the same level: rising plus high ´ low ` plus high ´; falling ˆ plus low ` high ´ plus low `. Cf. fusion.

2 Process in which a case or case role is assigned to one element in a construction and can then no longer be assigned to another.
Top

Back  -    New Search

abstract.

(Structure, representation) which differs from that which is most transparent. E.g. the representation of righteous as ‘rixt-i-s’, proposed at an underlying level in Generative Phonology at the end of the 1960s, is more abstract than one which corresponds closely to a phonetic transcription [rts]. Similarly, a representation of the syntax of a sentence is more abstract the more the order in which the words are arranged and the units and categories to which they are assigned differ from their order and potential grouping in speech.
Since the end of the 1960s most linguists have tried to put restrictions on the degree of abstractness that their models will permit: e.g. to exclude representations such as ‘rixt-i-s’. But it has been hard to propose firm limits that all will accept; hence in phonology a long-standing abstractness controversy.

Back  -    New Search

‘abstract case’.

See case.

Back  -    New Search

abstract noun.

One which denotes an abstract state, property, etc.: e.g. love, happiness. Opp. concrete.

Back  -    New Search

ACC

= accusative.

Back  -    New Search

Accadian

= Akkadian.

Back  -    New Search

accent (1).

A phonological unit realized by auditory prominence, especially within a word. E.g. in morning the first syllable is perceived as more prominent than the second: in phonetic transcription, ['m:n]. This distinguishes it as the accented syllable, or the one that ‘carries the accent’. Originally of pitch accents in Ancient Greek; thence of stress accents, e.g. in English; thence also applied to peaks of prominence in larger units, such as sentences. E.g. in He'll talk to ´ME (‘to me, not someone else’), the ‘sentence accent’, or sentence stress, falls on me.
The accents in writing, as in French père, bête, céder, originally distinguished pitches in Greek, the acute a high pitch, the circumflex a falling pitch, the grave a low pitch. But they have since been used for many other purposes, to distinguish length or quality of vowels, different consonants, homonyms, and so on, with others added in the spelling of various languages.

Back  -    New Search

accent (2).

A variety of speech differing phonetically from other varieties: thus, as in ordinary usage, ‘a Southern accent’, ‘Scottish accents’. Normally restricted by linguists to cases where the differences are at most in phonology: further differences, e.g. in syntax, are said to be between dialects.

Back  -    New Search

acceptable.

(Sentence, etc.) which native speakers will not see as contrary to usage. Often = grammatical (2), but many scholars insist on a distinction, drawn by Chomsky in the 1960s, between the acceptability of a sentence, taken as a datum, and its conformity to the rules of a specific grammar. Thus a sentence like The man the girl your son knew saw arrived may be unacceptable to speakers. But its structure conforms to general rules that may be posited for relative clauses: the man s[the girl s[your son knew] saw]… So, by hypothesis, it is grammatical, and its unacceptability must be explained by other factors, such as the difficulty of keeping track of it in short-term memory.

Back  -    New Search

accessibility scale.

A scale of elements or categories in order of diminishing applicability of some type or types of process. E.g. in English, a direct object (DO) can generally be made the subject of a passive: Harry saw them They were seen by Harry. So can an indirect object (IO), but with more restrictions and exclusions. So too a locative (Loc), but with even more restrictions and exclusions. These elements can thus be said to form a scale: DO > IO > Loc, where x > y means that x is more open to the process.
Similar scales are often formulated across languages: e.g. the NP accessibility hierarchy.

Back  -    New Search

‘accident’.

Ancient term for a variable property of words belonging to a specific part of speech. Accidents included categories of inflection: e.g. number and case as variable features of nouns. They also included any other feature that might vary: e.g. the ‘quality’ of nouns (lit. their ‘what-sort-ness’) was an accident initially distinguishing proper nouns from common nouns.
Later used especially of categories of inflection: hence ‘accidence’ is in effect an older term for inflectional morphology.

Back  -    New Search

Accommodation Theory.

Branch of sociolinguistics concerned with the adjustments made by speakers in adapting or ‘accommodating’ their speech in response to that of interlocutors who, e.g., are speakers of another dialect.

Back  -    New Search

accusative (ACC).

Case whose basic role, or one of whose basic roles, is to mark a direct object. E.g. in Latin vidi Caesarem ‘I-saw Caesar’, the object Caesarem has the accusative singular ending -(e)m.
The term derives from a mistranslation into Latin of a Greek term that was already obscure. There is and was no connection with accusing.

Back  -    New Search

accusative and infinitive.

Construction in Latin in which an indirect statement was marked by a verb in the infinitive whose subject was in the accusative: e.g. in Dixit Caesarem venisse ‘he-said Caesar-ACCSG had-come-INF’ (‘He said that Caesar had come’). Extended to formally similar constructions in other languages: e.g. in English (He told) me to come.

Back  -    New Search

‘accusative language’.

One which has a nominative and an accusative case, or which distinguishes subjects and objects in an equivalent way. E.g. English: thus, in The boy saw her and The boy smiled, the role of the boy as subject is distinguished by its position from its role as object in She saw the boy.
Coined in opposition to ‘ergative language’: see also active language.

Back  -    New Search

Achinese.

Austronesian language spoken at the northern end of Sumatra. Also ‘Achehnese’ .

Back  -    New Search

‘acoustic image’.

See linguistic sign.

Back  -    New Search

acoustic phonetics.

The study of the physical properties of the sounds produced in speech. Opp. articulatory phonetics.

Back  -    New Search

‘acquired’.

(Speech disorder) resulting from disease or injury to the brain, in someone who did not show it before. Thus aphasia is by definition ‘acquired’; dyslexia, as usually defined, is not ‘acquired’.

Back  -    New Search

acrolect.

Variety of a language which, of a series of varieties spoken predominantly at different social levels, has the highest prestige or is closest to a standard form. Especially in studies of creoles: e.g. of the varieties spoken in Jamaica the acrolect has the fewest creole features and is thus most similar to standard English elsewhere. Opp. basilect, mesolect.

Back  -    New Search

acronym.

A word formed from the initial letters of two or more successive words: e.g. ASH, phonetically [a], from ‘Action on Smoking and Health’. Sometimes taken to include abbreviations where the letters are spelled out: e.g. EU, pronounced [i:ju:].

Back  -    New Search

ACT.

= active.

Back  -    New Search

actants.

Used by L. Tesnière, and thence occasionally in English, for the elements in a clause that identify the participants in a process, etc. referred to by a verb. Thus, in French or English, a subject, direct object, and indirect object.

Back  -    New Search

action noun.

A derived noun whose formation has the general meaning ‘act or process of…’: e.g. construction (from construct + -ion), with the basic meaning ‘process of constructing’. Cf. agent noun.

Back  -    New Search

active (1) (ACT).

(Construction, sentence) in which a verb has a subject which is characteristically the role filled by an agent rather than a patient. Thus the agent my wife is the subject in the active sentence My wife cut the grass. Also (and more traditionally) of the form of verb in such a construction. Thus cut is an active verb and, in e.g. the woman cutting the grass, cutting is an active participle.
Opp. passive. In older usage verbs were ‘active’ only if they had a corresponding passive. Thus cut would be active since there is a passive in e.g. The grass was cut. If a verb was active in form but had no corresponding passive it was called ‘neuter’. Thus a verb like appear is traditionally neuter.

Back  -    New Search

active (2).

(Vocabulary) that a speaker uses, as opposed to passive vocabulary , that is known but not used. Likewise active knowledge of a language is knowledge that enables one to speak it, as opposed to passive knowledge , which enables one to understand it.

Back  -    New Search

active articulator.

See articulator.

Back  -    New Search

‘active language’.

One which has two basic intransitive constructions. In the first the noun is identified by its case or otherwise with the agent in a transitive construction: this might be so, in particular, when it is itself notionally an agent. In the second it is identified with the patient in a transitive construction. Thus, in the transitive, the agent and patient might be marked as nominative vs. accusative: schematically, Mary-NOM kissed Sarah-ACC ‘Mary kissed Sarah’. An intransitive would then have variously the nominative or the accusative: e.g. Mary-NOM left, where Mary is an agent or is relatively animate in terms of an animacy hierarchy, but The tree-ACC fell, where the tree is not an agent or is minimally animate.
Also called ‘split intransitive’ . Distinguished from an ergative language, in which the noun in the intransitive is identified throughout with a patient in the transitive construction, and an accusative language, in which it is identified throughout with an agent.

Back  -    New Search

actor.

Sometimes in a sense equivalent to agent (1). Alternatively, agents as linguistic elements may be distinguished from ‘actors’ as the individuals in the world that they refer to.

Back  -    New Search

‘actualization’

= realization.

Back  -    New Search

actuation.

The way in which changes in a language are initiated. The ‘actuation problem’ is accordingly that of explaining why a specific change began in a specific language or dialect at a specific time, and as such is distinguished, in many theories, from the problem of ‘implementation’, or transmission of the change across a community of speakers.

Back  -    New Search

acute.

1 Diacritic (´) originally and still used, in descriptions of tone languages, to represent a high pitch: see accent (1). Also, in accounts of intonation, to represent a rise in pitch.

2 Distinctive feature of both consonants and vowels proposed by Jakobson in the 1950s: e.g. in English front vowels are acute, as are dental and alveolar consonants. Defined acoustically by a relative concentration of energy in higher frequencies. Opp. grave; see also compact.
Top

Back  -    New Search

adaptation.

The process by which loan words are changed to fit the sound patterns of the language into which they are borrowed. Often progressive or otherwise a matter of degree: e.g. of the several pronunciations of garage, [g'r:z] is least adapted from its source in French, while ['gardz] is fully adapted.

Back  -    New Search

‘additive bilingualism’.

Bilingualism in which a second language is acquired without detriment to the first. Used e.g. of the learning of French by English speakers in Canada: that of German and French by speakers of Luxembourgish or of standard German by speakers of Swiss German also seem to fit the definition. Contrasted with subtractive bilingualism.

Back  -    New Search

address.

See forms of address.

Back  -    New Search

addressee.

The normal term for a person to whom someone else (the speaker) speaks or ‘addresses’ an utterance. Cf. hearer.

Back  -    New Search

addressee-controlled honorific.

See honorific; polite form.

Back  -    New Search

Adelung, Johann Christoph

(1732–1806).
Student of German, important in the history of general linguistics for his last project, Mithridates, which compiled information, including versions of the Lord's Prayer, on all languages then known to European scholarship. Published by Adelung and J. S. Vater in four volumes (1806–17), with the contents arranged geographically: the final survey of its kind in the period before the triumph of comparative linguistics.

Back  -    New Search

adequacy.

See levels of adequacy.

Back  -    New Search

adessive.

Case indicating position adjacent to an object, etc. E.g. schematically, Book-ADESS red cover ‘The book has (i.e. has adjacent to it) a red cover’.

Back  -    New Search

adhortative

= exhortative.

Back  -    New Search

Adj

= adjective.

Back  -    New Search

adjacency.

The usual term in linguistics for ‘position next to’. Thus various forms of ‘adjacency principle’ are principles by which elements that are syntactically related cannot be, or tend not to be, separated.

Back  -    New Search

adjacency pair.

Two successive utterances by different speakers, where the second is of a type required or expected by the first. E.g. a question followed by an answer; a greeting followed by a greeting in return.

Back  -    New Search

adjective.

A word of a class whose most characteristic role is as the modifier of a noun: e.g. in tall men, tall is an adjective modifying men. Hence typically understood as referring to properties (thus in this case that of being tall) not essential to whatever is denoted (in this case all possible men) by the noun. Adjectives were seen in antiquity as a distinct subclass of nouns, added or adjoined to (‘ad-’) others; as such they were sometimes said to have a role parallel to that of adverbs in their relation to verbs. They were distinguished as a separate part of speech (‘noun adjective’ vs. ‘noun substantive’) in the later Middle Ages, and are often, in the modern period, seen either as sharing properties with verbs or as intermediate between verbs and nouns.
An adjectival element is one either associated with or having the role of adjectives: e.g. -less in clueless is an adjectival affix; English participial adjectives in -ed, such as interested in very interested, are sometimes called ‘adjectival passives’.

Back  -    New Search

adjective clause

= relative clause: i.e. its role in a noun phrase, like that of adjectives, is as a modifier of the noun.

Back  -    New Search

adjective phrase.

A phrase (1) whose head (1) is an adjective: e.g. very tall in [very tall] men, whose head is the adjective tall.

Back  -    New Search

adjunct.

1 Any element in the structure of a clause which is not part of its nucleus (1) or core. E.g. in I will bring it on my bike tomorrow, the nucleus of the clause is I will bring it; the adjuncts are on my bike and tomorrow. Opp., e.g., complement (1).

2 Used by Quirk et al., CGE of a range of adverbials including those of manner, place, and time: e.g. carelessly, in the dustbin, and yesterday are adjuncts in I put it carelessly in the dustbin yesterday. Different in part from adjuncts as defined in sense 1: e.g. in this last example, in the dustbin would be part of the nucleus.
The term was originally introduced by Jespersen, for the secondary element in a junction. But it is no longer in general use in that sense.
Top

Back  -    New Search

adjunction.

1 Any operation, especially in syntax, by which an element is added next to another. E.g. in who have you met?, who is sometimes seen as adjoined , by wh-movement, to the remainder of the sentence: [who [have you met]].

2 Specifically, in terms of X-bar syntax, of an operation by which, when A is adjoined to B, the two together form a unit whose category is in turn that of B. E.g. if B is a CP, the adjunction of A will form a larger unit, [A [B]], which is also a CP. Adjunction in this sense is allowed in Government and Binding Theory only when B is a maximal projection (in this case of C); the structure that results is an adjunction structure .
Chomsky-adjunction and sister-adjunction are types distinguished in earlier transformational grammars.
Top

Back  -    New Search

adnominal.

(Word, etc.) directly depending on a noun. Thus, in the girl singing, the participle singing depends on girl; a participle is accordingly, in some accounts, an adnominal form of a verb.

Back  -    New Search

adposition.

Cover term for prepositions and postpositions. The sense is that of an element positioned ‘next to’ (‘ad-’), whether before (‘pre-’) or after (‘post-’).

Back  -    New Search

adstratum.

A language which has influenced one spoken by a neighbouring population. Thus in the modern period French has been an adstratum in the development of English. Cf. substratum; superstratum.

Back  -    New Search

Adv

= adverb.

Back  -    New Search

Advanced RP.

See Received Pronunciation.

Back  -    New Search

Advanced Tongue Root.

A distinctive feature of vowels e.g. in many West African languages. Abbreviated [± ATR]: in the production of vowels that are [+ ATR] the tongue is drawn forward so that the space between the tongue root and the back of the throat is widened; in vowels that are [- ATR] the tongue is retracted so that this space is narrowed.
Often described as ‘tense’ vs. ‘lax’ before the nature of the distinction was made clear.

Back  -    New Search

advancement

= promotion.

Back  -    New Search

‘advantage’.

See dative of advantage.

Back  -    New Search

adverb.

A word of a class whose most characteristic role is traditionally that of modifying a verb or verb phrase: e.g. badly in He wrote it badly, where (in different accounts) it modifies either wrote or the phrase wrote it.
One of the parts of speech established in antiquity. In the grammar of English and many similar languages, an adverb is effectively a word that modifies anything other than a noun. Thus badly as above; certainly in Certainly I'll come, where it modifies I'll come; highly in highly inflammatory, where it modifies inflammatory; nearly in nearly there, where it modifies another adverb there. The reasons for lumping these roles together are (a) that they are often served by words of the same form (e.g. words in -ly), (b) that the same words often serve two or more of them.

Back  -    New Search

adverbial.

(Syntactic element) whose role is one served by adverbs. Thus on Monday is an adverbial phrase , or an adverbial , in I'll do it on Monday: cf. I'll do it tomorrow, with the single adverb tomorrow. Likewise when I'm ready is an adverbial clause in I'll do it when I'm ready.

Back  -    New Search

adverb phrase.

A phrase (1) whose head (1) is an adverb: e.g. very badly, headed by badly, in I sing very badly.

Back  -    New Search

adversative.

Usually of a form or construction marking an antithesis: e.g. but is an adversative conjunction in I'll try, but it may not work.

Back  -    New Search

aerometry.

The measurement of air flow, e.g. in the production of speech. The techniques used in phonetics involve the insertion at appropriate places in the vocal tract of instruments which measure a drop in air pressure across a resistance, which is directly related to the rate of flow.

Back  -    New Search

affected object.

The direct object of a verb denoting an action, etc. which affects individuals or things already in existence. Thus the silver is an affected object in I polished the silver, since silver exists before it is polished. Opp. effected object.

Back  -    New Search

‘affection’.

Older term for the effect of one sound on another that precedes or follows: cf. assimilation; coarticulation.

Back  -    New Search

affective.

(Function, meaning) having to do with a speaker's feelings. E.g. one might say, as a neutral statement, ‘I have finished it’; or one might say, with triumph or amazement, ‘I have ´Actually ´FInished it’. What is said is in other respects the same, but the utterances differ in affective meaning. Likewise intonations or words like actually have, or have at times, an affective function.
Also called ‘emotive’ , ‘expressive’ . Opposed variously to cognitive meaning, propositional meaning, or to the representational or referential function of language.

Back  -    New Search

affirmative.

(Sentence, form, construction) by which one asserts what is, as opposed to what is not, the case. Opp. negative; also, by implication, to interrogative, imperative, etc.

Back  -    New Search

affix.

Any element in the morphological structure of a word other than a root. E.g. unkinder consists of the root kind plus the affixes un- and -er. Hence affixation , for the process of adding an affix. Also affixal : thus un- in unkind is an affixal element, and the formation of unkind is that of an ‘affixal negative’.
Affixes are traditionally divided into prefixes, which come before the form to which they are joined; suffixes, which come after; and infixes, which are inserted within it. Others commonly distinguished are circumfixes and superfixes.

Back  -    New Search

‘affix hopping’.

Rule posited in transformational grammar in the 1950s by which elements realized by affixes of verbs in English are placed in affixal position. E.g. Jim left is assigned an underlying structure Jim PAST leave, where PAST is syntactically an auxiliary. To derive the actual or surface structure, PAST ‘hops over’ leave and is attached as a suffix to it: Jim leave-PAST.

Back  -    New Search

affricate.

A stop consonant released with a fricative at the same place of articulation: e.g. [t] (written ch) in chip.

Back  -    New Search

African languages.

Currently classified, for convenience or as a working hypothesis, into four main groups. Afro-Asiatic, across North Africa, the Sahara, and the adjacent Near East, includes, as its largest member, Arabic. A Khoisan group includes a minority towards the southern tip of the continent. The other two are much more speculative. ‘Nilo-Saharan’ is an attempt to group together Nilotic languages with others spoken between the upper Nile and the Congo. ‘Niger-Congo’ covers all the remainder, including Bantu and most of the languages of West Africa.
The classification derives in part from an application of mass comparison by Greenberg in the early 1960s.

Back  -    New Search

Afrikaans.

Germanic, derivative from Dutch, spoken in South Africa and elsewhere in Africa by emigration. Sometimes claimed to be a Dutch-based creole, a claim also strongly resisted.

Back  -    New Search

Afro-Asiatic.

Proposed family of languages including Semitic and Cushitic; also Berber, Egyptian, and the Chadic languages in sub-Saharan Africa. Previously called ‘Hamito-Semitic’ , on the assumption that Semitic forms one major branch and the others thought to belong to it form another, called ‘Hamitic’ .

Back  -    New Search

agent.

1 Noun phrase, etc. identifying an actor or actors performing some action. E.g. Mary is an agent in Mary went out or Mary made it.

2 A syntactic category which is characteristically that of agents as opposed to patients. Thus the subject of a transitive construction in English has the role of agent (A) in opposition to an object as patient: Mary (A) shut the door (P).
Top

3 The element in a passive sentence which would correspond to a subject in the active, e.g. by Mary in The car was driven by Mary: cf. active (1) Mary drove the car.
Top

Back  -    New Search

agentive.

1 Having the semantic role of an agent (1): e.g. I is agentive in I did it.

2 (Case) = ergative.
Top

3 (Noun) = agent noun: also of a process or affix by which such nouns are formed.
Top

Back  -    New Search

agentless passive.

A passive without an agent (3): e.g. She was promoted, as compared with She was promoted by her company, with agent by her company. Cf. reduced passive.

Back  -    New Search

agent noun.

A derived noun whose formation has the general meaning ‘someone who does…’: e.g. builder, from build + -er, meaning ‘someone who builds’. Cf. action noun.

Back  -    New Search

agglutinating.

(Language, formation) in which words are easily divided into separate segments with separate grammatical functions. E.g. in Turkish, diçilerimin ‘of my dentists’ is transparently made up of a root (di ‘tooth’) and four suffixes: -çi (agentive), -ler (plural), -im ‘my’, and -in (genitive).
Opp. inflecting; isolating. Agglutination is likewise the process by which such structures or this type of structure is formed.

Back  -    New Search

AGR [agr] or ['ag].

A syntactic category in Chomsky's Principles and Parameters Theory. Originally an element within INFL, comprising features of person, number, and gender as opposed to those of tense. Later an independent element, or two such elements, one relating to a subject and the other to an object.
Originally an abbreviation for ‘agreement’: hence the first way in which it is pronounced.

Back  -    New Search

agrammatism.

Form of aphasia in which grammatical elements are lost. The resulting speech is often described as ‘telegraphic’, consisting mainly of lexical items and fixed expressions; also slow and hesitant.

Back  -    New Search

agreement.

Syntactic relation between words and phrases which are compatible, in a given construction, by virtue of inflections carried by at least one of them. E.g. these and carrots are compatible, in the construction of these carrots, because both are inflected as plural. Likewise, in the Italian sentence Maria e Luisa sono arrivate ‘Mary and Louise have arrived’, sono (lit. ‘be-3RDPL’) agrees in respect of plural number with arrivate (‘arrived-FEMPL’) and both, or sono arrivate as a whole, agree with a subject, Maria e Luisa, which refers to more than one woman.
Also called concord . Distinctions are drawn between grammatical agreement and notional agreement; also between agreement and some similar relations of compatibility, such as the government (2) of cases by prepositions. But the last of these is often at best imprecise.

Back  -    New Search

AGT

= agent, agentive.

Back  -    New Search

airstream mechanism.

Any system by which a flow of air is generated in the production of speech. Types of mechanism are distinguished by two criteria:
a as egressive or ingressive, according to the direction of flow;
b as pulmonic, glottalic, or velaric, according to the way in which the flow is initiated.
The main mechanism, and in many languages the only one that is normally employed, is breathing out. This is
a egressive, in that air flows outwards, and
b pulmonic, in that air is pushed out from the lungs as their volume is reduced by the contraction of the chest muscles. For other mechanisms of particular importance in speech see click; ejective; implosive.

Back  -    New Search

Akan.

Group of dialects or closely related languages, spoken mainly in Ghana: separately named Asante, Fante, and Akuapem (or Twi).

Back  -    New Search

Akkadian.

Ancient Semitic language spoken especially in Assyria and Babylonia. Written in cuneiform from about 2500 BC and by the middle of the next millennium an international language throughout the Near East. It has no modern descendant.
Also spelled ‘Accadian’ .

Back  -    New Search

Aktionsart.

The lexical class to which a verb belongs by virtue of the type of process, state, etc. that it denotes. E.g. walking is an activity; therefore walk is an ‘activity verb’. Knowing something is a state of mind; therefore know is lexically stative.
The German term means ‘kind of action’; sometimes replaced in English by ‘aspectual character’ , ‘aspectual value’, or ‘semantic value’. Aktionsart is linked to aspect, from which some scholars would argue that it is not separate.

Back  -    New Search

Albanian.

Attested from the 15th century AD, now spoken throughout Albania and in the neighbouring province of Kossovo; also in pockets in Greece and southern Italy. Indo-European, forming a separate branch within the family.

Back  -    New Search

alethic ['li:k].

(Modality) opposing in particular what must logically be true to what may be true in specific circumstances. Distinguished by logicians from epistemic modality; but not usually, if ever, a distinct category in languages.
From the Greek word for ‘true’.

Back  -    New Search

Alexandrians.

School of scholars and scientists associated with the library of Alexandria from the early 3rd century BC. Aristarchus (c.217–145 BC) is especially important in the history of literary and textual scholarship, and it is within this tradition that earlier analyses of language, by the Stoics especially, developed into the discipline of grammar as it has been understood from the 1st century BC onwards. The details are uncertain, a particular problem being the authenticity of the grammar attributed to Aristarchus' pupil Dionysius Thrax.

Back  -    New Search

alexia.

Loss of a previously acquired ability to read in consequence of disease or injury to the brain. Distinguished as such from dyslexia.

Back  -    New Search

Algonquian.

Family of languages spoken or once spoken over a large part of North America, in Canada and, in the USA, especially in the Great Lakes region and the eastern seaboard. Varieties of Cree and Ojibwa now have the greatest numbers of speakers.
Also spelled ‘Algonkian’ .

Back  -    New Search

algorithm.

See heuristic.

Back  -    New Search

alienable possession.

Possessive construction in which the thing possessed is not an inherent part of the possessor: e.g. that of Bill's house, since a house exists independently of its owner. Opp. inalienable possession.

Back  -    New Search

allative (ALL).

Case whose basic role is to indicate movement to or towards some location: e.g. schematically, I-walked shop-ALL ‘I walked to the shop’.

Back  -    New Search

allegro form.

A form as modified phonetically in rapid speech. E.g. I can't see him has, as one possible allegro form, [kã's:m]. Likewise rapid speech is sometimes called allegro speech .

Back  -    New Search

allo-.

Prefix used for variant forms of any linguistic unit. Thus in general ‘X-emes’, e.g. phonemes or morphemes, are invariants, abstracted from and realized by alternative ‘allo-Xes’, e.g. allophones or allomorphs.

Back  -    New Search

allograph.

A variant form of a grapheme: i.e. of a letter in writing seen as analogous to a phoneme.

Back  -    New Search

allomorph.

One of a set of forms which realize a morpheme: cf. morpheme (3). E.g. -[n] in taken and -[d] in removed are among the allomorphs of the ‘past participle’ morpheme.

Back  -    New Search

allomorphy.

Alternation in the forms that realize morphological or lexical units. E.g. in Latin rgis ‘king-GENSG’ vs. domini ‘master-GENSG’ there is allomorphy of the genitive singular ending (-is/-i); in fer ‘I carry’ vs. tul ‘I carried’ there is allomorphy in the root (fer-/tul-).

Back  -    New Search

allophone.

An audibly distinct variant of a phoneme. E.g. the [d] and [ð] of Spanish ['deðo] ‘finger’ are allophones of the same phoneme, written d in the spelling dedo.
Thence allophonic , as in ‘allophonic variation’, i.e. variation among allophones.

Back  -    New Search

alpha ().

See Greek letter variables; move .

Back  -    New Search

alphabet.

A writing system, strictly one in which consonants and vowels are represented equally by separate letters. Hence especially the Greek alphabet and its Roman and other derivatives; but also of consonantal alphabets of the Semitic type.

Back  -    New Search

alpha-syllabic.

(Writing system) in which successive characters sometimes represent a single consonant or vowel, as in an alphabet, and sometimes a syllable, as in a syllabary. The type is characteristic of systems in or derived from India, such as Devanagari.

Back  -    New Search

Altaic.

A proposed family of languages, including Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungusic in east Siberia.

Back  -    New Search

Alternating Stress Rule.

A rule of English phonology proposed by Chomsky and Halle, SPE which assigns stress e.g. to the first syllable of hurricane. By the ‘Main Stress Rule’, which applies first, ‘primary stress’ is assigned to the final syllable: hurricáne. By the Alternating Stress Rule, the second syllable before a primary stress also receives primary stress: húrricáne. Then, by a rule applying later, that of the final syllable is reduced.

Back  -    New Search

alternation.

Variation in the forms that realize linguistic units; hence often = allomorphy. Also a specific instance of such variation: e.g. in taken vs. removed there is an alternation in the past participle ending.
Hence alternant , one of the forms that enter into an alternation.

Back  -    New Search

alveolar.

Articulated with the tip or blade of the tongue against the ridge behind the upper teeth: e.g. [t] and [d] are normally alveolar in English. The ridge is called the alveolar ridge from the ‘alveoli’ or sockets for the teeth contained in it.

Back  -    New Search

alveolo-palatal.

A consonant articulated like a palatal consonant but in a more forward position.

Back  -    New Search

ambient it.

The it of e.g. It is snowing, where the sentence refers to no individual but simply to a state of the world in which this might be said.

Back  -    New Search

ambiguous.

(Sentence, etc.) having two or more meanings. Thus I filled the pen is ambiguous, since the pen might refer to a writing instrument or an enclosure for animals. Most accounts distinguish lexical ambiguity , as in this example, from grammatical or syntactic ambiguity . Cf. e.g. I like good food and wine, where good might bear a syntactic relation to both food and wine (‘good food and good wine’) or to food alone (‘good food and any wine’).
Many linguists will talk of ambiguity only when they see it as a property of sentences as opposed to utterances or as explained, as in these examples, by the language system. But such criteria are problematic as these notions are problematic.

Back  -    New Search

‘ambilingual’.

Bilingual who has equally mastered both languages.

Back  -    New Search

ambisyllabic.

Belonging to two syllables. E.g. single intervocalic consonants form a syllable, in one view, with the following and with the preceding vowel.

Back  -    New Search

ameliorative.

(Change) by which a word develops a more favourable sense. E.g. in the meaning of nice, originally borrowed from Old French in the 13th century with the meaning ‘foolish, stupid’; or that of minister, as in Prime Minister, originally meaning ‘servant’. Also called meliorative : opp. pejorative.

Back  -    New Search

American Sign Language.

See sign language.

Back  -    New Search

‘American structuralism’.

The school or theory of linguistics dominant in the USA from the 1920s or 1930s until the end of the 1950s: especially, therefore, that of Bloomfield and the Post-Bloomfieldians.

Back  -    New Search

‘Amerind’.

Conjectural phylum or grouping of families comprising all the indigenous languages of the Americas other than Eskimo-Aleut and Na-Dené. Proposed by Greenberg on the basis of mass comparison; hence valid or purely speculative, depending on one's assessment of his methods.

Back  -    New Search

Amerindian.

Cover term for the indigenous languages of the Americas. See Central American languages; North American languages; South American languages.

Back  -    New Search

Ameslan.

See sign language.

Back  -    New Search

Amharic.

South Semitic, the official language of Ethiopia and a second language, there and in Sudan, for many for whom it is not native. Written in a South Semitic alphabet, distinctive to it and neighbouring languages, such as Tigrinya.

Back  -    New Search

‘amplifier’.

See intensifying.

Back  -    New Search

anacoluthon [ank'lu:n].

A sentence, etc. which switches from one construction to another. E.g. in He told me that he was desperate and could I please help the interrogative could I please help does not construe with the that of that he was desperate. From Greek, with the meaning ‘not following’.

Back  -    New Search

analogists vs. anomalists.

Controversy regarding the basis for correct language, said by Varro to have raged in the 2nd to 1st centuries BC. One side argued that irregular inflections should be regularized, as far as was reasonable, by a principle of analogy: this view is also known from other sources. The other argued that ‘anomalies’, in the sense of inflectional irregularities, should be retained: for that sense Varro, and others following him, are our only testimony.

Back  -    New Search

analogy.

Process by which a form a is either changed or created in such a way that its relation to another form b is like that of other pairs of forms whose relationship is similar in meaning. E.g. if a speaker says contácted instead of cóntacted, it is possibly by analogy with other verbs whose stress is on that syllable. Thus contáct (verb) is to cóntact (noun) as impórt is to ímport, dispúte to (for many speakers) díspute, and so on. If a speaker were to invent a verb ‘locketize’ (meaning to enclose in a locket) it might be by analogy with other formations in -ize: locketize is to locket as palletize is to pallet, and so on.
Thence generally of any changes in which similarity in meaning leads to formal similarity. E.g. in the history of English cows (plural) may be said to have replaced kine by a process in which a form analogous to that of other plurals (cow + -s) has replaced one which was irregular. But analogy is logically distinct from processes of regularization. E.g. in some dialects regular dived has been replaced by irregular dove, by analogy especially with drove vs. drive.
Thence analogical change , change explained by analogy.

Back  -    New Search

analphabetic notation.

Phonetic notation in which segments are represented not by single letters but by arrays of symbols that refer to individual articulators. E.g. one devised by Jespersen in the late 19th century, for which the term was invented.

Back  -    New Search

‘analysis by synthesis’.

Any strategy in speech processing in which, given a set of rules that generate a set of speech forms, the structure of an input form is determined by the rules applied in a successful attempt to synthesize it. Proposed in the 1960s in the context of phonetics and phonology.

Back  -    New Search

analytic (1).

(Form, language) in which separate words realize grammatical distinctions that in other languages may be realized by inflections. Opp. synthetic (1).
Thus the perfect is realized analytically in English (has come) but by an inflection in e.g. Latin (veni ‘I have come’). Likewise constructions with prepositions are analytic, as opposed to case forms.

Back  -    New Search

analytic (2).

(Proposition) which by definition cannot but be true. E.g. spinsters are by definition unmarried: therefore ‘If Jane is a spinster, Jane is not married’ is analytic or analytically true. Opp. synthetic (2). Analyticity is similarly the property of being analytic.

Back  -    New Search

anaphor ['anf:].

1 A pronoun or similar element that can only be understood in relation to an antecedent. Thus themselves is an anaphor whose referent, e.g. in They helped themselves, is the same as that of they, but which has no referent, and accordingly cannot be understood e.g. in Please help themselves. In Government and Binding Theory, anaphors are classed as [+ anaphoric] and [- pronominal] while pronouns such as he are [- anaphoric] and [+ pronominal].

2 Any element standing in a relation of anaphora.
Top

Back  -    New Search

anaphora ['nafr].

The relation between a pronoun and another element, in the same or in an earlier sentence, that supplies its referent. E.g. in Mary disguised herself, the reflexive pronoun herself is understood as anaphoric [an'frk] to Mary: that is, it refers to whoever Mary refers to. Likewise, e.g. in conversation, across sentence boundaries. Thus if A asks ‘Where's Mary?’ and B says ‘She's in the garden’, she in the sentence B utters is meant to be understood as anaphoric to earlier Mary.
Thence of similar relations involving elements other than pronouns: e.g. the idiot is anaphoric to John in I asked John but the idiot wouldn't tell me; do so is anaphoric to help in I wanted to help but I couldn't do so. Also to cases of ‘anticipatory anaphora’: e.g. she is anaphoric to Mary in When she read it Mary was delighted. But the term is the Greek for referring ‘up’: i.e. to something earlier. Hence anticipatory anaphora is often distinguished as cataphora (‘referring down’).

Back  -    New Search

anaptyxis [an'ptkss].

Process or change in which successive consonants are separated by a vowel. E.g. the word for ‘milk’ has developed an anaptyctic vowel in Luxembourgish (mellëch) and some other Germanic dialects. The Greek term means ‘unfolding’.

Back  -    New Search

anastrophe ['nastrfi].

Term in rhetoric for a figure of speech which departs from the usual order of words or other syntactic units.

Back  -    New Search

Anatolian.

Branch of Indo-European, including Hittite and other languages attested in what is now Turkey in the 2nd to 1st millennia BC. Of the others Luwian is also early and is known from various sites in the west and south of the region.

Back  -    New Search

ancestor language.

An earlier language from which one or more later languages are descended: e.g. Proto-Germanic as the posited ancestor of the modern Germanic languages. The converse term is ‘daughter language’.

Back  -    New Search

angled brackets < >.

Used: 1 To distinguish orthographic units and forms written in them. E.g. orthographic <ph> is one way of writing [f].

2 By Chomsky and Halle, SPE in an abbreviatory convention by which, e.g. A <B> C <D> conflates a sequence AC, in which neither B nor D is present, with ABCD, where both are present. See tailless arrow for < or > used separately.
Top

Back  -    New Search

Anglo-Frisian.

Traditional division of West Germanic which includes English and Frisian.

Back  -    New Search

Anglo-Saxon

= Old English.

Back  -    New Search

‘animacy hierarchy’.

A proposed hierarchical ordering of noun phrases, etc. ranging from personal pronouns such as I as maximally ‘animate’ to forms referring to lifeless objects as minimally ‘animate’. Those at one end of the scale may differ in syntax from those at the other: e.g. the construction characteristic of an accusative language may be found with those that are maximally animate, that of an ergative language with the remainder.
The scale reflects degrees of empathy: thus people empathize most with themselves and other people, least with stones, etc.

Back  -    New Search

animate.

1 (Noun) denoting entities that can act, or are perceived as acting, of their own will: e.g. man, horse. Hence a feature involved in collocational or ‘selectional’ restrictions: e.g. a verb such as die typically takes an animate subject.

2 (Gender (1), noun class) characterized by nouns which are animate in that sense. Thus in the older Indo-European languages there are traces of a system in which nouns were initially classed as animate or inanimate. The inanimates are those described as neuter, and the animates were secondarily divided into masculine and feminine.
Top

Back  -    New Search

Annamite.

An older name for Vietnamese.

Back  -    New Search

‘anomalist’.

See analogists vs. anomalists.

Back  -    New Search

anomia.

Impaired ability to name things. Sometimes the main feature of aphasia, in which case called anomic aphasia .

Back  -    New Search

antecedent.

A phrase, etc. which supplies the interpretation of an anaphoric element. E.g. in Bill promised he would come, the referent of he is supplied, in one interpretation, by the antecedent Bill: accordingly he in turn refers to ‘Bill’.
A relative pronoun is described in the classical tradition as anaphoric to a noun preceding it. Thus, in the people who came, people would be the antecedent of who.

Back  -    New Search

antepenultimate.

Third from the end: thus the accent of háppily is on the antepenultimate syllable, or antepenult .

Back  -    New Search

anterior.

Articulated by obstructing the airflow in a position forward from that of e.g. English []. English [p], [t], and [s] are therefore among the consonants so classed. A distinctive feature in the scheme of Chomsky and Halle, SPE: opp. non-anterior.

Back  -    New Search

anthropological linguistics.

Often simply of the study of lesser-known languages through field work. Also, more generally, of any work on language from an anthropological viewpoint: of the use of language in ritual, of vocabulary in relation to the use made of material objects, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

anthroponym.

A personal name: e.g. Bill or Walker.

Back  -    New Search

anti-.

Used in terms for categories, constructions, etc. which are in some precise or looser sense the opposites of others. Modelled on antipassive.

Back  -    New Search

anticipatory anaphora

= cataphora.

Back  -    New Search

anticipatory assimilation

= regressive assimilation.

Back  -    New Search

anticipatory coarticulation.

Coarticulation in which the production of a following unit accompanies or affects that of the unit preceding: e.g. that resulting in a rounded [s] in sweet, where it is followed by [w].

Back  -    New Search

anticipatory subject.

An empty element that occupies the syntactic position of a subject when the subject itself is in a later position. E.g. what he does is the subject in what he does matters. It has the same role in relation to matters in It matters what he does; but in this construction it comes after the verb and the subject position is occupied by anticipatory it.

Back  -    New Search

antipassive (ANTIPASS).

(Construction) which stands to the basic transitive construction in an ergative language in a relation which is the reverse of that of a passive construction to a basic active.
In the basic construction, a patient is ‘absolutive’ and an agent is ‘ergative’: thus schematically, with the verb as the initial element, kissed Jack-ABS Jill-ERG ‘Jill (agent) kissed Jack (patient)’. In the corresponding antipassive, it is the agent that is absolutive, the verb is in a form that is also called ‘antipassive’ , and the patient, if indicated, is marked otherwise: schematically, kissed-ANTIPASS Jill-ABS (Jack-X). In this schema, ‘x’ might again be the ergative.
Thus, if we take the antipassive as a derived construction, Verb Patient-ABS Agent-ERG Verb-ANTIPASS Agent-ABS (Patient-X). By contrast, if the relation of active to passive is represented at a similar level of abstraction, Verb Agent-NOM Patient-ACC Verb-PASS Patient-NOM (Agent-X).

Back  -    New Search

antithesis.

The relation between successive units that are put in contrast; e.g. between me and you in It wasn't ME; it was YOU, or between the clauses that contain them.

Back  -    New Search

antonymy.

Relation in the lexicon between words that have opposite meanings; e.g. tall is in its basic sense an antonym of short. For types of oppositeness, which may or may not be classed as antonymy in particular treatments, see complementarity; converse terms; gradable antonymy.

Back  -    New Search

aorist ['erst] [':rst].

Aspect e.g. in Ancient Greek, used to refer to events that have taken place, without regard to their extension over time or to the state resulting from them. E.g. apéthane ‘he died’, ‘his death (whether long drawn out or sudden) happened’.
The Greek term meant ‘indefinite’, ‘not delimited’.

Back  -    New Search

‘A-over-A condition’.

An island condition proposed in the 1960s, by which a constituent of class A, if part of a larger constituent also of class A, could not be involved in operations which crossed the boundaries of that larger unit. A precursor of the principle of subjacency.

Back  -    New Search

Apachean.

A group of Athabaskan languages, including Navajo and those of the Apache themselves, spoken in the American South-west and the extreme north of Mexico.

Back  -    New Search

aperiodic.

Not periodic (1).

Back  -    New Search

aperture.

Usually of the degree to which the mouth is open in the production of vowels; hence equivalent to tongue height. Occasionally = stricture.

Back  -    New Search

aphaeresis ['frss] ['frss].

The loss of a vowel or syllable at the beginning of a word. The usual case is that of aphesis. Also, by extension, of the loss of an initial consonant, e.g. earlier [k] in knee. The Greek term means ‘taking away’.

Back  -    New Search

aphasia.

Loss or impairment of speech resulting from brain disease or physical damage to the brain. The term is used generally for both partial and complete loss; it also covers an impaired ability to understand speech, not just to produce it. Hence aphasic , suffering from aphasia.

Back  -    New Search

aphesis ['afss].

The loss of an initial unstressed vowel: e.g. squire is an aphetic form of esquire, from Old French esquier. Cf. aphaeresis.

Back  -    New Search

apical.

Articulated with the tip of the tongue. Likewise apico -: thus an apico-alveolar stop is one articulated with the tip of the tongue against the alveolar ridge.

Back  -    New Search

apocope ['pkpi].

The loss of a sound or sounds at the end of a word; e.g. that of [d], in some forms of English, after a nasal: [sen] (send). The Greek term means ‘cutting off’.

Back  -    New Search

apodosis ['pdss].

The main clause in a conditional sentence: e.g. I will in If she comes, I will. The Greek term has the sense of a ‘response to’ the protasis or ‘premiss’.

Back  -    New Search

apo koinou ['ap 'knu:].

Construction in which the same element is described as having a role in both a preceding and a following clause: e.g. in There's a man wants you on the telephone, it might be argued that a man is related both to there's (s[there's a man]) and to wants you on the telephone (s[a man wants…]). Greek term meaning ‘from a common (element)’.

Back  -    New Search

Apollonius Dyscolus.

Greek grammarian, working in Alexandria in the 2nd century AD. Three works survive in more than fragments, among them most of his treatment of syntax (in Latin De Constructione). This meant in antiquity the syntax of the individual parts of speech; hence, in particular, an account of solecism, or ungrammaticality, as arising from a mismatch in the semantic properties of individual words. Of the grammarians whose thought we can assess directly, Apollonius is the earliest in the west whose preoccupations were those of a linguist in the present-day sense, and the nature of some important categories, such as infinitives, seem to have been first clarified by him.

Back  -    New Search

apophony ['pfni]

= ablaut.

Back  -    New Search

aposiopesis [aps'pi:ss].

Lapse into silence before the construction of a sentence is completed: ‘And suppose that they…?’ (understood ‘don't agree’, ‘declare war on us’, or whatever).

Back  -    New Search

‘apparent time’.

An interval between different age-groups, seen as corresponding to an interval in real time. Thus it is argued by Labov and others that if the speech of younger members of a community differs from that of older members, this is possibly evidence of a change in progress between earlier and later states of the language.

Back  -    New Search

appellative

= common noun. The ancient term, now rare.

Back  -    New Search

applicative.

Construction in which an oblique element is promoted to the role of an object, with the verb inflected to show that it has that status. Also such an inflection.
Thus, schematically, I made it for Mary or I made it with a hammer I made-APPL a hammer it. The role of Mary or a hammer is then that of an object: hence, e.g. they may be further promoted to the subject of a passive. The applicative inflection (APPL) might be the same whatever element is promoted, or it might distinguish them e.g. as beneficiary (‘for’ Mary), instrumental (‘with’ a hammer), and so on.
Coined with reference especially to Bantu languages, where verbs with an applicative inflection are often called ‘applied’ or ‘prepositional’.

Back  -    New Search

applied linguistics.

Strictly any application of linguistics. But often in practice of a discipline which applies the findings of linguistics, among others, in education: e.g. or especially to teaching English as a foreign or second language.

Back  -    New Search

apposition.

A syntactic relation in which an element is juxtaposed to another element of the same kind. Especially between noun phrases that do not have distinct referents: e.g. Lucienne is in apposition to my wife in Do you know my wife Lucienne? Thence of other cases where elements are seen as parallel but do not have distinct roles in a larger construction: e.g. Smith is seen as apposed to Captain in Do you know Captain Smith?
Distinguished from modification (1) (or attribution) in that there is no clear tendency for either element to qualify the other.

Back  -    New Search

appositional.

1 Standing in a relation of apposition: e.g. the first president and George Washington are appositional noun phrases in the first president, George Washington.

2 Having a role like that of an element in apposition. Thus an appositional relative clause is one whose role is not as a qualifier: i.e. = non-restrictive relative clause.
Top

Back  -    New Search

appositive

= appositional.

Back  -    New Search

apprehensional.

(Clause, etc.) with the meaning ‘for fear that, lest that (such or such a thing should happen)’.

Back  -    New Search

approximant.

A speech sound whose function is that of a consonant but which is produced with open approximation of the relevant articulators: e.g. [r] in most pronunciations of red, [w] in wet. Opp. vowel, stop, fricative; cf. semivowel.

Back  -    New Search

approximation.

See close approximation; open approximation.

Back  -    New Search

‘aptote’.

Obsolete term for a noun which, unlike others in the relevant language, is not inflected for case.

Back  -    New Search

Arabic.

Semitic language first attested by inscriptions in the Arabian peninsula from about the 5th century BC. Carried by the expansion of Islam in the 7th and 8th centuries AD to a large area across the southern Mediterranean and the Middle East, and thence, as a language of religion especially, much wider. Written in a North Semitic alphabet, in origin purely consonantal, but with marks for vowels added in the 8th century.
The language of the Koran is Classical Arabic , and modern Arabic-speaking communities are in the main diglossic, with a range of variation between ‘Modern Standard Arabic’, a form of Classical Arabic with a modernized vocabulary, and one of many national or local ‘dialects’. At sufficient distances these dialects are mutually unintelligible.

Back  -    New Search

Aramaic [ar'mek].

Branch of Semitic attested from the 10th century BC, including languages in widespread use throughout the Middle East from around 700 BC, until progressively supplanted by Arabic after the expansion of Islam. ‘Middle Aramaic’ includes the spoken language of Palestine at the time of the New Testament; ‘Late Aramaic’ includes, in particular, Syriac.

Back  -    New Search

Araucanian.

See South American languages.

Back  -    New Search

Arawakan.

Family of languages spoken in widely scattered parts of South and Central America, from the Mato Grosso in Brazil northwards to the coast of the Guyanas and westwards to Honduras and Guatemala. Black Carib, in Honduras and neighbouring countries, is its largest member.

Back  -    New Search

arbitrariness.

The property of language by which there is in general no natural relation between the form of a simple lexical unit and the things, etc. that it denotes. E.g. there is nothing in the nature of the sounds and meanings to explain why cat is the word for a cat and not, for example, a dog or a pencil, or why cats should not be referred to by, say, dog instead.
Thence of any similar features of or differences between languages. Thus the system of colour terms in English differs arbitrarily from that of Welsh, not just in the forms but also in the way the spectrum, e.g. in the region of blue and green, is divided. Opp. iconicity; motivation.

Back  -    New Search

arbitrary

(control, reference) . See control.

Back  -    New Search

arc.

A line connecting two nodes in a graph: e.g. in a tree diagram.

Back  -    New Search

archaism.

Form or use of a form which is obsolete or belongs recognizably to an older stage of a language: e.g. the syntax of God Save the Queen! or the use of words like hereafter in legal documents.

Back  -    New Search

archi-.

Prefix used for units of any kind whose features are common to a set of more specific units. E.g. animal is in some accounts an ‘archilexeme’ , since its semantic features are those in common to all the more specific lexical units (rabbit, horse, etc.) in a semantic field that it defines.

Back  -    New Search

archiphoneme.

A phonological unit characterized by the distinctive features which are common to two or more phonemes whose opposition is neutralized. Thus in English there is no opposition between [t] and [d] after initial [s]: the unit written t in e.g. stop may therefore be identified as an archiphoneme which is neither specifically voiceless nor specifically voiced, but has only the features that these consonants share.

Back  -    New Search

Arc Pair Grammar.

System of formal syntax derived from Relational Grammar and published by D. E. Johnson and P. M. Postal in 1980. Sentences are represented by ‘network graphs’ in which e.g. the relation ‘subject of’ is shown by an arc connecting a noun or nominal node to a clause node, and arcs are in turn related especially to show relations at different levels.

Back  -    New Search

areal linguistics.

Any branch of linguistics that studies the geographical distribution of variables. A term sometimes applied to dialect geography; also to the study of ‘linguistic areas’ (see Sprachbund) involving several languages.

Back  -    New Search

argot [':g].

Special vocabulary used e.g. by criminals which is designedly unintelligible to outsiders.

Back  -    New Search

argument.

Any syntactic element seen as required by a verb: e.g. love takes two arguments, represented by she and me in She loves me. Thence generally of elements required by words of other categories: e.g. the adjective happy has the argument she in She is happy.
The term is borrowed from mathematical logic: e.g. in the expression P (x, y), the variables x and y are the arguments of a two-place predicate P. The argument structure of a verb or other lexical unit is the range of arguments that it may or must take: cf. valency.

Back  -    New Search

arhyzotonic.

Having the accent elsewhere than on the root.

Back  -    New Search

Aristarchus.

See Alexandrians.

Back  -    New Search

Aristotle

(384–322 BC).
Greek philosopher, important in the early history of western linguistics both for his general contributions to logic, rhetoric, and poetics and for a specific classification of speech units. These included minimal sounds and syllables, both distinguished as units that do not in themselves have meanings; the sentence as a unit which is meaningful and has parts that are also meaningful; and the beginnings, though in a form hard to interpret, of the system of parts of speech developed later by the Stoics and others.
Many of the terms that are later used in grammars are in Aristotle's work, though not necessarily with the same sense. A specific analysis, which recurs at intervals throughout the history of logic and linguistics, is that of a finite verb, such as walks, into a participle linked to its subject by a copula: ‘is (in a state of) walking’.

Back  -    New Search

Armenian.

First known from texts of the 5th century AD, though surviving in later copies; now spoken in the Armenian Republic, in Turkey, and by a diaspora in many countries. Indo-European, forming a branch distinct from Greek, Indo-Iranian, etc. Written in a distinct alphabet devised in the 5th century primarily by St Mesrop and St Sahak.

Back  -    New Search

arrow ().

1 Used in linguistics for a synchronic process or operation; e.g. s z indicates a change of s to z. To be distinguished from the tailless arrow (>), used for a historical process.

2 See implication.
The use of the arrow in the notation of phrase structure rules derives from Chomsky's initial formulation in the 1950s, in which they were seen as rewrite rules.
Top

Back  -    New Search

ars.

The Latin word for ‘art’ or ‘skill’; used in the title of grammars (ars grammatica or ‘art of grammar’); hence often alone, e.g. in translation into other modern languages, in that sense.

Back  -    New Search

article.

A determiner whose basic role is to mark noun phrases as either definite or indefinite: e.g. definite the in the girl, indefinite a in a girl.
Articles are distinguished from other determiners for two reasons. Firstly, they cannot form phrases on their own: compare e.g. the demonstrative this in This is my sister. Secondly, the distinction they mark is obligatory. Delete, for example, the in I am looking for the girls; the object girls is then specifically indefinite, like the singular a girl in I am looking for a girl, and does not merely cease to be specifically definite.

Back  -    New Search

articulation.

1 The production of speech sounds: thus manner of articulation, place of articulation.

2 The property of being analysable into discrete units standing in specific relationships: thus double articulation (1).
Sense 2 is the older. Thus in the classical tradition speech was distinguished as ‘articulate’ (lit. ‘jointed’) from cries, etc. that were ‘inarticulate’.
Top

Back  -    New Search

articulator.

Any vocal organ used to form specific speech sounds: e.g. the upper and lower lips, in the production of [p] in pit, or the blade of the tongue and the ridge behind the teeth, in that of [t] (t). Places of articulation are defined by the raising of a movable or active articulator , e.g. a part of the tongue, towards a fixed or passive articulator , e.g. a part of the roof of the mouth. For example, the labiodental place of articulation, which is that of f in fish, is defined by the placing of the lower lip (‘labio-’) in contact with the upper teeth (‘dental’).

Back  -    New Search

articulatory gesture.

See gesture.

Back  -    New Search

articulatory phonetics.

The study of the production of speech sounds. Opp. acoustic phonetics.

Back  -    New Search

Articulatory Phonology.

Model developed by C. P. Browman and L. Goldstein from the mid-1980s in which an utterance is represented at the phonological level by a temporally coordinated series of articulatory gestures. These form a ‘gestural score’, from which the actual movements of articulators are derived.
Compared by its authors to Autosegmental Phonology, in that gestures which are physically independent characterize different tiers of representation. But the units in Autosegmental Phonology are features, not gestures; and tiers in Autosegmental Phonology are defined by structural domains, which do not flow from the nature of the units themselves.

Back  -    New Search

articulatory setting.

A medium- to long-term disposition of the vocal tract, underlying the articulation of successive units. When permanent or virtually permanent, settings may identify the voice of an individual: e.g. that of some speakers is characteristically nasalized. They may also be characteristic of particular languages or accents; in the shorter term they may carry affective meaning, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

articulatory target.

See target.

Back  -    New Search

‘artificial language’.

Any invented ‘language’, whether an auxiliary language such as Esperanto, or a formal system used e.g. in logic or in computer programming.

Back  -    New Search

‘artificial underlying form’.

A basic form of a morpheme which is not identical to any of those by which it is realized. For ‘artificial’ cf. abstract.

Back  -    New Search

‘Aryan’.

See Indo-Aryan. ‘Aryan’ was sometimes used in the late 19th century in the sense of Indo-European.

Back  -    New Search

ascension

= raising (2).

Back  -    New Search

ascriptive.

(Sentence) which ascribes a property to some entity. E.g. in Zoe is beautiful, Zoe is ascribed the property of beauty, in Zoe is an undergraduate that of being an undergraduate. Also of the construction of such a sentence, if distinct from others. Cf. equational.

Back  -    New Search

‘ash’.

The digraph ‘æ’, devised originally in the spelling of Old English, for a vowel that was phonetically [a] or [æ].

Back  -    New Search

ASL.

See sign language.

Back  -    New Search

aspect.

General term, originally of specialists in Slavic languages, for verbal categories that distinguish the status of events, etc. in relation to specific periods of time, as opposed to their simple location in the present, past, or future. E.g. I am reading your paper means that the reading is in progress over a period that includes the moment of speaking: am reading is therefore present in tense (1) but progressive (or continuous) in aspect. I have read your paper means that, at the moment of speaking, the reading has been completed: it is therefore present in tense but perfect in aspect.
Aspectual categories are very varied, and since both tense and aspect are defined by reference to time, a clear distinction, where it exists, will usually be drawn by formal criteria. It is also hard to separate aspects marked by inflections or auxiliaries from the Aktionsart or inherent lexical properties of verbs. Hence the term is commonly extended to include these and, effectively, any distinction that does not clearly fall under tense or mood.
For other individual aspects see aorist; durative; habitual; imperfective; inchoative; iterative; punctual.

Back  -    New Search

Aspects

= Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, by Chomsky (1965). This expounded what was later called the Standard Theory of transformational grammar, also called ‘Aspects-theory’ .

Back  -    New Search

aspectual character.

See Aktionsart.

Back  -    New Search

aspirated.

(Plosive) whose release is followed audibly by a short period in which the vocal cords are not vibrating. Thus the t of English tea is usually aspirated: in phonetic notation [thi:] or [t'i:]. For ‘voiced aspirates’ see murmured.

Back  -    New Search

Assamese.

Indo-Aryan language of the valley of the Brahmaputra in north-east India; grouped with Bengali in all attempts to subdivide the family. Spoken in the Indian state of Assam and in Bangladesh.

Back  -    New Search

assertive.

(Mood, verb, particle) by which speakers commit themselves, to a greater or lesser degree, to what they are saying. E.g. assure is an assertive verb in I assure you he is coming; indicatives are assertive in opposition to subjunctives.

Back  -    New Search

assibilation.

Change into a sibilant. Thus of a sound change in Old English by which e.g. fetjan > fe[t]an ‘to fetch’.

Back  -    New Search

assimilation.

Sound change or process by which features of one element change to match those of another that precedes or follows. E.g. Italian scritto ‘written’ derives from Latin scriptu(m) by the assimilation of a bilabial (p) to a following dental (t); English cats is described synchronically as deriving from an underlying [kat] + [z] by the assimilation of voiced [z] to voiceless [t].
Divided into progressive assimilation and regressive assimilation. Cf. coarticulation.

Back  -    New Search

association line.

A line drawn to represent a relation between elements at different levels or tiers of phonological representation. Originally from Autosegmental Phonology: thus, in the illustration, a low tone (L) is an autosegment associated with one syllable on a skeletal or ‘CV’ tier; a high tone (H) with two successive syllables, of which the first might then have a rising contour.

association lines

Back  -    New Search

‘associative relation’.

Saussure's term for any relation between linguistic units which is not syntagmatic; e.g. between phonemes or words that can be substituted one for another, between forms of a word with different inflections, between words formed in the same way or with a sequence of sounds in common. Relations of the first type are those distinguished later (by Hjelmslev and Jakobson) as paradigmatic relations.

Back  -    New Search

Assyria(n).

See Akkadian.

Back  -    New Search

asterisk ().

Used: 1 In historical linguistics, to mark forms that are reconstructed, not directly attested: e.g. Germanic kuninga-(> English king, German könig, etc.).

2 In work on syntax since the 1950s, to mark forms judged to be ungrammatical: e.g. I yesterday did it, as opposed to I did it yesterday.
An asterisked form (or starred form ) is one marked, in historical linguistics especially, with an asterisk.
Top

Back  -    New Search

asyndeton [a'sndtn].

The joining together of syntactic units without a conjunction: e.g. in I'm tired, I'm hungry, or I'm exhausted, I’ve walked twenty miles. A sentence, etc. which has such a structure is asyndetic [asn'dtk]: the Greek term means ‘not bound together’.

Back  -    New Search

atelic.

(Verb, etc.) that is not telic.

Back  -    New Search

Athabaskan.

Family of languages in the American South-west and in western Canada and Alaska; another group were formerly spoken on the Pacific coast, north and south of the border between California and Oregon. Navajo has by far the greatest number of speakers. Also spelled Athapaskan, Athabascan .

Back  -    New Search

athematic.

Not having a thematic vowel. E.g. Latin fertis ‘you are carrying’ is a relic of an athematic formation in Indo-European, in which the inflection (-tis) is added directly to the root (fer-).

Back  -    New Search

Atlantic languages.

See West Atlantic languages.

Back  -    New Search

atonic.

(Word, syllable, vowel) not accented.

Back  -    New Search

ATR

= Advanced Tongue Root.

Back  -    New Search

attested form.

One for which there is direct historical evidence, as opposed to one that is reconstructed. In historical linguistics only attested forms are cited without an asterisk.

Back  -    New Search

attraction.

Agreement of a word with an adjacent element to which it does not bear a direct syntactic relation. E.g. in Nobody but grammarians say that, the subject of say is or is headed by the singular nobody; but the verb agrees with the plural grammarians. See also case attraction.

Back  -    New Search

attribution

= modification (1); likewise attribute = modifier. An attributive adjective is one which modifies the head of a noun phrase, as opposed to one which is predicative.

Back  -    New Search

auditory.

Having to do with hearing. Thus auditory phonetics is concerned with the perception of speech sounds; pitch is one of the auditory properties of sound.

Back  -    New Search

augment.

A verbal prefix (reconstructed e-) in Indo-European, marking finite forms with past time reference. E.g. in Greek é-graph-on ‘I was writing’; compare gráph- ‘I am writing’.

Back  -    New Search

augmentative.

(Affix, etc.) primarily indicating large or larger size. E.g. Italian cassone ‘large case, chest, etc.’ is an augmentative form of cassa ‘box, case’, with the augmentative ending -one. Opp. diminutive.

Back  -    New Search

Austin, John Langshaw

(1911–60)
. British philosopher, important in linguistics as the originator, in the 1950s, of the distinction between constative and performative utterances, and the definition of felicity as the requirement that the latter must meet. How to Do Things with Words (edited posthumously, 1962) is the first attempt to develop a general theory of speech acts, distinguishing in particular the locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary aspects of utterances.

Back  -    New Search

Australian languages.

Estimated to have been about 200 before the English invasion. Languages in an area covering most of the continent are classed on typological grounds as ‘Pama-Nyungan’; the name derives from the word for ‘man’ at the north-east and south-west extremes. Those not assigned to this group are or were spoken in the north of Western Australia and the Northern Territory, and are grouped as ‘Non-Pama-Nyungan’.
A handful still have over 1,000 speakers.

Back  -    New Search

Austro-Asiatic.

Proposed family of languages with Mon-Khmer and Munda as its main branches.

Back  -    New Search

Austronesian.

Family of languages distributed over a large area, mainly islands, from Madagascar in the west to Hawaii and Easter Island. It includes the indigenous languages of Taiwan, of the Philippines, of Micronesia and Polynesia, and most of those in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Melanesia.
The name is from the words for ‘south’ in Latin (austro-) and ‘island’ in Greek (nes-). The major subdivisions of the family are still partly in dispute, and with them the routes that led to much of this distribution.

Back  -    New Search

auto-.

From the Ancient Greek form for ‘-self’. Hence, e.g. a word is an ‘autohyponym’ if it has two senses one of which is included in the other. Cf. hyponymy.

Back  -    New Search

automatic alternation.

An alternation in morphology to which there are no exceptions. E.g. the regular plural suffix is always [z] after sibilants (fish-es), [s] after other voiceless consonants (cat-s), and [z] elsewhere (dog-s, cow-s).

Back  -    New Search

‘autonomous’.

(Linguistics, syntax, etc.) viewed as a discipline or object of study independent of others. E.g. linguistics as separate from, or as a separate part within, psychology; syntax as a level or component of language separate from semantics.

Back  -    New Search

autosegment.

See Autosegmental Phonology.

Back  -    New Search

Autosegmental Phonology.

Model of non-linear phonology developed in the 1970s by J. Goldsmith. The basic insight is that certain phonological features, such as tones or those involved in vowel harmony, may be realized variously in a single vowel or consonant, or in two or more such units, or, in effect, in only part of one. Thus, in Turkish eller ‘hand-PL’, the vowel of the plural suffix (-ler) is front in harmony with that of el ‘hand’: it cannot be otherwise, and we may therefore speak of just one feature, ‘front’ or [+ front], which is realized in both syllables. In the case of tones, successive high and low tones might be realized sometimes on two separate syllables (CC) and sometimes on a single syllable. The tone on that syllable will then be phonetically falling (C). Features like these are described as autosegments , and are represented at a structural level which is higher than that of the individual vowel or consonant segments. The ways in which they are realized in particular forms are then shown by association lines which relate the units at each structural level, or tier, to what is, in developed versions, no more than a CV skeleton (called the skeletal tier or CV tier).

Back  -    New Search

AUX [:ks].

A syntactic unit proposed by Chomsky in the 1950s, basically comprising the inflections of a main verb with any auxiliaries accompanying it. E.g. in He left, the AUX consists of the past-tense inflection (-t); in He may be leaving, of the auxiliaries may and be plus the inflection of the participle (-ing). Cf. INFL.

Back  -    New Search

auxiliary (Aux).

A verb belonging to a small class which syntactically accompanies other verbs: opp. lexical verb, full verb. E.g. could and have are auxiliaries in He could have done it. The first belongs to a class of modal verbs used only with other verbs or in elliptical sentences where a verb is understood. The second is an auxiliary related to the past participle (done); distinguished as such from have as a full verb, e.g. in I have the answer.
Auxiliaries typically mark modality, tense (1), or aspect: e.g. the construction of have with a past participle marks the perfect. Hence the same term has been used of other grammatical words that mark such categories, whether or not they are verbs.

Back  -    New Search

auxiliary language.

A language such as Esperanto, invented as a subsidiary means of communication among people with different native languages.

Back  -    New Search

aversive.

(Case) indicating someone or something feared or avoided. Characteristic of Australian languages: e.g. in Yidiny (north Queensland), (‘He hid’) bama-yida ‘from, to avoid being seen by, the people’, the aversive is marked by -yida.

Back  -    New Search

Avestan.

Ancient Iranian language known from texts of uncertain date, but similar in form to those in Vedic. These are the oldest part of the Zoroastrian scriptures called the Avesta, compiled when the language was no longer spoken.

Back  -    New Search

avoidance style.

Style of speech that has to be used, in some communities, in talking in the presence of someone with whom close social contact is taboo. Widespread in Australian languages, where a part or almost the whole of the vocabulary must be replaced by special avoidance terms in the presence of certain relatives. Often called ‘mother-in-law language’, this relative being typically or specially taboo.

Back  -    New Search

‘axis’.

Bloomfield's term for an element governed by a verb or preposition. E.g. me is the ‘axis’ in the construction of to me or saw me.

Back  -    New Search

Aymará.

Spoken mainly in Bolivia, on the plateau south of Lake Titicaca. The main member of the Jaqí family, conjecturally but not securely related to Quechuan, spoken to the north and south.

Back  -    New Search

Azerbaijani.

Turkic language, closely related to Turkish, spoken mainly in Azerbaijan and, by a greater number, in the neighbouring provinces of Iran.
Both the speakers and the language are also called Azeri .

Back  -    New Search

Aztec.

See Nahuatl.

Back  -    New Search

B

babbling.

The vocal sounds of very young children, especially involving repeated syllable-like forms, before the development of anything recognizable as speech.

Back  -    New Search

Babylonian.

See Akkadian.

Back  -    New Search

‘baby talk’

= motherese.

Back  -    New Search

‘Bach-Peters sentence’.

One in which each of two noun phrases includes a pronoun anaphoric to the other: e.g. in The girl who won it really deserves the prize she won, the first pronoun (it) might have the same referent as the prize she won, the second (she) the same referent as the girl who won it.

Back  -    New Search

back.

(Vowel) articulated with the highest point of the tongue towards the back of the mouth. E.g. [u:] in moon. Opp. front; also central.
In the scheme of Chomsky and Halle, SPE [± back] is a distinctive feature of consonants as well as vowels. Of the consonants, velars, uvulars, and pharyngeals are [+ back]; palatals are [- back].

Back  -    New Search

‘back-channelling’.

The use of any channel of communication seen as subsidiary to a main channel. Hence in particular, in Conversation Analysis, of any communication from a listener, who does not ‘have the floor’ according to the turn-taking hypothesis, to the speaker whose turn is in progress. E.g. while A is speaking, B may express surprise, or grunt in agreement. But this does not count as a turn by B as, technically, a speaker. Instead it is treated as back-channelling, with B as a ‘back-channeller’ .

Back  -    New Search

back-formation.

The formation of a simple or simpler word from one understood as derived, e.g. gruntled from disgruntled.

Back  -    New Search

‘backgrounded’.

Treated, presented, or marked as subsidiary. E.g. in a narrative, events are backgrounded if they are subsidiary to the main story; in the structure of a sentence subordinate clauses are backgrounded, or tend to present backgrounded information; and so on. By analogy with ‘foregrounded’.

Back  -    New Search

background knowledge.

Knowledge of the world in general, or of the life of their specific society, that people can be assumed to share as a framework for talking to one another. E.g. if someone says ‘His dog kept me awake’, the person spoken to will share the knowledge that people own dogs, that dogs make a noise by barking, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

backshifting.

Change of tenses e.g. in indirect speech. Thus someone called Emma might say ‘I am busy’; this might later be reported by Emma said she was busy, with the verb (was) backshifted into the past tense. Contrast Emma said she is busy, without backshifting.

Back  -    New Search

backward anaphora

= cataphora. Likewise ‘backward pronominalization’.

Back  -    New Search

Bahasa-Indonesia.

See Malay-Indonesian.

Back  -    New Search

bahuvrihi.

Sanskrit term for compounds such as whitethroat, meaning not ‘throat which is white’ but ‘something having a white throat’. Also called possessive or exocentric compounds.
Named after a representative of the type, bahuvrhi ‘(having) much-rice’.

Back  -    New Search

Balinese.

Spoken mainly in Bali; Austronesian, of the same branch as e.g. Javanese.

Back  -    New Search

‘Balkan languages’.

Various languages of the Balkans, especially Albanian, Bulgarian, Greek, Macedonian, Rumanian, Serbo-Croat, and more peripherally Turkish, seen as a classic instance of a ‘linguistic area’ or Sprachbund.

Back  -    New Search

ballistic.

In the sense of ‘broadly parabolic’. Thus a syllable may be seen as produced by a ballistic gesture of the vocal organs, whose peak corresponds to its vowel or nucleus.

Back  -    New Search

Baltic.

Branch of Indo-European, of which Latvian and Lithuanian are the surviving representatives. Closer to Slavic than to any other; hence Balto-Slavic.

Back  -    New Search

Balto-Slavic.

Hypothetical branch of Indo-European, subsuming Baltic and Slavic. Long proposed but never universally accepted.

Back  -    New Search

Baluchi.

Iranian language spoken mainly in the Baluchistan and neighbouring Sind provinces of Pakistan and in neighbouring parts of Afghanistan and south-eastern Iran.

Back  -    New Search

Bambara.

See Mande.

Back  -    New Search

Bantoid.

Term covering a large group of African languages which includes Bantu and others broadly from the Nigeria–Cameroon border eastwards.

Back  -    New Search

Bantu.

Family of languages covering most of southern Africa, broadly south of a line crossing Cameroon, north Zaire, Uganda, and Kenya, a few degrees north of the equator. Its members are similar in structure, and in large areas form dialect continua, with many local varieties. The divisions between languages are in places conventional, and there is no single, universally accepted scheme of classification within the family.
The most important is Swahili; for the location of some others with speakers in the millions, either as a native language or as a lingua franca, see Bemba, Kikuyu, Kongo, Lingala, Luba, Luganda, Makua, Mbundu, Nyanja, Rwanda-Rundi, Shona, Sotho, Swati, Tsonga, Xhosa, and Zulu.

Back  -    New Search

bar (¯).

1 As a mark of negation: thus = ‘not x’.

2 As a macron, indicating a long vowel.
Top

3 See X-bar syntax.
Top

Back  -    New Search

barbarism.

The ancient term for an error in an individual word. Distinguished as such from a solecism, which involved a combination of words.

Back  -    New Search

‘bare infinitive’.

An infinitive in English without to: e.g. jump in That made him jump.

Back  -    New Search

barrier.

Used in Government and Binding Theory for a boundary, or the category defining a boundary, across which government could not operate.

Back  -    New Search

barytone.

A word, originally one in Ancient Greek, that is not accented (and therefore had in ancient terms a low-pitched or ‘grave’ accent) on the final syllable.

Back  -    New Search

base.

Any form to which a process applies. Especially in morphology: thus a singular noun in English (man, horse) is traditionally the base for the formation of the plural ( men, horses). Where processes apply to units smaller than words, ‘base’ is sometimes used equivalently to root or stem.

Back  -    New Search

base component.

A component of a generative grammar which assigns an initial representation to each of a set of sentences. From this other representations may be derived by other components.
The term belongs particularly to the period 1965–75, when the level of structure to be represented by a base component was a central issue.

Back  -    New Search

base-generated.

(Element, construction) forming part of the structure assigned by the base component of a generative grammar. Thus it was an issue at one stage whether pronouns should be base-generated or derived by later rules of pronominalization.

Back  -    New Search

base language.

The language from which a pidgin or creole has drawn the bulk of its vocabulary. E.g. the creole of Haiti is ‘French-based’.

Back  -    New Search

Basic English.

A reduced English vocabulary devised by C. K. Ogden in the 1930s, with the intention that it should be used internationally.

Back  -    New Search

basic form.

A form of an affix or other morphological unit from which a range of alternating realizations is derived. Thus in most accounts the regular English plural ending has the basic form [z]. This is unchanged in ties or dogs; but it changes to [Z] in words like horses or houses, where the preceding forms themselves end in [s] or [z], and changes to [s] in words like cats, where the form which precedes it ends in a voiceless consonant.
Cf. underlying form.

Back  -    New Search

basic-level terms.

Lexical units belonging to a neutral level in a taxonomy. E.g. if one runs over a dog one will say ‘I have run over a dog’, not usually, unless perhaps one fails to recognize it as a dog, ‘I have run over an animal’, nor, unless perhaps one is collecting the names of breeds that one hits, ‘I have run over a labrador’. In that sense dog belongs, with cat, horse, and others, to a neutral or basic level in comparison both with animal, which is more general, and with labrador, poodle, etc., which are more specific.

Back  -    New Search

basic vocabulary.

Any set of words or concepts assumed to be central: e.g. that which was taken as the basis for glottochronology.

Back  -    New Search

basic word order.

An order of words or phrases which is distinguished as the commonest, or because it is in other respects unmarked, or because others are derived from it. Thus in English the order adjective + noun is basic (a red book); in French it is the opposite (un livre rouge).

Back  -    New Search

basilect.

The variety of a language which, of a series predominantly spoken at different social levels, has the lowest prestige or is most distant from a standard form. Especially in studies of creoles, where the basilect is the variety with the most creole features. Opp. acrolect; mesolect.

Back  -    New Search

Basque.

Language of the western Pyrenees, spoken by bilingual communities in Spain and France. The only language indigenous to western Europe that is not Indo-European; nor related plausibly to any other family.

Back  -    New Search

Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan

(1845–1929)
. Polish linguist, whose contribution to phonology, originally in collaboration with his shorter-lived pupil Mikolai Kruszewski (1850–87), was fundamental to the development of structural linguistics in Europe, especially by Saussure and in the work of the Prague School in the 1930s. The earliest to distinguish clearly between a phoneme, seen as the psychological equivalent of a speech sound and a unit of what he called ‘psychophonetics’, and the speech sound itself; also remarkable for his study of alternations, and of the changes of status that an alternation may undergo from one stage of a language to another, which are the foundation for what was later called morphophonology.
Professor at Kazan' in Russia 1875–83; hence the leader of what is called the Kazan' School.

Back  -    New Search

beat

= ictus.

Back  -    New Search

‘Behaghel's Law’.

Name sometimes given to the general principle, ascribed to work by O. Behaghel in the 1930s, by which syntactic elements that are closely related in meaning also tend to be next to each other in the sentence. Cf. iconicity.

Back  -    New Search

behaviourism.

Movement in psychology which sought to eliminate all reference to subjective concepts or experience. The data were accordingly restricted to the observable reactions of subjects to observable stimuli. Inaugurated by the American psychologist J. B. Watson just before the First World War; also developed by A. P. Weiss and, through him, a major influence on Bloomfield from the 1920s onwards. Developed further after the Second World War, especially by B. F. Skinner; arguably still, through Bloomfield, an influence on the Post-Bloomfieldians, but rapidly abandoned, in both psychology and linguistics, in the early 1960s.
Associated with the heyday of positivism in philosophy over the same period.

Back  -    New Search

Belorssian.

East Slavic, closely related to Russian, from which it has diverged only since the late Middle Ages.

Back  -    New Search

Bemba.

Bantu language spoken mainly in the north and in the Copperbelt region of Zambia.

Back  -    New Search

benefactive.

Case or case role of units that refer to individuals with an interest in an action, etc. who are not directly part of it. E.g. for the Red Cross is benefactive in They were collecting money for the Red Cross. The case role is also described as that of a beneficiary .

Back  -    New Search

Bengali.

Indo-Aryan, the national language of Bangladesh, with half as many speakers in the Indian state of West Bengal. Also spoken widely, through emigration, in Britain and elsewhere. Attested by texts from the early Middle Ages onwards; written in an Indian script that it shares with Assamese, to which it is also closely related within Indo-Aryan.

Back  -    New Search

Benue-Congo.

Term currently applied to a vast group of African languages, including Bantu and most of those to the south of Chadic in eastern West Africa.

Back  -    New Search

Benveniste, Émile

(1902–76)
. Indo-Europeanist and general linguist whose works on Indo-European include an elegant theory of the structure of the root (1935), a subsequent account of agentive nouns and action nouns (1948), and two brilliant volumes (1969) on the nature of Indo-European society as revealed by inherited vocabulary, together with a long series of monographs and articles on Iranian languages especially. His contributions to general linguistics are reprinted in two collections (1966, 1974), and include important essays on the nature of communication and the act of utterance, on subjectivity in language, on deixis and the system of persons and tenses. Many of his ideas, especially on the centrality of the speaker (‘sujet parlant’), have been as influential outside linguistics as within.

Back  -    New Search

Berber.

Generic name for a group of languages in North Africa and across the Saharan region, generally where Arabic is also spoken. Most speakers are in the north-west, in Morocco especially. Grouped with Semitic and others within Afro-Asiatic.

Back  -    New Search

BEV.

See Black English (Vernacular).

Back  -    New Search

Bhojpuri.

Indo-Aryan language spoken in the east of Uttar Pradesh and in west Bihar, including Varanasi (Benares). Largely unwritten.

Back  -    New Search

bi-.

From a Latin prefix related to the word for ‘two’. Thus a sentence is ‘biclausal’ if it contains two clauses; a syllable is bimoraic if it counts as two morae; processes, etc. are bidirectional if they operate in both directions. Cf. di-.

Back  -    New Search

bidialectal.

(Person, community) using two distinct dialects. Thence bidialectalism : cf. bilingual.

Back  -    New Search

Bihari.

Proposed branch of Indo-Aryan, including Maithili and Magahi (in Bihar to the south of the Ganges); also Bhojpuri and others.

Back  -    New Search

bilabial.

Articulated with the lower lip against the upper lip. E.g. p in pit [p] is a bilabial stop.

Back  -    New Search

bilateral.

1 (Opposition) between terms distinguished by a single feature. Especially in phonology: e.g. [i:] in feel and [u:] in fool are distinguished by a single feature ([± front] or front vs. back). Opp. multilateral opposition.

2 Two-sided: e.g. a dependency is bilateral if a depends on b and b also depends on a. Opp. unilateral.
Top

Back  -    New Search

bilingual.

Having an effectively equal control of two native languages. Thus a minority of people in Wales are bilingual in Welsh and English; many in England are bilingual in English and e.g. Punjabi. A bilingual community , as in Welsh-speaking parts of Wales, is one in which bilingualism is normal.
Loosely or more generally, in some accounts, of people or communities that have two or more different languages, whether or not control is effectively equal and whether or not more than one is native. Bilinguals in the ordinary sense are then variously called ‘ambilingual’ or ‘equilingual’, or are qualified as ‘full’, ‘true’, ‘ideal’, or ‘balanced’ bilinguals.

Back  -    New Search

binarism.

Tendency in many schools of structural linguistics to reduce relations to binary distinctions. Thus the relations between three levels of vowel height (close, mid, open) are commonly analysed into binary features: [+ close, - open], [- close, - open], [- close, + open]. Similarly, the relations between three elements that make up a syllable (onset, nucleus, coda) is reduced to a pattern of binary branching: [onset [nucleus coda]].
Jakobson was the earliest and most doctrinaire exponent; through his influence, directly or indirectly, such analyses were established in the 1960s at all levels of generative grammar, in Generative Phonology especially.

Back  -    New Search

binary.

(Feature, etc.) with two values. Usually of one whose values are positive and negative: e.g. [± voice] has the values [+ voice] (voiced) and [- voice] (voiceless), [± animate] the values [+ animate] (animate) and [- animate] (inanimate). Opp. multivalued.
Elements distinguished only by a binary feature are in a binary opposition (or binary contrast ): e.g. [t] and [d], distinguished by the feature [± voice], in English.

Back  -    New Search

binary branching.

Any configuration in a phrase structure tree in which a node is connected directly to two lower nodes. Opp. multiple branching, which in some accounts is explicitly or effectively excluded.

Back  -    New Search

binding.

Relation in which an element is bound (2) by an antecedent. E.g. in They helped each other, the subject they binds each other. ‘Binding Theory’ is the part of Government and Binding Theory concerned with this relation.

Back  -    New Search

binomial.

A pair of words linked by a conjunction such as and. Called ‘irreversible’ when their order is fixed: e.g. (I'll put it in) black and white, not white and black.

Back  -    New Search

binyan.

Term in Hebrew grammar for a pattern of stem formation, characteristically involving the addition of vowels to a consonantal root, of the kind general in Semitic languages. Cf. pattern.

Back  -    New Search

‘bioprogram’.

A set of genetically inherited rules of language for which, according to a hypothesis advanced by D. Bickerton in 1981, there is evidence e.g. when creoles develop from pidgins without influence from other languages.

Back  -    New Search

biuniqueness.

Constraint in phonology by which the phonetic and phonological representations of a form should each uniquely determine the other. Identified by critics as a restriction implicit in the theory of the phoneme current in the USA in the 1940s and 1950s.

Back  -    New Search

bivalent.

(Verb) having two valents. Thus, in particular, a transitive verb such as love or drink, whose valents are a subject and object.

Back  -    New Search

‘Black English’.

Any distinct variety of English native to black, especially urban, populations in the USA and, by extension, in other societies whose members are predominantly white. Also referred to by the abbreviation BEV , for ‘Black English Vernacular’ .

Back  -    New Search

blade.

The upper surface of the tongue immediately behind the tip: e.g. in the articulation of [l] in leaf the blade is against the teeth ridge. Distinguished as an articulator from the tip and the dorsum: hence laminal or lamino- (‘with the blade’) vs. apical or apico- (‘with the tip’) or dorsal (‘with the dorsum’).

Back  -    New Search

‘bleaching’.

Change by which the meaning of a word becomes increasingly unspecific. Typically, therefore, in instances of grammaticalization (2): e.g. the meaning of French pas (from Latin passus ‘step, pace’) was ‘bleached’ as it developed into a mark of negation: (ne …) pas ‘not’.

Back  -    New Search

bleeding.

Relation between rules which are ordered in such a way that the application of the earlier rule restricts the set of forms that the later will apply to. Especially in Generative Phonology: e.g. a rule by which vowels are deleted in unstressed syllables bleeds a later rule by which medial consonants are voiced when a vowel follows.
Opp. feeding; cf. counter-bleeding, counter-feeding.

Back  -    New Search

blend.

Word formed by joining the beginning of one form to the end of another. E.g. smog, formed in 1905 from smoke and fog.

Back  -    New Search

blocking.

The barring of a process. E.g. one of word-formation: thus the formation of a noun kingess, on the lines of princess, countess, etc. is seen as blocked by the existing word queen.

Back  -    New Search

block language.

The form of language used in newspaper headlines, in cables, in notices, on labels of products, and so on. Distinguished by specific rules or patterns, which have developed in part independently of those in ordinary language.

Back  -    New Search

Bloomfield, Leonard

(1887–1949)
. American linguist and one of the most influential of the 20th century. Originally a Germanist, but famous for his general theory and for comparative and descriptive studies of Algonquian languages, especially Menomini. His first general work, An Introduction to the Study of Language (1914), was influenced by the psychology of W. Wundt; from the 1920s, however, he was committed to a ‘physicalist’ philosophy of science in which all scientific statements are reducible to accounts of observable phenomena, and in his great work Language (1933) he sought to establish the foundations of linguistics, as an autonomous science, in a way that would be compatible with this view and specifically with behaviourism in psychology. This led, in particular, to an account of meaning in terms of the ‘practical events’ accompanying a speech signal, in which the meaning of a word, for example, is constituted by features of such ‘events’, including events within a speaker's body, common to all the occasions on which it is uttered. Bloomfield's work was continued, partly in a new direction, by the Post-Bloomfieldians and still, in part, by their successors. Many ideas now current, especially in the theory of grammar, are therefore his in origin.

Back  -    New Search

Boas, Franz

(1858–1942)
. American anthropologist, the teacher of Sapir and other eminent scholars in both linguistics and anthropology and, more than any other before or since, the founder and organizer of linguistic field-work in the USA. His most important general contribution is his introduction to the Handbook of American Indian Languages (1911), which emphasizes, in particular, the structural diversity of languages and the need to describe them in terms independent, where necessary, of the grammatical categories inherited in the European tradition.

Back  -    New Search

‘body language’.

Popular term which lumps together some conventional forms of non-verbal communication with other states or dispositions of a human body, voluntary or involuntary, identifiable as some kind of ‘sign’ to other people.

Back  -    New Search

Bokmål.

See Norwegian.

Back  -    New Search

borrowing.

Conventional term for the introduction into language a of specific words, constructions, or morphological elements of language b. Thus table and marble are among the many loan words borrowed into English from Old French in the period after the Norman conquest. ‘Dialect borrowing’ is a similar transference of features from one dialect to another, often posited to explain the lack of consistent divisions between them.

Back  -    New Search

bottom-up.

(Procedure) which determines the structure of a sentence, etc. by working from smaller units to larger. Opp. top-down, e.g. as alternative strategies in parsing (2).

Back  -    New Search

bound (1).

(Morpheme) which cannot stand as a word on its own. Thus un- in unkind is a bound form , since there is no word ‘un’. Opp. free (1): cf. minimal free form.

Back  -    New Search

bound (2).

(Pronoun, etc.) linked syntactically to an antecedent. E.g. in He saw himself, the reflexive himself would (according to most views of the scope of syntax) be ‘bound by’ he. The syntactic relation between such an element and its antecedent is one of bound anaphora.
Opp. free (2). The sense is derived from use in logic, where a variable is ‘bound’ if it is within the scope of an operator and therefore does not need to be assigned a value for the expression to be meaningful.

Back  -    New Search

boundary marker.

Any unit or feature of speech which is associated with a boundary between larger units. E.g. a glottal stop in German appears when a word begins with a vowel, and is therefore said to mark the boundary between that word and the one preceding. Translation of German ‘Grenzsignal’.

Back  -    New Search

boundary symbols.

Symbols representing the boundaries between different kinds of unit. E.g. in # the # govern + ment #, ‘#’ is used for a boundary between words, ‘+’ for one within words.
Cf. juncture.

Back  -    New Search

boundary tone.

A tone serving as a boundary marker.

Back  -    New Search

bounded.

(Rule, relation) restricted to a specific syntactic domain. Cf. local; unbounded.

Back  -    New Search

‘Bounding Theory’.

Part of Government and Binding Theory specifying the boundaries of units within which syntactic operations can apply. Cf. subjacency.

Back  -    New Search

boustrophedon.

A way of writing, especially in early Greek, in which alternant lines are from left to right and from right to left. From an adverb meaning ‘like an ox turning’: i.e. as a field is ploughed.

Back  -    New Search

braces { }.

Mainly used to conflate rules and examples that are partly identical. E.g. the rules s z / V—V (s is voiced between vowels) and s h/—# (s becomes h at the end of a word) may be conflated thus:

Similarly, the examples She likes him and She likes himself may be displayed thus:

Also used at one time in representing morphemes (3): e.g. children as a sequence of morphemes {child} + {plural}. Also, as in mathematics, to list the members of a set: e.g. {a, b, c} is the set whose members are a, b, and c.

Back  -    New Search

‘bracketing paradox’.

Applied to various cases in which a constituent structure suggested by formal criteria is at variance with that suggested by meaning. E.g. in hundred and eleventh, the suffix -th is formally attached to eleven: thus [hundred and [eleventh]]. But in meaning it goes with the whole: [[hundred and eleven] th].

Back  -    New Search

brackets.

See angled brackets, round brackets, square brackets; also braces (= ‘curly brackets’).

Back  -    New Search

Brahmi.

Script developed in India by the middle of the 1st millennium BC, and attested widely from the 3rd century; the direct or indirect source, from the early 1st millennium AD, of later Indian scripts, including those of Thai and other languages in South-east Asia. Supposedly modelled on a Semitic alphabet, but no precise source is certain.

Back  -    New Search

branch.

1 A group of languages within a language family that are more closely related among themselves than to any others. E.g. the Indo-Aryan languages form a branch of Indo-Iranian, which is in turn one of the main branches of the Indo-European family.

2 A branch in any form of tree diagram.
Top

Back  -    New Search

branching node.

A node in a phrase structure tree which is connected directly to two or more lower nodes.

Back  -    New Search

‘breaking’.

A sound change in the development of Old English by which front vowels were diphthongized by the addition of a close back vowel when they were followed by a velar or velarized consonant. E.g. in feohtan ‘to fight’ < fehtan, where h = [x]. Also used more generally by some specialists in Germanic, in referring to other specific cases of diphthongization.

Back  -    New Search

Bréal, Michel

(1832–1915)
. A pioneer of comparative linguistics in France, whose Essai de sémantique (1897) is a general introduction to grammatical and lexical theory, influential, in particular, for its treatment of changes in the meanings of words. The term ‘semantics’ (‘sémantique’) was coined by Bréal in opposition to ‘phonetics’ (‘phonétique’), and defined, more widely than in usage since the mid-20th century, as a science concerned with the nature and relations of all meaningful units, as opposed to a science, again in the most general sense, of sounds.

Back  -    New Search

breath group.

A tone group, seen as a unit before or after which a speaker can in principle take in breath.

Back  -    New Search

breathy voice.

See murmured.

Back  -    New Search

Breton.

Celtic language introduced into Brittany in France by emigration from south-west Britain in the 5th century AD. Increasingly restricted to the west of the province, most if not all speakers being bilingual in Breton and French.

Back  -    New Search

breve ().

Normally used to indicate that a vowel is short: e.g. Latin brvis ‘short’, phonetically [brWS].

Back  -    New Search

‘brightening’.

Used of sound changes in Germanic languages by which back vowels become front.

Back  -    New Search

Brittonic

= Brythonic.

Back  -    New Search

Broad Romic.

See Sweet.

Back  -    New Search

broad transcription.

A phonetic transcription omitting details that are judged to be inessential; hence identical with, or close to, a representation of phonemes. Opp. narrow transcription.

Back  -    New Search

‘Broca's area’.

A part of the brain included in a massive area of damage suffered by an aphasic patient of P. Broca in the mid-19th century. ‘Broca's aphasia’ is a form characterized by agrammatism and associated in clinical lore with lesions in this area.

Back  -    New Search

‘broken plural’.

Term in Arabic grammar for a plural formed by a pattern of vowels which is different from that of the singular, as opposed to one formed by suffixation. E.g. (Egyptian) [?aswa:q] ‘market-PL’ vs. [su:q] ‘market-SG’, [kuba:r] ‘big-PL’ vs. [kibi:r] ‘big-SG’.

Back  -    New Search

Brugmann, Karl

(1849–1919)
. Indo-Europeanist and one of the founders of the Neogrammarian movement. His great work is a handbook of Indo-European comparative linguistics (Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen), 1st edn. (5 volumes) 1886–93.

Back  -    New Search

Brythonic.

Branch of Celtic which includes Welsh, Cornish, and Breton. Also spelled ‘Brittonic’ .

Back  -    New Search

BSL.

See sign language.

Back  -    New Search

Bühler, Karl

(1879–1963)
. Psychologist, professor at the University of Vienna 1922–38, where his views influenced the thinking of Trubetzkoy and other members of the Prague School. His Sprachtheorie (1934) presented a sign theory with particular emphasis on the functions of language, and a distinction between two ‘fields’ which form the context in which a sign is used. The ‘symbolic field’ (Symbolfeld) is formed by the other signs that make up an utterance; the ‘deictic field’ (Zeigfeld) is formed by the context in which it is uttered and is the origin of modern conceptions of deixis.
Bühler emigrated to the USA in 1939, practising as a clinical psychologist from 1945.

Back  -    New Search

Bulgarian.

South Slavic, the official language of Bulgaria, where it is mainly spoken: written in Cyrillic. ‘Old Bulgarian’ = Old Church Slavonic.

Back  -    New Search

bunched.

Articulated with the tongue tip drawn back into the body of the tongue. Used e.g. of a bunched continuant ‘r’ in some forms of American English.

Back  -    New Search

‘bundle’.

See feature; isogloss.

Back  -    New Search

Burmese.

The official language of Myanmar (Burma), and native to about two-thirds of its people: the standard form is that of the valley of the Irrawaddy. Attested by inscriptions from the 11th century AD; written in an Indian script adapted from that of the Mons, whom the Burmese had conquered. Sino-Tibetan, of the Lolo-Burmese branch of Tibeto-Burman.

Back  -    New Search

C

C

= COMP.

Back  -    New Search

CA

= componential analysis; Conversation Analysis.

Back  -    New Search

cacuminal.

An old term for retroflex.

Back  -    New Search

Caddoan.

Family of languages in North America, spoken or formerly spoken in part of the central plains in the USA.

Back  -    New Search

caesura [s'zjr].

A metrical division in a line of verse. Hence available as a term for similar rhythmical or intonational divisions in speech.

Back  -    New Search

calque.

A word or expression which has been formed by translation of a corresponding word or expression in another language. E.g. French gratte-ciel ‘skyscraper’ (lit. ‘scratch-sky’) is a calque on English skyscraper. Also called a loan translation .

Back  -    New Search

Cambodian

= Khmer.

Back  -    New Search

cancellable

(inference) . See defeasible.

Back  -    New Search

canonical.

Usually in the sense of ‘typical’ or ‘characteristic’. E.g. the canonical form of words, syllables, etc. is a phonological pattern to which they tend, in some particular language or group of languages, to conform. Cf. template.

Back  -    New Search

Cantonese.

See Chinese.

Back  -    New Search

cardinal numeral.

One which indicates the number of individuals in a set, e.g. three, as opposed to an ordinal numeral, e.g. third.

Back  -    New Search

cardinal vowels.

A set of vowels established and recorded by (Daniel) Jones, to serve as fixed reference points for the description of vowels in any language. Together they define the limits of a space within which vowels can be articulated, and within which a phonetician who has been trained to do so can place any particular vowel that is heard.
The space is represented as a quadrilateral, shown in the illustration overleaf in its most schematic form. Of the vowels that delimit it, cardinal 1 (in phonetic notation [i]) is articulated with the tongue as far forward and as high in the mouth as is possible without audible friction; cardinal 5 ([]) is articulated with the tongue as far back and as low in the mouth as possible. Cardinals 2, 3, and 4 ([e, , a]) are front vowels on the limits of the space and auditorily equidistant between 1 and 5; cardinals 6, 7, and 8 ([, o, u]) correspondingly define the limits of the space for back vowels.
Other points of reference are defined by relation to these. In particular, the ‘secondary’ cardinal vowels are articulated in the same way as the primary except that rounding or spreading of the lips is reversed. E.g. to primary [i], in which in addition the lips are spread, corresponds secondary [y], with lips rounded; to primary [u], with lips rounded, secondary [y], with lips spread.

The primary cardinal vowels

Back  -    New Search

‘caretaker speech’

= motherese but with recognition that not only mothers use it. Also ‘caregiver speech’ .

Back  -    New Search

Cariban.

Family of languages in the northern part of South America, represented at intervals mainly from the mouth of the Amazon across to northern Colombia.

Back  -    New Search

‘Cartesian linguistics’.

The study of grammar in the tradition of Port Royal, interpreted by Chomsky in a book with that title (1966) as specifically in the spirit of Descartes.

Back  -    New Search

case.

Inflectional category, basically of nouns, which typically marks their role in relation to other parts of the sentence. E.g. in Latin vidi puellam ‘I saw a girl’, puellam ‘(a) girl’ has the ending of the accusative case (puella-m) and this marks it as the object of the verb (vidi ‘I-saw’).
Thence of ‘abstract cases’ , conceived as corresponding categories at an underlying level. E.g. the girl in I saw the girl is also described as, in a more abstract sense, ‘accusative’. But in English this is realized by the position of a noun phrase in the sentence, not by a case ending. Also of, at a still more abstract level, the specific semantic roles (or case roles) of such units.

Back  -    New Search

case attraction.

Agreement of a relative pronoun with the case of the noun on which its clause depends. Common especially in Ancient Greek. E.g. in tôn pólen hôn ékhei ‘of the cities which he holds’, the relative pronoun is the object of its clause. Therefore one might expect it to be accusative: hs ékhei ‘which-ACCPL he-holds’. But the noun to which it relates is genitive: tôn pólen ‘the-GENPL city-GENPL’. Hence, by attraction, it too is genitive: hôn ‘which-GENPL’.
Also called ‘case assimilation’ .

Back  -    New Search

Case Filter.

See Case Theory.

Back  -    New Search

‘case frame’.

See Case Grammar.

Back  -    New Search

Case Grammar.

Variant of transformational grammar developed by C. J. Fillmore in the late 1960s. The central idea was that in any clause each noun phrase has, as one element at an underlying level, a ‘case’ which represents its semantic role or case role. E.g. in I opened the door with the key, the cases of I, the door, and with the key were respectively agent, patient, and instrumental. An underlying case may correspond to varying roles or forms in surface structure: e.g. instrumental corresponds in this example to an adverbial, and is marked by with. But in The key opened the door the same element is represented by the subject (the key).
In the lexicon, verbs were classed by ‘case frames’ : that is, by the arrays of underlying ‘cases’ with which each can be combined. E.g. open can combine with an agent, a patient, and an instrumental; also with a patient alone (The door opened); also with a patient and an instrumental (The key opened the door, or The door opened with the key).

Back  -    New Search

case role.

A semantic role of the kind that in many languages is marked by cases. E.g. in Open it with the knife, it has the role of goal in relation to open and with the knife the role of instrumental. In English these are marked by the order of words and the use of the preposition with; but in Latin, for example, both would be marked by case endings.
For theories of case roles see Case Grammar; concrete case; grammatical case; localism.

Back  -    New Search

case stacking.

Pattern in which a single word has two or more successive case inflections. E.g. in Australian languages: thus, schematically, in Bill-GEN-DAT wife-DAT ‘to Bill's wife’, the dependent noun (Bill) is marked as genitive through its relation to the head noun wife, and also as dative in agreement with it.
Hence ‘double case’ , referring to instances in which, as here, two cases are so ‘stacked’.

Back  -    New Search

case syncretism.

Strictly, of the syncretism, in some paradigms or at some points in a paradigm, of cases distinguished elsewhere. E.g. in Latin and other older Indo-European languages, a distinction between nominative and accusative was drawn in masculines and feminines but syncretized in neuters.
Also, loosely or more generally, of the realization by the same case of two or more different case roles. E.g. the semantic role of ‘movement from’ is conflated, in the Latin ablative, with that of an instrumental: Roma (‘Rome-ABLSG’) ‘from Rome’; hasta (‘spear-ABLSG’) ‘with a spear’.

Back  -    New Search

‘Case Theory’.

Part of Government and Binding Theory concerned with the assignment of abstract case on the basis of relations of government. The main principle was a ‘Case Filter’ , by which any non-empty noun phrase (i.e. one which is not an ‘empty category’) must be assigned such a case.

Back  -    New Search

Cassubian.

See Polish.

Back  -    New Search

Castilian.

See Spanish.

Back  -    New Search

catachresis [kat'kri:ss].

Ancient term for the incorrect use of words: e.g. the use of the term ‘universal’ is catachrestic when it refers to features of language known not to be universal. From Greek: ‘abuse’ and ‘abusive’ are from the corresponding terms in Latin.

Back  -    New Search

Catalan.

Romance language, spoken in north-east Spain, including Barcelona. The language of medieval Aragon, with its earliest literature of that period.

Back  -    New Search

cataphora [k'tafr].

The relation between an anaphoric expression and an ‘antecedent’ that comes later. E.g. in When he had finished, Jones was exhausted, the referent of he might be Jones; if so, it is a cataphoric element, whose ‘antecedent’ is the later phrase Jones. Also called ‘anticipatory anaphora’ or ‘backward anaphora’ .

Back  -    New Search

categorial component.

The base component of a transformational grammar: i.e. one whose rules, called ‘categorial rules’ , deal with relations among syntactic categories.

Back  -    New Search

categorial grammar.

A type of formal grammar, originally devised by the logician K. Ajdukiewicz in the 1930s. Its basis is a lexicon, in which words are assigned to categories of greater or lesser complexity: if a string of words is well-formed, these will combine, by a repeated operation of cancellation, to a designated simple category. E.g. run is a word with which a preceding noun (N) can form a sentence (S): men run. So, assign run to a complex category N\S, indicating precisely that. By the operation of cancellation, X followed by X\Y reduces to Y; hence N (men) plus N\S (run) reduces to, and is thus assigned as a whole to, a sentence category S. An adjective such as young can combine similarly, but in the opposite order, with a following noun. So, assign young to a complex category N/N. By the operation of cancellation, Y/X followed by X also reduces to Y. So, for the string young men run, the reduction will be in two stages. First, N/N (young) plus N (men) reduces to N: i.e. the form as a whole is also of this category. Then N (young men) plus N\S (run) will again reduce to S.
Categorial grammars have the same weak generative capacity as context-free phrase structure grammars. For the operation of cancellation compare later concepts of unification.

Back  -    New Search

‘categorical rule’.

See rule (2).

Back  -    New Search

category.

Any class or system of grammatical or lexical units distinguished at some level in the structure of a language. ‘Noun phrase’, for example, is a syntactic category. ‘Case’ and ‘tense’ are inflectional or morphosyntactic categories. Colour terms or terms for kinship might be said to form a ‘lexical category’, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

category-neutral.

(Rule, principle, etc.) which applies regardless of the category to which a unit is assigned: thus regardless, especially, of any of the syntactic categories noun, verb, etc.

Back  -    New Search

catenative.

A verb such as need in I need to stop, seen as a link between the subject (I) and the following infinitive (to stop). Named from the Latin word for ‘chain’ (catena): e.g. like and promise form part of a chain in I would like to promise to do it tomorrow.

Back  -    New Search

Caucasian.

Cover term for languages whose families are indigenous to the Caucasus. South Caucasian (‘Kartvelian’) includes Georgian, and is for many though not all scholars a family with no plausible relationship to the others. North West Caucasian includes Abkhaz, West Circassian (Adyghe), and East Circassian (Kabardian), and is separated by Ossetic, which is Iranian, from North Central Caucasian (Chechen, Ingush) and North East Caucasian (in terms of geography, east), of which Avar (north-east Dagestan) and Lezgi (south Dagestan and north Azerbaijan) are the largest. The North Central and North East groups arguably represent a larger family, possibly with the North West also.

Back  -    New Search

CAUS

= causative.

Back  -    New Search

causal.

(Clause, etc.) indicating a cause or reason; e.g. because I am busy in I can't see you because I am busy. The subordinator because is in turn a causal conjunction .

Back  -    New Search

causative (CAUS).

(Construction, verb, affix) used in saying who or what causes something to happen. E.g., schematically, I eat-CAUS-PAST the baby ‘I fed the baby’: i.e. ‘I caused the baby to eat’.
A verb derived in this way will take a further argument, referring to the ‘causer’; thus, schematically, non-causative Y (Z) verb (transitive or intransitive) causative X Y (Z) verb. Similarly when the causative element is itself a verb: English he ate (the apple) I made him eat (the apple). Hence extensions of the term, common in the 1970s, to e.g. English feed (with two arguments) vs. eat (with one argument), where there is no ‘explicit’ causative element.

Back  -    New Search

cavity.

See nasal, oral. Cavity features , in the scheme of Chomsky and Halle, SPE, are ones involving primary and secondary places of articulation.

Back  -    New Search

c-command.

A relation of command (2), variously defined in detail, which obtains e.g. between the subject of a sentence and an anaphoric element in its predicate. For example, in John's father hurt himself, the reflexive himself is c-commanded by its antecedent John's father. But it is not c-commanded by John, and it is for that reason, it has been proposed, that this cannot mean ‘John's father hurt John’.

Back  -    New Search

CD.

See Functional Sentence Perspective.

Back  -    New Search

Cebuano.

A language of the Philippines, spoken in Negros and other smaller islands and in parts of Mindanao. Austronesian, of the same branch as Tagalog.

Back  -    New Search

Celtiberian.

See Celtic.

Back  -    New Search

Celtic.

Branch of Indo-European, conventionally divided into ‘Continental Celtic’, extinct by or soon after AD 500, and ‘Insular Celtic’, spoken in (or in the case of Breton originating in) the British Isles. Continental Celtic is attested only by inscriptions and place-names, and by references in Latin authors, but forms of it were spoken widely in the area of north Italy (Lepontic), France (Gaulish), and parts of Spain (Celtiberian) before the Roman expansion; also in ancient Galatia (now part of Turkey). Insular Celtic is divided into Brythonic or Brittonic (Welsh, Breton, Cornish) and Goidelic (Gaelic).
Within Indo-European, Celtic shares features with Italic especially: hence an old conjecture, never generally accepted, that they might at a higher level form a single ‘Italo-Celtic’ branch.

Back  -    New Search

ceneme.

Hjelmslev's term for a unit of expression. A ‘cenemic’ system of writing is one which represents phonological units as opposed to units of the lexicon or grammar: i.e. an alphabet or alpha-syllabic system or a syllabary.
From the Greek word for ‘empty’: opp. plereme, ‘pleremic’.

Back  -    New Search

central.

(Vowel) intermediate between front and back. For example, [] in [bt] (butter) is a mid central vowel; u in Welsh du ‘black’ is a close central vowel ([l]) in northern dialects.

Back  -    New Search

Central American languages.

The indigenous languages of the geographical area, now dominated in most parts by Spanish. Those described as Meso-American form a linguistic area or Sprachbund, broadly between a line across the centre of Mexico (from the state of Nayarit to northern Veracruz) and another east of Guatemala: they include, in particular, the Mayan family to the east, with the Oto-Manguean and languages of the Nahuan or Aztecan branch of Uto-Aztecan to the west; also smaller families (Mixe-Zoquean, centred on the Tehuantepec Isthmus, and Totonacan, in the north-east of the area), and individual languages, especially Tarascan (in the state of Michoacán), Huave, and Tequistlatec (both in Oaxaca), not belonging to any of these. Oaxaca and adjacent parts of neighbouring states form the region of greatest linguistic diversity.
Outside the Meso-American area, languages of the Sonoran branch of Uto-Aztecan are spoken in north-west Mexico; to the east of the area, mostly ones of families also represented in South America.

Back  -    New Search

centralized.

1 (Vowel) whose quality is more central than that of one of the cardinal vowels: e.g. [ä], as one both closer and more back than cardinal [a].

2 (Vowel) resulting from a sound-change or other process by which its quality becomes central or more central.

Back  -    New Search

centre-embedding.

The inclusion of a syntactic unit within another which is of the same category. E.g. in the girl a[who the man b[who you met] liked] the smaller relative clause (b) is included in this way within the larger (a).
Distinguished, in accounts of recursive processes in phrase structure grammar, from left-branching and right-branching.

Back  -    New Search

centrifugal vs. centripetal.

(Languages) in which heads (1) come before vs. after their dependents: i.e. the movement in the phrase is, respectively, ‘away from’ or ‘towards’ its syntactic centre. Distinguished by L. Tesnière in the 1950s and divided further into languages markedly of one type or the other (‘accusées’) vs. those less markedly so (‘mitigées’). Cf. Head Parameter.

Back  -    New Search

‘centum language’.

Indo-European language of any branch in which a velar stop, as in Latin centum ‘hundred’, did not change to a sibilant fricative or affricate. Opp. satm language.

Back  -    New Search

Cercle Linguistique de Prague.

See Prague School.

Back  -    New Search

cerebral.

An old term for retroflex.

Back  -    New Search

CF.

For ‘context-free’. Thus CF-grammar or CF-PSG = context-free (phrase structure) grammar.

Back  -    New Search

CGE

= A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, by R. Quirk, S. Greenbaum, G. Leech, and J. Svartvik (1985).

Back  -    New Search

Chadic.

Family of languages in sub-Saharan Africa, spoken to the east, south, and west of Lake Chad: Hausa is by far the largest. Grouped with others in Afro-Asiatic.

Back  -    New Search

chain.

1 Relation between elements forming a sequence: cf. syntagmatic.

2 = movement chain: see movement rule.
Top

Back  -    New Search

chain shift.

A series of two or more sound changes, by which sound a > sound b, sound b > sound c, and so on. E.g. in the Greek dialect of ancient Athens, by which [u:] > [y:] and [o:] in turn > [u:]. Divided in principle into drag chains and push chains . E.g. in the example cited the fronting of [u:] might be seen as having ‘dragged’ [o:] after it into the phonetic space so vacated; alternatively, the raising of [o:] to [u:] might have ‘pushed’ the existing [u:] out of it.

Back  -    New Search

change.

Any change that takes place, for whatever reason or at whatever level, in the history of a language. Thus phonological change is change in phonology, morphological change change in morphology, syntactic change change in syntax, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

‘change in progress’.

See apparent time.

Back  -    New Search

‘charm’.

See Government Phonology.

Back  -    New Search

Chechén.

North Central Caucasian language, spoken north of the Caucasus Mountains, with Ingush, in the former autonomous region of the Soviet Union named after them.

Back  -    New Search

checked.

Feature distinguishing glottalized consonants (= ejectives) in Jakobson's system. A checked tone is a tone whose realization ends in a glottal stop.

Back  -    New Search

chereme.

See -eme.

Back  -    New Search

Cherokee.

See Iroquoian.

Back  -    New Search

chest

(voice, register) . See phonation.

Back  -    New Search

chiasmus.

Figure of speech in which the order of elements in one clause or sentence is reversed in one which follows. E.g. if I see her I am a fool (conditional clause + main clause) and I am a worse fool if I don't (main clause + conditional clause).

Back  -    New Search

Chibchan.

Group of languages spoken in scattered places mainly in Colombia and neighbouring parts of Venezuela, and westwards in Panama and Costa Rica.

Back  -    New Search

Chichewa

= Nyanja.

Back  -    New Search

Chinese.

Branch of Sino-Tibetan. The most important member (conventionally ‘dialect’) is Mandarin , native in most of China roughly north and west of a line from south Jiangsu to west Guangxi; the regional variety of Beijing is the basis for Chinese as an official language in China, Taiwan, and (with others) Singapore. Other major ‘dialects’, running broadly from north to south and east to west, are: Wu (Zhejiang and to the north, including Shanghai); Northern Min (north Fujian to south of the River Min); southern Min or Hokkien (south Fujian and the coast southwards, also in Taiwan and Hainan); Kejia or Hakka (mainly north-east Guangdong); Xiang or Hunanese (in Hunan); Yue or Cantonese (most of Guangdong, including Hong Kong, and most of Guangxi). Of these, Cantonese and Hokkien especially are widely spoken through emigration in many other countries.
‘Old Chinese’ is the form spoken from the 5th century BC to the end of the Han dynasty in the 3rd century AD, and the form from which Classical Chinese , as a written language, derives. The Chinese writing system is attested earlier, from the second half of the 2nd millennium BC. Pinyin is now the standard Roman spelling.

Back  -    New Search

Chinese writing system.

Developed, independently on all available evidence, in at the latest the first half of the 2nd millennium BC. First attested by inscriptions on bone and tortoiseshell used in divination (‘oracle bones’) dating from the 14th century. The characters now used developed essentially from the late 3rd century BC (Qin and Han dynasties).
Each character represents a minimal grammatical element or morpheme, realized phonetically by a single syllable. Some characters are simple, often pictographic in origin: e.g. the precursor of the one which represents the morpheme meaning ‘water’ was made up of wavy lines. But the vast majority are ‘compound’ characters, in which, in particular, a character taken to represent a syllable as a phonetic unit has been combined with one which represents a morpheme with a related meaning. E.g. the compound character for a morpheme meaning ‘sea’ has as its ‘semantic’ element the radical of the character for the ‘water’ morpheme, and, as its ‘phonetic’ element, one which also represents a homonymous form for ‘sheep’ (yáng).
Characters of Chinese origin are used for Japanese, partly in a very different way; also in writing Korean.

Back  -    New Search

choice vs. chain.

Effectively = paradigmatic (1) vs. syntagmatic. In the terminology of Halliday especially, there is ‘choice’ among the alternatives which form a system; a ‘chain’ is formed by elements in a structure.

Back  -    New Search

chômeur.

An element in Relational Grammar that has been ‘demoted’, by a syntactic operation, from the nucleus of a clause to its periphery. Thus in the passive construction an agent (3) would be a chômeur demoted from the nuclear role of subject: nucleus[a wall blocked my path] nucleus[my path was blocked] by a wall. From the French word for ‘unemployed’.

Back  -    New Search

Chomsky, Avram Noam

(1928– )
. American linguist whose theories have revolutionized much of the subject in the second half of the 20th century. In Syntactic Structures (1957), his first book and for many still his most important single work, he overturned the strategy of analysis developed by the Post-Bloomfieldians and replaced it with a formal theory of generative grammars and the concept of an evaluation procedure as a means of justifying them. In his next major book, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965), he proposed a theory of levels which included, in particular, the distinction between deep structure and surface structure; he also introduced the notion, in the long run far more important, that much of the structure of language in general is ‘innate’ or genetically inherited. From the end of the 1960s Chomsky's work has been directed above all to the development of a theory of universal grammar (2), conceived as an account of what is so inherited, and, by implication, to confirming that such a universal grammar does exist. A succession of works in the 1970s led by the end of the decade to a Principles and Parameters Theory, embodied and developed further in the 1980s in what is called by his followers Government and Binding Theory: see in particular Reflections on Language (1975), Lectures on Government and Binding (1981), Knowledge of Language (1986), and, at a more popular level, Language and Problems of Knowledge (1988). The latest versions are those developed in his programme of minimalism from the early 1990s.

Back  -    New Search

‘Chomsky-adjunction’.

Any operation on a phrase structure tree in which an element is added to a constituent of class A in such a way that both become part of a larger constituent, also of class A. E.g. if horse has the structure N[horse], the addition of -s by Chomsky-adjunction would yield the structure N[N[horse] s]. Cf. sister-adjunction.

Back  -    New Search

‘Chomsky-hierarchy’.

A ranking of finite state grammars, context-free and context-sensitive phrase structure grammars, and unrestricted rewrite systems, in respect of increasing power or weak generative capacity. The term refers to work by Chomsky in the mid-1950s.

Back  -    New Search

‘chroneme’.

(Daniel) Jones's term for a phonological unit of duration: e.g. long and short as chronemes distinguishing vowels in some forms of English. Likewise ‘chrone’ , for any phonetic degree of duration.

Back  -    New Search

Chrysippus.

See Stoics.

Back  -    New Search

Chukotko-Kamchatkan.

Small family of languages, of which Chukchi is the most important, spoken on the Chukotka and Kamchatka Peninsulas in Siberia.

Back  -    New Search

Circassian.

Alternative name of two North West Caucasian languages, Adyghe (West Circassian) and Kabardian or Kabardo-Cherkess (East Circassian).

Back  -    New Search

circumfix.

A combined prefix and suffix, treated as a single unit. E.g. in German gefragt ‘asked’, the forms which mark the participle, ge- and -t, might be seen as a circumfix (ge …t) enclosing the root frag-. Cf. parasynthetic (2).

Back  -    New Search

circumflex (ˆ).

In origin a sign invented for Ancient Greek to represent an accent (1) realized by a falling pitch. Used in linguistics either for a falling tone in tone languages or for a rise followed by a fall in intonation.

Back  -    New Search

circumstantial.

(Adverb, adverbial) which indicates the external setting, in space and time especially, of an event, etc. E.g. both in Chicago and yesterday are circumstantial elements in We met her in Chicago yesterday. From French, where ‘circonstant’ or ‘complément circonstanciel’ would be variously applied to these and other adjuncts forming the periphery (1) of a clause.

Back  -    New Search

citation form.

The form used to refer to a lexical unit. The choice is a matter of convenience and is often arbitrary. E.g. in French a verb is referred to by the infinitive: manger ‘to eat’. But in Latin it is referred to by the first-person singular of the present indicative: edo ‘I eat’.

Back  -    New Search

classeme.

A semantic feature characterizing a class of lexical units, similar in grammar as well as meaning, which cuts across the organization of the lexicon into semantic fields: e.g. animate vs. inanimate. More usual in French or German accounts of word meaning (‘classème’, ‘Klassem’) than in English-speaking countries.

Back  -    New Search

classifier.

Used, in accounts of Chinese especially, of a form which marks a noun of a specific semantic class and which has to accompany e.g. a numeral. Thus in Chinese yí-ge rén ‘one man’ ge is a classifier, originally from a word for ‘bamboo stalk’, which has to follow the numeral (yí ‘one’) when it modifies any of a large class of nouns, including rén ‘man’. Often called a ‘numeral classifier’ , though e.g. a classifier is also required in Chinese by a demonstrative (schematically ‘that-ge man’).

Back  -    New Search

clause.

Any syntactic unit whose structure is, or is seen as reduced from, that of a sentence. Thus, in particular, one which includes a verb and the elements that accompany it.
The smaller unit who you introduced me to is accordingly a clause in I liked the girl who you introduced me to. So, in many accounts, is meeting her in I liked meeting her or to meet her in I want to meet her, or even, in some, a single word or phrase like in his cups in He sang hymns (sc. when he was) in his cups. So, in current usage, is each of these sentences as a whole.

Back  -    New Search

clause chaining.

Used of a variety of constructions in which clauses or elements seen as clauses are linked in ways unlike those characteristic of European languages. Hence, in particular, of constructions with switch-reference; also, in some accounts, of serial verb constructions; also of ones in which only one verb in the sequence has a full set of inflections; also of ones in which relations between clauses are marked by verb endings and not by conjunctions.

Back  -    New Search

clausemate.

The relation between two syntactic elements that are part of a single clause. E.g. in Jane promised [she would visit her], she and her are clausemates; therefore, by a rule which distinguishes them as such, they must be understood to refer to different people.

Back  -    New Search

clause union.

Syntactic process, distinguished by this term in Relational Grammar, by which a main clause and a subordinate clause become one. Applied especially to constructions with an infinitive in Romance languages: e.g. in Italian, La farò venire (lit. ‘her I-will-make to-come’) is treated as a single clause derived from a main clause with a causative verb (‘I will make’) with, at an underlying level, a second clause as its complement (‘she to come’).

Back  -    New Search

‘clear I’.

See dark 1.

Back  -    New Search

cleft.

(Construction) of e.g. It was my sister (who/that) he married. In cleft sentences the copula (was) is preceded by it and followed by a noun phrase (my sister) and a relative clause: distinguished as such from pseudo-clefts (e.g. what he did was marry my sister).

Back  -    New Search

cliché.

In the ordinary sense: hence some idioms and set expressions are clichés; also some other expressions involving habitual collocations.

Back  -    New Search

click.

Sound produced by suction of the tongue against the roof of the mouth. A body of air is trapped between the back of the tongue, which is in contact with the velum, and a second closure further forward. The space enclosed is then enlarged, the air within it is rarefied, the second closure is released, and air flows inwards.
Clicks are an important part of the consonant system in Khoisan and neighbouring Bantu languages in South Africa; elsewhere mainly in sounds outside the system of phonemes, e.g. the one written ‘tut! tut!’ in English. Defined by phoneticians as a sound produced by an ingressive velaric airstream mechanism. But this is perhaps misleading, since the movement of air is not in reality initiated by the velum.

Back  -    New Search

cline

= gradience.

Back  -    New Search

clipping.

Process of word-formation in which an existing form is abbreviated. E.g. fan ‘devotee, enthusiast’ was formed in the late 19th century by shortening fanatic, hi-fi in the mid-20th century by shortening high fidelity.

Back  -    New Search

clitic.

A grammatical element treated as an independent word in syntax but forming a phonological unit with the word that precedes or follows it. E.g. Ancient Greek tis is a clitic in nêsós tis ‘a (certain) island’: it is inflected independently (in this case as nominative singular) but accentually it forms a unit with the word for ‘island’ (basically nêsos) that precedes it.
From the Greek word for ‘leaning’: thus unaccented tis ‘leans on’ nêsos. ‘Enclitics’ are clitics linked phonologically, as here, to the word preceding, proclitics those linked to the word following. The distinction between clitics and affixes is naturally fluid: e.g. English -n't in haven't or aren't is a clitic by some criteria but has been claimed as an affix by others. So too is the boundary between clitics and full words: e.g. unstressed to is a clitic, by some relevant criteria, in I have to [haft] go.

Back  -    New Search

clitic climbing.

Syntactic process, e.g. in Italian, in which a clitic pronoun or another similar element forms a unit not with the verb to which it bears a direct syntactic relation but with one to which that verb is subordinate. E.g. in lo faccio venire ‘I make him come’, lo ‘him’ is the subject of the infinitive venire ‘to come’, but ‘climbs’ to form a unit with faccio ‘make’. Cf. raising (2); also described in terms of clause union.

Back  -    New Search

‘clitic doubling’.

The use of a clitic pronoun with the same referent and in the same syntactic function as another element in its clause. E.g. in Spanish le vi a Juan ‘I saw John’, le ‘him’ is a clitic parallel to a Juan ‘(to) John’. One case of what Bloomfield called cross-reference.

Back  -    New Search

cliticization.

Syntactic process or historical change by which a word becomes a clitic.

Back  -    New Search

clitic pronoun.

A pronoun which is a clitic: e.g. in Modern Greek ton simpathí (lit. ‘him likes’) the verb has as its object a clitic (hence unaccented) pronoun ton. Such pronouns are often seen as moved from a basic position of an object or other element; hence ‘clitic movement’ .

Back  -    New Search

close.

(Vowel) produced with the body of the tongue close to the roof of the mouth: e.g. those of heat or hoot. ‘Close’ is opposed to ‘open’ in the classification of cardinal vowels; in other schemes close vowels are ‘high’.

Back  -    New Search

close approximation.

Narrowing of the space between articulators sufficient to cause turbulence in a flow of air: e.g. of the lower lip and upper teeth in the articulation of [f] or [v]. Distinguished as a degree of stricture from open approximation and closure.

Back  -    New Search

closed class.

A class of words or morphemes whose membership is fixed and can be listed. E.g. there is a closed class of determiners (the, this, etc.). Opp. open class.

Back  -    New Search

closed syllable.

One which ends in a consonant: e.g. the first syllable, [as], of aster. Opp. open syllable.

Back  -    New Search

close juncture.

The normal linkage between successive sounds within a word. Cf. juncture.

Back  -    New Search

close-mid

(vowel) = half-close.

Back  -    New Search

close transition.

Linkage between sounds characterized by coarticulation. Opp. open transition: cf. close vs. open juncture.

Back  -    New Search

closing diphthong.

One which changes from relatively open to relatively close: e.g. [a] in how.

Back  -    New Search

closure.

Contact between articulators by which a flow of air is completely blocked: e.g. between the lips in the articulation of [p] or [m]. Distinguished as a degree of stricture from close approximation and open approximation.

Back  -    New Search

cloze test.

A test in which pupils or subjects are instructed to supply words, etc., that are missing from text presented to them.

Back  -    New Search

cluster.

A sequence of consonants before, after, or between vowels. E.g. [str] is a medial consonant cluster in words like astray.

Back  -    New Search

coalescence

= fusion.

Back  -    New Search

coarticulation.

The simultaneous or overlapping articulation of two successive phonological units. E.g. in a normal pronunciation of sweet [swi:t] the lips are rounded in the articulation of [s]; i.e. there is coarticulation of [s] and the [w] which follows. In one normal pronunciation of [kp] in duckpond [dkpnd], the contact of the back of the tongue with the soft palate (for [k]) does not end before the closure of the lips (for [p]): i.e. there is a period of coarticulation of both consonants.
To be distinguished from double articulation (2) in that the sounds are separate phonological units. Coarticulation is classed as anticipatory, where the articulation of a following unit is anticipated, vs. perseverative, where that of a preceding unit continues. Compare the distinction between regressive (= anticipatory) and progressive (= perseverative) assimilation.

Back  -    New Search

coda.

The part of a syllable, if any, that comes after the nucleus; e.g. [st] in [bst] (best).

Back  -    New Search

‘code mixing’.

See code switching. Also used by some sociolinguists for what is generally called borrowing.

Back  -    New Search

code switching.

Switching from one language, dialect, etc. to another. E.g. two business associates meet and chat in one language; the meeting becomes formal and they switch to another. Sometimes distinguished, and then by no means consistently, from ‘code mixing’ . E.g. in ‘code switching’ the switch is made, as in this example, because the nature or the subject of the conversation changes; in ‘code mixing’ speakers switch to and fro, for no specific external reason, at frequent intervals.
‘Code’ itself is used by some sociolinguists effectively of any distinct variety of a language. Also by others of varieties and languages generally, whether or not they are believed to be ‘codes’ (like the morse code or a code of morals) in any illuminating sense.

Back  -    New Search

cognate.

(Languages, words, etc.) that have developed from a common ancestor. E.g. English is cognate with German; likewise English beam is cognate with German Baum ‘tree’.

Back  -    New Search

cognate object.

An object in syntax whose head noun parallels and repeats the meaning of the verb. E.g. life parallels lived in She lived her life in Berlin, or She lived a full life.

Back  -    New Search

Cognitive Linguistics.

Movement in linguistics, nascent from the late 1980s, emphasizing the continuity of language with the workings of the mind in general and seeking to ground a theory of language in accounts of cognition. Thus opposed especially to structuralist schools, including that of Chomsky, which stress the autonomy of linguistics. Leading proponents include R. W. Langacker and G. P. Lakoff, both advocates, in their early careers, of Generative Semantics.

Back  -    New Search

‘cognitive meaning’.

The meaning of a sentence considered in abstraction from affective or emotive meaning, stylistic nuances, the meaning of word order in specific contexts, and whatever else is deemed or assumed to be irrelevant to it. E.g. Harry kissed her (in an amazed whisper) might be said to have the same cognitive meaning as Harry KISSED her (shouted at the top of one's voice), or HARry kissed her, or She was kissed by Harry, and so on. Often therefore, in practice, what is said to be preserved in paraphrase.

Back  -    New Search

coherence.

Used semi-technically of the way in which the content of connected speech or text hangs together, or is interpreted as hanging together, as distinct from that of random assemblages of sentences. Especially in studies of conversation: e.g. it is by a principle of coherence that, if one speaker asks a question, the other is expected to answer. Cf. cohesion.

Back  -    New Search

cohesion.

1 The connection between successive sentences in texts, conversations, etc., in so far as it can be described in terms of specific syntactic units. E.g. A says ‘Peter came’ and B replies ‘But he was very late’: in this interchange the role of but as a conjunction and the link between the pronoun he and its antecedent Peter are both aspects of cohesion.

2 The property of syntactic units which are not interrupted by elements that do not belong to them. Thus words are generally cohesive: i.e. they are not interrupted by other words or elements that belong to other words.
Top

Back  -    New Search

cohort model.

Model for the perception of spoken words proposed by W. Marslen-Wilson in the mid-1980s. It assumes a ‘recognition lexicon’ in which each word is represented by a full and independent ‘recognition element’. When the system receives the beginning of a relevant acoustic signal, all elements matching it are fully activated, and, as more of the signal is received, the system tries to match it independently with each of them. Wherever it fails the element is deactivated; this process continues until only one remains active.

Back  -    New Search

co-hyponym.

See hyponymy.

Back  -    New Search

co-indexing.

The linking, by subscript indices, of elements which have the same referent.

Back  -    New Search

collapsing (of rules).

Their conflation by means of an abbreviatory convention.

Back  -    New Search

collective noun.

One used to refer to individuals as a group: e.g. clergy, meaning ‘clergymen in general’. Also of a noun or form of a noun which distinguishes a kind from individuals of that kind: e.g. in Egyptian Arabic, [xo:x] ‘peaches as a kind’ in opposition to [xo:xa] (an individual peach) or the plural [xo:xat] (three or more individual peaches).

Back  -    New Search

colligation.

Firth's term for the general relation between elements in a construction, as opposed to a collocation or relation between individual words. Thus the collocation e.g. of heavy and smoker in She's a heavy smoker instances the colligation of an adjective with an agent noun, or with a noun generally.

Back  -    New Search

collocation.

A relation within a syntactic unit between individual lexical elements; e.g. computer collocates with hate in My computer hates me. Used especially where words specifically or habitually go together: e.g. blond collocates with hair in blond hair or Their hair is blond; drunk with lord in as drunk as a lord; run with riot in run riot. Hence of idioms: e.g. blow and top are part of a ‘special collocation’ in She blew her top.
A collocational restriction is any restriction on the collocability of one individual word with another. Cf. selectional restriction (1).

Back  -    New Search

combinatory variants.

Variant realizations, especially of a phoneme, which are in complementary distribution.

Back  -    New Search

combining form.

A form of a word, or a form related to or in meaning like a word, used only as an element in compounds: e.g. Anglo- in Anglo-American or socio- in socio-economic; also retro- in retrovirus or bio- in biotechnology. Common in English, where in some putative compounds, such as autocrat or technocrat, both members would be combining forms.

Back  -    New Search

comitative.

Case or case role with the meaning ‘together with, accompanied by’: e.g. with my husband, or the preposition with, is comitative in He went to town with my husband.

Back  -    New Search

command (1).

An utterance which constitutes an order: e.g. ‘Get out!’ as an order to someone to leave the room. An indirect command is a clause representing a command in indirect speech: e.g. in I ordered [it to be sold] or We directed [that they should be rewarded]. Cf. imperative.

Back  -    New Search

command (2).

Cover term for various relations defined over nodes in a phrase structure tree. In the most general case, a node A on one branch ‘commands’ a node B on another branch if (a) both are dominated by the same node C and (b) C is the lowest branching node that dominates A.
The relation most widely invoked is c-command, where C, as above, may be any branching node. In other relations it is one of a specific type: e.g. it must represent a maximal projection of some category (‘m-command’), or it must be a cyclic node as defined by a principle of subjacency (‘k-command’).

Back  -    New Search

comment.

A syntactic element which forms a basic sentence construction with a topic (3). Hence the equivalent, in such a ‘topic—comment’ construction, of the predicate (1) in a subject—predicate construction.
Also, more generally, of the parts of a sentence other than a topic, whether or not they are seen as forming a single syntactic unit. E.g. in The beer you can, of course, drink, the comment is everything after the topic the beer.

Back  -    New Search

comment clause.

Used by Quirk et al., CGE to cover various clauses seen as expressing a comment, etc. which is in meaning, at least, parenthetical. E.g. ones like I think in Nothing, I think, happened or as you know in As you know, nothing happened; also, e.g. one like what is odd in What is odd, she had her husband with her.

Back  -    New Search

commissive.

A type of speech act by which speakers e.g. commit themselves to doing something: thus especially a promise.

Back  -    New Search

‘common core’.

The core of a language as defined by units, constructions, etc. that distinguish all its dialects. Thus the order of subject and verb might belong to a common core of English; the inflection e.g. of the verb ‘to be’ does not.

Back  -    New Search

common gender.

1 Traditionally of the gender of nouns with which either masculine or feminine forms can agree: e.g. in French le ministre ‘the-MASC minister’, la ministre ‘the-FEM minister’. Cf. epicene.

2 Also of the use of a masculine, as a neutral gender, when reference is indifferently to male and female.
Top

Back  -    New Search

common noun.

One whose application is not restricted to arbitrarily distinguished members of a class. E.g. girl is a common noun that may be used in reference to any individual characterizable in general as a girl. Opp. proper noun.

Back  -    New Search

communicative competence.

A speaker's knowledge of the total set of rules, conventions, etc. governing the skilled use of language in a society. Distinguished by D. Hymes in the late 1960s from Chomsky's concept of competence, in the restricted sense of knowledge of a grammar.

Back  -    New Search

communicative dynamism.

See Functional Sentence Perspective.

Back  -    New Search

communicative language teaching.

Method of teaching a foreign language which aims to develop communicative competence, as opposed to simple knowledge of grammatical and similar structures.

Back  -    New Search

commutation test.

Hjelmslev's term for the basic test which distinguishes one unit of a language from another. Strictly, the replacement of one unit by another on the level of expression (crudely a change in form) must entail a replacement at the level of content (crudely a change in meaning) and vice versa. But often, especially in practice or in later usage, of a test involving the exchange of expression units only.

Back  -    New Search

Comp.

See X-bar syntax. For ‘complement’, but not always a complement in any other sense.

Back  -    New Search

COMP (C).

Category posited in Chomsky's Principles and Parameters Theory whose realizations include complementizers. E.g. in He asked if I made them, the subordinate clause is a ‘COMP phrase’ (CP) headed by if.

Back  -    New Search

compact.

Distinctive feature in the scheme proposed by Jakobson. Characterized acoustically by a concentration of energy in a narrow part of the spectrum: thus with reference to, in particular, the formants (1) of open vowels. Opp. diffuse.
The opposition of compact and diffuse is one of two that were taken by Jakobson to define both a triangle of vowels and a triangle of consonants parallel to it. In the illustration, [a] is maximally compact, [p] and [t] are maximally diffuse; on the horizontal axis, [p] is maximally grave and [t] is maximally acute. This scheme was abandoned by Chomsky and Halle in SPE, but remains the most important achievement of Jakobson's binary method.

Jakobson's vowel and consonant triangles

Back  -    New Search

comparative.

(Construction, inflection, etc.) by which individuals, etc. are compared, in respect of some property, with others. Originally of inflected forms with the meaning ‘more (than)’: e.g. taller, with a comparative suffix -er, in He is taller than me. As such a term in the category of degree or grade. Thence of constructions, whether or not they are marked by inflections: e.g. in He is more fortunate than me; also, with less … than, in He is less fortunate than me.
Cf. equative; superlative.

Back  -    New Search

comparative linguistics.

1 The comparison of languages by the comparative method.

2 The comparison of languages for whatever purpose, whether e.g. for genetic classification or for typological classification.

Back  -    New Search

comparative method.

The method of comparing languages to determine whether and how they have developed from a common ancestor. The items compared are lexical and grammatical units, and the aim is to discover correspondences relating sounds in two or more different languages, which are so numerous and so regular, across sets of units with similar meanings, that no other explanation is reasonable.
Three points are worth underlining. (a) The argument does not rest on mere similarities. Since sounds change over time, the older the ancestor the more likely it is that correspondences will be between sounds that are not similar: e.g. initial k- in one language might correspond to v- in another and to s- in a third. Likewise the greater the danger that similarities as such will be misleading. (b) The argument cannot safely rest on two or more correspondences. E.g. an s in language A might correspond quite frequently to an s in language B, not because the words in question have been inherited from a common ancestor but because they have been borrowed, e.g. from B into A, in the not too distant past. (c) It is a matter of judgement how far other explanations, such as borrowing or chance, can be excluded. But the more remote the postulated ancestor the more likely it is that judgement will have to be suspended, and the hypothesis will remain a conjecture.

Back  -    New Search

comparative philology.

The study of a family of languages, especially the Indo-European family, by the comparative method.

Back  -    New Search

compensatory lengthening.

Any change or process by which a vowel is lengthened as an element is lost: e.g. that in morphology by which Ancient Greek melan-‘black’ + -s (NOM SG)mels.

Back  -    New Search

competence.

Chomsky's term in the 1960s for a ‘speaker-hearer's knowledge of his language’, as represented by a generative grammar. Opp. performance: cf. I-language; also communicative competence.

Back  -    New Search

complement.

A syntactic element seen as ‘completing’ the construction of another element. Thus, in particular:
1 Of elements other than a subject which are within the valency of a verb or other lexical unit. E.g. in He put it on the floor, both it and on the floor are complements of put and, within on the floor, the floor is the complement of on.
2 Specifically of such elements when they are clauses: thus that he came is a complement clause in They said that he came or the news that he came.
3 Specifically of subject complements and object complements: e.g. happy in He seems happy or That will make him happy.
The term is originally from French (‘complément’). But French and English usage no longer match: in particular, the ‘compléments’ of a verb include all other elements of the predicate, whether or not they are complements in any of the senses above.

Back  -    New Search

complementarity.

Relation between lexical units whose meanings are mutually exclusive. E.g. between male and female: what is male is thereby not female, and vice versa. Words which stand in such a relation are complementary terms (or complementaries ).
Distinguished in typologies of sense relations from other relations broadly between opposites: cf. gradable antonymy especially.

Back  -    New Search

complementary distribution.

Relation between sounds or forms whose distributions do not overlap. Thus in southern British English (RP), an unaspirated [p] appears after an initial [s], e.g. in [spn] (spin); an aspirated [ph] e.g. initially in [phn]; but there is no context in which both would be normal. Therefore they are in complementary distribution, and therefore, in part, they are described as allophones of the same phoneme.
Cf. contrast for contrastive distribution: also free variation.

Back  -    New Search

complementation.

1 A set or series of complements that a verb, etc. may or must take. E.g. verbs such as read have as their complementation a direct object (I read a newspaper); that of put includes both a direct object and a locative (I put it on the floor); that of be, if described in a similar way, might be a predicative adjective (I am cold), noun phrase (I am a nervous wreck), or locative (I am in the kitchen). Equivalent, therefore, to valency (or argument structure) minus the subject.

2 The general relation in which complements stand: thus distinguished, in particular, from that of modification (1).
Top

Back  -    New Search

complementizer.

A word, etc. which marks a complement clause: e.g. that in She said [that she would]. Cf. COMP.

Back  -    New Search

complementizer phrase

= CP.

Back  -    New Search

complete reduplication.

See reduplication.

Back  -    New Search

complete sentence.

One in which no element in its construction requires another element that is missing. Cf. ellipsis: thus I can't help is one of many complete sentences that would correspond to an elliptical I can't.
Traditionally one which, in particular, lacks neither a subject nor a predicate: hence one said to express a ‘complete thought’.

Back  -    New Search

completive.

See perfective.

Back  -    New Search

complex.

1 (Sentence , clause , noun phrase ) which includes one or more subordinate clauses: e.g. I know [he is there] or the fact [that he is there].

2 (Preposition, subordinator, etc.) which consists of more than one word: e.g. on top of or provided that, seen as having the same syntax as above or if. Distinguished from compounds (e.g. throughout or whenever) in that the words remain separate.

3 (Word) whose form is derived by the addition of a derivational affix: e.g. maker, derived by the addition of -er to make.

4 (Coordination) in which the forms that are joined are not single syntactic units, e.g. in [[I was] and [she wasn't] coming]: cf. I [was coming], She [wasn't coming].

Back  -    New Search

complex NP constraint.

Proposed principle by which an element in a clause which is in turn an element in a noun phrase cannot be related to one in any larger construction. Designed to exclude e.g. What did you appreciate the fact that he had done?, with what construed as the object of a verb (had done) whose clause is within the noun phrase the fact that he had done.
Cf. island. Formulated in the late 1960s as a constraint on movement: thus what could not be extracted by wh-movement from its position in you appreciated [the fact [that he had done what]]. Subsumed in the 1970s under a principle of subjacency.

Back  -    New Search

complex nucleus.

A nucleus of a syllable which includes more than one unit: e.g. [ban] in bounty has a complex nucleus [a].

Back  -    New Search

‘complex symbol’.

Chomsky's term in the mid-1960s for the syntactic class of a word as represented by a set of component features.

Back  -    New Search

complex tone.

An intonational contour in which the pitch changes in two or more successive directions on a single tonic syllable. E.g. the fall-rise () in southern British English: When will he be coming?

Back  -    New Search

complex transitive.

Used by Quirk et al., CGE of both the verb and its complementation in constructions with both an object and some complement other than an object: e.g. those of That drove him mad, They made me their leader, He threw it on the fire, I heard him singing. Opp. monotransitive; ditransitive.

Back  -    New Search

component.

1 A semantic feature: see componential analysis.

2 A subset of rules within a generative grammar, which is distinguished either by assigning a specific kind of representation to sentences, or by relating one such representation to another. E.g. the base component of a transformational grammar, which in the model of Chomsky's Aspects assigned the representations called deep structures, or the transformational component, which related deep structures to surface structures.

Back  -    New Search

componential analysis.

A treatment of lexical meaning in which the sense of each unit is distinguished from those of others by a set of semantic features or components. E.g. the basic sense of bull might be analysed into three components: ‘bovine’, distinguishing it from those of stallion, ram, etc.; ‘fully adult’, distinguishing it from that of calf or bullock; and ‘specifically male’, distinguishing it from that of cow.
Several versions of componential analysis were developed independently from the 1930s onwards. In English-speaking countries the best known was that of J. J. Katz and J. A. Fodor, proposed in 1963 within the framework of a generative grammar. This assumed, in addition, that components such as ‘bovine’ (or [+ bovine]), ‘adult’ ([+ adult]), or ‘male’ ([+ male]) were substantive universals.

Back  -    New Search

composition.

The process of forming compounds.

Back  -    New Search

compositional meaning.

The meaning of a syntactic unit seen as derivable from those of the smaller units of which it is composed and the constructions in which they stand: e.g. that of tall girls as derived from the meanings of tall as one lexical unit, of girls as the plural of another lexical unit, and of a syntactic construction in which girls is head and tall a modifier.
According to the principle of compositionality the meanings of sentences are compositional if considered in abstraction from particular occasions on which they are uttered. Often adopted as a hypothesis, or implicitly by definition, in theories that insist on a division between semantics and pragmatics.

Back  -    New Search

compound.

A word formed from two or more units that are themselves words: e.g. blackboard from black and board, or German Schreibmaschine ‘typewriter’ from schreiben ‘write’ and Maschine ‘machine’. Compounding and composition are alternative terms for the process of forming compounds.

Back  -    New Search

compound bilingualism.

Bilingualism in which the speaker's knowledge of the structure of one language is hypothetically integrated with that of the other. Opp. coordinate bilingualism.

Back  -    New Search

compound letter.

Two or more successive letters which represent a single phonological unit: e.g. sh in English or sch in German, both representing []. Cf. digraph. Likewise a compound logogram (or ‘ideogram’) is a logogram which represents a single lexical or grammatical unit but can be analysed into parts that correspond to other separate logograms.

Back  -    New Search

compound sentence.

One formed by the coordination of two or more smaller sentences: e.g. He sat down and she moved over.

Back  -    New Search

‘compound stress’.

Stress in English on the first member of a compound: e.g. in bláckbird as opposed to (a) black bírd. Common and taken by some as a defining feature. The ‘compound rule’ , or ‘Compound Stress Rule’, is the one in Chomsky and Halle, SPE, which places stress in that position.

Back  -    New Search

compound tense.

A form with an auxiliary seen as forming part of the system of tenses. From French: e.g. the compound past (‘passé composé’), as (j')ai tué ‘I killed’.

Back  -    New Search

compound tone.

A unit of intonation in which two successive tones are associated with a single tone group: e.g. a ‘fall-plus-rise’ (falling tone followed by rising tone) in I ‘THINK it may ’SNOW.

Back  -    New Search

conative.

(Function of language) in trying to get an addressee to do, think, etc. what the speaker wishes. From the Latin word for ‘to try’ (infinitive conari); defined by Jakobson in 1960 in terms of orientation towards an addressee, as opposed to orientation towards the world (the referential function) or orientation towards the speaker (the emotive function).
Also of verb inflections with the meaning ‘try to’.

Back  -    New Search

concatenation.

The mathematical operation of juxtaposing units to form strings.

Back  -    New Search

conceptual field.

See semantic field.

Back  -    New Search

concessive.

(Clause, etc.) indicating something conceded but not detracting from what is said: e.g. the clause introduced by although, and although as the subordinator, in Although I am old, I am not stupid.

Back  -    New Search

concord

= agreement.

Back  -    New Search

concrete case.

A case whose main role is to distinguish different meanings of adverbials. E.g. an instrumental or a locative: schematically, cut knife-INSTR kitchen-LOC ‘cut with a knife in the kitchen’. Opp. grammatical case.

Back  -    New Search

concrete noun.

One denoting a range of concrete objects or individuals: e.g. cat, table. Opp. abstract.

Back  -    New Search

condition.

1 = constraint.

2 The circumstances, or a statement of the circumstances, under which a rule (2) or a subrule applies. Thus a rule for German might introduce a glottal stop under the ‘condition’ # — V: i.e. at the beginning of a word (# –) before a vowel (– V).

Back  -    New Search

conditional.

(Mood) characteristically marking either a conditional clause or, as implied by the use of the term in accounts of French and other Romance languages, a main clause accompanied by one.

Back  -    New Search

conditional clause.

One which expresses a condition: e.g. provided he is sober, if he can stay sober, unless he is drunk. For types see remote.

Back  -    New Search

conditional sentence.

One which consists of a main clause and a conditional clause. The conditional clause is traditionally the protasis, the main clause the apodosis: e.g. If you can come (protasis) I would be delighted (apodosis).

Back  -    New Search

conditioned.

(Sound change) explained by the phonetic context or the position in a word in which it takes place: e.g. the voicing of consonants between vowels, or a reduction of vowels in unstressed syllables. Opp. spontaneous; unconditioned.

Back  -    New Search

conditioned variation.

Variation in the realization of a unit under specific conditions. Especially of units in phonology: thus the [] of comfort can be described as a conditioned variant , in the position before a labiodental fricative, of the unit realized by another variant, [m], e.g. in bumper.

Back  -    New Search

‘configurational language’.

One in which syntactic units stand in a fixed (2) order. Effectively one, like English, for which it is easy to draw phrase structure trees, in which ‘configurations’ of categories form ‘configurational structures’ . Opp. non-configurational.

Back  -    New Search

confirmative.

(Particle, etc.) indicating that a statement is about something directly witnessed.

Back  -    New Search

congruence.

The property by which words come together in a construction. E.g. these is a demonstrative and can combine with a following noun; people is a noun; in addition, both are plural. As such, they are congruent in the sense required to form a larger unit these people.
An ancient concept, going back at least to Apollonius Dyscolus, and central, whatever the term used for it, in any theory in which the combinability of units is primary: see especially unification; Word Grammar.

Back  -    New Search

conjoin.

Used by Quirk et al., CGE, for a phrase, etc. linked to another by coordination: i.e. what other grammarians call a conjunct.

Back  -    New Search

conjugation.

The inflection of verbs; also a class of verbs which share a pattern of inflection. Thus verbs of the ‘first conjugation’ in Latin followed a pattern which differed in various ways from those of the ‘second conjugation’. They had an -a- in most forms where those of the second conjugation had an -e-: e.g. am-a-re ‘to love’ (first) but mon-e-re ‘to advise’ (second). They also had e.g. a present subjunctive in -e-(third singular am-e-t) where the second and other conjugations had -a-.
A conjugation marker is a form which simply distinguishes one conjugation from another: thus the -a- and -e- of amare vs. monere are conjugation vowels , with no specific grammatical meaning.

Back  -    New Search

conjunct.

1 Any phrase, etc. linked to another by coordination: cf. conjunction (2).

2 Used by Quirk et al., CGE, of an adverbial indicating a connection between its clause or sentence and what precedes: e.g. however in We, however, could not, or then in If not, then burn it. Cf. adjunct; disjunct; subjunct.

Back  -    New Search

conjunction (1).

A word, etc. which joins two syntactic units. Especially in coordination: e.g. and and but are conjunctions in [He did] and [he didn't] or He [[came] but [didn't stay]]. But also, especially in older uses, of words like when in He arrived when I left, or that in He said that he did, seen as linking the subordinate clause to the unit it is subordinate to. Hence a distinction between subordinating conjunctions (= subordinators) and coordinating conjunctions (= coordinators).
Distinguished as a part of speech since antiquity.

Back  -    New Search

conjunction (2).

Logicians’ term for a proposition of the form p&q which is true if and only if both p is true and q is true. Hence of coordination with e.g. English and; thence, in some usage, other cases of coordination.
‘Conjunction reduction’ is or was a rule of transformational grammar by which ‘conjoined’ phrases, such as you and your sister in I saw you and your sister, are reduced from conjoined sentences: in this case, from I saw you and I saw your sister.

Back  -    New Search

conjunctive.

The ancient term for subjunctive, as German ‘Konjunktiv’.

Back  -    New Search

conjunctive order.

Relation between ordered rules each of which can apply, in sequence, to the same form. Opp. disjunctive order.

Back  -    New Search

conjunctive pronoun.

Term for unstressed or clitic pronouns in the Romance languages: e.g. Italian lo in lo mangio (‘it eat-1SG’) ‘I am eating it’. Opp. disjunctive pronoun.

Back  -    New Search

connectionism.

Model of mental processing inspired by the physical connections among brain cells, in which operations of different kinds are carried out in parallel by a network of different processing units, linked in such a way that each can either excite or inhibit others. Also described as a model of Parallel Distributed Processing (or PDP ), and contrasted with that of serial processing, in which operations of different kinds are carried out in sequence, each having access only to the results of those that have gone before.

Back  -    New Search

connotation.

Used variously to refer to differences in meaning that cannot be reduced to differences in denotation. E.g. queer, when applied to male homosexuals, has a connotation different from those of gay or homosexual. The usual implication is that denotations are primary and connotations secondary.

Back  -    New Search

consecutive.

(Clause, etc.) indicating a consequence or result: e.g. the that-clause in I was so tired [that I slept for ten hours].

Back  -    New Search

consistent.

(Language) seen as conforming in every respect to a proposed structural type. Thus a ‘consistent’ VO language would have all the properties associated, in a specific theory of types, with verb—object order.

Back  -    New Search

consonant.

Originally a sound or letter that had to be accompanied by a vowel: hence the term (Latin consonans ‘sounding with’). Now generally of phonological units which form parts of a syllable other than its nucleus (2), or whose primary role, at least, is to do so. E.g. [n] is a consonant in English, whose primary roles are as the onset of a syllable (e.g. in no) or as its coda (e.g. in on): its role as a nucleus (e.g. in ridden ['rdn]) can be seen as secondary.
In phonetic terms, most consonants are sounds in whose production the flow of air is obstructed at some point in the mouth, throat, or larynx, at least sufficiently to cause audible friction: i.e. they are produced with a degree of stricture greater than open approximation. But no phonetic definition will quite match the phonology of all languages; hence a distinction, in many accounts, between consonants as units in phonology, and contoids.

Back  -    New Search

consonantal.

Distinctive feature in the schemes of Jakobson and of Chomsky and Halle, SPE. That of all consonants except glides, which are defined as both non-consonantal and non-vocalic.

Back  -    New Search

consonantal alphabet.

One in which the characters represent consonants, with vowels either not indicated or indicated by subsidiary marks. The original North Semitic alphabet was purely consonantal; in later derivatives marks for vowels may remain optional.

Back  -    New Search

consonant cluster.

See cluster.

Back  -    New Search

consonant harmony.

Agreement in respect of one or more features between consonants that are not adjacent to one another: cf. vowel harmony, which is more varied and more widespread.

Back  -    New Search

‘conspiracy’.

Used in Generative Phonology in the early 1970s, to refer to rules which the model required one to formulate separately, but which in effect contributed to a single pattern. E.g. a pattern in which all syllables were open (CV) might be achieved by rules which ‘conspired’ variously to delete consonants (CVCCV CVCV) or insert vowels (CVCCV CVCVCV).

Back  -    New Search

constant opposition.

An opposition between phonemes that is not subject to neutralization.

Back  -    New Search

constative.

An utterance by which a speaker expresses a proposition which may be true or false. Opp. performative.

Back  -    New Search

constituency.

Relation, especially in syntax, between a unit which is part of a larger unit and the whole of which it is part. E.g. the adjective phrase very friendly is a constituent of the noun phrase very friendly people. The immediate constituents of a unit are the largest such parts. E.g. the immediate constituents of meeting very friendly people are meeting and very friendly people; those of this second constituent are in turn very friendly and people. Constituency is usually shown by a tree diagram or by square brackets: thus [meeting [[very friendly] people]].
The analysis of sentences into constituents is ‘immediate constituent analysis’ (or IC analysis ): developed especially by the Post-Bloomfieldians, whose underlying aim was to establish divisions that would allow the simplest account of the distributions of units.

Back  -    New Search

constituent sentence.

See embedding.

Back  -    New Search

constituent structure.

A representation of relations of constituency: thus a phrase structure tree is, alternatively, a ‘constituent structure tree’.

Back  -    New Search

constraint.

Any restriction either on the application of a rule or process or on the well-formedness of a representation. Thus, if Which have you seen? is derived from You have seen which? (see wh-movement), this process might be constrained, by a general principle, from deriving e.g. Which were you always asleep when you have seen? from You were always asleep when you have seen which?, where which is within an island formed by an adverbial clause. Alternatively, the constraint might be interpreted as a filter by which, at a specific level of representation, the structure of such a sentence is ill-formed.
A model of grammar is declarative (2) to the extent that specific constraints on the well-formedness of representations replace rules which specify a process by which representations are derived.

Back  -    New Search

constructio ad sensum.

Process by which word a is taken to be syntactically related to word b supposedly ‘by meaning’ (Latin ad sensum) although they do not conform to some proposed rule. E.g. notional agreement, if seen in this way.

Back  -    New Search

construction.

1 The grammatical structure of a sentence or any smaller unit, represented by a set of elements and relations between elements. Thus His family hunts has a construction with two elements: a noun or noun phrase, (his) family, as subject and a verb, hunts, as predicate. The relation between them is one of sequence, or specifically one in which, e.g. one element depends on the other.

2 Also, informally, of the individual units within a sentence that are described as having constructions. E.g. his family is a smaller ‘construction’ (= phrase) within His family hunts.
Constructions as units are central to some models of syntax. Thus, in particular, that of Bloomfield, who included them in his concept of a tagmeme: see also Construction Grammar.

Back  -    New Search

constructional homonymy

= grammatical ambiguity.

Back  -    New Search

Construction Grammar.

Concept of syntax developed in the 1990s by C. J. Fillmore, G. P. Lakoff, and others, in which, in contrast to those dominant in the USA and elsewhere since the 1940s, constructions and their meanings, sentence types, etc. are basic.

Back  -    New Search

construct state.

Used in accounts of Semitic languages for the form taken by a noun that is modified by another noun. Thus, in a phrase which means ‘(a) man's coat’, the relation between the nouns for ‘man’ and ‘coat’ is marked on the latter: schematically, man coat-CONSTR.

Back  -    New Search

construe.

To determine what word, etc. is syntactically related to what. Hence of the relation between such units: e.g. in I'll try it on next week, on ‘construes with’ try and not directly with either of the units (it, next week) adjacent to it.
No longer usual in technical accounts of syntax. But in Chomsky's terminology rules e.g. for control or binding were called ‘rules of construal’ at one stage in the 1970s.

Back  -    New Search

consuetudinal

= habitual.

Back  -    New Search

contact language.

Any language used systematically in contacts between speakers whose native languages are different. This could be a language native to one participant: e.g. French might be described as a ‘contact language’ for speakers of English after the Norman conquest; also for a linguist in the 20th century, either French-speaking or not, beginning an investigation e.g. of an African language.
Likewise ‘contact dialect’ .

Back  -    New Search

contamination.

The influence of one form on the historical development of another form to which it is related in meaning. E.g. Old French femelle, borrowed into English in the 14th century, > female by contamination from male.

Back  -    New Search

content.

Level in Hjelmslev's model of language whose substance is that of meaning. Defined formally by its opposition to the level of expression.

Back  -    New Search

content word.

A word with lexical meaning: hence = lexical word. Also called ‘(a) contentive’ .

Back  -    New Search

context.

Any relevant features of the setting in which a form appears or might appear. Suppose, e.g. that one person shouts to another ‘Let's get out of here!’ Within the sentence uttered, get is in a ‘context’ formed by the surrounding words Let's—out of here! The surroundings in which it was uttered might, e.g. have been in a room full of noisy machinery: that is an aspect of the ‘context’ that explains why it was shouted. Of its elements, let's is appropriate to a ‘context’ in which one person proposes joint action to another; the place referred to by here is identified in the ‘context’ of where they are situated; and so on.
The term co-text is sometimes used of linguistic context as distinct from the wider setting. To ‘contextualize’ is to put a form into a context in which it might be said: e.g. My sister will be a dormouse can be contextualized in a conversation about a dramatic performance of Alice in Wonderland.

Back  -    New Search

context-free grammar.

A form of phrase structure grammar in which each rule holds for a specific category regardless of context: hence, more fully, context-free phrase structure grammar .
As originally formulated in the 1950s, a phrase structure rule was a rewrite rule by which a single element in a string (A) is replaced by a string of one or more elements (Z). Each rule had in general the form XAY XZY, where X and Y are further strings of elements, and the form of grammar was context-free if it met the restriction that, in any such rule, both X and Y are null: i.e. the replacement of A with Z applies regardless of context. A form of grammar not subject to this restriction was defined as context-sensitive .
A ‘context-free language’ is a formal language that can be generated by a context-free grammar.

Back  -    New Search

context of situation.

Used by Firth to cover all the relevant circumstances in which a specific act of speech takes place. E.g. when a specific person says on a specific occasion ‘Well played!’, it might be part of the context of situation that the speaker is sitting, with others, watching a cricket match, that a batsman has driven for four through covers, that the speaker is from a certain social background, and so on. In the analysis of a language, features recurring in individual utterances (considered again as specific acts of speech) will be related to specific types of situation and to specific features in them.
The term was originally that of the anthropologist B. Malinowski.

Back  -    New Search

context-sensitive grammar.

A form of phrase structure grammar which is not subject to the restriction that defines a context-free grammar: hence, more fully, context-sensitive phrase structure grammar . A context-sensitive language is a formal language that can be generated by a context-sensitive grammar.

Back  -    New Search

continuant.

(Consonant) that can be articulated continuously: thus the r in many forms of English is described as a frictionless continuant . Also a distinctive feature in the scheme proposed by Jakobson, characterized negatively as not abrupt.

Back  -    New Search

continuous (1).

See discrete.

Back  -    New Search

continuous (2) (CONT)

= progressive.

Back  -    New Search

contoid.

A consonant defined phonetically, by the way it is produced, as distinguished from a consonant in a phonological sense, defined by its role in the structure of words and syllables. Thus a syllabic nasal, as in the second syllable of button ['btn], is a contoid even if, in phonology, it were treated as vocalic.
Cf. vocoid: both terms were introduced by Pike in the 1940s.

Back  -    New Search

contour.

A pattern of successive levels of pitch. E.g. in intonation: thus the question What is it? will often be marked by a contour in which the pitch falls from the second word onwards (What ` IS it?).

Back  -    New Search

contour tone.

A tone in some tone languages, such as Chinese, which is characterized by a movement or potential movement in pitch as opposed to a specific pitch level. Distinguished as such from a register tone: note, however, that in many tone languages a phonetic contour may be characterized in phonology as a sequence of two or more specific levels (falling = high + low, rising = low + high, and so on).

Back  -    New Search

contraction

= fusion. E.g. in accounts of Ancient Greek, where ‘contracted verbs’ are ones whose stem ends in a vowel which fuses with the vowel of a following suffix.

Back  -    New Search

contradictory.

(Propositions, etc.) of which only one can be true and only one can be false: e.g. ‘Mary is married’ and ‘Mary is single’. Distinguished in logic from contrary propositions of which only one can be true though both may be false: e.g. ‘Mary is tall’ and ‘Mary is short’.
Thence of lexical units: e.g. married and single are specifically contradictory terms .

Back  -    New Search

contrast.

The relation between sounds or forms which have or distinguish different meanings in a specific context. E.g. [t] and [d] contrast at the beginnings of words in German: i.e. words with different meanings, such as Tank ‘tank’ and Dank ‘thanks’, can be distinguished by them. But they do not contrast at the ends of words.
Sounds, etc. contrasting in at least some contexts are in contrastive distribution : opp. complementary distribution.

Back  -    New Search

contrastive linguistics.

Any investigation in which the structures of two languages are compared. A contrastive grammar establishes point-by-point relations between their respective systems, with the aim e.g. of explaining, and thereby possibly helping teachers to remedy, errors made by speakers of one in learning the other.

Back  -    New Search

contrastive stress.

1 Stress as part of a system of phonological contrasts.

2 A sentence stress whose function is to draw a contrast: e.g. that of Our team LOST (as opposed to winning) or OUR team lost (as opposed to someone else's). Cf. emphatic (2).
Top

Back  -    New Search

control.

Relation or principle by which, in a language like English, an element in a larger clause supplies the subject of a non-finite verb subordinate to it. E.g. in I promised [to leave], the subject of to leave is supplied by I as the subject of the main clause; in I asked Mary [to leave], by its object Mary.
In Government and Binding Theory the relation is mediated by PRO: I promised [PRO to leave], with PRO linked to I; I asked Mary [PRO to leave], where it is linked to Mary. The term ‘control’ is therefore extended to the interpretation of PRO in general. E.g. in [PRO to give] is better than [PRO to receive] no noun phrases control it; accordingly it has ‘arbitrary reference’ and is said to exhibit ‘arbitrary control’ .

Back  -    New Search

‘Control Theory’.

Part of Government and Binding Theory concerned with relations of control; hence generally with the syntax of PRO.

Back  -    New Search

control verb.

A verb which takes a dependent verb whose subject is determined by a relation of control: e.g. want in I want to see her. Cf. catenative; equi verb.

Back  -    New Search

conventional.

Having no natural explanation. Thus the meaning of cat is purely conventional, in that there is no natural relation between the phonetic form [kat] and any feature of the animals that it denotes. Cf. arbitrariness.

Back  -    New Search

conventional implicature.

An aspect of the meaning of a sentence which reflects that of a specific word but is not part of its truth conditions. The stock example involves the meaning of but in He was poor but honest. Plainly this sentence does not mean the same as He was poor and honest. But they have the same truth conditions: therefore, if we assume that semantics is limited to an account of such conditions, the meaning of but, over and above that of and, must be ascribed to an implicature.
Distinguished as conventional in that, unlike conversational implicatures, it cannot be explained by general maxims of conversation.

Back  -    New Search

converb.

A reduced form of a verb which, unlike full forms, does not distinguish tenses. Used in some languages in the first of a sequence of two clauses: e.g., schematically, I see (converb) it I ran (full form) ‘I saw it and ran away’.

Back  -    New Search

convergence.

Historical process by which languages in contact become more similar in structure. E.g. Ancient Greek and Latin converged in antiquity, and Modern Greek and Italian have continued to converge since. On a larger scale convergence results in a ‘linguistic area’ distinguished by a Sprachbund.
To be distinguished from the sense of ‘convergence’ in evolutionary biology, by which species independently develop similar characters in similar external conditions.

Back  -    New Search

conversational implicature.

Any meaning implied by or understood from the utterance of a sentence which goes beyond what is strictly said or entailed. E.g. It is raining might, in specific contexts, implicate (alternatively, whoever says it might implicate) ‘We can't go for a picnic’, ‘We had better close the windows’, and so on.
Sometimes divided into particularized implicatures holding, like these, only on a specific occasion when a sentence is uttered, and generalized implicatures that will hold, in principle, whenever it is uttered. E.g. I like quite a lot of professors has the generalized implicature ‘I don't like all professors’. Cf. conventional implicature; also maxims of conversation for the ‘cooperative principle’ from which implicatures arise.

Back  -    New Search

conversational maxims.

See maxims of conversation.

Back  -    New Search

‘Conversation Analysis’.

Treatment of conversation developed by sociologists in the early 1970s which concentrates on relations between successive turns and on the operation of a hypothetical ‘turn-taking system’ . This system ensures (according to the hypothesis) that at any moment a specific speaker will ‘have the floor’, and that when their turn ends that of the next speaker will follow smoothly without (according to those proposing the hypothesis) an appreciable overlap, or intervening period of silence, or confusion as to who, in a conversation with several participants, it will be. Hence attempts to identify ‘transition relevance places’, specific devices by which one speaker ‘selects’ the next, etc.

Back  -    New Search

converse terms.

Lexical units whose meanings are opposed in such a way that sentences in which they appear can be interchangeable if words, etc. to which they are syntactically related are distributed differently across a range of similar syntactic roles. E.g. husband and wife: thus John is Mary's husband, where John is subject and Mary is possessive, implies and is implied by Mary is John's wife, where Mary is subject and John is possessive. Also sell and buy: compare John sold a car to Mary; Mary bought a car from John. Converseness is the sense relation in which such units stand.

Back  -    New Search

conversion.

A process by which a lexical unit which is primarily of one syntactic class also belongs secondarily to another. E.g. cook is a transitive verb in I am cooking dinner. In Dinner is cooking it is converted, in one account, to an intransitive, with a secondary sense derived from its primary sense in the transitive.
Often equivalent to zero derivation: e.g. the noun cook is likewise said to be converted from the verb cook. But a distinction can be drawn in principle between a single unit in the lexicon which has both a primary and a secondary role in syntax, and the derivation of a different lexical unit by a process like, or of, word-formation.

Back  -    New Search

cooccurrence restriction

= selectional restriction.

Back  -    New Search

Cooperative Principle.

See maxims of conversation.

Back  -    New Search

coordinate.

(Clause, etc.) standing in a relation of coordination.

Back  -    New Search

coordinate bilingualism.

Bilingualism in which mastery of one language is hypothetically separate in the bilingual's mind from mastery of the other. Opp. compound bilingualism.

Back  -    New Search

coordinate structure constraint.

Principle by which forms joined by coordination form an island with respect to syntactic processes or relations. E.g. one cannot say What did you see and ‘King LEAR’, with one element in the coordination questioned (what) and the other (‘King Lear’) not.

Back  -    New Search

coordinating conjunction

= coordinator.

Back  -    New Search

coordination.

Relation between two or more separate and syntactically equivalent parts of a sentence: e.g. between the parts enclosed by brackets in [John] and [his sister] met me; [I looked] but [I could not see them]; I bought [a blue] plus [a black] handbag.
Opp. subordination (= dependency); cf. apposition. A construction relating such parts is a coordinating or coordinative construction; an element linking them, such as and, but, or plus, is a coordinator or coordinating conjunction.

Back  -    New Search

coordinative compound

= copulative compound.

Back  -    New Search

coordinator.

A word, etc. which links syntactic units standing in a relation of coordination. E.g. or in You can see me or my secretary ([[me] or [my secretary]]); also e.g. the clitic -que ‘and’ in Latin di omnes deaeque ‘all gods and goddesses’ (lit. gods all goddesses-and’). Equally called a coordinating conjunction ; cf. subordinator or subordinating conjunction.

Back  -    New Search

‘Copenhagen School’.

Hjelmslev and his associates, including some by no means in complete agreement with him.

Back  -    New Search

coproduction (of consonants, etc.)

= coarticulation.

Back  -    New Search

Coptic.

Egyptian as written alphabetically from the 4th century AD, after the adoption of Christianity. Progressively replaced by Arabic from the 9th century but surviving in Christian liturgy. The script was derived from the Greek alphabet, with additional letters, for sounds with no Greek equivalent, adapted from the Demotic script, derived ultimately from Hieroglyphic, used previously.

Back  -    New Search

copula.

The verb ‘be’ and its equivalent in other languages, seen simply as a link or mark of relationship between one element and another. E.g. am is a copula in I am cold or I am a doctor, where it links the subject (I) and the predicative element (cold, a doctor). Distinguished from, in particular, the existential use of ‘be’, e.g. in There is a solution (‘A solution exists’).

Back  -    New Search

copular.

Containing or having the character of a copula. Thus the construction of They are happy is a copular construction ; a copular verb is one like seem in They seem happy, whose syntax is like that of a copula.
Likewise copulative .

Back  -    New Search

copulative compound.

One in which the relation between members is like one of coordination: e.g. actor-manager ‘actor and manager’, silly-clever ‘silly and clever’. Also called by the Sanskrit term dvandva; also, less usually though more perspicuously, a ‘coordinative compound’ .

Back  -    New Search

copying.

Technical process in generative grammars by which features, etc. of one unit are reproduced on another. Thus in an account of agreement widespread in the 1960s, the relevant features or affixes e.g. of a head noun were seen as added, by a ‘copying rule’, e.g. to a modifying adjective.

Back  -    New Search

core (of clause).

See nucleus (1).

Back  -    New Search

coreference.

The relation between noun phrases, etc. which have the same reference. E.g. in Mary promised she would come, Mary and she are coreferential if the promise is that Mary herself will come. Often shown informally by subscript indices: thus Maryi promised shei will come (coreferential); Maryi promised shej would come (not coreferential).

Back  -    New Search

core grammar.

That part of a person's internalized grammar of a language which, in Chomsky's hypothesis, derives directly from universal grammar (2) by the setting of parameters. Opp. periphery.
Also called ‘core language’ : i.e. the core of I-language. The definition is that of work published in the 1980s; the term itself dates from the mid-1970s, when its precise sense within Chomsky's theory was less clear.

Back  -    New Search

‘core vocabulary’.

Any part of the lexicon of a language judged to be more basic in some respect than others: e.g. as representing concepts for which old words are supposedly less likely to be supplanted by new, for which such replacements supposedly take place at a fixed rate, for which they are supposedly less likely to result from borrowing, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

Cornish.

Celtic, similar to Welsh, spoken in Cornwall until the 1800s. Revived in the mid-20th century in an attempt to establish it as a second language.

Back  -    New Search

coronal.

Articulated with the blade of the tongue raised from its neutral position in the mouth. Hence of any dental, alveolar, or palato-alveolar consonant: defined as a distinctive feature with that scope in the scheme of Chomsky and Halle, SPE.

Back  -    New Search

corpus.

Any systematic collection of speech or writing in a language or variety of a language. Since the 1960s they have been developed largely by projects such as that of the Survey of English Usage: they are often large and diverse, can be classified according to contexts or styles, tagged and indexed for specific features, and so on. ‘Corpus linguistics’ (or ‘corpus-based linguistics’) aims to base accounts of languages on corpora derived from systematic recordings of real conversations and real discourse of other kinds, as opposed to examples obtained by introspection, by the judgement of grammarians, or by haphazard observation.

Back  -    New Search

correlation.

In the ordinary sense; also specifically, in Trubetzkoy's account of phonological systems, of a set of oppositions characterized by the presence or absence of the same feature. Thus [b] is distinguished from [p] by the presence or absence of voice; likewise [d] from [t], [g] from [k], and so on. Such pairs will accordingly form a correlation ‘of voicing’.

Back  -    New Search

correlative.

(Construction) in which clauses or other syntactic units are linked by a pair of parallel adverbs, pronouns, etc.; e.g. that of As you sow, so shall you reap, where the first clause (as you sow) is linked to the second (so shall you reap) by the parallel elements as and so.
Also of the linking elements themselves. Thus in the Latin phrase tam moribus quam doctrina ‘as (in) behaviour so (in) learning’, tam ‘as’ and quam ‘so’ are two of a set of correlative adverbs, etc., each pairing a form in t-with another in qu-, that form such constructions.

Back  -    New Search

correption.

An older term for the shortening of vowels.

Back  -    New Search

correspondence fallacy.

The assumption that different criteria which are relevant to the analysis of a language will necessarily lead to the same result. E.g. that a set of morphemes identified solely by their distributions will be the same as one identified by reference to meaning; that, if this is not so, only one of these criteria must be truly relevant; and so on. Identified, named, and attacked by C. E. Bazell in the 1950s.

Back  -    New Search

‘correspondence hypothesis’.

The assumption, rife among psycholinguists from the 1960s onwards, that structures to be investigated in the minds of speakers will correspond, in some more or less precise way, with the rules of a language as established independently in grammars.

Back  -    New Search

correspondence theory.

Concept of truth by which a proposition is true if there is a correspondence between it and a state of the world that it describes. Thus, in a stock example derived from work by the philosopher A. Tarski, the proposition ‘Snow is white’ is true if and only if snow is in fact white.

Back  -    New Search

corrigible.

Capable of being corrected: e.g. a form I today have done it, which is contrary to a rule for the position of adverbs, can be corrected to I have done it today. A test for a rule (1), or rule in the strict sense, is thus the corrigibility of forms that would break it.

Back  -    New Search

Coseriu, Eugenio

(1921– )
. Rumanian linguist, finally based in Germany, whose early work, written in Montevideo in the 1950s, brought an important clarification to the structuralist concept of a language system and the explanation of change in language. The system is an abstraction from the usual patterns of speech in a community, and it is the norm which is constituted by these patterns, not the system, which directly constrains a speaker. The norm is in turn an abstraction from individual acts of speech on individual occasions; but, on the basis of these, may over time shift gradually in such a way that the system itself becomes in part unstable. If so, it will change to a new system, in which stability is restored.
In later work, Coseriu distinguishes the overall character of a language (German ‘Sprachtypus’) as a still more abstract construct. At the lowest level of abstraction, the norm can change easily; the system is more resistant, but can undergo saltatory changes in consequence; the overall character, as an inflecting language, or one with a certain tendency in word order, is the most resistant but may in the end change also.

Back  -    New Search

cost.

The contribution of a rule (2) to the complexity of a grammar as measured, or measurable, by an evaluation procedure.

Back  -    New Search

co-text.

The relevant text or discourse of which a sentence, etc. is part: e.g. the co-text of Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? (Hamlet, III. 1) is that speech of Hamlet's (Get thee to a nunnery …), or the dialogue in that scene between Ophelia and Hamlet, or whatever longer text is relevant to some specific inquiry. Sometimes defined as part of context in a wider sense; sometimes as opposed to it.

Back  -    New Search

countable. (Noun)

whose syntax is that of ones denoting individuals that can be counted; thus, in English, one such as sparrow that distinguishes singular and plural (the sparrow, the sparrows), that can take a numeral (three sparrows) or the indefinite article (a sparrow), etc.
Opp. uncountable; alternatively ‘count nouns’ (such as sparrow) are opposed to ‘non-count’ or ‘mass nouns’ (such as poultry). But the distinction is not absolute. Many nouns, such as chicken, are variously countable and uncountable: three chickens but also, e.g. the price of chicken. Some are intermediate: e.g. a hundred cattle, but not a cattle. Many basically of one class may have the syntax of the other on occasion: e.g. I'm not going to eat sparrow.

Back  -    New Search

counter-bleeding.

Relation between ordered rules whose order is designed to avoid an effect of bleeding; i.e. if one does not want rule a to remove the whole or part of the input to rule b, one orders a after b.

Back  -    New Search

counter-example.

Any example which is taken to show that a proposed rule, etc. is wrong or must be qualified. E.g. examples like ‘She was sure that he would never fall in love with herself’ (Trollope) are potentially or arguably counter-examples to a proposed universal principle by which a reflexive in a finite clause (he would never fall in love with herself) cannot have an antecedent (she) outside that clause.

Back  -    New Search

counterfactual.

(Conditional clause) expressing a condition not in fact met: e.g. if she had been there … (but she wasn't). Cf. remote.

Back  -    New Search

counter-feeding.

Relation between ordered rules whose order is designed to avoid an effect of feeding; i.e. if one does not want the output of rule a to become part of the input to rule b, one orders a after b.

Back  -    New Search

‘counter-intuitive’.

(Analysis, etc.) variously contrary to a native speaker's feel for their language, or to an experienced linguist's judgement of what is right.

Back  -    New Search

count noun

= countable.

Back  -    New Search

covert.

(Category) relevant to the grammar of a language but not overtly marked. Thus gender is covert in English but overt e.g. in Spanish.

Back  -    New Search

‘covert prestige’.

The value implicitly attached by members of a speech community to forms or variants which they use quite normally but claim to avoid. Thus, in particular, that of local or non-standard forms which are overtly proscribed but which reflect the solidarity of each member with the others.
Sometimes contrasted with ‘overt prestige’, e.g. of the corresponding standard forms.

Back  -    New Search

‘covert pronoun’.

One realized only by a verbal ending, seen as in agreement with it: e.g. in Spanish Vamos ‘Let's go’, the form of the verb (‘go-1PL’) would be related to a zero pronoun whose properties are in other respects the same as those of the ‘overt’ nosotros ‘we’. Cf. pro in Government and Binding Theory.

Back  -    New Search

CP.

A phrase (P) headed by a C (=COMP). Thus, in accounts which follow versions of X-bar syntax developed in the 1980s, when I saw him would represent a CP which has within it an ‘IP’ (I saw him) headed by I (=INFL).

Back  -    New Search

‘cranberry morpheme’.

One like cran- in cranberry, which is found in one combination only.

Back  -    New Search

crasis.

Term in Greek grammar for the fusion of vowels across a word boundary: from the word for ‘mixing’.

Back  -    New Search

creak.

Slow vibration of the vocal cords, typically at least at the front end. Creaky voice is voice (1) accompanied by creak: often a distinct voice quality, and also exploited in the phonology of some languages. E.g. a creaky tone is a tone distinguished, in part or wholly, by creaky vs. normal voice.

Back  -    New Search

‘creativity’.

In its usual sense. Also used by Chomsky in his early days, specifically of the ability of speakers to produce and understand sentences they have not heard before. A generative grammar was presented as explaining this ability.

Back  -    New Search

Cree.

Algonquian language spoken widely across northern Canada, from the Gulf of St Lawrence to the Rocky Mountains. The different varieties form a dialect continuum.

Back  -    New Search

creole.

Defined by specialists as, in a strict sense, a language that has developed historically from a pidgin. In the beginning the pidgin develops from trade or other contacts; it has no native speakers, its range of use is limited, and its structure is simplified. Later it becomes the only form of speech that is common to a community; it is learned increasingly as a native language, it is used for all purposes, and its structure and vocabulary are enlarged.
Thence to languages seen as being like creoles, but where there is no evidence that a pidgin existed. E.g. Middle English was a creole, according to one theory.

Back  -    New Search

‘creole continuum’.

A continuous range of variation, found in particular in many creole-speaking communities, between the forms used at the lowest social levels, predominantly those of the variety called the basilect, and those used at the highest, predominantly those of the acrolect. The phenomenon was first described in these terms by D. Bickerton in the 1970s, for the English creole in Guyana.
Also called a ‘post-creole continuum’ , since it reflects a process of ‘decreolization’, or progressive assimilation of a creole to a standard language.

Back  -    New Search

creolization.

The historical process by which a creole, in the strict sense, develops from a pidgin.

Back  -    New Search

‘creoloid’.

(Language) which is not a creole but which has structural features deemed to be significantly like those ascribed, in general, to creoles.

Back  -    New Search

Croce, Benedetto

(1866–1952)
. Italian philosopher, whose treatise on Estetica (1902) develops aesthetics as a science of expression with which, in a final chapter, general linguistic theory is identified. Language is ‘perpetual creation’, like other forms of aesthetic activity: the mechanisms of grammar, the parts of speech, divisions into words and syllables, and so on belong in contrast to a discipline concerned with nothing more than practical classification.

Back  -    New Search

cross-categorization.

Assignment of words, etc. to classes that intersect. E.g. the noun despair is on one dimension uncountable as opposed to countable, and on another abstract as opposed to concrete: by contrast, butter is uncountable and concrete, theory countable and abstract, tree countable and concrete.

Back  -    New Search

crossed dependency.

Any case in which a dependent a is separated from its head b by an element c whose own relationship, either as dependent or head, is to an element separated from it, in turn, by either a or b. Dependencies not ‘crossed’ in that way are ‘nested’.

Back  -    New Search

cross-linguistic.

(Investigation, etc.) across languages. Thus any attempt to identify a category in different languages is cross-linguistic; likewise any attempt to establish it as a linguistic universal, or to develop a typology of categories which involves it.

Back  -    New Search

cross-over principle.

Principle proposed by P. M. Postal in the 1970s, by which a syntactic process could not move a pronoun, etc. across a phrase which has the same reference. E.g. in I do admire myself the reflexive (myself) has the same referent as I: i.e. both refer to the speaker. Hence, if the cross-over principle were to apply, myself could not be moved over I by a process of topicalization: Myself I do admire.

Back  -    New Search

cross-reference.

Bloomfield's term for the agreement of a pronoun or verb form with an optional noun phrase that supplies its referent. E.g. in Spanish Los muchachos cantarán (lit. ‘the boys they-will-sing’) the third plural ending of the verb (-n) ‘cross-refers’ to the subject los muchachos. Likewise in French Marie est-elle venue? (lit. ‘Mary is-she come?’), elle ‘she’ cross-refers to Marie. For a similar case See ‘clitic doubling’.

Back  -    New Search

cryptotype.

Term used by B. L. Whorf in the 1930s for a covert category revealed only when forms are combined with some specific overt form. One of his examples is a group of verbs with similar meanings (close, fasten, wrap, …) that combine productively with un-(unclose, unfasten, unwrap, …).

Back  -    New Search

CS.

For ‘context-sensitive’. Thus CS-grammar or CS-PSG = context-sensitive (phrase structure) grammar.

Back  -    New Search

c-selection.

Chomsky's term in the mid-1980s for valency or argument structure seen as determined by a syntactic category, such as transitive or intransitive, that a verb or other word belongs to. For ‘categorial selection’: opp. s-selection.

Back  -    New Search

c-structure.

One of two levels of syntax in Lexical-Functional Grammar.

Back  -    New Search

cue.

Psychologists' term for a specific feature seen as an aid to the perception e.g. of some larger structure. Thus intonation is thought of as a cue for the construction of a sentence; a boundary marker is a cue for e.g. the beginning of a word; Conversation Analysis seeks among other things to discover cues for the ends of ‘turns’.

Back  -    New Search

‘culminative’.

(Accent) seen as no more than a phonetic peak of prominence on the syllable that carries it. E.g. of the accent in French that falls on the last syllable of a phrase: la plume de ma tánte.

Back  -    New Search

cultural transmission.

Transmission from one generation to the next through membership of a society as opposed to genetic inheritance. One of the set of design features of language proposed in the 1950s.

Back  -    New Search

cumulation.

The joint realization of two or more distinct inflectional categories. E.g. case and number are realized cumulatively, or have cumulative exponents , in languages like Russian or Latin: Latin puella-m ‘girl-ACCSG’, puella-e ‘girl-GENSG’, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

cuneiform.

Form of writing first developed for Sumerian from the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC; later adapted to Akkadian (from the second half of the 3rd millennium) and later still to other languages of the ancient Near East, including Elamite, Hittite, and Old Persian. Last used in the 1st century AD. The name means ‘wedge-shaped’, the signs being formed by patterns of triangular marks normally impressed in clay.
The signs were used in various ways, often representing words as wholes and often syllables; they could also serve as determinatives, indicating either the semantic class or the phonetic form of a word otherwise represented ambiguously. These functions are found in differing degrees in different systems, that of Akkadian being particularly complex, while that devised for Old Persian in the 6th century BC comes nearest to a pure syllabary. Cuneiform signs were also used in the Ugaritic alphabet.

Back  -    New Search

curly brackets {}.

See braces.

Back  -    New Search

cursive.

(Script) in which, in writing a word or other sequence of characters, the writing instrument is not in principle raised from the medium. Hence the characters are linked, not separate.

Back  -    New Search

Cushitic.

Group of genetically related languages, including Somali and Oromo, spoken in parts of East Africa from the coastal area of Sudan to northern Tanzania. Traditionally and by most still seen as a smaller family within what is now called Afro-Asiatic.

Back  -    New Search

CV tier

= skeletal tier.

Back  -    New Search

cyclic(al) principle.

Principle in generative grammar by which a set of rules applies first to the smallest constituents which are of a given type or types, then to the next largest such constituents, and so on. Introduced in transformational grammars in the 1960s, when a specific set of transformations were said to apply to successively larger units of the clause or sentence category ‘S’. Transformations not part of this set were accordingly either ‘pre-cyclic(al)’ or ‘post-cyclic(al)’ .
The same principle was applied to successively larger units in Generative Phonology.

Back  -    New Search

cyclic node.

See subjacency.

Back  -    New Search

Cyrillic.

Alphabet devised for Slavic, according to tradition by St Cyril, a missionary from Thessalonica, in the 9th century AD. Used for Russian and other Slavic languages where the Orthodox Church predominates: also for others, including many that are not Slavic, in the former Soviet Union.
Based on contemporary forms of the Greek alphabet. Its relation to Glagolitic, also used for Slavic from the early Middle Ages and possibly the alphabet in fact devised by St Cyril, is not wholly clear.

Back  -    New Search

Czech.

West Slavic, attested in writing from the 13th century, spoken mainly in the Czech Republic. Closely related to Slovak, with which there is for the most part mutual intelligibility.

Back  -    New Search

D

DA

= Discourse Analysis.

Back  -    New Search

Daco-Romance.

Branch of Romance of which Rumanian is the main representative. From the name of the Roman province of Dacia.

Back  -    New Search

dangling participle.

A participle which does not depend on any other individual element of a clause: e.g. walking in Walking back, it snowed. The term is the one by which the construction is traditionally proscribed; alternatively, it is absolute.

Back  -    New Search

Danish.

North Germanic, spoken mainly in Denmark and with official status there and in The Faeroes and Greenland; there are also some speakers across the border with Germany and, through emigration, in North America. A distinct language from the late Middle Ages; a standard form developed from the translation of the Bible in the 16th century.

Back  -    New Search

Dari.

See Persian.

Back  -    New Search

dark I.

One which is accompanied by velarization: e.g. that of tell [tl] in many forms of English. A ‘clear 1’ is one that is not velarized: e.g. again in many forms of English, that of leave [li:v].

Back  -    New Search

dash (—).

Used to mark the position in a context or environment in which a form appears or a process takes place. E.g. the appears before words such as house: i.e. in such environments as ‘—house’. Consonants might be voiced between vowels: i.e. in the context ‘V—V’.

Back  -    New Search

dative (DAT).

Case whose basic role, or one of whose basic roles, is to distinguish the recipient of something given, transferred, etc.: e.g. in Latin librum (‘book’) dedit (‘he-gave’) Mariae (‘Mary-DAT’) ‘He gave a book to Mary’. Also extended to phrases in which this semantic role is marked differently: e.g. to Mary would often be described as ‘dative’ in English, or as marked by to in the role of a ‘dative’ preposition.

Back  -    New Search

dative movement.

Syntactic process relating e.g. I lent my copy to Jim, where to is traditionally said to mark the dative, to I lent Jim my copy. Also called ‘dative shift’ .
In the first construction to Jim is an indirect object; also, in most accounts, Jim in the second. In an alternative view, the effect of ‘dative movement’ is to promote an indirect object to the status of a direct object: I lent my copy to Jim (IO) I lent Jim (DO) my copy. It is for that reason, it is claimed, that e.g. it can correspond to the subject of a passive (Jim was lent my copy).

Back  -    New Search

dative of advantage.

Use of the dative, e.g. in Latin, as a benefactive. Also of equivalents in other languages: e.g. for you in I did it for you. A dative ‘of disadvantage’ is a similar element referring e.g. to someone who suffers rather than benefits.

Back  -    New Search

dative subject.

A noun, etc. which is morphologically in the dative case, but which syntactically has some of the characteristics of, and is therefore described as being, a subject. E.g., schematically, cats-DAT love milk-NOM, where the word for ‘cats’, though dative, is subject e.g. on the grounds that the verb agrees with it (love-3PL) and not with the nominative ‘milk’.

Back  -    New Search

daughter.

1 Any of the later languages that develop separately from a single earlier language. E.g. French and Spanish are ‘daughter languages’ in relation to Latin. Opp. ancestor language.

2 Also of nodes in a phrase structure tree. Thus a node X is the ‘daughter’ of node Y if Y immediately dominates (is the ‘mother’ of) X.
Top

Back  -    New Search

Daughter-Dependency Grammar.

A precursor in the 1970s of what was to become Word Grammar.

Back  -    New Search

deadjectival.

(Process) by which words of other classes are derived from adjectives. Also of the words so derived: e.g. happiness (? happy) is a deadjectival noun.

Back  -    New Search

dead language.

One that is no longer the native language of any community. Such languages may remain in use, like Latin or Sanskrit, as second or learned (e.g. as liturgical) languages.

Back  -    New Search

decidable.

Capable of demonstration by some formal procedure. Mathematicians' term used in the study of formal languages: e.g. it is undecidable (i.e. there is no guaranteed way of determining) whether a language which is context-sensitive is also context-free.

Back  -    New Search

‘decision procedure’.

Used by Chomsky in the 1950s of a procedure which would determine that a given generative grammar g is the best for a given language l. Distinguished from a discovery procedure and an evaluation procedure.

Back  -    New Search

declaration.

Defined by J. R. Searle as a speech act which formally changes some state of affairs. E.g. ‘You are fired’, said by an employer in appropriate circumstances, makes someone unemployed.

Back  -    New Search

declarative (1).

(Sentence, construction) whose primary role is in making statements. Thus David has come is a declarative sentence, or ‘a declarative’, in opposition to the interrogative Has David come?
Declaratives can in principle be distinguished from statements made by them. E.g. You must stop at once has the construction of a declarative; but when uttered it will often constitute an order rather than a statement.

Back  -    New Search

declarative (2).

(Model of grammar, etc.) in which the well-formedness of an expression is determined by a set of constraints on representations at a given level, as opposed to a set of rules by which e.g. a representation at one level is derived from that at another. Hence, in particular, of ‘constraint-based’ models of phonology, as opposed to Generative Phonology and its immediate successors.

Back  -    New Search

declension.

The inflection of nouns and other words whose categories are similar. Also of a class of nouns, etc. which share a characteristic formal pattern of inflection. E.g. a ‘third declension’ noun in Latin is one of a class whose genitive singular is in -is, dative and ablative plural in -ibus, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

declination.

Progressive lowering of pitch, or of successive high pitches in particular, over the course of an utterance. Often equivalent to downdrift.

Back  -    New Search

decline.

To inflect, said of nouns and other words traditionally assigned to declensions. E.g. a noun like Latin puella ‘girl’ declines or is declined in one way, ones like dominus ‘master’ or civis ‘citizen’ in others.

Back  -    New Search

‘decoding’.

Used sometimes of the process of understanding a sentence. The assumption is that this is like recovering a message (the thought expressed by the speaker) from its ‘coded’ form. Cf. encoding.

Back  -    New Search

decontextualized.

(Sentence, etc.) abstracted from any context in which it might be uttered. E.g. it is an issue whether a decontextualized form can properly, or safely, be judged either grammatical or ungrammatical.

Back  -    New Search

‘decreolization’.

Historical process by which a creole is progressively assimilated to a standard language: e.g. the assimilation of English creoles in the West Indies to standard English. Not evidently different, in reality, from processes often affecting regional dialects.

Back  -    New Search

de dicto vs. de re.

Philosophers' distinction between belief in the truth of a proposition (de dicto or ‘about what is said’) and belief about an individual (de re ‘about a thing’). Thus I believe his wife is rich can be seen as expressing either a belief (de dicto) in the proposition that he is married to a rich woman or a belief (de re) concerning an individual, his wife, that she is rich.
Uses in linguistics reflect or extend this sometimes more and sometimes less faithfully.

Back  -    New Search

deduction.

Process of reasoning which moves from the general to the particular. E.g. from the general proposition that all trees have leaves and the further proposition that oaks are trees one may draw the deductive inference that oaks have leaves. Opp. induction; see also hypothetico-deductive method.
In deductive reasoning the conclusion follows logically: contrasted in this respect with induction; also with abduction.

Back  -    New Search

deep case

= case role. Such roles were at one time represented by case-like elements in deep structure, with cases proper, in languages that have them, seen as belonging to surface structure.

Back  -    New Search

deep structure.

A representation of the syntax of a sentence distinguished by varying criteria from its surface structure. E.g. in the surface structure of Children are hard to please, the subject is children and the infinitive to please is the complement of hard. But in its deep structure, as it was understood especially in the early 1970s, is hard would have as its subject a subordinate sentence in which children is the object of please: thus, in outline, s[please children] is hard.
Initially defined in Aspects and in other work by Chomsky in the mid-1960s, as the part of the syntactic description of a sentence that ‘determines its semantic interpretation’; as such a phrase marker specified by the base component of a generative grammar. Later said to determine the semantic representation only in part, and later still, by the mid-1970s, to have no role in determining it. Renamed D-structure in the late 1970s and as such the second of three levels of syntax in Government and Binding Theory, until undermined by Chomsky's programme of minimalism in the early 1990s.

Back  -    New Search

DEF

= definite.

Back  -    New Search

default.

(Rule, class, etc.) taken to be operative if no other is specified. Thus a lexicon of English must specify that certain plurals are irregular: man men, child children. But any other will be assumed to follow the regular pattern: singular singular + (e)s. That rule is therefore the ‘default rule’ and the class of regular plurals the ‘default category’.
Likewise at other levels. E.g. it might be assumed in syntax that all verbs have a passive unless, in their lexical entries, it is made clear that they do not; [+ passivizable] would then be the ‘default value’ of a feature [± passivizable]. Hence ‘default’ is often the equivalent of one sense of unmarked.

Back  -    New Search

defeasible.

Capable of being cancelled or overridden. E.g. if someone says ‘I have got two eggs’, one might infer, all else being equal, that they have no more than two eggs. In the theory of maxims of conversation, this is represented by an implicature that follows from the maxim of quantity. But the inference might be rendered invalid by specific contexts. E.g. the speaker is checking ingredients for a recipe; it calls for two eggs; so, what matters is that there should be at least two eggs, not two only. Alternatively, the speaker might go on to say ‘Indeed I may have got a dozen’.
A term in law originally. It is a property of such implicatures that they are defeasible; of entailments that they are not.

Back  -    New Search

defective.

(Lexical unit) whose paradigm is incomplete in comparison with others of the major class that it belongs to. E.g. Latin aio was a defective verb for ‘to say’ found only in some tenses and for only some persons.

Back  -    New Search

deferential form

= polite form.

Back  -    New Search

‘deficit theory’.

The view once held by some educationalists that ‘working-class’ children are ‘linguistically deprived’ or handicapped by a ‘language deficit’; hence, it was claimed, they are at a disadvantage in lessons designed for ‘middle-class’ children who are not so handicapped.
In the theory of B. Bernstein such children have mastered only a ‘restricted code’ , whose structure is limited in comparison with the ‘elaborated code’ of others.

Back  -    New Search

defining

(relative clause) = restrictive.

Back  -    New Search

definite.

Referring to, or characteristically indicating reference to, an identifiable individual or set of individuals. Thus Mary or the woman is a definite noun phrase , referring to a specific person or set of persons that can be identified in context by someone spoken to. Likewise she is a definite pronoun , the in the woman or the girls a definite article, and so on. Opp. indefinite: cf. also indefinite reference.

Back  -    New Search

definite article.

A determiner which characteristically marks a definite noun phrase: e.g. the in the boy, French le in le garçon. Distinguished from a demonstrative in that it does not, in addition, indicate a referent or referents through deixis.

Back  -    New Search

definite description.

Philosophers' term used in effect of any definite noun phrase, such as the man over there, which has a common noun as its head.

Back  -    New Search

degemination.

Change or process by which a geminate is reduced to a single consonant.

Back  -    New Search

degree

= grade (1): thus the category of degree in English distinguishes positive (2), comparative, and superlative.

Back  -    New Search

degree of grammaticalness.

Chomsky's term in the 1950s for the degree to which a form which contravenes a rule of grammar comes close to being grammatical. E.g. Sincerity admires John, which was seen as contravening a selectional restriction, came closer than Admires John sincerity?, which contravenes a major rule of word order.

Back  -    New Search

degree Ø learnability.

See learnability.

Back  -    New Search

deixis ['dkss].

The way in which the reference of certain elements in a sentence is determined in relation to a specific speaker and addressee and a specific time and place of utterance. E.g. in I came yesterday, the reference of I will be to whoever is speaking on some specific occasion, and the time reference of yesterday will be to the day before the one on which they are doing so.
Hence deictic , of any element or category whose reference is determined deictically . Thus I and you are deictic elements, as opposed to potentially anaphoric pronouns such as he or she. So are here as opposed to there (location in space in relation to a speaker), now as opposed to then (location in time in relation to the time of speaking), or come and go (direction of movement basically in relation to a speaker). Tense is similarly a deictic category (present, past, or future in relation to the time of speaking). For further extensions, which start to stretch the sense beyond coherent definition, see discourse deixis, social deixis.
The Greek term is from a verb ‘to show’ or ‘to point out’. Applied in antiquity to pronouns, including demonstratives (= ‘deictics’) such as this and that. The modern sense has its origin in work by Bühler in the 1930s.

Back  -    New Search

delayed release.

Term of Chomsky and Halle, SPE, for the slow release of a stop consonant, causing audible turbulence in the air flow. Hence a feature of affricates: e.g. [t] in ketchup. Opp. instantaneous release.

Back  -    New Search

deletion.

Usually of deletion, by a syntactic or other process, at some level of representation. E.g., by a rule of Generative Phonology, [t] might optionally be deleted from the phonological representation of pants [pants], to derive a phonetic representation [pans].
‘Deletion under identity’ is the deletion of an element in one position when it is identical to one in another position: e.g. by the classic transformational process of equi NP deletion.

Back  -    New Search

deliberative.

(Form, construction, inflection) used in considering a decision. Thus shall has a deliberative force, or is used deliberatively, in What shall I do?; likewise the subjunctive in Latin quid agam? (‘What do-SUBJ-1SG’).

Back  -    New Search

delicacy.

Halliday's term for greater or lesser detail in grammatical description. E.g. a distinction between masculine, feminine, and neuter pronouns (he, she, it) is made in English only in the third-person singular. It is therefore more delicate than those between singular and plural, or between third person and first or second.

Back  -    New Search

delimitative

= demarcative.

Back  -    New Search

delocutive.

Benveniste's term (French ‘délocutif’) for a verb derived from the use of a linguistic expression: e.g. French tutoyer ‘to use tu and toi’.

Back  -    New Search

demarcative.

Serving as a boundary marker. Thus an accent demarcates words if it always falls e.g. on the first syllable after a boundary between them.

Back  -    New Search

demonstrative.

A word whose basic role is to locate a referent in relation to a speaker, an addressee, or some other person, etc. referred to: e.g. proximal this (physically and thence subjectively closer to the speaker) and distal that (physically or subjectively more remote from the speaker). Demonstratives are a classic instance of deixis.

Back  -    New Search

Demotic (1).

Cursive script, derived ultimately from Hieroglyphic, used for Egyptian from the 7th century BC to the 4th century AD.

Back  -    New Search

Demotic (2).

Variety of Modern Greek formerly identified as the ‘Low’ form in a case of diglossia. Opp. Katharevusa (officially suppressed in the 1980s) as the ‘High’ form.

Back  -    New Search

demotion.

The opposite of advancement or promotion.

Back  -    New Search

denasalization.

Change or process by which a sound is no longer nasal or nasalized.

Back  -    New Search

denominal.

(Process) by which words of other classes are formed from nouns. Also of the words so formed: e.g. beautiful (? beauty) is a denominal adjective.

Back  -    New Search

denotation.

The relation between a lexical unit and whatever objects, etc. it is used to refer to. E.g. bull denotes (in one account of its meaning) a class of animals, brown a property of individuals or objects, etc. The second term in the relation is the denotatum .
Distinguished in theory, though not always necessarily in practice, from both reference, seen as a relation between a specific expression and e.g. a specific individual, and sense, defined by Lyons and others as the network of relations between a lexical unit and other such units. See also connotation.

Back  -    New Search

dense (network).

See social network.

Back  -    New Search

dental.

Articulated with the tip or blade of the tongue against the upper teeth: e.g. t [] in Italian, where the diacritic () distinguishes dentals from alveolars.

Back  -    New Search

denti-alveolar.

1 Articulated at the junction of the upper teeth and the teeth-ridge.

1 Cover term for dental and alveolar.
Top

Back  -    New Search

deontic [d'ntik].

Expressing the presence or absence of an obligation, recommendation, prohibition, etc. E.g. the modal must is deontic, or used deontically, in They told me I must Fnish it tomorrow; likewise ought (to) in You ought to take more exercise, can or can't in The children can't play here, or may in She may if she likes.
From the participle of a Greek word for ‘ought to’: opp. epistemic as one of two major categories of modality.

Back  -    New Search

dependency.

Any relation in which one element (the dependent ) is taken to imply the other. Thus a modifier, such as big in big men, implies the presence of the element it modifies; a complement, such as men in I like men, implies that of the element whose construction it ‘completes’. Also in fields other than syntax: thus in the structure of syllables a consonant as onset or coda depends on (i.e. it serves as onset or coda by virtue of there being) a nucleus; in a word such as party the unstressed syllable (-ty), or the vowel in the unstressed syllable ([i]), depends on the one that is stressed (par-, [:]).
The element to which a dependent relates is variously called the ‘head’ or ‘governor’ : thus in party [pa:] is the head of the rhythmical unit; in big men the noun governs the adjective. But cf. head (1), government for more restricted senses of both terms.

Back  -    New Search

dependency grammar.

A generative grammar by which the structures of sentences are represented by dependency trees. Thence generally of other grammars that assign dependency relations, whether or not the structures are restricted to that form.

Back  -    New Search

Dependency Phonology.

Model of phonology developed by J. M. Anderson and others from the 1970s. Its name derives from a form of representation in which segments stand in a relation of dependency within the syllable and other larger and smaller units. E.g. an unstressed vowel depends on a stressed vowel; consonants depend, both within the syllable and within the rhyme of a syllable, on vowels; within a diphthong one vowel depends on the other. Within vowels and consonants in turn, there are further relations of dependency among feature-like components.
The dependencies form a structure more complex than a dependency tree. In particular, many consonants are ambisyllabic: i.e. they depend on both a preceding and a following vowel.

Back  -    New Search

dependency tree.

A tree diagram which assigns each of a series of elements to a class and shows relations of dependency among them. In the illustration, the successive words are assigned to the classes noun (N), verb (V), and adverb (Adv). The root node labelled V is connected to the two lower nodes labelled N and Adv: that is, both the noun (boys) and adverb (well) depend, in the analysis assumed, on the verb (play).
Compare the phrase structure tree for the same sentence.

A dependency tree

Back  -    New Search

dependent clause

= subordinate clause.

Back  -    New Search

dependent marking.

Marking of syntactic relations on a subordinate or dependent element. E.g. in their house the possessive construction is marked by the form of the dependent their. Opp. head marking.

Back  -    New Search

deponent.

Class of verbs in Latin, intransitive or active in syntax but with inflections that usually mark passives.

Back  -    New Search

de re.

See de dicto vs. de re.

Back  -    New Search

derivation.

1 Any series of changes in which a form or structure is altered by successive processes. E.g. the derivation of cellists from cello might involve the stages ['tl] ['tl + st] (suffixation) ['tlst] (fusion) ['tlst + z] (plural formation) ['tlsts] (devoicing of [z]).

2 = derivational morphology.
Top

Back  -    New Search

derivational constraint.

Any rule of grammar interpreted as a restriction on two or more different stages of a derivation; especially one which links stages that do not immediately succeed one another.
Introduced into syntax by G. P. Lakoff in the early 1970s; in Lakoff's account, a transformation, which was at the time seen as a rule relating two successive stages in the derivation of surface structures, was a special instance of a derivational constraint, which could relate any such stages whatever.

Back  -    New Search

derivational morphology.

Branch of morphology concerned with the derivation of one word in the lexicon from another: e.g. that of hanger from hang, or of countess from count. In these examples, -er and -ess are derivational affixes , and the processes of which they are part are derivational formations .
Traditionally distinguished from inflectional morphology; also from the formation of compounds.

Back  -    New Search

derived.

Resulting from some lexical or syntactic process. E.g. establishment is a derived noun (? establish); in early transformational grammars a passive was a derived sentence (I was bowled over by her ? She bowled me over).

Back  -    New Search

derogative

= pejorative.

Back  -    New Search

descent.

Continuity of transmission from an ancestor language to later languages that have evolved from it. Thus English is hypothetically one of the many descendants of an Indo-European protolanguage.

Back  -    New Search

descriptive (1).

Used in the 1940s and 1950s in opposition to ‘historical’. ‘Descriptive linguistics’ was therefore another term, especially in the USA, for synchronic linguistics, and ‘descriptivists’ are scholars in the USA who saw that branch as primary. Also opposed to prescriptive and, rarely at that time but commonly in later attacks on the ‘descriptivists’, to ‘theoretical’ or ‘explanatory’.

Back  -    New Search

descriptive (2).

(modifier, relative clause) = non-restrictive.

Back  -    New Search

descriptive (3).

(Function of language) in describing events in or states of the world. Cf. referential; representational.

Back  -    New Search

descriptive adequacy.

See levels of adequacy.

Back  -    New Search

‘descriptive order’.

The relation between processes which are ordered in the description of a language, as opposed to the historical order e.g. of sound changes. Cf. ordered rules.

Back  -    New Search

descriptor.

Used by Quirk et al., CGE of a noun combined with proper nouns to form complex names: e.g. miss in names like Miss Schleich or road in names like Hills Road.

Back  -    New Search

desiderative.

(Inflection, etc.) indicating a desire to do something. Originally of a set of derived verbs in Latin: e.g. es-uri-o (‘eat-DESID-1SG’) ‘I feel hungry’.

Back  -    New Search

designate.

1 To distinguish from other members of a set. E.g. in the formulation of phrase structure grammar as a system of rewrite rules the element S was designated as the only one from which a derivation could begin.

2 = denote, mean, etc.
Top

Back  -    New Search

design features.

Concept introduced by C. F. Hockett in the 1960s of a set of key properties of language not shared or not known to be shared, as a set, with systems of communication in any other species. Their number and names vary from one account to another; but all include, as among the most important, the properties of duality (= double articulation (1)), arbitrariness, and productivity.

Back  -    New Search

desinence.

An older term for an inflectional ending. E.g. -s in books is the plural desinence.

Back  -    New Search

Det

= determiner.

Back  -    New Search

determinative.

A sign used in writing to resolve an ambiguity in some other sign. A semantic determinative is one which indicates the relevant field of meaning, a phonetic determinative one which represents some sound or sequence of sounds.
Suppose, e.g. that in a system in which words are represented as wholes, the word for ‘hare’ is written with a sign <X>. Suppose then that, as in English, the word for ‘hair’ has the same sound; accordingly it too might be represented by <X>. But <X> is then ambiguous. So, to remove potential confusion, <A> and <B>, which usually represent the words for ‘animal’ and ‘head’, are added as semantic determinatives: <AX> ‘hare’, <BX> ‘hair’.
Suppose, alternatively, that the same sign <Y> has been used for both the word for ‘hare’, which begins as in English with [h], and the word for ‘rabbit’, which again begins with [r]. To distinguish them, two signs <H> and <R>, each representing other words that begin with these consonants, might be added as phonetic determinatives: <YH> ‘hare’, <YR> ‘rabbit’.
Systems then evolve in which some signs are used only as determinatives.

Back  -    New Search

determinative compound.

Any compound whose members are joined in a relation resembling that of a modifier and a head: e.g. paperback or funny face (both of the subtype called ‘possessive’ or bahuvrihi), blackbird or watercress (‘attributive’), car-crazy, punch-drunk, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

determiner.

Any of a class of grammatical units characterized by ones that are seen as limiting the potential referent of a noun phrase. Thus, in English, of a class which in any account will include the definite article the (limiting reference to individuals, etc. that an addressee can identify), demonstratives such as this (limiting reference to individuals standing in a relation to the speaker), with others, such as the indefinite article a and the possessives my, your, etc., used in opposition to these. Divided by Quirk et al., CGE into ‘predeterminers’ (e.g. all in all those three people), ‘central determiners’ (e.g. those), and ‘postdeterminers’ (e.g. three).

Back  -    New Search

determiner phrase.

A noun phrase according to an analysis popular from the mid-1980s, in which it is seen as having a determiner as its head. Thus the old man would be a determiner phrase headed by the, with old man, headed in turn by man, as its dependent.

Back  -    New Search

Devanagari.

Script used for many modern and older languages of India, including Hindi and Sanskrit. Developed in an evolved form by the 7th–8th century AD.
Of its 48 characters, 34 represent a consonant followed, unless shown otherwise, by a: thus ka, ta, and so on. Where the same consonant is followed by a vowel other than a, a character representing that vowel is added: thus ki, for instance, is represented by the character for ka plus a character for i. Where no vowel follows, a stroke is added instead: thus the character for ka plus the stroke represents k. The system is typical of Indian scripts in general. In typologies of writing systems it is described as ‘alpha-syllabic’ : i.e. its characters sometimes represent a single consonant or vowel, as in an alphabet, and sometimes a syllable, as in a syllabary.

Back  -    New Search

‘developmental dysphasia’.

See dysphasia.

Back  -    New Search

‘developmental psycholinguistics’.

See psycholinguistics.

Back  -    New Search

deverbal.

(Process) by which words of other classes are derived from verbs. Also of the words so formed: e.g. action and actor (? act) are deverbal nouns.

Back  -    New Search

‘deviant’.

Not conforming to a rule, or what is conceived as being a rule, of grammar. A sentence judged to be deviant in that sense will often be perfectly acceptable: e.g. much poetic usage, whether or not traditionally covered by ‘poetic licence’, was described in the 1960s and 1970s as ‘deviant’.

Back  -    New Search

devoicing.

Process or change by which voice (1) is lost or restricted. Common e.g. at the ends of sentences in French: thus [l] is regularly devoiced in that position in words such as peuple ‘people’, phonetically [pœpl].

Back  -    New Search

DF

= distinctive feature; likewise DF-matrix = distinctive feature matrix.

Back  -    New Search

di-.

From the Greek word for ‘twice’. Thus a disyllabic word, or disyllable , has two syllables, a ditransitive verb has two objects, and so on. Opp. mono-, tri-: cf. bi- in e.g. ‘bivalent’.

Back  -    New Search

diachronic.

Having to do with changes over time. Thus a diachronic account of a language deals with its history, a diachronic theory deals with the nature of historical change in general, and so on. Opp. synchronic; also panchronic.

Back  -    New Search

diacritic.

Any mark in writing additional to a letter or other basic element: e.g. the tilde (˜) distinguishing ñ from n in Spanish; the umlaut (¨) distinguishing ä ö ü from a o u in German, or, in phonetic transcription, to indicate that a vowel is centralized.

Back  -    New Search

diacritic feature.

A feature in Generative Phonology which distinguishes units that are exceptions to a rule or follow a rule that is itself exceptional. E.g., in the account of Chomsky and Halle, SPE, a form such as sang or rang was derived from sing or ring by a rule applying only to words to which a specific diacritic feature had been assigned.
Features such as this are, in effect, instructions to apply the rule in question. In that sense they ‘trigger’ the rule, and are also called ‘rule features’ .

Back  -    New Search

diaeresis [d'rss] [d'rss].

Mark in writing (¨) used to show that successive vowels belong to different syllables: thus Zoë ['zi]. Also to show that a letter is not ‘silent’: e.g. the ü [w] of Spanish lingüística ‘linguistics’.

Back  -    New Search

diagrammatic.

Having the property of iconicity.

Back  -    New Search

dialect.

Any distinct variety of a language, especially one spoken in a specific part of a country or other geographical area.
The criterion for distinguishing ‘dialects’ from ‘languages’ is taken, in principle, to be that of mutual intelligibility. E.g. speakers of Dutch cannot understand English unless they have learned it, and vice versa; therefore Dutch and English are different languages. But a speaker from Amsterdam can understand one from Antwerp: therefore they speak different dialects of the same language. But (a) this is a matter of degree, and (b) ordinary usage often contradicts it. E.g. Italian ‘dialects’ (‘dialetti’) are so called though many from the north and south are not mutually intelligible. By contrast Danish and Norwegian are called ‘languages’ though speakers understand each other reasonably well. There are also conventions among linguists themselves: e.g. the ‘dialects’ of Indo-European are the original branches of the family: Germanic, Italic, etc. Cf. accent (2).

Back  -    New Search

dialect atlas.

An atlas of a geographical region showing the distribution of forms, etc. which vary from one dialect of a language to another. This may be shown by points on a map at which e.g. recordings have been made, by drawing isoglosses, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

dialect continuum.

A progressive shift from one form of speech to another across a territory, such that adjacent varieties are mutually intelligible, but those at the extremes are not. Thus it is likely that, a century ago, someone who spoke a dialect of rural Devon would not have understood a speaker from Glasgow; but, between these, each individual shift from dialect to dialect would have been minor.

Back  -    New Search

dialect geography.

The study of differences in speech from one place to another within the area in which a language is spoken. Thus including, in particular, the preparation of dialect atlases.

Back  -    New Search

‘dialect mixture’.

The presence in some form of speech of features linking it to two or more different neighbouring dialects.
Usually invoked as a factor which obscures the Neogrammarian principle of regularity in sound change. E.g. in the Tuscan dialect which forms the basis of standard Italian, intervocalic stops which were voiceless in Latin are voiced in some words (as more generally in dialects to the north) but voiceless in others. If the change had proceeded mechanically they should all be voiced or all be voiceless: that they are not is accordingly attributed to the influence on this dialect of others adjacent to it.

Back  -    New Search

dialectology.

The study of geographical dialects: e.g., in the preparation of a dialect atlas, or of dialect grammars or dialect dictionaries of specific varieties.

Back  -    New Search

dialectometry.

The quantitative comparison of forms from different dialects, to determine how close one is to another. Developed by the French dialectologist J. Séguy in the 1950s.

Back  -    New Search

diaphone.

A phonological unit established across accents or dialects: e.g. one which subsumes both the rounded vowel of [pt] in the dialect of some British speakers with the unrounded, lower, and more central vowel in that of others.

Back  -    New Search

diastratic.

(Variation, study of variation) across different classes, or strata, in a society. Opp. diatopic; cf. social dialect.

Back  -    New Search

diasystem.

A phonological or other system established as an abstraction covering dialects whose individual systems differ. Thus the vowels of Scottish and Southern British English differ in that distinctions of quality in one correspond to differences of length, etc. in the other. But both might be covered by a diasystem in which series of vowels are distinguished neutrally. Cf. diaphone.

Back  -    New Search

diathesis [d'ass].

From the term in Ancient Greek for voice (2): the sense is that of the role or ‘placing’ of a subject, e.g. as agent in relation to an active verb, or as patient or ‘undergoer’ in relation to a passive.
Not usual in English, but available as a term for voice-like categories in general.

Back  -    New Search

diatopic.

(Variation, study of variation) from one part to another of the area covered by a speech community. Opp. diastratic.

Back  -    New Search

dictionary.

In the ordinary sense: e.g. a ‘dictionary word’ is a word that would be entered in a dictionary. For related terms and concepts see citation form; lexeme; lexicology; lexicon.

Back  -    New Search

diffuse.

The feature opposed to compact in Jakobson's system of distinctive features.

Back  -    New Search

diffusion.

The gradual spread of words, sound changes, etc. from one person or community to another. Central to the wave model in historical linguistics: see also lexical diffusion.

Back  -    New Search

diglossia.

The case in which a community uses two distinct forms of the same language, one acquired through education and appropriate to one range of contexts, the other acquired before formal education and appropriate to another. Thus German-speaking Switzerland is described as a diglossic community , where the distinct varieties are Standard German and the local forms of Swiss German.
Thence extended to communities in which two different languages are in a similar relationship: e.g. in Paraguay, where the diglossia is between Spanish and Guaraní. In accounts of diglossia a variety learned formally and used in a range of more formal contexts is the High form (often abbreviated H ), one learned naturally and used in a range of less formal contexts is the Low form (L) . E.g. in Paraguay, Spanish is H and Guaraní is L.

Back  -    New Search

digraph.

A sequence of two letters corresponding, in application to a given language, to one phoneme: e.g. sh in shin, representing the single phoneme []. Cf. compound letter.

Back  -    New Search

diminutive.

(Word, etc.) basically indicating small size; e.g. piglet is a diminutive of pig, formed with the diminutive suffix -let. Opp. augmentative.

Back  -    New Search

Diogenes of Babylon.

See Stoics.

Back  -    New Search

Dionysius Thrax

(c.170–c.90 BC)
. Scholar in the Alexandrian tradition, taught by Aristarchus and later established in Rhodes. A short grammar of Greek has come down in his name, and from late antiquity had the same influence in the eastern Roman empire and beyond as those of Donatus in the west. But it is not clear how much of it he actually wrote. An initial definition of the parts of grammar is known from other testimony to be his. But later sections, dealing especially with the parts of speech and their accidents, differ in places from what Dionysius is known from other sources to have said, and are more consistent with a date some four centuries later.

Back  -    New Search

diphthong.

A vowel whose quality changes perceptibly in one direction within a single syllable: e.g. [a] in house, whose articulation changes from relatively open to relatively close and back. Diphthongs are falling or rising according to which phase is more prominent.
A distinction might be drawn in principle between a phonetic diphthong and a diphthong in phonology, which would consist of a sequence of two vowel phonemes. Thus the [a] of house is phonetically diphthongal, but different phonologists have described it variously as a single phoneme, as a vowel plus another vowel, or as a vowel plus a semivowel. Cf. monophthong; triphthong.

Back  -    New Search

diphthongization.

Change or process by which a monophthong becomes a diphthong.

Back  -    New Search

‘direct case’.

Traditionally of the nominative in e.g. Latin as opposed to the oblique cases.

Back  -    New Search

directional.

(Phrase, preposition, case) indicating movement to a location. Thus to New York is a directional phrase in We flew to New York.

Back  -    New Search

directionality.

Issue regarding the direction of derivation among parts of a generative grammar. Specifically as part of a controversy between Generative Semantics and Interpretive Semantics in the early 1970s: i.e. should syntactic representations of sentences be derived from their semantic representations, or vice versa?

Back  -    New Search

directive.

1 Bloomfieldian term for constructions in which a verb or preposition (the director ) governs what Bloomfield called an axis: e.g. those of visits me, from her, and while I was there, where the directors are visits, from, and while and the axes me, her, and I was there.

2 Speech act by which speakers direct or elicit action by others. Thus an order; also e.g. a question, since it invites an answer.
Top

3 = directional.
Top

Back  -    New Search

direct method.

Method of teaching a language in which learners are exposed to it without translation into or any formal explanation in any language they already know. A reaction to conventional teaching of grammar, once very fashionable.

Back  -    New Search

direct object (DO).

An object traditionally seen as identifying someone or something directly involved in an action or process: e.g. my books in I might leave my books to the library, where it is distinguished from the indirect object to the library. Hence, in particular, the object typically next to the verb in English, one marked by the accusative case in German, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

director.

See directive (1).

Back  -    New Search

direct speech.

The direct quotation of something said, thought, etc.: e.g. Where am I? is an example of (or is ‘in’) direct speech in He asked ‘Where am I?’ Opp. indirect speech.

Back  -    New Search

disambiguate.

To resolve an ambiguity. Thus Woods are expensive is ambiguous, since woods might refer to stands of trees or a type of golf club. But its meaning will usually be clear in context: i.e. the context ‘disambiguates’ it.

Back  -    New Search

disconnection model.

Model proposed for some forms of aphasia, in which the symptoms hypothetically result from damage to connections between different parts of the brain, concerned e.g. with auditory analysis vs. production of speech.

Back  -    New Search

discontinuous.

Not realized in an unbroken sequence. E.g. the constituents of blow it up are, in most accounts, a phrasal verb (blow…up) and its object (it): blow…up is accordingly a discontinuous constituent . In some accounts of agreement, a phrase like those girls is said to realize three morphemes: a demonstrative (‘that’) realized by th-, a noun (‘girl’) realized by girl, and a single ‘plural’ morpheme, realized by -ose in the first word and -s in the second. ‘Plural’ would accordingly be a discontinuous morpheme .

Back  -    New Search

discourse.

Any coherent succession of sentences, spoken or (in most usage) written. Thus this entry in the dictionary is an example of discourse; likewise a novel; likewise a speech by a politician or a lecture to students; likewise an interview or any other series of speech events in which successive sentences or utterances hang together. Often equivalent to text.
The term in French (‘discours’) is often restricted, following Benveniste, to speech directed by a specific speaker (an ‘I’) to a specific audience or addressee (a ‘you’). Distinguished by Benveniste from a narration (e.g. an historical narrative) or ‘récit’.

Back  -    New Search

Discourse Analysis.

The attempt by various linguists to extend the methods of analysis developed for the description of words and sentences to the study of larger structures in, or involved in the production of, connected discourse. Term first used in the 1950s by (Zellig) Harris: textlinguistics is a similar extension many years later.

Back  -    New Search

‘discourse deixis’.

All forms of anaphora and exophora in discourse: i.e. of relations in fact distinguished from deixis proper.

Back  -    New Search

discourse marker.

Any of a variety of units whose function is within a larger discourse rather than an individual sentence or clause: e.g. but then in But then he might be late or well in Well what if he is?

Back  -    New Search

Discourse Representation Theory.

A formal account of the meaning of a discourse, developed by H. Kamp and others, in which a semantic representation, called a Discourse Representation Structure , is derived cumulatively, sentence by sentence, by rules operating on representations of their syntax. Conceived as an idealized model of the way in which people in practice understand passages of connected speech.

Back  -    New Search

‘discourse topic’.

See topic.

Back  -    New Search

discovery procedure.

A mechanical procedure for deriving a grammar of a language from a corpus, or sample, of sentences. Term introduced by Chomsky in the 1950s, with reference to the aims of (Zellig) Harris and other Post-Bloomfieldians. Cf. evaluation procedure.

Back  -    New Search

discrete.

(Unit, etc.) which has an identity sharply distinguished from that of others. E.g. I love cider is analysed into the discrete units I, love, and cider; [lv] (love) is in turn analysed into the discrete units [l], [], and [v]. Opp. continuous: e.g. it may be disputed whether differences in intonation reflect distinctions between discrete units, or variation along continuous parameters.
Cf. also non-discrete; fuzzy.

Back  -    New Search

disjunct.

Used by Quirk et al., CGE, of an adverbial such as perhaps in Perhaps he is there or honestly in Honestly, I can't do it, seen as an element belonging to the periphery of its clause and e.g. qualifying, commenting on, or giving authority for the remainder. For the second example compare honestly as an adjunct in I can't do it honestly; see also conjunct (2); subjunct.

Back  -    New Search

disjunction.

Coordination that distinguishes alternatives: e.g. in She will come by bike or she will take a bus. A coordinator such as or is a disjunctive conjunction , a question such as Will you go or will you stay? is a disjunctive question , and so on.
A term from logic, where a disjunctive operator (?) is defined as connecting propositions at least one of which is thereby represented as true. Thus p ? q = ‘Either p is true or q is true or both’. Opp. conjunction (2).

Back  -    New Search

disjunctive order.

Relation between ordered rules of which only one will apply to a given form. Opp. conjunctive order.

Back  -    New Search

disjunctive pronoun.

A full as opposed to a reduced or clitic pronoun in, or especially in, the Romance languages: e.g. French moi ‘I, me’, Italian io ‘I’. Opp. conjunctive pronoun.

Back  -    New Search

dislocation.

See left dislocation; right dislocation.

Back  -    New Search

displaced speech.

Speech referring to objects, etc. which are not part of its immediate setting in space and time. A normal property of communication in man, but not demonstrated in any other species; hence displacement is often included in accounts of design features.

Back  -    New Search

displacement.

1 See displaced speech.

2 Otherwise of any movement of a tone, accent, word, etc. from its basic or usual position.
Top

Back  -    New Search

dissective.

(Verb, form of verb) referring to a state or activity constant over a period of time. E.g. if someone walks for three hours then at any moment within that time span they are walking: therefore walk, as a lexical unit, is dissective, as is walked in I walked for three hours.

Back  -    New Search

dissimilation.

Change or process by which two sounds in a sequence become less like each other. E.g. French pèlerin ‘pilgrim’ is from Latin peregrin(us) ‘foreigner’ by, among other things, dissimilation to l of the first of two r's.
Often sporadic: see Grassmann's Law for a more regular instance.

Back  -    New Search

distal.

(Demonstrative, etc.) which basically identifies someone or something as distanced from, rather than close to, a speaker. E.g. that in that side of the road is distal as opposed to ‘proximal’ this in this side of the road.

Back  -    New Search

distinctive.

Making a distinction or distinctions between units. Especially in phonology: thus the phonetic difference between [d] and [ð] is distinctive in English, since e.g. den [dn] and then [n] are two different words. Similar sounds are found in Spanish: e.g. in dedo ‘finger’, phonetically [deðo]. But there the difference is not distinctive, since no words differ in just that way.
‘Contrastive’ is used with the same sense: see also opposition.

Back  -    New Search

distinctive feature.

1 A phonetic feature which distinguishes one phonological unit, especially one phoneme, from another. Thus voice (1) is a distinctive feature in English since e.g. voiced [b] (as in bit) is a phoneme distinct from voiceless [p] (as in pit).

2 One of a set of features which hypothetically characterize all such phonological distinctions in all languages: e.g. voice considered as a linguistic universal, instanced in English by voice as a feature of [b] in bit, in German by voice as a feature of [b] in Bitte, and so on. According to the hypothesis, not every distinctive feature in this sense is distinctive in every individual language: thus there are many languages, e.g. in Australia, in which voice is not. But no language will have distinctions that no member of the set covers.
Top

Back  -    New Search

distinctive feature matrix.

Strictly, a feature matrix which shows only distinctive features. Also loosely of any feature matrix.

Back  -    New Search

‘distinguisher’.

See semantic marker.

Back  -    New Search

distributed.

(Consonant) articulated with a maximal degree of stricture extending for a distance along the direction of air flow. A feature in the scheme of Chomsky and Halle, SPE, distinguishing e.g. laminals as [+ distributed] from apicals as [-distributed].

Back  -    New Search

distribution.

The set of contexts within sentences in which a unit or class of units can appear. E.g. the distribution of hair in written English is the set of contexts I combed my —, Give me the — spray, My — is too long, etc., in any of which the blank (—) can be filled by it.
The distribution mode of a unit is defined by Pike in terms of its distribution in this sense. Distributionalism is the doctrine, developed especially by leading Post-Bloomfieldians, that the formal distribution of units should be studied in abstraction from, and before one goes on to study, their meanings.

Back  -    New Search

distributive.

Indicating reference to each individual member of a set. E.g. a language might contrast a distributive plural and a collective plural: schematically, girls-DISTR brought present ‘The girls each brought a present’ vs. girls-COLL brought present ‘The girls as a group brought a present’.

Back  -    New Search

ditransitive.

Taking or including two objects, e.g. the construction of They taught us arithmetic or They taught arithmetic to us; also the verb teach, in taking such a construction. Opp. monotransitive; cf. also complex transitive.

Back  -    New Search

divalent

= bivalent.

Back  -    New Search

divergence.

Usually of the increasing differentiation of languages as they develop from a common ancestor, as opposed to the convergence of languages which may be genetically unrelated.

Back  -    New Search

DO

= direct object.

Back  -    New Search

domain.

The range or extent of forms to which some rule, etc. applies. E.g. in many languages the word is the domain of vowel harmony: i.e. the application of the rule does not extend beyond words. A class of verbs like sing, sink, or drink might also be described as the domain of a rule by which i in the present tense is changed to a in the past.

Back  -    New Search

domal.

An old term for retroflex.

Back  -    New Search

dominance.

1 Relation defined by a phrase structure tree between a node X and any lower node Y that is on a branch originating from X.

2 Relation, again defined by a phrase structure tree, between a node X and a constituent assigned to that category.
Recently in sense 1, but ‘dominate’ was once common in sense 2.
Top

Back  -    New Search

Donatus

(4th century AD)
. Roman grammarian, author in particular of a compendium of Latin grammar (the Ars maior or ‘larger ars’) and a catechism on the parts of speech and their accidents (the Ars minor or ‘smaller ars’), which were to have an immense influence, directly and through their role as a model for other grammars, throughout the medieval and into the modern period.

Back  -    New Search

Dong.

See Kam-Sui.

Back  -    New Search

‘donkey sentence’.

A sentence of the type Every farmer who owns a donkey beats it, or If a farmer owns a donkey he beats it, seen as problematic in their logical structure through the relation of anaphora between it and a donkey. Named after work by P. T. Geach which used these examples.

Back  -    New Search

dorsal.

Articulated with the convex upper surface of the tongue: e.g. a velar such as [k] in cap, produced with closure of this part of the tongue (the dorsum ) against the soft palate. Also of a back vowel such as [u:] in coop, in which the dorsum is again raised.
Likewise dorso- ; cf. apical, laminal, radical (3).

Back  -    New Search

‘do-support’.

Rule in transformational grammar by which do is used as a dummy auxiliary. Thus do would be added by do-support in the negative I don't know or the interrogative Don't they know?

Back  -    New Search

double accusative.

Construction, e.g. in Latin, with two nouns both in the accusative case. Compare what are sometimes described as ‘double object’ constructions in English: e.g. both him and my coat have the form they would have as a direct object in I lent him my coat.

Back  -    New Search

double articulation (1).

The property of being composed of discrete units at two levels. Thus, at one level, the sentence You go to sleep is composed of the words you, go, to, and sleep, and, at another level, it or the successive words are composed of the phonological units [j], [u:], [g], etc.
Cf. articulation. Also called ‘duality’ , and claimed as one of the most important of the design features that distinguish language from systems of communication in other species. In a leading formulation by Martinet, the articulation of words or other meaningful units is the primary articulation , that of phonological units within words the secondary articulation .

Back  -    New Search

double articulation (2).

Production of a sound at two equal places of articulation. E.g. [k], in many African languages, is a single consonant produced with partly simultaneous closures of the tongue against the soft palate and of the lower lip against the upper lip.

Back  -    New Search

double bar (, X?).

See X-bar syntax.

Back  -    New Search

double-base transformation

= generalized transformation.

Back  -    New Search

‘double case’.

See case stacking.

Back  -    New Search

double cross (#).

Used as a boundary symbol. In the conventions established in Generative Phonology, a double ## marks a boundary between words in syntax; a single # a boundary between words that are parts of a larger word; a plus sign (+) a boundary between smaller units, such as stems and affixes. Thus e.g. large ## wood # pigeon + s.

Back  -    New Search

double negative.

Construction in which a single negation is marked by two elements each of which, in the same or another construction, can indicate it independently. E.g. in Spanish: No he visto nada (lit. ‘not I-have seen nothing’) ‘I haven't seen anything’. Proscribed in English, on the grounds that sentences like I haven't seen nothing ought to mean ‘It is not the case (first negative) that I have not seen (second negative) anything’.

Back  -    New Search

double object.

See double accusative.

Back  -    New Search

doublet.

Two words in a language which are historically from the same source, but with different intervening stages. E.g. frail and fragile are both from Latin fragilis; but frail was borrowed into English in the Middle Ages from the form that had developed from it in Old French, while fragile was borrowed in the 17th century, directly from Latin as a learned language or via a similar borrowing in contemporary French.

Back  -    New Search

downdrift.

Gradual lowering of pitch over a sentence or some other unit. Especially in some tone languages, where successive high tones are progressively lowered, often to a level phonetically below that of low tones earlier in the unit.
Cf. declination. ‘Downdrift’ is usual when the lowering of pitch is governed by the phonology of a particular language; ‘declination’ can be used of a purely phonetic effect, due to the progressive lowering of air pressure from the lungs. Cf. also downstep.

Back  -    New Search

downgrading.

Process by which a larger syntactic unit, such as a sentence, has a function like that of a smaller unit, such as a word or phrase. Hence of regular processes of embedding: e.g. he was alive is downgraded to an element of a phrase in the news that he was alive. Also of sporadic processes: e.g. the phrasal verb cut up is downgraded to the level of a stem in This meat is un-cut-up-able.

Back  -    New Search

‘downstairs clause’

= subordinate clause. Likewise ‘downstairs subject’, etc. = subject, etc. in a subordinate clause.

Back  -    New Search

downstep (').

A phonological unit in some tone languages which is realized by a lowering of the second of two successive high or mid tones. Thus, in a language with a high and a low tone, this will distinguish three possibilities:
(a) H L (high followed by low);
(b) H H (high followed by high without downstep);
(c) H'H (high followed by high with downstep). The pitch of the tone following the downstep in case (c) is intermediate between that of the low tone in case (a) and that of the second high tone in case (b).

Distinguished from downdrift in that the pitch is lowered by specific units, whereas in downdrift all high tones are in principle affected equally. Languages with downstep, in particular, are described as having terraced-level systems.

Back  -    New Search

downtoner.

See intensifying.

Back  -    New Search

DP

= determiner phrase.

Back  -    New Search

drag chain.

See chain shift.

Back  -    New Search

Dravidian.

Family of languages historically limited to the south of the Indian subcontinent and scattered areas to the north. Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu all have speakers in the tens of millions.

Back  -    New Search

drift.

Pattern of change in which the structure of a language shifts in a determinate direction. Described as such by Sapir in the 1920s, with reference to various individual changes in the history of English, interpreted collectively as ‘symptoms of larger tendencies at work in the language’. Interpreted in the 1970s, by W. P. Lehmann and others, as reflecting a tendency for languages to conform to a specific structural type: hence for languages which are structurally similar to change similarly.

Back  -    New Search

D-structure.

Level of syntactic representation in Government and Binding Theory, more abstract than S-structure and less abstract than Logical Form. In the history of Chomsky's theories, D-structure derived from the deep structure of the 1960s and early 1970s; therefore in origin an initial structure from which structures at other levels were derived.

Back  -    New Search

dual (DU).

1 Term in the category of number which distinguishes two individuals as opposed to one or to more than two. E.g. in Sanskrit: pitárau ‘father-NOMDU’ as opposed to singular pita ‘father’, plural pitára‘more than two fathers’.

2 See inclusive.
Top

Back  -    New Search

duality

= double articulation (1).

Back  -    New Search

dubitative.

(Inflection, particle) indicating a doubt as to the reliability of what is said. E.g., schematically, I come-DUBIT ‘I might perhaps come’.

Back  -    New Search

dummy.

A syntactic element which fills a place in a construction that would otherwise be unfilled. Thus, to form an interrogative, the order of a subject and an auxiliary is inverted: They can ski Can they ski? But in They ski there is no auxiliary: so, in Do they ski?, do is a dummy that, in effect, supplies one. Similarly in the negative They don't ski it supplies an auxiliary to which n't is attached (compare They can't ski), and in the emphatic They DO ski one which carries the intonation (compare They CAN ski). Another dummy in English is the it of It is snowing or (again of the weather) It is pouring. In e.g. It is falling, the reference of it is to something that falls. But with the ‘weather verbs’ there is no reference to a ‘snower’ or a ‘pourer’. Therefore it is seen as a dummy whose role is to fill the syntactic position of a subject when no other element does so.
Also called a prop or prop-word .

Back  -    New Search

duration.

The physical length of sounds, etc. as measured on a time scale. Opp. ‘length’ as a feature in phonology: e.g. the duration of [a] of sad is appreciably greater, for many speakers, than that of [] in hid, but in terms of the phonological system they are equally ‘short’.

Back  -    New Search

durational.

(Adverb, adverbial) indicating a period of time: e.g. all night in I sat up all night is durational, or is an adverbial of duration .

Back  -    New Search

durative.

(Aspect) indicating a process, etc. seen as continuing for an appreciable time. Thus the use of the past tense might be described as durative in I worked in Paris for five years. Opp. punctual; cf. progressive.

Back  -    New Search

Dutch.

West Germanic, spoken in Holland; also in Belgium and the extreme north-east of France, roughly from a line broadly south of Brussels to the North Sea. Related within Germanic to Low German, but separated from it, with effect on its development and status, by a political boundary that has been constant in the modern period.

Back  -    New Search

dvandva.

Sanskrit term for a compound in which the relation between members is like that of coordination: e.g. fighter-bomber ‘fighter and bomber’. The word means ‘pair’ or ‘couple’; also called a ‘copulative compound’ .

Back  -    New Search

Dyirbal.

Australian language of north Queensland; the subject of a grammar in 1972 by R. M. W. Dixon which had a major influence on theories of ergative languages.

Back  -    New Search

dynamic.

(Verb) denoting an action, process, etc. as opposed to a state. E.g. buy is dynamic; own, which denotes the resulting state, is stative. Also of aspects: e.g. a verb meaning ‘sit’ might, in a dynamic form, be used of the action of sitting down.

Back  -    New Search

dynamic passive.

One referring to an action or process, as opposed to a ‘statal passive’. E.g. (is) opened is dynamic in It is easily opened with a penknife (what is easy is the action of opening), but statal in It is already opened (already in the opened state).

Back  -    New Search

dynamic tone

= contour tone.

Back  -    New Search

dys-.

Greek prefix used in medical terms for malfunctions of one sort or another. Hence in describing speech disorders: ‘dysphemia’ (stammering), ‘dyssyntaxia’ (errors in syntax), etc.

Back  -    New Search

dyslexia.

Condition in which, for no independent reason, such as lack of education, someone has serious difficulty in reading. Hence dyslexic , of someone in that condition.

Back  -    New Search

dysphasia.

Impaired or less than normal ability to speak. Sometimes of milder cases of aphasia; also of ‘developmental dysphasia’ , in which the development of language in a child is delayed or otherwise abnormal, for no independent physical or psychological reason.

Back  -    New Search

Dyula.

See Mande.

Back  -    New Search

E

e.

General notation for empty categories.

Back  -    New Search

ear-training.

The training of students of linguistics to identify by ear the full range of sounds that the human vocal tract can produce.

Back  -    New Search

ease of articulation.

See principle of least effort; cf. euphony.

Back  -    New Search

East Germanic

= Gothic.

Back  -    New Search

‘echolalia’.

Mechanical repetition of the words just uttered by another speaker, when symptomatic of a speech or other mental disorder.

Back  -    New Search

echo question.

A form such as ‘You've bought ´WHAT?’, partly echoing a statement such as ‘I've bought a concrete mixer’.

Back  -    New Search

echo-word.

A compound whose second member repeats the first with an initial consonant or syllable altered. Widespread in languages of the Indian subcontinent, with the general meaning ‘… and the like’: e.g. Hindi pn pn-vn ‘water and such-like’, by a systematic process in which an initial consonant is changed to v.

Back  -    New Search

ECM

= exceptional case marking.

Back  -    New Search

ECP.

See empty category.

Back  -    New Search

-ed form.

An English verb form in -ed: e.g. walked. Also of the past tense in English generally, whether marked by -ed or not; cf. -en form, for past participle (2).

Back  -    New Search

effected object.

The object of a verb which denotes an action, etc. that brings things or individuals into existence: e.g. a book in I wrote a book, where the book would exist as the effect of the speaker writing it. Opp. affected object.

Back  -    New Search

Efik.

Native to the area of Calabar but used more widely as a literary language in south-east Nigeria. The Cross River languages, of which Efik and Ibibio are the most important, are grouped with many others under Benue-Congo.

Back  -    New Search

EFL.

Abbreviation for ‘English as a foreign language’.

Back  -    New Search

egocentrism.

Property of language in being centred on the ‘here’ and ‘now’ of the individual ‘I’ (Latin ‘ego’) who is speaking. Fundamental, in particular, to deixis.

Back  -    New Search

egressive.

(Air stream, airstream mechanism) in which the direction of flow is outwards. Opp. ingressive.

Back  -    New Search

Egyptian.

The language of ancient Egypt, progressively replaced by Arabic after the Muslim conquest. Seen as a branch of Afro-Asiatic, related most closely, perhaps, to Semitic and Berber.
Written in Hieroglyphic from the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC; from the middle of the millennium, for ordinary purposes, in Hieratic; from the 7th century BC, again for ordinary purposes, in Demotic. Subsequently, from the 4th century AD, in the Coptic alphabet.

Back  -    New Search

ejective.

(Consonant) produced on a flow of air initiated by an upward movement of the larynx. Distinguished in phonetic transcription by the diacritic [']; the airstream mechanism is classed as ‘glottalic egressive’.
In the production e.g. of ejective [p'], the lips are closed and the velum raised, as in non-ejective [p]. The vocal cords are also closed and, as the larynx is raised, the air pressure within the mouth is increased. Air then flows outwards when the closure at the lips is released.

Back  -    New Search

elaborated code.

See deficit theory.

Back  -    New Search

Elamite.

Ancient language of south-west Iran, written from the late 3rd millennium BC in a cuneiform script, largely a syllabary but with some signs representing words as wholes. It has no certain genetic relation to any other language and is not wholly understood.

Back  -    New Search

E-language.

Chomsky's term in the mid-1980s for a language conceived as a system of events or utterances or other units external to or as externalized by the individual speaker. Applied, in effect, to all conceptions of language other than as I-language.

Back  -    New Search

elative.

Case which basically indicates movement ‘out of’: e.g. schematically, ran room-ELAT ‘ran from the room’.
1 An intensified form of an adjective or adverb. E.g. a superlative with that sense: He's the greatest, meaning ‘very, really great’.

Back  -    New Search

electromyography.

A technique for investigating muscular contractions, e.g. those of the chest muscles and others in the production of speech, by inserting electrodes which register the firing of individual fibres.

Back  -    New Search

electropalatography.

A technique for recording points of contact between the tongue and the hard palate; hence, in particular, for investigating coarticulation in this area. The subject is fitted with a thin artificial palate which has an array of electrical contacts. A weak current is passed through the body, so that when the tongue touches any of these contacts a circuit is completed and a signal can be registered. The technique has tended to replace earlier methods of palatography since the late 1970s.

Back  -    New Search

element.

A basic or indivisible unit at some level of analysis or representation. Thus the elementary units at the level of syntax are words or, in some accounts, morphemes: those of phonology are phonemes, or individual features, articulatory gestures, etc.
1 A term, position, or role in a construction. E.g. a subject-predicate construction has two elements, subject and predicate; correspondingly, in e.g. My wife left yesterday the specific elements are the subject my wife and the predicate left yesterday. Likewise of syntagmatic structures at other levels: e.g. in phonology the structure of an open syllable, (C)V, has as its elements an optional consonantal onset, ‘(C)’, followed by an obligatory vocalic nucleus, ‘V’.
Top

Back  -    New Search

elicit.

To obtain or draw out from an informant. Thus one might try to elicit from speakers of English, either by asking or by some indirect means of testing, whether they would say or find acceptable a form whose status was uncertain: e.g. in a study of auxiliary verbs, ones like I didn't use to or I didn't ought to.

Back  -    New Search

elision.

Process by which a vowel at the end of a word is lost, or elided , before another vowel at the beginning of a word that follows. Cf. prodelision.
1 =, in some uses, ellipsis.

Back  -    New Search

ellipsis.

The omission of one or more elements from a construction, especially when they are supplied by the context. E.g. if A asks ‘Have you seen my glasses?’, B might answer elliptically? ‘I'm afraid I haven't’, with the remainder of the construction (‘seen your glasses’) to be understood from the question.
The scope of ellipsis depends in part on how the elements of the sentence are described. Thus in John DID one might again say that a part of the construction is missing: cf. John DID see them. But where the stress is on John one might be tempted to argue that there is no ellipsis: JOHN did, but not, with a similar expansion, JOHN did see them. Instead did might be described as a pro-form which itself forms the entire predicate.

Back  -    New Search

‘elsewhere’ rule.

A rule in a generative grammar that applies whenever the conditions for more specific rules are not met: hence = default rule. The condition attached to such a rule is similarly the ‘elsewhere condition’ .

Back  -    New Search

ELT.

Abbreviation for ‘English language teaching’.

Back  -    New Search

embedding.

The inclusion of one clause or sentence in another. E.g. who you mean is a sentence (S) embedded within a larger sentence in s[I know s[who you mean]].
In early transformational grammar an embedding transformation was a generalized or ‘double-base’ transformation by which the whole or part of a phrase structure tree assigned to one sentence (called the ‘constituent sentence’ ) was inserted into that assigned to another (called the ‘matrix sentence’ ). Distinguished as such from singulary transformations and those dealing with coordination.

Back  -    New Search

-eme.

Used in terms for basic linguistic units. Thus phoneme, for a basic unit of phonology; morpheme, for a basic unit of morphology; lexeme, for the basic unit of the lexicon. For others see e.g. moneme; morphophoneme; sememe.
Thence, by analogy with the phoneme, to units other than those of speech: e.g. ‘chereme’ (from the Greek word for ‘hand’) for the basic unit of sign language; ‘proxeme’ (see proxemics) for a distinctive unit of distance, etc. between speakers; ‘narreme’ , for a unit in the literary analysis of narrations.

Back  -    New Search

emergence.

Process by which a structure, change, etc. is created by the separate behaviour of many individuals. Hence, in one view, in the case of language: e.g. a sound change is a phenomenon emerging from the repeated articulatory movements of many individual speakers; the meaning of a word arises by a process of emergence from its repeated use by individual speakers in individual contexts; a language system as a whole is a structure generated by innumerable individual acts of speech in a community.

Back  -    New Search

EMG = electromyography.

Back  -    New Search

emic.

Involving, or having the status of, a unit in -eme. A term of Pike's in particular: thus an analysis of sounds which aims to establish phonemes is an emic, as opposed to an etic, analysis.

Back  -    New Search

emotive.

(Meaning, function of language) having to do with the feelings of the speaker. Cf. affective.

Back  -    New Search

empathy.

Identification with another. Hence empathetic deixis is deixis, e.g. in free indirect style, that reflects the viewpoint of someone other than the speaker or writer. Scales of empathy, ranging from a speaker at one end to objects with which speakers can empathize least, play a role e.g. in direct vs. inverse constructions.

Back  -    New Search

emphasizer.

Used by Quirk et al., CGE, of adverbs or adverbials with a broadly emphasizing role: e.g. actually in It actually worked; frankly in I frankly detest him.

Back  -    New Search

emphatic (1).

Term for dental consonants, especially in Arabic, in which the body of the tongue is broad and flat in the mouth and with the front part lowered. Thus in Egyptian Arabic iin ‘mud’ as opposed to non-emphatic t, with the front part of the tongue more narrow and pointed. Usually explained by phonologists as an effect of pharyngealization.

Back  -    New Search

emphatic (2).

Marking, or marking among other things, emphasis: thus ‘emphatic stress’ (But I ´CAN'T do it), emphatic word order, and so on. An ‘emphatic pronoun’ is a full form (e.g. moi ‘I, me’ in French) as opposed to a reduced or clitic form (e.g. je).
‘Emphasis’ and ‘contrast’ can in principle be distinguished but, since their realizations tend to be the same, contrastive especially is often used for both.

Back  -    New Search

empirical principle.

Hjelmslev's term for a principle by which accounts of a language system should
a be free of internal contradictions;
b cover the relevant data exhaustively;
c be as simple as possible. The subprinciples have priority in that order: i.e. self-consistency should not be sacrificed to exhaustiveness, nor either self-consistency or exhaustiveness to simplicity.

Back  -    New Search

empiricism.

Any of a range of doctrines in philosophy which hold that knowledge is derived from sense experience. Traditionally opposed to nativism.

Back  -    New Search

empty.

1 Having or described as having no meaning: e.g. a dummy.

2 Having no phonetic or other realization: thus especially an empty category as posited by Chomsky and others.
Confusion might be avoided if ‘empty’ were reserved for sense 1 and ‘null’ or ‘zero’ used consistently for sense 2.
Top

Back  -    New Search

‘empty category’.

An element in Chomsky's Principles and Parameters Theory which occupies a syntactic position but has no phonetic realization: see pro, PRO, trace. Seen as subject to a universal principle (the Empty Category Principle or ECP ) which rests on Chomsky's definition, in the early 1980s, of government. Strictly an element rather than a category.

Back  -    New Search

empty morph.

A morph which does not directly realize a morpheme (3). E.g. in children [tldrn], a morph [tld] realizes the morpheme ‘child’ and a morph [n], as also in oxen, may be said to realize the morpheme ‘plural’; the intervening [r] is then an empty morph which is not assigned specifically to either. Cf. empty (1).

Back  -    New Search

‘empty word’.

A word seen as ‘empty’ in that its meaning is grammatical rather than lexical. Hence = form word, function word, grammatical word.

Back  -    New Search

enantiosemy.

A case of polysemy in which one sense is in some respect the opposite of another. E.g. that of dust in I dusted the mantelpiece, meaning that something is removed, vs. I dusted the cake with sugar, meaning that something is added.
From Greek enantio- ‘opposite’: modelled by G. C. Lepschy on German ‘Gegensinn’.

Back  -    New Search

encapsulation.

The inclusion in the sense of word a of that of another word b with which a could potentially collocate. Usually of cases where the collocation would be pleonastic: e.g. female wife, where the sense of wife includes that of female.
For ‘informationally encapsulated’ see modular.

Back  -    New Search

enclitic.

A clitic attached phonologically to the word which precedes: e.g. Latin -que in arma virumque (lit. ‘arms man-and’) ‘arms and the man’.

Back  -    New Search

‘encoding’.

Used of a supposed mental process by which pre-existing thoughts are encoded as sentences; also of any relation of realization, whether or not in the belief that it is part of such a mental process. Opp. decoding.

Back  -    New Search

‘encyclopaedic knowledge’.

Knowledge of the world as distinguished from knowledge of the language system. Thus in many accounts a word like cat might have a semantic feature [+ mammal] or [+ viviparous]: to know that it has this feature and others that distinguish it from other units in the lexicon is to know its meaning in the language. But it would then be a matter of ‘encyclopaedic knowledge’ that the young of cats are born blind, that the period of gestation in the domestic cat is about 65 days, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

ending.

Informal term for any suffix or combination of suffixes at the end of a word. Cf. termination.

Back  -    New Search

endocentric.

Bloomfield's term for a construction in which at least one element is of the same syntactic class as the whole. E.g. that of raw meat, whose role in larger constructions is like that of its second element meat; also that of meat and fish, whose role could be filled by either meat or fish. Opp. exocentric. Also used of compounds: e.g. blackbird is endocentric since, to put it in later terminology, it is a hyponym of bird, while blackcap (another species of songbird) is not, since it is not a hyponym of cap.

Back  -    New Search

endophora [n'dfr].

Sometimes used to subsume anaphora and cataphora, seen as relations within (‘endo-’) what is said or written, as opposed to exophora.

Back  -    New Search

-en form.

See past participle (2).

Back  -    New Search

English.

West Germanic. Old English (‘Anglo-Saxon’) is attested from the 7th century AD, with an extensive literature before the Norman conquest in the 11th century. After the conquest, Middle English was heavily influenced by French, most noticeably in large and central areas of vocabulary. A standard form, based mainly on eastern dialects spoken in London, developed increasingly from the end of the Middle Ages.
The expansion of English to other continents began in earnest in the 17th century, with the successful colonization of the eastern seaboard of North America. Subsequently spread by colonization both directly from Britain and from the USA and existing colonies, across North America, in Australia and New Zealand, in southern Africa, and elsewhere. Also promoted as a second language throughout most of the British Empire and in countries similarly occupied by the USA;hence an official language in, e.g. India or Nigeria. As a second language it has several regional varieties (Indian English, West African English, etc.); also dominant as an international language, increasingly in forms based on American English, since the mid-20th century.

Back  -    New Search

English for Special Purposes.

Programme of teaching English for use in specific applications, e.g. in air traffic control.

Back  -    New Search

entailment.

Relation between propositions one of which necessarily follows from the other: e.g. ‘Mary is running’ entails, among other things, ‘Mary is not standing still’. Cf. implication.
Thence of propositions entailed by sentences: thus ‘Mary is not standing still’ is entailed by Mary is running. Distinguished from implicatures, often similarly described as propositions implicated by sentences, in that entailments are not defeasible: i.e. they cannot be overridden in a specific context.

Back  -    New Search

environment.

A context within a word or sentence in which a change or process takes place. E.g. [n] [m] ‘in the environment’—[+ bilabial]: i.e. when a bilabial consonant, such as [b] or [p], follows.

Back  -    New Search

epenthesis ['pnss].

Process or change in which successive sounds are separated by an intervening segment. E.g. the [b] of thimble developed between an adjacent [m] and [l]: cf. Old English pmel. Likewise of processes in morphology or morphophonology: e.g. [] in horses can be described as an epenthetic vowel inserted between [s] and [z] in underlying [h:s] + [z].
From the Greek for ‘insertion’.

Back  -    New Search

EPG

= electropalatography, electropalatographic.

Back  -    New Search

epicene ['psi:n].

(Noun) used to refer to individuals of either sex. Traditionally of one whose grammatical gender is the same in either case: e.g. French (la) grive ‘(the-FEM) male or female thrush’. Cf. common gender.

Back  -    New Search

epiglottal.

Articulated with or, more loosely, in the region of the epiglottis. The epiglottis is a flap of cartilage at the base of the throat whose function is to cover the larynx while swallowing.

Back  -    New Search

epigraphy.

The study of inscriptions.

Back  -    New Search

epiphenomenon.

A by-product or secondary phenomenon. Thus in accounts of syntax that became standard in the 1960s it is the individual rules that are primary; constructions, as they have usually been conceived, were by implication secondary or epiphenomenal .

Back  -    New Search

episememe.

Bloomfield's term for the meaning of a construction or other grammatical pattern (in his terms a tagmeme).

Back  -    New Search

epistemic.

Indicating factual necessity, probability, possibility, etc. E.g. the modal must is epistemic, or is used epistemically, in He must surely be there by now; likewise may in It may have been lost, or might in The train might be late.
From a Greek word for ‘knowledge, understanding’. Opp. deontic as one of two major categories of modality: see also alethic.

Back  -    New Search

epistrophe.

Term in rhetoric for the repetition of a word at the end of successive clauses or sentences: e.g. ‘This house is mine; this car is mine; you are mine’.

Back  -    New Search

epithet.

Usually of an adjective, etc. conventionally associated with a noun or with whatever or whoever it denotes: in origin the term in Greek for adjective or ‘adjective noun’ in general.

Back  -    New Search

eponym.

An individual name from which a common noun is derived: e.g. that of ‘the eponymous’ Lord Sandwich as the source for sandwich. Eponymy is the relation between them.

Back  -    New Search

EPP

= extended projection principle.

Back  -    New Search

equational.

(Sentence, construction) by which one asserts that two referents are identical: e.g. Jim's daughter is Harry's wife, by which one asserts that the daughter of someone called Jim is the same person as the wife of someone called Harry. Thence of other sentences and constructions that are formally similar.
Also called ‘equative’ ; cf. ascriptive.

Back  -    New Search

equative.

1 (Construction) by which two individuals, etc. are equated with respect to some property: e.g. the as … as construction in John is as clever as me.

2 (Case) marking a predicative noun or noun phrase: e.g., schematically, He is father-EQUAT ‘He is the father’. Cf. equational; also essive.
Top

3 = equational.
Top

Back  -    New Search

equi NP deletion.

A syntactic operation in early transformational grammars which deleted one of two identical noun phrases. Thus in most accounts in the 1960s and 1970s a sentence like I asked Mary to come was derived from an underlying I asked Mary [Mary come] with deletion of the second Mary.
Often abbreviated ‘Equi’ : a verb such as ask was similarly an ‘Equi verb’ as opposed to a raising verb. Cf. control; control verb.

Back  -    New Search

equipollent.

Opposition between phonemes neither of which is marked in relation to the other: e.g. between English [p] and [t]. Opp. privative (1).

Back  -    New Search

equivalent.

Technically, e.g. of grammars having the same generative capacity.

Back  -    New Search

equi verb.

See equi NP deletion.

Back  -    New Search

equivocal

= ambiguous: opp. univocal.

Back  -    New Search

ERG

= ergative (1).

Back  -    New Search

ergative.

1 Case which identifies the agent in a basic transitive construction when the patient is absolutive. The latter identifies the patient with the single argument or valent in an intransitive construction: e.g., schematically, intransitive collapsed wall-ABS ‘The wall collapsed’; transitive Bill built wall-ABS ‘Bill built the wall’. The ergative then distinguishes the agent: thus, more fully, Bill-ERG built wall-ABS. The same terms are extended to other constructions in which an agent is similarly distinguished, but by e.g. word order instead of case.

2 Also used sporadically, from the early 1960s, of the relation between e.g. We sank the ship, where the ship is object, and The ship sank, where, though now the subject, its semantic relation to sank is similar. Hence, in some accounts, sink is an ‘ergative verb’ , as distinct from both a straightforward transitive and a straightforward intransitive.
Sense 2 seems to have arisen, partly at least, from a misunderstanding of sense 1. It could perhaps with benefit be avoided.
Top

Back  -    New Search

‘ergative language’.

One which has an ergative (1) vs. absolutive case, or which distinguishes semantic roles, e.g. by word order, in an equivalent way. Languages either partly or wholly of this type are said to illustrate a phenomenon of ‘ergativity’ . Cf. accusative language; active language.

Back  -    New Search

‘erosion’.

The progressive reduction of the phonetic forms of words by sound change. ‘Eroded’ words are often replaced: thus a classic study by Gilliéron showed how the forms derived from Latin apis ‘bee’, when reduced by sound changes in French to a monosyllable, were widely replaced by longer forms derived by suffixation (French abeille < diminutive api-culu-s) or by others.

Back  -    New Search

erotetic [r'ti:tk].

From the Greek word for ‘to question’; e.g. an erotetic logic is a logic of questioning.

Back  -    New Search

error analysis.

The analysis, for practical but also potentially for scientific ends, of errors made by students learning another language.

Back  -    New Search

Erse

= Irish Gaelic.

Back  -    New Search

Eskimo-Aleut.

Family of languages whose branches are Aleut, spoken by a minority in the Aleutian and neighbouring islands, and Eskimo , spoken over a large area from Greenland to Siberia. The main branches of Eskimo are Yupik, in south and south-west Alaska and across the Bering Strait, and Inuit.

Back  -    New Search

esophagus

= oesophagus.

Back  -    New Search

Esperanto.

Artificial language first promoted by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, as a neutral auxiliary language for people whose native languages were different. It combines elements of various European languages, but with a morphological structure designed to be clear and regular.

Back  -    New Search

essive.

Case indicating a state or mode of existence: e.g., schematically, He cook-ESS ‘He is a cook’; Cook-ESS he good ‘As a cook he is good’.

Back  -    New Search

EST

= Extended Standard Theory.

Back  -    New Search

established.

(Form, etc.) accepted as normal in a community. E.g. courage is an established word in English; couragiousness, though it follows the rules of word-formation and might well be used on occasion, is not.

Back  -    New Search

Estonian.

Official language of, and spoken mainly in, Estonia. Finno-Ugric, closely related to Finnish.

Back  -    New Search

état de langue.

A stage in the history of a language, considered in abstraction from anything earlier or later. From Saussure: also, in translation, ‘language state’ or ‘state of a language’.

Back  -    New Search

ethic.

(Dative) used in referring to someone with an interest in or indirectly affected by an action, etc. Also ‘ethical’ : cf. dative of advantage.

Back  -    New Search

ethno-.

From the Greek word for a people or nation. Thus ethnolinguistics can have the sense of anthropological linguistics; ethnobotany is concerned with the ways in which specific societies name and classify plants, ethnopoetics with their literature, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

ethnography of speaking.

Term introduced by D. H. Hymes in the early 1960s for the study of the uses and patterns of speaking in a society, as distinct from an account of the language system. Thus in some communities ritual utterances are a central feature of ceremonial; in others they are not. In some, close friends will tend to greet each other with formal insults; in some, verbosity in speech is appreciated; in some, requests will tend to be made directly rather than indirectly; and so on. The domain of the ethnography of speaking covered features such as these which were seen as falling between the usual scope of linguistics, and that of ethnography in general.
Cf. communicative competence.

Back  -    New Search

ethnomethodology.

Movement in sociology that sought to study social interaction in terms of categories, etc. empirically valid for members of a society, not assumed a priori. Relevant to linguistics as the source, in the early 1970s, of Conversation Analysis.

Back  -    New Search

ethology.

Branch of science concerned with animal behaviour: hence with, among other things, modes of communication in species other than man.

Back  -    New Search

etic.

Not emic. Thus for Pike an etic account of the sounds of language would describe them impressionistically as sounds (i.e. as ‘phon-etic’ units) in advance of an analysis assigning them to phonemic (i.e. ‘-emic’) units.

Back  -    New Search

Etruscan.

Ancient language of Tuscany in Italy, with no demonstrated genetic relation to any other. Written in an alphabet derived from that of Greek and itself one source of the Roman.

Back  -    New Search

‘etymological fallacy’.

The notion that the ‘true’ meaning of a word is the one to be expected from its etymology. E.g. literature is from the word in Latin for a letter of the alphabet (litera): therefore, a pedant might argue, it is incorrect to apply it to compositions transmitted orally and not written.

Back  -    New Search

etymology.

The study of the historical relation between a word and the earlier form or forms from which it has, or has hypothetically, developed. Thus the etymology of sheep relates it, with German Schaf and others, to a reconstructed Common Germanic skpa; that of street relates it, through Old English strt, to a borrowing into Germanic of Latin (via) strata ‘paved road’.
Loosely described as a study of the ‘origins of words’; but if this expression is taken too literally it can be misleading.

Back  -    New Search

etymon.

A form at an earlier stage of history or prehistory from which one or more later forms are derived. E.g. a root gwo- is reconstructed as the Indo-European etymon of English cow, French boeuf ‘ox’, etc. These are in turn its reflexes.

Back  -    New Search

euphemism.

Word, etc. used in place of one avoided as e.g. offensive, indecent, or alarming. E.g. a word for ‘girl’ used of prostitutes in place of the specific word for ‘prostitute’.

Back  -    New Search

euphony.

Literally the property of ‘sounding well’. But commonly at one time of a principle equivalent to that of ‘ease of articulation’: thus it was for reasons of ‘euphony’ that one consonant undergoes assimilation to another, or that successive syllables are matched in vowel harmony.

Back  -    New Search

‘eurhythmy’.

Maximal conformity to the rhythmical pattern normal in a given language: defined in Metrical Phonology in terms of an ideal ‘metrical grid’ to be approximated as far as possible.

Back  -    New Search

European structuralism.

Structural linguistics as developed especially in continental Europe. Baudouin de Courtenay was an important pioneer, followed in the early 20th century by Saussure. In the 1920s and 1930s their ideas were developed especially by members of the Prague School, notably Trubetzkoy and Jakobson; from the late 1930s by Hjelmslev and Martinet among others; also, though his basic assumptions were in part different, by Firth. Among later scholars, Coseriu and, from the 1960s, Lyons are among those whose ideas, despite many differences, stand clearly in the structuralist tradition. ‘Structuralism’ in literary studies developed especially in France in the 1960s, inspired largely by readings or misreadings of Saussure.

Back  -    New Search

evaluation procedure.

A mechanical procedure for comparing two generative grammars, of the same format and generating the same language, to determine, e.g. by a measure of simplicity, which is the better. Proposed by Chomsky in the 1950s, as a goal for linguistic theory weaker than that of a discovery procedure.
An evaluation measure is a metric employed in such a procedure.

Back  -    New Search

evaluative.

Indicating a speaker's attitude to some real or potential event, etc. Thus an evaluative particle might indicate e.g. surprise: schematically, He SURPRISE didn't ‘Amazingly he didn't’. Likewise the sentence Why on earth put it in the dustbin? is likely to be said not as a question which invites an answer, but as an evaluative utterance commenting on what someone has done or proposes to do.

Back  -    New Search

evidential.

(Particle, inflection) which is one of a set that make clear the source or reliability of the evidence on which a statement is based. Thus in a given language they might formally distinguish statements based on direct observation from ones based e.g. on inference (cf. inferential), or on what someone else has told the speaker (cf. quotative), or e.g. on guesswork.

Back  -    New Search

evolution.

Used both in the biologist's sense and of the development over time of individual languages. Thus ‘the evolution of language’ refers in one sense to the issue of, as it is traditionally called, ‘the origin of language’. In another it refers to the history of languages, without any implication that the principles of evolution, as biologists understand them, will apply.

Back  -    New Search

exaptation.

Introduced by R. Lass in the early 1990s for the development, in the history of a language, of a new semantic role for differences of form that have lost whatever role they may have had earlier. Suppose, e.g. that the distinction of gender is lost in French: le mur ‘the wall’: also ‘le’ (now la) maison ‘the house’. Accompanying variations in the forms of adjectives (grand/grande ‘big’) would then have no rationale; but, by a process of exaptation, they might develop a new one, e.g. in distinguishing attributive adjectives (‘le maison grand’ instead of present la maison grande) from predicative (‘le maison est grande’ instead of present la maison est grande).

Back  -    New Search

exception.

A form, etc. that does not follow a rule applying generally to those of its class: e.g. past tense forms in English generally end in -ed: wait-ed, talk-ed, etc. Forms such as ran or broke, or run and break as lexical units, are therefore exceptions to this.
Cf. regular. As there are degrees of regularity so, conversely, a form may be an exception to a more general rule which covers forms that are themselves exceptions to one still more general.

Back  -    New Search

‘exceptional case marking’.

That of e.g. her in I believe her to be right. Its form is that of the object in e.g. I believe her; therefore, in many accounts, it too is an object. But in that of e.g. Government and Binding Theory it is not. Instead it is the subject of a subordinate clause (I believe [her to be right]); therefore its case marking (realized by her instead of she) is ‘exceptional’.

Back  -    New Search

exclamation.

Sentence whose construction is characteristically used in emotional reactions, as opposed to questions, statements, requests, etc.: e.g. How wonderful that would be! or What a filthy mess!
A distinction could in principle be drawn between ‘exclamations’ as a type of speech act and constructions that are specifically ‘exclamative’. The examples given would then be both exclamative and exclamations; but a sentence such as How the hell do I know? might be uttered as an exclamation, although its construction is not exclamative but interrogative.

Back  -    New Search

exclamation mark (!).

Used, in citing an example, to indicate that although it is grammatical, it is not so in the sense that is relevant. E.g. in a discussion of idioms one might write !The fat was being chewed by the committee for three hours, meaning that, although a passive is possible in the literal sense, in the sense of the idiom ‘chew the fat’ it is not.

Back  -    New Search

exclusive.

(First person) specifically excluding reference to an addressee. See inclusive.

Back  -    New Search

excrescent.

Older term used of a consonant, etc. historically added to a word. E.g. -d is excrescent in sound ‘noise’, which had no -d (cf. French son) before the 15th century.

Back  -    New Search

exhaustiveness.

Property of a description, grammar, etc. that covers all the relevant data: cf. empirical principle. The crux, of course, lies in the criteria for relevance.

Back  -    New Search

exhortative.

(Particle, etc.) used in enjoining or encouraging an action by a group that includes the speaker: e.g. let or let's in Let's go.

Back  -    New Search

existential.

(Sentence, construction) indicating what does or does not exist: e.g. the construction with there in There's a wasp in your hair, There are no white crocodiles.

Back  -    New Search

existential quantifier (?).

Operator in logic used in expressions interpreted as asserting existence. E.g. (? x)((boy (x)) & (dance (x))) ‘There exists some x such that x is a boy and x dances’: i.e. ‘At least one boy dances’.

Back  -    New Search

exocentric.

Bloomfield's term for a construction in which no element is of the same syntactic class as the whole: e.g. those of in Washington or wrote books.
Opp. endocentric. Also used of compounds: e.g. pickpocket and hardback are exocentric compounds since, to put it in later terms, they are not hyponyms of either pick or pocket, or either hard or back.

Back  -    New Search

exophora [k'sfr].

The interpretation of a pronoun, etc. when it is supplied from ‘outside’ (‘exo-’) what is immediately said or written: e.g. of she in ` SHE's coming, uttered by a speaker who points to the ‘she’ in question, or for a hearer who can guess who is meant. Opp. anaphora; also endophora.

Back  -    New Search

‘expanded pidgin’.

A pidgin whose form has in time become less simplified but which is still not judged to meet, or to meet sufficiently, the definition of a creole. Also called an ‘extended pidgin’ ; Tok Pisin is one case sometimes so described.

Back  -    New Search

expansion.

In its ordinary sense: e.g. the ‘expansion of English’ in the last few centuries. Also specifically, in American structural linguistics, of an operation designed to establish that shorter and longer sequences of words belong to the same class. E.g., in She came, she can be replaced by the ‘expanded’ forms a man, the people next door, the book which I ordered, and so on. Accordingly all these are classed as, in the usual term, noun phrases.

Back  -    New Search

experiencer.

The semantic role of e.g. I in I felt cold or Jane in Jane saw it. Seen as one of a set of universal ‘cases’ or case roles in e.g. Case Grammar.

Back  -    New Search

experimental psycholinguistics.

See psycholinguistics.

Back  -    New Search

expiratory.

In or for breathing out. E.g. ‘expiratory pressure’ is pressure of air being breathed out.

Back  -    New Search

explanatory adequacy.

See levels of adequacy.

Back  -    New Search

expletive.

From a Latin verb meaning ‘to fill out’. Hence e.g. of dummies or ‘prop-words’: thus it is expletive in It's obvious that he will.
Also, as in ordinary use, of swear words seen as padding which add nothing to the sense. Thence of swear words generally, and of minor sentences (Damn and blast!, Bugger it!) that contain them. Cf. imprecative.

Back  -    New Search

explicature.

A proposition explicitly expressed, as opposed to an implicature. E.g. Mary is ill will, when uttered, communicate the explicature ‘Mary is ill’. It might also in a specific context implicate, say, ‘Mary won't be in today’.

Back  -    New Search

explicit performative.

See performative.

Back  -    New Search

exponence.

Any relation between a linguistic unit, structure, etc. and its realization in speech. E.g. the exponents of stress, as a phonological unit, might be variously the lengthening of a syllable, a difference in vowel quality, a significant pitch movement, and so on. Hence of any relation of realization by which this is mediated; e.g. in morphology, an affix such as -en in taken is an exponent of a feature or unit ‘past participle’.

Back  -    New Search

expression.

1 Any form of words which constitutes a unit of meaning. Rarely an explicit technical term, but cf. referring expression; also e.g. fixed expression.

2 Level in Hjelmslev's theory whose substance is that of sounds or their equivalent as opposed to that of meaning. Defined formally by its opposition to that of content.
Top

Back  -    New Search

expressive.

Type of speech act seen as giving expression to a psychological state of the speaker: e.g. an apology, or an expression of thanks or congratulation.
2 (Meaning, function of language) having to do with the state of mind of the speaker. Cf. affective; emotive; interjection.
Top

Back  -    New Search

extended exponence.

The realization of a single morphological category in two or more different parts of a word. E.g. in swollen the past participle is realized by both a suffix (-en) and the vowel [] in swoll-.

Back  -    New Search

‘extended projection principle’.

A principle in Government and Binding Theory, whose substance is that all sentences must have a subject, seen as supplementing the projection principle.

Back  -    New Search

‘Extended Standard Theory’.

Version of Chomsky's model of transformational grammar current in the mid-1970s, distinguished from the so-called Standard Theory mainly in that semantic representations of sentences, in so far as they belonged to an account of grammar, were said to be determined either wholly or in part by surface structures rather than by deep structures.

Back  -    New Search

extension.

1 In the ordinary sense. Thus analogical extension is an extension in the range of words formed in a particular way, seen as by analogy with those already so formed. ‘Extension of meaning’ is used for the development of a new sense of a lexical unit: thus, in particular, a figurative extension which involves a metaphor or other figure of speech. It is also used of the widening of an existing sense: cf. widening of meaning.

2 Philosophers' term for the range of individuals, etc. to which e.g. a term applies: e.g. the extension of computer is the set of all computers. Hence, in particular, an extensional definition of a class or set is a specification one by one of its members. Opp., in this sense, intension, intensional.
Top

Back  -    New Search

‘extensive’.

(Verb, complementation) that is not intensive.

Back  -    New Search

external.

Not belonging to, or not conceived as directly relevant to, a language system. Hence external history deals with everything except the way such a system changes; ‘external causes’ of change are factors, such as the influence of another language, seen as lying outside the system of a language whose changes are the object of study; ‘external evidence’ , e.g. of psychological reality, is evidence other than that on which an account of a language system is explicitly based.

Back  -    New Search

‘external argument’.

An argument of a verb external to the predicate (1) or verb phrase: i.e. in particular, a subject.

Back  -    New Search

external history.

The history of a language as the means of communication in a community, as opposed to the internal history of a language system. E.g. it is part of the external history of English that it was brought to Britain by immigration in the Dark Ages, that it came to be written in a version of the Roman alphabet, that many people spoke both English and French in the Middle Ages, that it was spread to North America in the 17th century, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

‘externalized language’

= E-language.

Back  -    New Search

external sandhi.

Processes of phonological modification (sandhi) that take place at or across word boundaries. Thus, by one common process of external sandhi in English, an initial [s] in words like steak is assimilated to an [] in e.g. fish steak.

Back  -    New Search

extraction.

Any syntactic process by which something is moved from within a clause or other unit to a position outside it. E.g. in You said [who was there], who is an element within the subordinate clause; in Who did you say [was there]?, it is seen as extracted from that position to become an element in the main clause.

Back  -    New Search

extrametrical.

(Syllable, etc.) seen, originally in Metrical Phonology, as irrelevant to the definition of a metrical structure. E.g. in Latin, the position of the accent depended on the quantity or weight of the next to last syllable in a word. But that of the final syllable did not matter: therefore, in establishing the structure to which the rule of accentuation applied, the final syllable is ‘extrametrical’.

Back  -    New Search

extraposition.

Construction of e.g. It's wonderful [to see you], It amazes me [that you have done it so fast], It was odd [meeting her in New York]. By implication, the unit enclosed in brackets is ‘extraposed’ from a formally basic, though often in practice far less usual, position at the beginning: [To see you] is wonderful, and so on.
Also of constructions in which an element is detached e.g. from a head noun. Thus the relative clause who wanted to see you would be ‘extraposed’, in some accounts, in The man is here who wanted to see you.

Back  -    New Search

extrinsic allophone.

One which is not intrinsic.

Back  -    New Search

extrinsic ordering.

See ordered rules.

Back  -    New Search

F

F_0

= fundamental frequency.

Back  -    New Search

F_1, F_2.

See formant (1).

Back  -    New Search

‘face’.

Developed as a technical term in explaining ways of being polite. If one is ordered about by other people one will, in the ordinary sense, ‘lose face’: one's self-respect and freedom of action will be diminished. Hence a tendency for people not to give direct orders; instead a request will be put in the form of a question (‘Could you come and hold this?’), making clear its slightness and that it is just a request (‘Could you perhaps come and hold this for a second?’), and so on. In an account by P. Brown and S. C. Levinson in the late 1970s, face is defined as a basic ‘want’ of individuals, and analysed into negative face (the want that one's freedom of action should not be impeded by others) and positive face (the want that one's own wants should be desirable to others also). The basic strategy of politeness is to minimize the threat to an addressee's ‘negative face’ and enhance their ‘positive face’ as much as possible.

Back  -    New Search

factitive.

(Verb) denoting an action or process that leads to a result. E.g. kill or make: to kill someone or something is to produce the result that they are dead; to make something or to make someone happy has the result that the thing exists or the person is happy.

Back  -    New Search

factive.

(Verb, etc.) whose use commits a speaker to the truth of a subordinate proposition. E.g. know or realize: to say She doesn't know (or She hasn't realized) that it has stopped raining is to commit oneself to the truth of ‘It has stopped raining’. Think, by contrast, is non-factive : one makes no such commitment if one says She thinks it has stopped raining.

Back  -    New Search

facultative

= optional.

Back  -    New Search

‘fading’

(of meaning) = bleaching.

Back  -    New Search

Faeroese.

North Germanic, spoken in the Faeroe Islands in the north Atlantic.

Back  -    New Search

falling.

1 (Diphthong) of which the first part or element is the more prominent: e.g. [] in boy as opposed to [j:] or [:] in your.

2 (Tone, intonation) in which the pitch falls from relatively high to relatively low. Opp. rising in both senses.
Top

Back  -    New Search

fall-rise.

Intonational contour in which there is a fall followed by a rise on the same tonic or nucleus: e.g. in southern British English, in questions such as When will dinner be REAdy?

Back  -    New Search

‘false friend’.

A word in one language which sounds like one in another and may be taken by mistake as having the same meaning. E.g. English cold and German kalt mean ‘cold’; therefore one misunderstands Italian or Spanish caldo ‘hot’ as also meaning ‘cold’.

Back  -    New Search

falsetto.

Voice quality in which voiced sounds are produced with the vocal cords stretched and therefore thinner. Hence with a higher range of fundamental frequency, perceived as a higher pitch range.

Back  -    New Search

familiar form.

Pronoun, form of verb, etc. used in addressing, among others, close friends: e.g. German du or French tu (familiar second-person singular) as opposed to Sie or vous. Cf. polite form; such oppositions are also described, from the forms in French, as holding between ‘T’ and ‘V’ forms.

Back  -    New Search

family.

A group of languages that have developed from a single ancestor: e.g. Indo-European, of which English is one of many members.
Cf. branch; phylum; stock. Some linguists have tried to apply such terms to different levels in a hierarchy, on the analogy of ‘genus’, ‘order’, etc. in biology. E.g. Indo-European is a ‘family’; any groups above it would be variously or successively ‘superfamilies’, ‘macrofamilies’, ‘stocks’, ‘superstocks’, or ‘phyla’; those below it will be ‘subfamilies’, in turn divided into ‘branches’, ‘groups’, etc. But such distinctions are not established consistently, and generally imply more than we do or can know. A safer alternative is to speak of a family whenever a common origin can be accepted as certain (thus Indo- European or e.g. Austronesian), and of branches, larger or smaller, within it (e.g. Indo-Iranian and, within that, Iranian). When a common origin is speculative or less firmly supported, one may simply talk of a ‘conjectural family’ (e.g. ‘Nostratic’), a ‘proposed family’ (e.g. Austro-Asiatic), or a ‘probable family’.

Back  -    New Search

‘family resemblance’.

Wittgenstein's description of the links between different uses of a word. E.g. point may be used of the tip of a dagger or a needle, of a point of land sticking into the sea, of a mark on paper made by a point, of a point on a scale, and so on. There is no single property that these and only these have in common, but there are similarities, as among people in a family, that link each of them to the others.
Taken up by linguists especially in the 1980s; often associated, and occasionally confused, with ideas in prototype theory.

Back  -    New Search

‘family tree’.

See genetic classification; Stammbaum model.

Back  -    New Search

Fanagalo.

See Zulu.

Back  -    New Search

Farsi.

See Persian.

Back  -    New Search

favourite sentence-forms.

Bloomfield's term for the sentence constructions predominant in a given language: e.g. in English, the constructions of subject and predicate, or of imperatives without subjects. Opposed at the other extreme to those of minor sentences such as Ouch! or Thank you.

Back  -    New Search

feature.

Any property of or assigned to a unit. Originally in phonology, where often restricted to distinctive features. Thus [i:] in beat is phonetically and phonologically a front vowel: that is, it has the feature ‘front’. Thence to other types of unit: e.g. in a componential analysis of word meaning, woman has the features ‘adult’ and ‘female’: that is, it denotes people who are both adult and female.
Often formulated as a variable. Thus [front] or [± front] represents a variable feature with the values [+ front] (front) and [- front] (not front; i.e. back). Units themselves are often described as bundles of features: thus the vowel in beat would be constituted as a phonological unit precisely by the bundle of features which distinguish it from others: ‘vocalic’ (or [+ vocalic]), ‘front’ (or [+ front]), and so on.

Back  -    New Search

feature matrix.

A two-dimensional display of the phonetic features characterizing each of a sequence of phonological segments. In the illustration, the features on the left are those proposed by Jakobson in the 1950s: each has two values, the positive (e.g. vocalic or [+ vocalic]) first, the negative second. In the table the value of each is shown, where applicable, for each of the successive units of pin. Thus, in the first column, [p] has a negative value for the feature ‘vocalic/non-vocalic’ and a positive value for ‘consonantal/non-consonantal’; these values are those of every consonant in English except [r] and [l]. In the third row, [p] has the negative value ‘diffuse’ for the feature ‘compact/diffuse’, and so on. Where the distinction does not apply the space is blank.
A distinctive feature matrix (or DF-matrix ) is strictly one, like this, displaying distinctive features only.

p

i

n

Vocalic/non-vocalic

-

+

-

consonantal/non-consonantal

+

-

+

compact/diffuse

-

-

-

grave/acute

+

-

-

nasal/oral

-

+

tense/lax

+

continuant/interrupted

-

A feature matrix

Back  -    New Search

feature spreading.

Term in Autosegmental Phonology for the extension of a feature, e.g. of tone, to an adjacent element not already associated with such a feature.

Back  -    New Search

feeding.

The relation between rules which are ordered in such a way that the application of the earlier rule enlarges the set of forms that the later will apply to. Especially in Generative Phonology: e.g. a rule by which a front vowel is inserted between two consonants might feed a later rule by which velars are palatalized before a front vowel. Opp. bleeding; cf. counter-feeding, counter-bleeding.

Back  -    New Search

felicity conditions.

The conditions that a performative must meet if it is to be appropriate or successful. E.g. the performative ‘I pronounce you man and wife’ will be effective in marrying people only under the conditions that the person uttering it is qualified to solemnize marriages, that it forms part of a marriage ceremony, that the couple have agreed to marry, and so on.
Introduced by Austin on the model of truth conditions: elaborated by J. R. Searle for speech acts generally.

Back  -    New Search

feminine (FEM).

Gender (1) of words characterized as a class by nouns denoting females. Thus French femme ‘woman’ is a feminine noun; in la femme ‘the woman’ la ‘the-FEM’ is the feminine form of the article; in English, by extension, she is a feminine pronoun.

Back  -    New Search

field.

Generally of a network of paradigmatic relations that units of a language enter into, or of a conceptual or other area that such a network covers. Hence especially of semantic fields: also e.g. in the distinction by Pike between a field view of language and a ‘particle’ or a ‘wave’ view.

Back  -    New Search

figurative.

(Sense, use) which is an extension of a basic or literal meaning. E.g. blossom has a figurative sense , or is used figuratively , in She is really blossoming, the basic sense being of plants rather than people.
From the traditional concept of figures of speech. ‘Figurative language’ refers similarly to a style employing ‘figures’.

Back  -    New Search

figure of speech.

Ancient term for any form of expression in which the normal use of language is manipulated, stretched, or altered for rhetorical effect. E.g. in metaphor, a word which is normally used with reference to one domain is extended to another; in a figure such as chiasmus, words are placed in a deliberately striking order.
Many individual figures, such as these, are distinguished in traditional western rhetoric. Some, like metaphor, have been taken over directly into linguistics, e.g. in typologies of semantic change.

Back  -    New Search

Fijian.

Austronesian, of the Polynesian branch; spoken by the indigenous people of Fiji.

Back  -    New Search

‘filled pause’.

A period in which a speaker is uttering a hesitation form (English [:], [mm], etc.).

Back  -    New Search

filler.

Any unit or class of units seen as occupying a slot in a construction or similar structure: e.g. it fills the object slot (i.e. it has the role or function of object) in I cooked it, and is one of a class of pronouns (her, them, etc.) that is in general one of its fillers.

Back  -    New Search

filter.

A rule, principle, etc., formulated as an output condition on structures at some level of representation. Filters may be very specific (e.g. the proposed that-trace filter) or very general. Thus in terms of Government and Binding Theory a form like Mary loves themselves contains an anaphor (themselves) which is not bound (2) by an antecedent: it will therefore be ‘filtered out’ by an output condition which requires that anaphors should be so bound.

Back  -    New Search

final.

1 In the ordinary sense: e.g. in Portuguese, vowels are lost or reduced in final unstressed syllables.

2 =purposive. Thus, in Latin grammar, a final clause is one translatable by ‘in order to’: i.e. one which indicates a purpose or ‘end’ (finis).
Top

Back  -    New Search

finite clause.

A clause one of whose elements is a finite verb: e.g. the subordinate clause in Accept that it has broken, as opposed e.g. to the construction with an infinitive in Expect it to break. Cf. tensed.

Back  -    New Search

finite state grammar.

A form of grammar in which sentences are characterized in terms of the transitions of an automaton from one state to another. E.g. for The man left, the machine is first in an initial state; in changing to a second state it writes the; in changing to a third it writes man; in changing to a fourth it writes left. A grammar will therefore specify all the sequences of states that the automaton may successively be in, and what word must be written in each transition from each state in a specific sequence to the next. It follows that what can be written at each stage depends solely on the state the automaton is in at that point and the transitions that are possible from it.
Formulated by Chomsky in the 1950s in order to make clear its inadequacy.

Back  -    New Search

finite state Markov process

= finite state grammar.

Back  -    New Search

finite verb.

Traditionally a verb, e.g. in Latin or Greek, inflected for person and number. Now more generally of any verb whose form is such that it can stand in a simple declarative sentence: e.g. Latin veni (‘came-1SG’) ‘I came’; English came in I came or was (standing) as in He was standing. Opp. non-finite, infinitive; cf. tensed.

Back  -    New Search

Finnic.

See Finno-Ugric.

Back  -    New Search

Finnish.

Finno-Ugric, spoken largely in Finland. The standard language is based mainly on the dialect of the extreme south-west, attested in writing from the early 16th century.

Back  -    New Search

Finno-Ugric.

Family of languages, generally subsumed with Samoyedic under Uralic. Traditionally divided into Ugric , of which the main representative is Hungarian, and Finno-Permic: this in turn includes Finnic (Finnish, Estonian, and others in the Baltic region), Sami (Lappish), Permic (in the region of the Urals), and others in the former Soviet Union.
The term is also used of Uralic as a whole.

Back  -    New Search

‘First Grammarian’.

The anonymous author of the ‘First Grammatical Treatise’ of Old Icelandic.

Back  -    New Search

first language.

The language someone acquires first. Often, therefore, in a sense equivalent to native language; also of the language mainly used by an individual or a community. Cf. second language.

Back  -    New Search

first person (1ST).

See person. For first-person inclusive vs. exclusive see inclusive, exclusive.

Back  -    New Search

‘First Sound Shift’.

See Grimm's Law.

Back  -    New Search

Firth, John Rupert

(1890–1960)
. From 1944 the first professor of general linguistics in Britain. Distinguished from other theorists of his generation by his insistence that language should be studied as part of a social process. A linguist's data were for him events embedded in specific contexts, and linguistics in general was concerned with the techniques by which they are handled across a spectrum of varying levels of abstraction. Hence, in particular, an emphasis on context at all points, and a profound disagreement with the prevailing view of Saussure and his followers, in which the object of study was an integrated language system seen as a reality underlying speech.
Prosodic Phonology was developed by Firth and others from the late 1940s, and reflects the polysystemic principle by which systems of contrasting elements are established at specific points, within a contextual framework at an appropriate level of abstraction, and not, again, as part of a single overall system independent of the data.

Back  -    New Search

fixed (1).

(Accent) whose position is determined by a phonological rule. E.g. Latin had a fixed stress accent, whose position in a word was determined by its syllabic structure. Opp. free (3).

Back  -    New Search

fixed (2).

(Order of elements) wholly or largely determined by rules, e.g. that of subject and verb in English: Jane arrived, not Arrived Jane. Opp. free (4).
A language with ‘fixed word order’ is one in which the order both of phrases and of words within phrases is fixed in this sense.

Back  -    New Search

fixed expression.

Any expression which offers a ready-made way of saying something. E.g. ‘nurse back to health’ in He nursed her back to health: cf. nursed her into health, nursed her out of illness, or helped her back to health, which are not ready-made and which one is much less likely to say.
Distinctions between ‘fixed’ or ‘set’ expressions, frozen expressions, idioms, formulae, etc. are at best variably and hazily drawn.

Back  -    New Search

flap.

Consonant in which one articulator strikes the other with a sliding motion: e.g. the r of Spanish pero [pero]. Distinguishable at least in principle from a tap, in which there is no sliding motion.

Back  -    New Search

flat.

Distinctive feature in the scheme proposed by Jakobson. Retroflex and pharyngealized consonants, in particular, are flat; dentals or alveolars with which these contrast are non-flat or plain.

Back  -    New Search

‘flat structure’.

One represented by a phrase structure tree with few branching nodes. Languages said to have ‘flat structures’ are effectively those called non-configurational languages.

Back  -    New Search

flectional

= inflecting.

Back  -    New Search

Flemish.

Dutch spoken in Belgium.

Back  -    New Search

floating quantifier.

A quantifier (2) detached from a noun phrase by quantifier floating.

Back  -    New Search

floating tone.

A tone in a tone language which is not associated, at an underlying level of representation, with a syllable or other segment. Posited, especially in some African languages, to explain an effect on neighbouring tones: e.g. in a form with two syllables (), a pattern of high tone plus falling tone ( ) might derive from an underlying pattern of high plus floating high plus low ( ´ ).

Back  -    New Search

‘floor apportionment’.

Term in Conversation Analysis for the division of time, in accordance with a hypothetical ‘turn-taking system’, among different speakers. Likewise ‘yielding the floor’ or ‘holding the floor’ , respectively for being replaced by another speaker and for continuing to speak.

Back  -    New Search

flout.

Technically, in pragmatics, of the conscious non-observance of a maxim of conversation. E.g. A might ask B ‘How much did you pay for your house?’ B replies ‘What a beautiful tie you are wearing’. In this way B flouts a maxim by which contributions to an interchange should be relevant; but the failure to observe it indicates to A that the question is not one that is going to be answered.

Back  -    New Search

focal area.

An area within a geographical region from which changes in language tend to spread, in accordance with a wave model, to peripheral areas.

Back  -    New Search

focus.

An element or part of a sentence given prominence by intonational or other means. Usually where there is contrast or emphasis, or a distinction of new vs. given: e.g. certainly in I ´CERtainly can or can in I certainly ´CAN; was in the pseudo-cleft It `WAS me who did it, or me in It was `ME who did it. Other means include, in particular, clitics or other particles marking focused elements. Also used in a sense like that of comment.

Back  -    New Search

focused interrogative.

An interrogative in which questioning is focused on a specific element in the construction. E.g. in Who is coming? it is focused on the subject (who), in Whose coat is this? on a possessive modifier (whose), in How did they do it? on an adverbial, and so on.
Often called a wh-interrogative or ‘wh-question’; x-question has also been suggested. Opp. polar interrogative.

Back  -    New Search

focusing subjunct.

Used by Quirk et al., CGE, of adverbs such as only or also in He only visited Mary or He also visited Mary. Thus in the first example the focus might be Mary (‘Mary was the only person he visited’), or visited Mary (‘The only thing he did was visit Mary’), or just visited (He only `VIsited Mary). Cf. subjunct.

Back  -    New Search

folk etymology

= popular etymology.

Back  -    New Search

folk taxonomy.

A taxonomy implicit in the sense relations between lexical units, as opposed to one developed for scientific purposes. Thus a tomato is, in scientific terms, a fruit. But in the lexicon of English the word tomato is a hyponym not of fruit but of vegetable: this implies a folk taxonomy which, in that respect at least, is different.

Back  -    New Search

foot.

A rhythmical unit in speech consisting of one or more syllables grouped together e.g. with respect to their stress pattern. Thus a foot in English is often defined as a stressed syllable plus any following unstressed syllables that intervene before the next stress. Alternatively, if the boundaries of feet can be defined independently, the patterns of stress may be seen as in part determined by them. An important unit, accordingly, in some versions of Metrical Phonology.
Originally of a rhythmical unit in verse whose type was defined in Ancient Greek or Latin by a pattern of heavy and light (traditionally ‘long’ and ‘short’) syllables. But the divisions conventionally made in English verse do not coincide with those of the phonological unit. E.g. the first line of Paradise Lost traditionally has five feet each in principle of two syllables. But in a natural reading four syllables might be stressed, and the divisions between phonological feet would, by the definition given, be: Of | MAN'S|FIRST diso|BEdience and the|FRUIT.

Back  -    New Search

foregrounded.

The opposite of backgrounded.

Back  -    New Search

‘foreigner talk’.

Simplified or supposedly simplified forms used by speakers of a language to foreigners presumed to have a poor understanding of it: e.g. No put there as a simplification of Don't put it there. Historically an important factor in the development of pidgins.

Back  -    New Search

form.

1 A realization of a combination of units in a language: e.g. Come away is as a whole a form, which includes a form away, which in turn includes a form a-

2 A structure of relations among linguistic units, considered in abstraction, as especially in the account of Hjelmslev, from any corresponding substance.
Top

Back  -    New Search

formal.

1 Based on form rather than meaning. Thus a formal definition of a word class might refer to the distributions of its members, while a semantic or notional definition might refer to a type of process, entity, etc. that they denote.

2 Developed as a mathematical system. Thus a formal grammar is a set of rules that precisely specifies a set e.g. of strings formed by an operation of concatenation; a formal language is a set so specified.
The earliest generative grammars were formal in both senses. By extension from the second, the term has often been used to mean no more than ‘explicit’, ‘cast in quasi-mathematical notation’, etc.
Top

Back  -    New Search

formal vs. informal style.

Defined by a relation between aspects of the forms and structures employed and a range of contexts or situations in which they are appropriate. E.g. in the formal style of a scholarly paper or legal document, words will be longer and constructions will be more complex and without ellipsis: in a casual conversation, the opposite. A broad distinction of degree: details are best referred to the descriptions of specific registers (1).
Polite forms or honorifics are described as ‘formal’ in a similar sense.

Back  -    New Search

formalization.

An account or formulation that is formal (2): especially, in linguistics, of a model of grammar or some part of grammar.

Back  -    New Search

formal semantics.

Branch of philosophy concerned with the assigning of precise interpretations to expressions in artificial systems of mathematics or logic. Thus especially, in the philosophy of science in the mid-20th century, in accounts of scientific theories, conceived as calculi interpreted with respect to some empirical domain. Thence, in linguistics, of a similar interpretation of languages, on the assumption, due originally to Montague Grammar in particular, that it is illuminating to represent them, at a sufficient level of abstraction from the phenomena of speech, as systems of the same kind.

Back  -    New Search

formal universal.

Chomsky's term in the mid-1960s for an abstract condition on the form that, hypothetically, the generative grammar of any language may take. Thus it might be an abstract condition on rules and representations in phonology that all features should be binary, or, in syntax, that, at a certain level, all rules are phrase structure rules.
Opp. substantive universal. But as Chomsky's theory developed the distinction became increasingly artificial. E.g. if the format of rules in X-bar syntax is universal, do ‘Spec’ or ‘Comp’ represent formal conditions on them, or substantive categories or relations?

Back  -    New Search

formant (1).

A peak of acoustic energy centred on one point in the range of frequencies covered by the spectrum of a vowel. Vowels have several formants, but the distinctions as perceived between them lie, in particular, in the three lowest. In e.g. [i], the lowest or first formant (F_1) is centred on a frequency below 300 Hz, while the second (F_2) and third are high, around 2,000 and 2,500 Hz. In [a], by contrast, they are spaced more evenly over a marginally narrower range.
Changes in the frequencies of formants can be displayed by a sound spectrogram. A formant chart is a plotting of one formant against another (typically F_1 against F_2). When a vowel is preceded or followed by a consonant, changes in the shape of the vocal tract are reflected by rapid shifts in formant frequencies: the direction of such formant transitions is the main acoustic feature distinguishing stops such as [p], [t], and [k].

Back  -    New Search

formant (2)

= formative.

Back  -    New Search

formation.

Any specific process by which a unit is formed from one or more other units. Thus an inflectional formation by which present participles in English are formed by the addition of -ing: sing singing. Also a compound formation by which e.g. ballpoint is formed from ball and point.

Back  -    New Search

formative.

An affix or other element within a word which is introduced by a morphological process. E.g. in destroyers, -er and -s are formatives introduced by successive processes of suffixation: destroy destroy + er destroyer + s. 2 . Also used, e.g. by Chomsky in the mid-1960s, of a minimal unit of syntax equivalent to the morpheme.

Back  -    New Search

form class.

Bloomfield's term for a syntactic category.

Back  -    New Search

Formosan.

The indigenous languages of Taiwan, which form a branch of Austronesian.

Back  -    New Search

forms of address.

Any of the distinct forms that speakers must or will normally use to addressees who are e.g. of different social standing or with whom their personal relationships are different. Thus addressee-controlled honorifics, familiar forms vs. polite forms, forenames or surnames, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

formula.

A specific form of words used in a specific context: thus especially in ritual (e.g. recital of a Christian creed), or in other ritualized activities (e.g. ‘Return to Manchester, please’ in buying a train ticket). Thence to other ready-made forms: e.g. those used by oral poets or story-tellers as building blocks in composition, or fixed expressions generally.
‘Formulaic discourse’ or ‘formulaic language’ has a structure built on formulae, especially in stricter senses.

Back  -    New Search

form word.

A word which has grammatical meaning. E.g. a is a form word (or grammatical word or function word) in a cow.

Back  -    New Search

fortis.

(Consonant) articulated, or claimed to be articulated, with higher muscular tension. Traditionally of voiceless consonants as opposed to voiced.
From Latin fortis ‘strong’. Opp. lenis: cf. tense (2) vs. lax.

Back  -    New Search

fortition.

Any change or process by which a sound is, or is conceived as being, ‘strengthened’; e.g. a sound change by which [t] > [tt], where a longer closure is seen as requiring greater effort of articulation. Opp., and modelled on, lenition.

Back  -    New Search

fossilized.

(Form, construction) no longer used freely. Thus the hue of hue and cry is a fossilized form used only in that phrase or, possibly, in allusion to it; a sentence like The devil take the hindmost! has a fossilized construction in which subjects, verbs, etc. cannot be freely combined.

Back  -    New Search

‘fourth person’.

Usually = obviative.

Back  -    New Search

fragment.

See sentence fragment.

Back  -    New Search

frame.

Any representation of a context, within a sentence, etc., in which linguistic units can appear. E.g. adjectives, such as happy or helpful, are among the units that can fill the blank (—) in the frame the—people.
Originally as a tool in the analysis of distributions: see substitution frame. Subsequently as a representation in the lexicon of constructions in which units can be used: see Case Grammar (for case frames), subcategorization (for subcategorization frames).

Back  -    New Search

Franco-Provençal.

Philologists' term for the Romance dialects spoken or once spoken in an area including the west of Switzerland, the Val d'Aosta in north-west Italy, and in adjoining areas of France as far as a point west of Lyons.

Back  -    New Search

free (1).

(Morpheme) which can stand as a word on its own: thus kind in unkind is a free form , whereas un-, since it is not a word on its own, is a bound form.

Back  -    New Search

free (2).

(Pronoun, etc.) that is not linked syntactically to an antecedent: e.g. he is free in the domain formed by the sentence I knew he would come.
Opp. bound (2). The sense is derived from use in logic, where a variable is ‘free’ if it must be assigned a value for the expression which contains it to be meaningful.

Back  -    New Search

free (3).

(Accent) which can fall in principle on any syllable. E.g. Italian has a virtually free stress accent, falling in some words on the final syllable, in others on the penultimate, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

free (4).

(Word order) which is not determined by a rule of syntax: opp. fixed (2). A language with ‘free word order’ is accordingly one in which the order of syntactic elements varies according to the context in which someone is speaking, for rhetorical effect, and so on.
Many languages have, to a greater or lesser degree, a free phrase order . E.g. in Italian a subject and a verb might be in either order: Il mio amico (lit. ‘the my friend’) è arrivato (lit. ‘is arrived’), or, with verb first, È arrivato il mio amico ‘My friend has arrived’. But within these phrases the order of words cannot vary. Other languages, such as Latin or Ancient Greek, have ‘free word order’ in a stricter sense: i.e. in many constructions words which stand in a close syntactic relation may be separated, e.g. in a specific context or for rhetorical effect, by others to which neither, or only one, relates directly. Thus in Latin an adjective could easily be separated from the noun it modifies, by a preposition (paucis post diebus ‘(a) few after days’), by a verb, or by a succession of words in various relationships.

Back  -    New Search

free indirect style.

Style of e.g. literary narrative in which events, etc. are presented from the viewpoint of a character as well as that of the narrator. In ‘Plainly she was going to ask him tomorrow’, the past tense (was) and third person pronoun (him) are appropriate to the ‘present’ time of the narration and the ‘I’ of the narrator: cf., in indirect speech, He thought she was going to ask him the day after. But the adverb of time (tomorrow) refers to the future as seen by a character who thinks the other character (‘she’) will do this: cf., in direct speech, He thought ‘She is going to ask me tomorrow’.
From French (‘style indirect libre’): see also empathy.

Back  -    New Search

free relative clause.

A clause whose structure is or is like that of a relative clause but whose role in a larger construction is that of a noun phrase; e.g. whatever she wants in Whatever she wants she gets, or the archaic who dares in Who dares wins. Also called a nominal relative clause .

Back  -    New Search

‘free ride’.

The derivation of a form by means of a rule already posited for some other purpose. Thus a rule was posited, in terms of Generative Phonology, by which e.g. [d'vn] (divine) was derived from underlying [divn]: the purpose of this was to explain its alternation with [dvn] (in divinity). But then, by a ‘free ride’ on the same rule, the [] of e.g. fine, which was involved in no alternation, could also be derived from underlying [].
The derivation was ‘free’ in the sense that the measure in the proposed evaluation procedure was of rules alone. The perceived advantage was that [] could then be eliminated as an element in underlying forms.

Back  -    New Search

free variation.

The relation between sounds or forms which have similar or partly similar distributions but are not described as being in contrast. E.g. for some speakers of English, a flapped r [] may be in free variation with a continuant [].
In a strict sense, free variation might be defined as variation which does not correlate with any other variable, e.g. context in a word or sentence, or the style of speech or social background of a speaker. But its use will normally reflect the criteria for contrast in a given investigation. E.g. [dri:md] and [drmpt] (both written dreamed) might be treated as free variants in a study of morphology, but not in stylistics or sociolinguistics.

Back  -    New Search

French.

Romance, spoken mainly in France; also in south Belgium, west Switzerland, and elsewhere through colonization, both as a native language (notably Québecois in Canada) and as a second language, e.g. in Africa. The standard language is in origin the dialect of the Ile de France, which includes Paris.
Attested in a form distinct from Latin from the 9th century, and with an extensive literature from the 11th; Old French refers to the language of north France and originally of the ruling class in England and in the Crusader and other kingdoms in the Mediterranean, by convention until the mid-14th century.

Back  -    New Search

frequentative.

(Inflection, etc.) indicating frequent repetition: thus, schematically, She telephone-FREQ ‘She keeps on telephoning’. Cf. iterative.

Back  -    New Search

fricative ['frktv].

Consonant in which the space between articulators is constricted to the point at which an air flow passes through with audible turbulence. E.g. [f] in feel or [v] in veal are labiodental fricatives, with turbulence originating at the point where air flows outwards through a channel constricted by the close approximation of the lower lip and upper teeth.

Back  -    New Search

frictionless continuant.

See continuant.

Back  -    New Search

Frisian.

Germanic language most clearly related, within West Germanic, to English; spoken mainly in the Dutch province of Friesland, where it is losing speakers to Dutch, and, in different forms, in parts of north-west Germany.

Back  -    New Search

Friulan.

Rhaeto-Romance dialect spoken in the extreme north-east of Italy, in an area centred on Udine. Important regionally, with speakers still in six figures.

Back  -    New Search

front.

(Vowel) articulated with the highest point of the tongue towards the front of the mouth: e.g. [i:] in seen. Opp. back; also central.
Hence [± front] as a distinctive feature in phonology.

Back  -    New Search

fronting.

Any syntactic process by which elements are moved to a marked position at the beginning of a sentence. E.g. the object (that problem) is fronted in That problem I can't solve; a verb and its complement (climb that) in Climb THAT I `CAN'T.

Back  -    New Search

frozen expression.

Often = fixed expression. But it could in principle be restricted e.g. to one which includes a fossilized word that is normal in that combination only: e.g. spick and span, go berserk.

Back  -    New Search

FSP

= Functional Sentence Perspective.

Back  -    New Search

f-structure.

One of two levels of syntax in Lexical-Functional Grammar.

Back  -    New Search

Fula.

African language whose speakers are distributed over much of the northern part of West Africa, from the interior of Senegal and Guinea to northern Cameroon. Major dialects are especially in the west of this range, and in the region of Sokoto and elsewhere in northern Nigeria. Grouped with Wolof and others as West Atlantic.

Back  -    New Search

full sentence.

Bloomfield's term for a sentence that is not a minor sentence: defined as an instance of a favourite sentence-form.

Back  -    New Search

full word.

One whose meaning is lexical rather than grammatical. Thus, in particular, a full verb , such as come in could have come, as opposed to the auxiliaries could and have.

Back  -    New Search

function.

1 Used very widely of the part that a unit plays in a larger structure. E.g. in I met my brother, the phrase my brother has the function or ‘role’ of direct object: i.e. it plays the part of direct object in a larger construction of which that is one element. Following the question ‘Can you come?’, the utterance ‘Yes’ would function as an answer: i.e. it plays that part in a larger question-answer interchange. The formula ‘Let us pray’ has a function, with other elements such as kneeling, in a larger ceremony of worship, and so on. Cf. functional linguistics; functional syntax; functions of language; syntactic function.

2 Other uses reflect a mathematician's sense of functions as dependencies between variables: hence especially, as in other disciplines, (the value of) x may vary ‘as a function of’ (that of) y.
Top

Back  -    New Search

Functional Grammar.

Model of functional syntax developed since the late 1970s by S. C. Dik and his followers. Basically an account of clause structure in which functions are distinguished separately on three levels: e.g., in Bill left yesterday, Bill has the syntactic function of subject and the semantic function of agent; it might also have the pragmatic function of theme. Semantic functions are associated with predicates (2) in the lexicon (e.g. agent with leave), and the nucleus (1) of a clause (e.g. that represented by Bill left) may also be extended by satellites (e.g. that represented by yesterday in Bill left yesterday); syntactic functions are then assigned to its elements; then pragmatic functions. A clear distinction is drawn between the rules by which this functional structure is established, and the ‘expression rules’ which specify the ways in which it is realized, by order, intonation, cases or prepositions, the voice of the verb, and so on. Of these, the order of elements in particular is determined, as far as the structure of a given language allows, by a universal principle.

Back  -    New Search

functional linguistics.

Label adopted by various schools of linguists who wish to emphasize the attention given in their theories to the functions of language in general, or to those of specific features in particular textual or other contexts. E.g. the ‘functionalism’ of the Prague School, of Martinet, etc. seen in opposition to forms of structuralism in which the system of a language is explicitly studied in abstraction from its functions.

Back  -    New Search

Functional Sentence Perspective.

A model of the information structure of sentences, developed in the early 1960s by J. Firbas and others in the tradition of the pre-war Prague School. Parts of a sentence representing given information are said to have the lowest degree of communicative dynamism (or CD ): i.e. the amount that, in context, they communicate to addressees is the least. These form the theme : cf. theme (1). Parts representing new information have the highest degree: these form the rheme . Parts which have an intermediate degree are sometimes said to form a transition between theme and rheme.
Suppose e.g. that A asks ‘Who bought it?’. B might reply ‘JOHN bought it’, with (in this context) bought it as theme and John as rheme. In languages such as Czech, where the order of elements is more free (4) than in English, parts with the lowest degree of communicative dynamism tend to come first in the sentence and parts with the highest to come last: schematically, in the same context, bought-3SG it John. By a general principle this is taken to be, if all else is equal, the natural order.

Back  -    New Search

functional syntax.

1 A treatment of syntax in which syntactic functions, such as subject and object, are primitive or at least central.

2 A treatment of syntax in which aspects of the construction of sentences are explained by, or related to, the functions that they play in communication.
Some accounts are ‘functional’ primarily in sense 1, others primarily in sense 2. But there is a widespread implication that, at some deeper level, the senses are the same.
Top

Back  -    New Search

functional yield.

The number of minimal pairs distinguished by a given opposition between phonemes. E.g. there is a distinction for some speakers of English between voiceless [] (in which, when, whin) and voiced [w] (in witch, wen, win). But pairs such as these are few; therefore its functional yield is low. By contrast, that of [p] vs. [k] is very high.
Also called ‘functional load’ . A low value has often been seen as a factor in the loss of oppositions: e.g. the loss, for many other speakers, of [] vs. [w].

Back  -    New Search

functions of language.

Any of the kinds of things that can be done in, or through the use of, language. Thus an utterance may give information, show that the speaker is angry, try to get someone to do something, and so on.
Two influential typologies are those of Bühler in the 1930s and Jakobson in 1960. Bühler's distinguishes the Darstellung ‘representation’ function (that of representing states of the world) from the Ausdruck ‘expression’ function (in reflecting states of mind of the speaker) and the Appell (lit. ‘appeal’) function, in being directed towards a hearer. In Jakobson's scheme, these are mirrored in large part by the referential, emotive, and conative functions, to which are added three others: the phatic function (of simply maintaining contact between people), the metalingual or metalinguistic (of elucidating the language itself that is being used), and the poetic, defined by attention to the form, as such, of what is said. Among later schemes, that of Lyons in the 1970s distinguishes the descriptive function (corresponding to Bühler's representational or Jakobson's referential) from the social and expressive functions, together classed as interpersonal.

Back  -    New Search

function word.

One with grammatical meaning as opposed to lexical meaning: e.g. the and of are function words (or grammatical words or form words) in the top of Everest.

Back  -    New Search

fundamental frequency.

The frequency with which e.g. a vibrating string vibrates as a whole. Thus, in speech, the fundamental frequency in the production of a vowel is the frequency, as measured in hertz (Hz) = cycles per second, at which the vocal cords are so vibrating.

Back  -    New Search

fusion.

Any process by which units, etc. that are separate at one level of representation are realized by a form in which there is no corresponding boundary. Thus in morphology: e.g. flyer is made up of fly [fl] and -er [], but in some varieties of English [] and [] are fused to a single long vowel (roughly [fla:]). The morphological units fly and -er may then be said to have fused exponents .

Back  -    New Search

fusional.

(Language) in which there is no clear boundary within the word between one morphological unit and another. Cf. inflecting.

Back  -    New Search

futhark.

See Runic alphabet.

Back  -    New Search

future.

See tense.

Back  -    New Search

future perfect.

Form of verb used of a future action or event, seen as prior to some moment of time which is itself still later in the future: thus, in Latin, venero ‘I will have come’ (will have come by e.g. the day after tomorrow) as opposed to the ‘simple future’ veniam ‘I will come’. Thence, in English, of forms like will have come. Cf. perfect.

Back  -    New Search

fuzzy.

Without definite boundaries. Thus a fuzzy set is one whose membership is not determined absolutely; fuzzy logic deals in degrees of truth, instead of an absolute distinction between true and false.

Back  -    New Search

G

Gaelic.

Celtic. Dialects of Irish Gaelic (or Erse) are the native language of parts of west Ireland: a standardized form is taught as a national language in schools in the Irish Republic. Scottish Gaelic has native speakers in parts of north-west Scotland.
First attested by inscriptions in Oghams from the early 1st millennium AD, and by texts in Old Irish (conventionally from the 7th to the 9th century) in Roman spelling. Carried from Ireland to Scotland by emigration in the Dark Ages.

Back  -    New Search

Galician.

Romance, closely related to Portuguese; an official regional language in north-west Spain.

Back  -    New Search

Gallo-Romance.

The forms of Romance (e.g. French) that developed in what is now France.

Back  -    New Search

gap.

See lexical gap; parasitic gap.

Back  -    New Search

gapping.

The deletion of a verb, with or without other elements, from the middle of the second and any subsequent clauses in a sequence related by coordination. E.g. in I liked everything, Jane < > nothing, and her mother < > only some things gapping, shown here by angled brackets, applies to the single element liked; in I will be giving her some help on Monday and Bill < > on Tuesday the elements ‘gapped’ are both the verb and its objects (will be giving her some help).
Cf. stripping.

Back  -    New Search

‘garden path sentence’.

One whose beginning suggests that it has a construction which by the end it clearly does not have. The stock example is The horse raced past the barn fell: raced will be taken at first to be the past tense (cf. The horse rode past the barn), but the whole makes sense only if it is a participle (cf. The horse ridden past the barn fell).

Back  -    New Search

Gaulish.

The form of Continental Celtic spoken in what is now France.

Back  -    New Search

GB

= Government and Binding Theory.

Back  -    New Search

Gê.

See South American languages.

Back  -    New Search

Ge'ez.

South Semitic: formerly spoken in Ethiopia, Ge'ez is still a language of Christian liturgy.

Back  -    New Search

geminate.

Doubled: e.g. the consonant in Italian [at:o] ‘act’ (written atto) is analysed as a geminate, in opposition to a single, consonant. Hence gemination , a change or process by which consonants are doubled.

Back  -    New Search

gender (1).

Grammatical category dividing nouns into classes basically characterizable by reference to sex. The division is therefore between masculine (characterized by nouns denoting males) and feminine (characterized by nouns denoting females), with neuter as the term for a third class characterized by neither. Also extended, in some modern usage, to categories of noun class generally.
Often specifically called grammatical gender , to distinguish it as a grammatical category from ‘natural gender’ as defined by the notional categories partly corresponding to it. Thus girls are ‘naturally’ female, but German Mädchen ‘girl’ is grammatically neuter.

Back  -    New Search

‘gender’ (2).

General term imported from the social sciences for the sex or sexuality of human beings. Thus a difference in speech between men and women is a ‘gender difference’.

Back  -    New Search

General American.

Accent of the majority of speakers of English in the USA, not specific to or strikingly indicative of a particular region, such as the Southern States or New England.

Back  -    New Search

general grammar

= universal grammar (1).

Back  -    New Search

Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar.

Formal model of syntax developed by G. J. M. Gazdar, and subsequently by others, from the end of the 1970s. Basically a phrase structure grammar, but with additional devices, in particular the use of metarules and slash categories, that removed the need, assumed in most theories of generative grammar at the time, for transformations. A passive sentence, for example, is characterized by phrase structure rules derived in part, by a higher-level rule, from those that characterize an active; hence there is no need for a transformation that relates such sentences directly. In an interrogative like Who can you see?, who is related, by a phrase structure rule, to a phrase that must contain a null noun phrase: [can you see NP[ ]]. This removes the need for a transformation (e.g. move ) which would move who from the object position.
The main applications are in computational linguistics, where parsing with phrase structure systems is simple and well understood. Usually linked to a system of semantic interpretation, derived from Montague Grammar, in which semantic rules correspond one-to-one with those of syntax.

Back  -    New Search

‘generalized quantifier’.

Logicians' term for an expression interpreted as representing a set of subsets. Adapted, in formal semantics, to represent the meaning of noun phrases: e.g. some people denotes the set of all subsets of individuals whose members are a subset of people; likewise, e.g. Matthews denotes the set of all subsets whose member is Matthews.
A sentence such as Some people like formal semantics is true if, in a given situation, a property denoted by the predicate (that of liking formal semantics) holds of, in this case, some people. If noun phrases denote generalized quantifiers, a generalized quantifier can accordingly be represented as a function from a property (such as liking formal semantics) to a truth value (true or false in given circumstances).

Back  -    New Search

generalized transformation.

A transformation which combines two separate structures: e.g. one combining those of Mary asked (something) and Bill was happy to form that of Mary asked if Bill was happy. Also called a ‘double-base’ transformation .
Usual in early transformational grammars: the sense was that of transformations generalized beyond the special case of a singulary transformation.

Back  -    New Search

generate.

See generative grammar.

Back  -    New Search

generative capacity.

The capacity of a given type of generative grammar both to generate a specific range of languages and to assign a specific range of structures. Thus the generative capacity of transformational grammars is greater on both counts than that of phrase structure grammars.
The set of languages that can be characterized defines the weak generative capacity; the set of analyses that can be assigned to their sentences the strong generative capacity.

Back  -    New Search

generative dialectology.

The application of Generative Phonology, in the early 1970s, to the description of dialects. Variants of the same form were assigned a common underlying representation in all dialects, with different realizations derived by different phonological rules, by the same rules ordered differently, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

generative grammar.

1 A set of rules (2) which indicate precisely what can be and cannot be a sentence in a language. Formulated by Chomsky in the 1950s as an abstract device interpreted as generating , or producing, a set of strings or sequences of units: a ‘sentence’ was formally a string so generated, and a ‘language’ defined as a set of sentences.

2 Loosely, without the article, of schools or concepts of linguistics based at least historically on the construction of such grammars: thus especially the programme of Chomsky and his followers, the ‘generativist’ schools of Chomskyan origin, and so on.
Phrase structure grammars and transformational grammars were developed as specific types of generative grammar.
Top

Back  -    New Search

Generative Phonology.

Treatment of phonology and morphology developed by Halle and others from the end of the 1950s. In its classic form, the surface structure of each sentence was a configuration of ‘formatives’ or morphemes, each represented in the lexicon by a single feature matrix. Such representations were the input to a set of ordered phonological rules, each conceived as an instruction to change, add, delete, or rearrange features in specific contexts. These resulted in phonetic representations which were in turn feature matrices.
The classic account is that of Chomsky and Halle, SPE (1968). It was widely criticized from the early 1970s, especially for proposing underlying forms that were unjustifiably abstract.

Back  -    New Search

Generative Semantics.

Theory of transformational grammar developed from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s. The original proposal was that a base component of a grammar should directly generate semantic representations of sentences, which would be converted to surface structures with no intervening level of deep structure. This was associated in particular with the view that lexical items were units only at the surface level. But in the 1970s it became clear that the proposed semantic representations could not be assigned by rules of grammar independent of the knowledge, beliefs, etc. of individual speakers. Therefore the break with what was later called the Standard Theory of transformational grammar was in reality far more radical.
Leading proponents included G. P. Lakoff, J. D. McCawley, P. M. Postal, and J. R. Ross, of whom Lakoff has since become an advocate of Cognitive Linguistics.

Back  -    New Search

generic reference.

Reference to the entire class of individuals, events, etc. included in the meaning of an expression, as opposed to specific members of it. Thus grass snakes or the grass snake have generic reference in statements about the species: Grass snakes eat slugs, or The grass snake is not poisonous. By the same token these are generic statements , or express generic propositions . In contrast, the grass snake has non-generic or specific reference in, e.g. I just saw the grass snake.

Back  -    New Search

genetic classification.

The classification of languages according to their presumed development from common ancestors. E.g. French and Spanish are among those classed as Romance languages, since both have developed from Latin. They are also Indo-European languages, with the same hypothetical ancestor as many others across Eurasia. The method of genetic classification is the comparative method.
Cf. typological classification. Genetic relations are commonly represented by tree diagrams, called ‘family trees’ . But the connection with families in the ordinary sense is metaphorical.

Back  -    New Search

Geneva School.

General name for linguists in Geneva either followers of or associated with Saussure. The work of C. Bally, on French stylistics in 1909 and later in his Linguistique générale et linguistique française (4th edn., 1965), is especially important.

Back  -    New Search

genitive (GEN).

Case whose basic role is to mark nouns or noun phrases which are dependents of another noun. Thus, in German, Vaters ‘father-GEN’ in Vaters Buch ‘father's book’; or meines and Vaters (‘my-GEN’, ‘father-GEN’) in das Buch meines Vaters ‘my father's book’. Thence of similar constructions marked by other elements. Thus the construction marked by the clitic -'s in English (Daddy's book or the man next door's book) is also described as genitive; and, in older grammars, the construction with of (the top of the page).
Cf. possessive.

Back  -    New Search

geographical linguistics

= areal linguistics.

Back  -    New Search

Georgian.

The most important language of the South Caucasian (Kartvelian) family, spoken mainly in Georgia in the former Soviet Union. Attested by inscriptions from the 5th century AD and by manuscripts from the 8th. Written in an alphabetic script, called ‘Mkhedruli’, one of two in use in earlier periods: the precise origins of both are uncertain.

Back  -    New Search

German.

West Germanic, spoken mainly in Germany and in Austria, and used with others, as an official language in Switzerland and Luxembourg and as a regional form in the Italian Tyrol and elsewhere. Divided historically into two main dialect areas, Low German , roughly north of a line from south of Magdeburg to the frontier with Belgium, and High German , to the south. The criterion is whether or not forms underwent the so-called ‘Second Sound Shift’ , by which [t] > [ts], e.g. in the word for ‘ten’ (standard High German zehn), [p] > [pf], e.g. in the word for ‘apple’ (Apfel), and so on.
Old High German is the language of the earliest texts (before the late 11th century). The rise and spread of the modern standard was a gradual process, from the early 16th century, when Luther translated the Bible into his own East Saxon dialect, to the 19th.

Back  -    New Search

Germanic.

Branch of Indo-European which includes German, Dutch, English, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, and others living or extinct. The hypothetical common language, Proto-Germanic, is not directly attested.
Traditionally divided into East Germanic (Gothic), North Germanic (Scandinavian), and West Germanic; but prehistoric relationships are now seen as more complex.

Back  -    New Search

gerund.

A nominal form of verbs in Latin: e.g. pugnando (‘fight-GERUND-ABLSG’) ‘by fighting’. Hence a term available for verb forms with a noun-like role in other languages: e.g. English fighting is traditionally a gerund in Fighting used to be fun, as opposed to the participle, also in -ing but with a different syntactic role, in people fighting.

Back  -    New Search

gerundive.

An adjectival form of verbs in Latin: e.g. in Delenda est Carthago (‘destroy-GERUND-NOMSGFEM is Carthage’) ‘Carthage must be destroyed’.

Back  -    New Search

Gesamtbedeutung.

An ‘overall meaning’ seen as covering all the uses of a morphological or other element. E.g. that of a past tense might be described as one of ‘distance from the reality of the present’: this meaning would then be taken to cover reference to events both distanced in time (He came last week) and distanced from what is real or probable (If he came tomorrow …).

Back  -    New Search

gesture.

Any voluntary movement of the body which is significant in a specific community or communities: e.g. raising one's hand in the street in casual greeting, moving one's head backwards as a sign of surprise. The study of gestures is sometimes called kinesics.
An articulatory gesture is a structured movement of the vocal organs which is directed towards a specific articulatory goal: e.g. any pattern of movement that achieves closure of the lips, any that achieves close approximation of the back of the tongue to the soft palate. In Articulatory Phonology gestures are the basic phonetic/phonological units and are seen as orchestrated by a gestural score derived by rule from representations at a higher level.

Back  -    New Search

Gilliéron, Jules

(1854–1926)
. A pioneer in dialect geography, whose first atlas, of the phonetics of the French-speaking Valais of his native Switzerland, appeared in 1881. Later associated with the phonetician P. Rousselot in the programme that led eventually to the publication, in 1902–10, of the Atlas linguistique de la France. The data for this had been obtained on the spot by his co-author, E. Edmont, who had been trained as a very acute observer of sounds.
As a theorist Gilliéron denied that dialects themselves had any objective reality. In monographs based on the atlas, he explored in particular changes in the lexicon, in response e.g. to homonymic clashes that result from sound change (word X, becoming homonymous with Y, is replaced by Z), or to phonetic erosion (word X, having become too short for clear communication, is replaced by Y or extended by an affix). The findings of the atlas have often been cited against the Neogrammarian regularity principle in sound change. But Gilliéron's own etymological studies seem rather to presuppose it.

Back  -    New Search

given.

Known to or recoverable by an addressee, etc. If parent A asks ‘Where are the children?’, parent B might answer ‘Jane's gone to the hairdresser’. In the sentence uttered by B, the subject Jane corresponds to what is given: i.e. Jane is one of the children A has referred to. The remainder, (ha)s gone to the hairdresser, corresponds to what is new : i.e. what A does not know already.
Usually, as in this account, of given vs. new ‘information’. But also of the forms themselves: thus the sentence uttered by B has the information structure ‘given Jane + new (ha)s gone to the hairdresser’.

Back  -    New Search

Glagolitic.

One of two alphabets devised specifically for Slavic languages. Once used widely, especially in the western Balkans, but supplanted by Roman and Cyrillic under pressure variously from the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches.

Back  -    New Search

glide.

Any audible transition from one sound to another. If described as a transition to a following sound it is an on-glide; if described as a transition from a preceding sound it is an off-glide .
Extended to sounds which are themselves seen as transitional or which phonetically resemble glides: e.g. semivowels such as [w] or [j] in will [wl] or you [ju:].

Back  -    New Search

‘gliding vowel’.

A diphthong or triphthong.

Back  -    New Search

global rule.

Defined by G. P. Lakoff in the early 1970s as the most general instance of a derivational constraint.

Back  -    New Search

gloss.

Any explanation of the meaning of a word or expression. Especially of glosses added to texts: e.g. a translation into Old Irish in the margin of a manuscript in Latin. Thence to entries in glossaries or collections of glosses, or in dictionaries.

Back  -    New Search

glossematics.

The theory of linguistic structure developed by Hjelmslev in the 1930s and 1940s.

Back  -    New Search

glossolalia.

‘Speaking in tongues’: i.e. uttering sounds under conditions of religious ecstasy that are believed, wrongly, to be in unknown languages.

Back  -    New Search

glottal.

(Consonant) articulated with the vocal cords. E.g. the glottal stop [?] before initial vowels in most forms of German: die Arbeit [di: ?arbait] ‘the work’.

Back  -    New Search

glottalic.

1 (Airstream mechanism) in which a flow of air is initiated by, or at least partly by, the larynx. See ejective; implosive.

2 (Consonant) = ejective.
Top

Back  -    New Search

‘glottalic theory’.

The hypothesis, advanced by G. Gamkrelidze and others, that the consonants of Indo-European languages have developed from a system that included ejectives: thus, for the dental series, the plosives would be [t'] (ejective), [t], and [d], where earlier reconstructions have [d], [t], and [dh].

Back  -    New Search

glottalized.

Produced with a secondary articulation of the vocal cords: cf. glottal reinforcement. Also in the same sense as ejective. A glottalized tone is one realized by creaky voice.

Back  -    New Search

glottal reinforcement.

Closure of the vocal cords during or partly anticipating a closure at another place of articulation. Common in southern British English for final, or especially for final, [p], [t], and [k].

Back  -    New Search

glottis.

The space between the vocal cords. Thus the glottis is closed in the articulation of a glottal stop.

Back  -    New Search

glottochronology.

Method proposed by M. Swadesh in the 1950s, by which he hoped to determine the date at which genetically related languages diverged. He assumed that every language had a basic vocabulary (defined in practice by a list of 100 or of 200 concepts) whose members are replaced, by internal change or borrowing, at a constant rate. If that assumption is accepted, one can take a set of languages known to be related, and, by comparing their basic vocabularies, one can determine that some diverged more recently than others. If the rate itself is known, one can also determine the dates at which successive protolanguages were spoken.
The method is still trusted by some scholars, especially in disciplines other than linguistics.

Back  -    New Search

glottophagie.

See language murder.

Back  -    New Search

GLOW

= Generative Linguistics in the Old World, an organization promoting cooperation among Chomsky's followers in Europe, Japan, etc.

Back  -    New Search

gnomic ['nmk].

Used in a timeless statement. E.g. the present tense (eat) is gnomic, or has a gnomic use, in Cows eat grass. Cf. generic reference.

Back  -    New Search

goal.

1 = direct object: e.g. me is the goal in Watch me or She kissed me. Sometimes used with specific commitment to localism; often, e.g. by Bloomfield and his followers, without.

2 Case role, especially of syntactic elements identifying the end or goal of a movement: e.g. that of (to) Paris in They got to Paris or They were going to Paris.
Top

Back  -    New Search

‘God's truth’.

Coined by F. W. Householder in 1952, in reference to linguists who believed they were establishing units, categories, etc. with real existence in a language, as opposed to ‘hocus pocus’ linguists, who did not.

Back  -    New Search

Goidelic.

Branch of Celtic principally represented by Irish and Scottish Gaelic.

Back  -    New Search

Gothic.

Germanic language attested mainly by a partial translation of the Bible dating from the second half of the 4th century AD. Traditionally classed as East Germanic, as opposed to North Germanic and West Germanic.

Back  -    New Search

govern.

See dependency; government.

Back  -    New Search

‘governing category’.

Used in Government and Binding Theory in the 1980s of the smallest domain, as defined by categories labelling nodes in a phrase structure tree, within which a noun phrase is, in the specialized sense developed in that theory, governed. E.g. in The neighbours said s[the children hurt themselves], the governing category of themselves is the subordinate clause (labelled ‘S’). By a proposed general principle, anaphors such as themselves must have an antecedent within their governing category: thus, in this case, the antecedent is the children.

Back  -    New Search

government.

1 The relation between a head (1) and an object or other complement. Thus, in I saw her in Bristol, the object her is governed by the verb saw; likewise Bristol is the complement of, and governed by, the preposition in.

2 A relation between such a head and the case of an object. E.g. in Latin in Italiam contendere ‘to hasten into Italy’, the preposition in governs an accusative (lit. ‘in(to) Italy-ACCSG to-hasten’).
Top

3 Developed in Government and Binding Theory into a general principle by which elements are assigned ‘cases’ by other elements that c-command them. Detailed formulations have varied, but, in Mary saw John, the subject Mary is commanded by, and therefore ‘governed’ by, INFL, which labels it as ‘nominative’. Likewise the object John is governed and labelled by the verb as ‘accusative’.
Top

Back  -    New Search

Government and Binding Theory.

Version of Chomsky's theory of universal grammar (2) named after his Lectures on Government and Binding (1981). This proposed effectively three levels of syntax, Logical Form (LF), D-structure, and S-structure, related to each other by a single-movement rule (move ) and related to the lexicon of an individual language by the projection principle. The specific constraints of universal grammar were the topics of a set of interacting subtheories: Bounding Theory, Theta Theory, and so on.
The term is that of Chomsky's followers, not Chomsky's own. But it can conveniently be used of the specific model current in the 1980s, until superseded in part by the minimalist programme in the 1990s.

Back  -    New Search

Government Phonology.

Theory of phonology developed from the mid-1980s by J. D. Kaye and others. Essentially an account of syllabification based (a) on a requirement that successive constituents of a syllable should stand in a defined relationship of ‘government’; (b) on a theory of the ‘charm’ of segments which determines what can enter into that relationship with what. Charm rests on an analysis of phonological features which is specific to this theory; the concept of government is modelled on that in Chomsky's Government and Binding Theory.

Back  -    New Search

‘Government Theory’.

Part of Government and Binding Theory concerned with principles of government (3).

Back  -    New Search

governor.

Any element said to ‘govern’ another, in a relation either of dependency in general or specifically of government.

Back  -    New Search

GPSG

= Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar.

Back  -    New Search

gradable antonymy.

Relation of antonymy in which the opposition is one of degree. E.g. between large and small: although they are opposites, the same thing may be at once large by one standard and small by another, or larger than ‘x’ and yet smaller than ‘y’. In such a relation one term is often neutral. Thus if one wants to know the size of something one will normally ask ‘how large’ it is. One will not, except in a specific context or for some specific reason, ask ‘how small’ it is. In that sense small is the marked term in the opposition, large the unmarked.

Back  -    New Search

gradation.

Usually of vowel gradation, e.g. or specifically ablaut.

Back  -    New Search

grade.

1 The traditional term (more fully, ‘grade of comparison’ ) for the category in which simple or ‘positive’ forms of adjectives and adverbs (e.g. great) are opposed to comparatives (e.g. greater) and superlatives (e.g. greatest).

2 See ablaut.
Top

Back  -    New Search

gradience.

A series of instances intermediate between two categories, constructions, etc. E.g. blackboard is, by all relevant criteria, a compound: it has stress on its first element (bláckboard), its precise meaning does not follow from those of black and board individually, and so on. Fine weather is equally, by all criteria, not a compound. But many other cases are less clear. Bond Street is in meaning as regular as Trafalgar Square, but stress is again on the first element. Able seaman has stress on its second element, but does not simply mean ‘seaman who is able’. White lie is likewise not in meaning ‘lie which is white’; but it too has stress on its second element and, in addition, white might be separately modified (a very white lie). So, by such criteria, these form part of a gradience between compounds and non-compounds.

Back  -    New Search

gradual opposition.

An opposition between extremes with at least one intermediate term: e.g. in the English vowel system, between [] (close) and [a] (open), with intermediate [] (mid).

Back  -    New Search

grammar.

Any systematic account of the structure of a language; the patterns that it describes; the branch of linguistics concerned with such patterns.
Often restricted to relations among units that have meaning. Hence opp. phonology: e.g. singing is a grammatical unit, as are sing and -ing, while [s] or the syllable [s] are phonological. Also opposed, though again not always, to a dictionary or the lexicon. E.g. the meanings of sing belong to its entry in the lexicon; the role of -ing to grammar, where it is described for verbs in general. When limited in these ways, the study of grammar reduces to that of morphology and syntax.
Used by Chomsky in the 1960s of the knowledge of a language developed in the minds of its speakers. A grammar in the widest sense was thus at once a set of rules, etc. said to be internalized by members of a speech community, and an account, by a linguist, of such a grammar. This internalized grammar is effectively what is later called I-language.

Back  -    New Search

grammatical.

1 Having to do with grammar: see entries following.

2 Specifically of sentences, etc. which conform to the rules of a given language: e.g. I like tea is grammatical in English, while I tea like is ungrammatical . Hence grammaticality or grammaticalness is variously a property either assigned to sentences by a specific grammar, or of sentences judged to be acceptable to speakers who hypothetically ‘know’ its grammar.
Top

Back  -    New Search

grammatical agreement.

Agreement determined solely by the grammatical properties of the words or phrases involved. E.g. in The council has agreed, the subject is grammatically singular, and the form of the verb (has) agrees grammatically with it. Cf. The council have agreed, with notional agreement.

Back  -    New Search

grammatical ambiguity.

Ambiguity explained by differences in syntax. E.g. I read the book on the floor might mean that a book was on the floor and that was the one the speaker read: this would reflect a syntactic construction in which on the floor modifies book. Alternatively, it might mean that the speaker was on the floor while reading the book: this would reflect a construction in which on the floor modifies read or read the book.
Also called ‘constructional homonymy’ .

Back  -    New Search

grammatical case.

A case whose main role is to indicate a construction in syntax. Thus genitive is a grammatical case which typically marks one noun or noun phrase as the dependent of another. Opp. concrete case.

Back  -    New Search

grammatical category.

A category of elements with grammatical meaning, as opposed especially to a lexical category; also one established in a specific grammar, as opposed to a notional category.

Back  -    New Search

‘grammatical competence’.

See communicative competence.

Back  -    New Search

grammaticalization.

1 The representation of notional distinctions in the grammar of a specific language. Thus many languages distinguish a dual from a plural: that is, the conceptual or notional distinction between ‘two’ and ‘three or more’ is grammaticalized in these languages.

2 The process by which, in the history of a language, a unit with lexical meaning changes into one with grammatical meaning. E.g., in Italian ho mangiato ‘I-have eaten’, a form that was in Latin a full verb (‘to have, possess’) has been grammaticalized as an auxiliary (ho). In mangerò ‘I will eat’, the same form, first combined as an auxiliary with an infinitive (lit. ‘to-eat I-have’), has further changed to an inflectional ending (-ò).
Top

Back  -    New Search

grammatically conditioned.

(Alternation) among forms or processes in different grammatical settings: e.g. between [sl] in sell, sell-s, sell-ing and [sl] in the past tense or past participle sol-d. Cf. phonologically conditioned; lexically conditioned.

Back  -    New Search

grammatical meaning.

Any aspect of meaning described as part of the syntax and morphology of a language as distinct from its lexicon. Thus, in particular, the meanings of constructions; of inflections; of other units forming closed classes.
Thence ‘grammatical word’ or ‘grammatical morpheme’ , for units whose meaning is so described: thus of in e.g. a wall of silence, seen as marking the syntactic relation between wall and silence; or the plural morpheme (-s) in the walls.

Back  -    New Search

grammatical morpheme.

A morpheme which has grammatical meaning.

Back  -    New Search

‘grammatical relation’.

Strictly of any relation, or any syntagmatic relation, in grammar. Often specifically of syntactic relations such as ‘subject of’ or ‘object of’; cf. syntactic function, terms.

Back  -    New Search

‘grammatical role’.

Used variously of case roles or of syntactic functions.

Back  -    New Search

grammatical subject.

A subject in the usual sense (subject (1)), as opposed to a logical subject or psychological subject. Thus, in Yesterday I was delayed by fog, the ‘grammatical subject’ is I: e.g. it is the element with which was agrees. But the ‘psychological subject’ would be yesterday (the sentence is about what happened yesterday) and the ‘logical subject’ would be fog (the fog was responsible for what happened).

Back  -    New Search

grammatical word.

1 One which has grammatical meaning: e.g. to, seen as marking the infinitive, in I want to go out.

2 One established as a unit of syntax and morphology, as opposed to a phonological word.
Top

Back  -    New Search

grammatology.

The study of the nature, history, etc. of writing systems.

Back  -    New Search

Grantha script.

See Indian scripts.

Back  -    New Search

grapheme.

A character in writing, considered as an abstract or invariant unit which has varying realizations. E.g. the grapheme <A> subsumes the variants or ‘allographs’ ‘A’ (Roman capital), ‘a’ (Roman minuscule), and so on.

Back  -    New Search

graphic.

(Medium, substance) involving written characters. Opp. phonic.

Back  -    New Search

graphology.

A study of the written forms of languages modelled on phonology as the study of their sound systems.

Back  -    New Search

Grassmann's Law.

Sound law in Indo-European by which an aspirated consonant became unaspirated when it was followed by a vowel which was followed by another aspirated consonant. E.g. in Ancient Greek té-thne:-k-e ‘has died’, the first prefix is derived by reduplication of the first consonant of the root (thne:-); but, through Grassmann's Law, it is te-, with unaspirated t, not the-.
The change is of the type called dissimilation.

Back  -    New Search

grave.

1 Diacritic (`) originally used to mark low pitch: see accent (1).

2 Distinctive feature of consonants and vowels proposed by Jakobson in the 1950s. Characterized acoustically by a relative concentration of energy in lower frequencies: hence, in particular, back vowels are grave, also bilabial consonants. Opp. acute: cf. compact.
Top

Back  -    New Search

Great Vowel Shift.

A series of changes in late Middle English, by which close long vowels became diphthongs and other long vowels shifted one step closer. Thus, in the front series, [a:] > [:], [:] > [e:], [e:] > [i:], [i:] > [a]; in the back series, [:] > [o:], [o:] > [u:], [u:] > [a]. Often interpreted as a unitary phenomenon; hence as a classic example of a chain shift.
It is in consequence of these and other changes that [e] in name (formerly [a:]) is spelled a, or [a] in shine (formerly [i:]) spelled i. They are also the main factor in the development of vowel alternations between long [e] and short [a] (in sane/sanity), long [a] and short [] (divine/divinity), and so on.

Back  -    New Search

Greek.

Indo-European, forming a separate branch within the family. First attested in records of the 15th century BC, written in Linear B, and by a rich literature from early in the 1st millennium BC. Spoken widely, in a koine or ‘common’ language reflecting the Attic dialect of Athens, after the conquests of Alexander: later the official language throughout the eastern part of the Roman empire and its Byzantine successor. Now spoken mainly in Greece and Cyprus, and the national language of both.
The alphabet was developed around the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. Derived from a North Semitic alphabet, but with the crucial feature that vowels are represented equally with consonants.

Back  -    New Search

‘Greek letter variables’ (, …).

Used in Generative Phonology as variables over ‘+’ and ‘-’ in phonological features. Thus, by a rule of assimilation, the value of the feature [± voice] (voiced vs. voiceless) might be reversed to match that of a segment following: [+ voice] [- voice] / - [- voice]; [- voice] [+ voice] / - [+ voice]. Using as a variable, we can write the rule in this form: [ voice] [- voice] / - [- voice]. I.e. whatever value a segment has with respect to voice (), that value is reversed (- ) when the next has the reverse value.

Back  -    New Search

Greenberg, Joseph H.

(1915– )
. American linguist, originally an anthropologist. See African languages; Amerind; mass comparison: also a pioneer of linguistic universals in the field of word order.

Back  -    New Search

Grenzsignal.

See boundary marker.

Back  -    New Search

Grice, Herbert Paul

(1913–88)
. Anglo-American philosopher whose work develops a theory of meaning in terms of the communicative intentions of speakers. His most substantial contribution was a series of lectures on ‘Logic and Conversation’, delivered in 1967, which proposed a theory of implicatures and maxims of conversation designed to account for discrepancies between the meanings of words such as and or some and the roles of corresponding operators in a system of logic. They were not published fully until the end of his life (in Studies in the Way of Words, 1989), but ideas taken from them have been influential in linguistics since the early 1970s.

Back  -    New Search

Grimm, Jacob

(1785–1863)
. Germanist, known to the world for the Märchen collected and published by him and his brother Wilhelm, to linguistics for his Deutsche Grammatik (1819–37) and in particular for the formulation of Grimm's Law, based on the insight of Rask, in the second edition (1822) of its first volume. At the end of their lives he and his brother worked together on the Deutsches Wörterbuch, published in parts from 1854 and finally completed over a century later.

Back  -    New Search

Grimm's Law.

Sound law or series of sound laws by which consonants in Germanic differ systematically in manner of articulation from those of cognate forms in other Indo-European languages. In a traditional account, ‘voiced aspirated’ stops (e.g. dh) change in Germanic to voiced ([d]); voiced stops (d) change in turn to voiceless ([t]); voiceless stops (t) change to fricatives ([]).
Called by Germanists the ‘First Sound Shift’ . The ‘Second Sound Shift’, by which e.g. Germanic t > ts, is peculiar to High German.

Back  -    New Search

groove fricative

= rill fricative.

Back  -    New Search

‘group’

= phrase, or specifically phrase (2) or word group.

Back  -    New Search

Guaraní.

Spoken throughout Paraguay, and the only language, though Spanish also has official status, of many of its people. Paraguayan Guaraní is related to Classical Guaraní , now dead but recorded by early Jesuit missionaries, within a branch of Tupi-Guaraní that extends to neighbouring parts of Brazil, Bolivia, and Argentina.

Back  -    New Search

Gujarati.

Indo-Aryan language, spoken mainly in the Indian states of Gujarat, where it has official status, and Maharashtra; also widely, through emigration, in South and East Africa and elsewhere. Written in a script derived from Devanagari.

Back  -    New Search

Gullah.

English-based creole spoken along the coast of Georgia and South Carolina in the USA. The African elements in it were the subject of a pioneering study by a native speaker, L. D. Turner, in 1949.

Back  -    New Search

gua.

Term in Sanskrit for a unit analysed as the combination of a simple vowel or resonant with a preceding a. Thus i is a simple vowel; e is the gua form resulting e.g. from a fusion of a and i across a word boundary. One of three degrees of ‘strengthening’: see vddhi.

Back  -    New Search

Gur.

Family of languages in the Sahel region of West Africa, from south-eastern Mali and northern Ivory Coast across Burkina Faso and the north of Ghana, Togo, and Benin, into north-west Nigeria. Moré, spoken in an area which includes Ouagadougou, is the main indigenous language of Burkina Faso. The family is also called ‘Voltaic’ .

Back  -    New Search

Gurmukhi.

Indian script developed for Punjabi.

Back  -    New Search

‘guttural’.

Older term for velar consonants and others produced in the back part of the vocal tract; no longer used in any technical sense.

Back  -    New Search

Gypsy.

See Romany.

Back  -    New Search

H

H.

See diglossia.

Back  -    New Search

habitual.

(Verb, aspect) indicating something done, etc. consistently or habitually. Thus the present tense has a habitual use in e.g. I exercise the dog on Sundays.

Back  -    New Search

half-close.

(Vowel) that is auditorily one-third of the way from close to open: thus [e] and [o] in the system of primary cardinal vowels. Also called close-mid .

Back  -    New Search

half-open.

(Vowel) that is auditorily one-third of the way from open to close: thus [] and [] in the system of primary cardinal vowels. Also called open-mid .

Back  -    New Search

Halle, Morris

(1923– ).
American linguist, associated first with Jakobson and, from the mid-1950s, with Chomsky. Responsible especially for the development of Generative Phonology.

Back  -    New Search

Halliday, Michael Alexander Kirkwood

(1925– ).
British linguist who retired in 1987 from a chair in Sydney. Originally a specialist in Chinese, whose earliest general theory was the model of grammar eventually called Systemic Grammar. In the late 1960s he applied this, in particular, in an analysis of English intonation and in a general account of the dimensions on which sentences are organized. The dimension of ‘transitivity’ concerns the relations of e.g. actor to action or action to goal; that of ‘mood’ their broadly interpersonal function (e.g. as interrogative or declarative); that of ‘theme’ the relations of theme to rheme or given to new. Halliday's general theory, especially as it emerged in the 1970s, is centred on an all-embracing concept of function, including both the functions of utterances and texts and those of individual units within their structure, and on the thesis that the nature of language as a semiotic system, and its development in each individual, must be studied in the context of the social roles that individuals play, and the ways in which these develop.
Originally a follower of Firth. Hence his own theories and followers, especially in the 1960s, were often called ‘Neo-Firthian’ .

Back  -    New Search

Hamitic.

See Afro-Asiatic.

Back  -    New Search

hamza.

Sign in Arabic writing used to represent a glottal stop.

Back  -    New Search

hanging participle.

See dangling participle.

Back  -    New Search

Han'gul.

The Korean alphabet, traditionally ascribed to King Sejong (1419–50). The characters representing consonants and vowels are in part composed of smaller elements, which represent phonetic features such as, in particular, a place of articulation. These basic characters are then in turn combined into larger units representing syllables. Han'gul is the only native alphabet designed for a language in the Far East, and is unique, among systems of writing in normal use, for the phonological insight that informed it.

Back  -    New Search

hapax legomenon ['hapaks l'gmnn].

A lexical unit found only once in the surviving records of a language. Greek ‘said once’; often shortened to hapax . Cf. nonce-word.

Back  -    New Search

haplology.

Sporadic change in which successive syllables, etc. which are similar in form are reduced to one. E.g. Late Latin idololatria ‘worship (-latria) of idols’ was reduced to forms such as French idôlatrie (> English idolatry).

Back  -    New Search

Harappan script.

That of the Harappan civilization, flourishing in the Indus valley in the 3rd–2nd millennia BC. Undeciphered and not demonstrably connected to later Indian scripts.

Back  -    New Search

‘hard’.

Used conventionally of velar plosives in Romance languages: thus ‘hard’ [k], [g] (spelled c, g) as opposed e.g. in Italian to ‘soft’ [t], [dz] (also spelled c, g). Also more generally, in languages such as Russian which have palatalized consonants, of those that are not palatalized.

Back  -    New Search

hard palate.

The roof of the mouth between the back of the ridge behind the teeth and the fleshy part called the soft palate. Palatal consonants are articulated in this area.

Back  -    New Search

harmonic.

Any of a series of tones at higher intervals accompanying the fundamental tone produced by a vibrating body. The frequency of the fundamental tone is the fundamental frequency, the lowest harmonic the ‘first harmonic’, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

harmony.

See vowel harmony; consonant harmony.

Back  -    New Search

Harris, James

(1709–80).
Author of an important philosophical grammar, Hermes: or, a Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Language and Universal Grammar (London, 1751). His work is grounded in the philosophy of Aristotle and includes an original analysis of word classes, in which ‘substantives’ and ‘attributives’ are opposed as principal parts of speech to ‘definitives’ and ‘conjunctives’ as accessories. Substantives include nouns and pronouns; attributives verbs and participles with adjectives and adverbs; definitives are articles with other determiners; conjunctives include both conjunctions and prepositions.
Harris's grammar was widely read and published after his death in both German (1788) and French (1795).

Back  -    New Search

Harris, Zellig Sabbatai

(1909–92).
The leading theorist of the Post-Bloomfieldian school in the USA. In Methods in Structural Linguistics (1951) he set out a series of formal procedures by which, on the basis of a corpus or sample of actual or potential utterances, a description of a language, in abstraction from the meanings of its units, could in principle be obtained in a mechanical and therefore replicable way, without reference to anything outside the corpus. This was perceived at the time as a method by which descriptions could be justified scientifically. In the course of the 1950s Harris developed, in concert with his pupil Chomsky, ideas which the latter was to make his own: in particular, those of a generative grammar and of syntactic transformations. But by the end of the decade their paths had separated, and Harris's later work, which deals especially with syntax, has had less influence. His thought is summed up in his last two books, A Theory of Language and Information (1991) and, at a more popular level, Language and Information (1988).

Back  -    New Search

‘hash mark’ (#).

See double cross.

Back  -    New Search

Hausa.

Chadic language, native to northern Nigeria (roughly from Kaduna northwards and some 200 km. east of Kano westwards) and neighbouring parts of Niger. Also widespread as a second language, there and elsewhere, and as a lingua franca across West Africa. Written in Arabic script before the 20th century, now largely in Roman.

Back  -    New Search

Hawaiian.

Polynesian, now spoken by a tiny minority of the native population of the Hawaiian islands.

Back  -    New Search

head (1).

A single element in a construction which characterizes or may stand for the construction as a whole.
There are two main definitions, one narrower and due largely to Bloomfield, the other wider and now more usual, following work by R. S. Jackendoff in the 1970s.
1 In the narrower definition, a phrase p has a head h if h alone can bear any syntactic function that p can bear. E.g. very cold can be replaced by cold in any construction: very cold water or cold water, I feel very cold or I feel cold. Therefore the adjective is its head and, by that token, the whole is an ‘adjective phrase’.
Top

2 In the wider definition, a phrase p has a head h if the presence of h determines the range of syntactic functions that p can bear. E.g. the constructions into which on the table can enter are determined by the presence of a preposition, on. Therefore the preposition is its head and, by that token, it is a ‘prepositional phrase’. Similarly, in I feel cold, the predicate feel cold is a ‘verb phrase’ whose construction, as a whole, with I is determined by its having as its head the verb feel. This second definition is central e.g. to X-bar syntax.
See also dependency.
Top

Back  -    New Search

head (2).

The part of an intonation pattern that falls on syllables preceding the nuclear or tonic syllable: e.g. in I didn't see HER, the head falls on I didn't see.Cf. tail.

Back  -    New Search

Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar.

Formal model of syntax developed by C. Pollard and I. Sag in the late 1980s. In essence a variant of Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar in which the structure of syntactic units is constrained directly or indirectly by the properties of lexical units as heads (1). E.g. the head of Bill hates silence is (in this treatment) hates. The lexical properties of hates are such that it combines with a following noun phrase: [hates silence]. By a process of unification this is in turn a verb phrase, and, since hates is a verb in the third person singular, the phrase as a whole is one which, as a non-lexical head, combines, again by a process of unification, with a subject in the third person singular.
As in other models which extend the role of the lexicon, there are either no or few specific rules. As in Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, there is no operation, as in earlier or contemporary versions of transformational grammar, by which units are moved.

Back  -    New Search

‘headline language’.

The style of newspaper headlines, studied as a restricted language. Cf. block language.

Back  -    New Search

head marking.

Marking of syntactic relations on the head (1) as opposed to a subordinate or dependent element. E.g. in Semitic languages such as Hebrew, a possessive construction is marked by the form of the head noun (traditionally in the construct state). Opp. dependent marking: e.g. in Latin a possessive construction is marked instead by the genitive case of the noun that depends on the head.

Back  -    New Search

Head Parameter.

A proposed parameter in Principles and Parameters Theory distinguishing orders of syntactic units in which heads precede and those in which they follow. An unconscious revival of L. Tesnière's distinction of centrifugal vs. centripetal languages.

Back  -    New Search

hearer.

Strictly, anyone who hears an utterance, whether addressed to them (as an addressee) or not.

Back  -    New Search

heavy.

(Noun phrase, etc.) whose length or complexity affects the positions it can occupy in a sentence. E.g. one can say I gave John advice or I gave advice to John; but if John is replaced by the man you will remember meeting last week the second construction is at the very least more likely. One says I posted a letter to John rather than I posted to John a letter; but the second order is possible e.g. in I posted to John a letter which was sent here by mistake.
‘Heavy noun phrase shift’ , or more generally ‘heavy constituent shift’ , is a proposed syntactic process by which ‘heavy’ elements are moved to a position later in the sentence.

Back  -    New Search

heavy syllable.

One which counts rhythmically as two units rather than one. E.g. in Latin, one which ended in either a consonant or a long vowel: [lik] in [re'liktus] relictus ‘left behind’, [li:] in [re'li:kwi:] relqui ‘I left behind’. One which ended in a short vowel was light : e.g. [li] in ['relikwi:] reliqui ‘the rest’. In the last two examples this difference determines, in particular, the different positions of the stress accent.
Called, in the western tradition, ‘long’ (=heavy) as opposed to ‘short’ (= light). The distinction in terminology between the weight of syllables (heavy vs. light) and the length of vowels (long vs. short) is from the ancient grammarians of Sanskrit.

Back  -    New Search

Hebrew.

West Semitic, spoken in antiquity in the interior of Palestine; the language of the Jewish Bible (Old Testament), progressively influenced and replaced by Aramaic from the 8th century BC. Last attested in the 2nd century AD; thereafter a written and liturgical language, until revived in its modern form, especially from the 1920s, as a prospective official language of Jewish settlers in what is now Israel. Written in a Semitic alphabet whose modern form (‘square Hebrew’) can be traced back to the 3rd century AD.

Back  -    New Search

hedge.

Any linguistic device by which a speaker avoids being compromised by a statement that turns out to be wrong, a request that is not acceptable, and so on. Thus, instead of saying ‘This argument is convincing’, one might use a hedge and say ‘As far as I can see this argument is convincing’; instead of simply giving an order ‘Carry it into the kitchen!’ one might use an interrogative as a hedge and say ‘Could you perhaps carry it into the kitchen?’

Back  -    New Search

height

(of vowels) . See vowel height.

Back  -    New Search

heightened subglottal pressure.

Posited as a distinctive feature by Chomsky and Halle, SPE, where seen as one property of consonants impressionistically called tense (2).

Back  -    New Search

Hellenistic grammar.

The study of grammar in the West in the period called ‘Hellenistic’, conventionally 323–31 BC: the period of the early Stoics and Alexandrians, including Dionysius Thrax.

Back  -    New Search

hendiadys [hn'dds].

Term in rhetoric for two words joined by a coordinator but seen as expressing a single complex idea: e.g. in These cushions are lovely and soft, meaning that they are lovely in being soft, not that they are separately lovely cushions and soft cushions. Lit. ‘one (Greek hen) through (dia) two’.

Back  -    New Search

hermeneutics.

Movement in the philosophy of science, according to which the task of the human sciences is to elucidate the structure of the social institutions underlying behaviour. Thus the aim of linguistics, as one human (and therefore ‘hermeneutic’) science, is to elucidate the rules of language, seen as rules that constitute such an institution.
From a term that usually means ‘interpretation’ or ‘exegesis’. The movement developed in Germany in the 1960s; its ideas have been applied in linguistics since the 1970s, in opposition especially to those of Chomsky.

Back  -    New Search

hesitation form.

Any sound used conventionally in a specific community to indicate that one is about to start or to continue speaking: e.g. English [:] (er).

Back  -    New Search

hesternal.

(Tense, form of verb) used or basically used in referring to events, etc. that have taken place on the day before the day of speaking. From Latin hesternus ‘of yesterday’: cf. hodiernal.

Back  -    New Search

hetero-.

From the Greek word for ‘other’. E.g. a noun whose inflection follows something other than the regular pattern is traditionally ‘heteroclite’; the head e.g. of a noun phrase is heterocategorial if it is itself something other than a noun; heteroglosses link speakers using different forms on either side of an isogloss. Often in implied or explicit opposition to homo-‘same’: e.g. two successive consonants are heterorganic (as opposed to homorganic) if they have different places of articulation; a word is heteromorphemic if it is formed from two (i.e. two different) morphemes; successive sounds are heterosyllabic (as opposed to tautosyllabic) if they belong to different syllables.

Back  -    New Search

heteronym.

Used by various scholars for varying cases of homonymy. E.g. of words with the same meaning, such as pail and bucket, used by different speakers or in different dialects; also in the same sense as homograph.

Back  -    New Search

heuristic.

General term, e.g. in computing, for a procedure which is designed to solve a problem by exploring the most likely possibilities, as opposed to an algorithm , which mechanically examines every alternative.

Back  -    New Search

hiatus [h'ets].

A division between vowels belonging to different words or syllables. E.g. [:] and [a] are ‘in hiatus’ in a pronunciation of draw out as ['dr: 'at].

Back  -    New Search

hierarchy.

Any ordering of units or levels on a scale of size, abstraction, or subordination. E.g. a phrase structure tree assigns a hierarchical structure to sentences; levels of representation are often seen as forming a hierarchy from phonetics upwards; Jespersen's theory of ranks (1) proposes a hierarchy of primary, secondary, and tertiary.

Back  -    New Search

Hieratic.

Cursive form of Hieroglyphic used in writing Egyptian from the 26th century BC. Replaced by Demotic, for ordinary purposes, from the 7th century BC, but retained for religious texts; hence the name (‘priestly’).

Back  -    New Search

Hieroglyphic.

Writing system developed for Egyptian and used, mainly on or in monuments, from around 3000 BC until the 3rd century AD. Replaced for ordinary purposes by cursive scripts (Hieratic, Demotic) derived from it.
The signs are basically pictures of objects, people, etc., but function variously as representations of words as wholes (logograms), as representations of consonants or successions of consonants (phonograms), and as determinatives added to phonograms to indicate the semantic class to which the word belongs. These functions are all found in the earliest texts.

Back  -    New Search

high.

1 (Tone, intonation) with a pitch that is high within a speaker's range.

2 (Vowel) = close. In the scheme of Chomsky and Halle, SPE, the feature [+ high] is that of a sound produced by ‘raising the body of the tongue above the level that it occupies in the neutral position’: hence also of palatal and velar consonants.
Opp. in both senses to low.
Top

Back  -    New Search

High (H).

See diglossia.

Back  -    New Search

High German.

See German.

Back  -    New Search

highlighting.

Used by Quirk et al., CGE, of any linguistic device by which a phrase, etc. is put into focus; e.g. the placing of the nucleus (3) of an intonation, or the use of a cleft or pseudo-cleft construction.

Back  -    New Search

Hindi-Urdu.

Indo-Aryan, native to a large area centred on the valley of the upper Ganges, but spoken more widely across the north of the Indian subcontinent. The national language of Pakistan, where called Urdu and written in an Arabic script derived through Persian, and one of the national languages of India, where called Hindi and written by non-Muslims in Devanagari. Distinct from other modern Indo-Aryan languages since around AD 1000 and with a literature from the 12th century.

Back  -    New Search

hiragana.

One of two syllabic systems used in writing Japanese.

Back  -    New Search

‘hissing’.

Used of dental or alveolar sibilants such as [s] in hiss, as opposed to palato-alveolar or ‘hushing’ sibilants, such as [] in hush.

Back  -    New Search

historical linguistics.

The study of change in individual languages and in language generally. Distinguished by most schools of structural linguistics as a branch of the subject concerned with diachronic relations among language systems, separate from and presupposing the findings of synchronic or descriptive linguistics.

Back  -    New Search

historic present.

A present tense used, especially with an effect of vividness or immediacy, in an account of past events. E.g. ‘I was in Oxford Street yesterday and suddenly this man turns on me and grabs me by the arm and…’.

Back  -    New Search

history.

In the ordinary sense in historical linguistics. Also metaphorically of the stages in a derivation: e.g. in a transformational grammar the ‘transformational history’ of a form or structure is the series of structures resulting from the transformations that have applied to it.

Back  -    New Search

Hittite.

Indo-European language attested by cuneiform texts of the 2nd millennium BC, mainly from the capital of the Hittite empire (modern Boazköy in north central Turkey). The main language of the Anatolian branch.

Back  -    New Search

Hixkaryana.

Cariban language in the state of Amazonas in Brazil. Famous in the history of typological classification as the first known OVS language.

Back  -    New Search

Hjelmslev, Louis

(1899–1965).
Danish linguist and one of the major exponents of structural linguistics after Saussure. His most important theoretical work, Omkring Sprogteoriens Grundlæggelse (‘On the Foundations of Linguistic Theory’), appeared in 1943: later in English, Prolegomena to a Theory of Language, trans. F. J. Whitfield (1953). Hjelmslev's theory carried Saussure's concept of the linguistic sign to a logical conclusion. The sign itself is represented by a ‘sign relation’ (or ‘sign function’) between two ‘planes’ or levels: one of expression and one of content. By the commutation test, a difference between units at one level must entail a difference at the other. At each level, units are characterized by their syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations to other units, and these relations constitute a form (2), again at each level, independent of its projection onto distinctions of substance.
Hjelmslev called his theory ‘glossematics’ from 1935 onwards.

Back  -    New Search

Hmong-Mien

See Miao-Yao.

Back  -    New Search

‘hocus pocus’.

Coined by F. W. Householder in 1952 in reference to linguists who did not ascribe any reality to the units, categories, etc. that they established, as opposed to ‘God's truth’ linguists, who did.

Back  -    New Search

hodiernal.

(Tense, form of verb) characteristically used to refer to events, etc. that have taken place earlier on the day of speaking. From Latin hodiernus ‘of today’: cf. hesternal.

Back  -    New Search

Hokan.

Proposed family of languages spoken or formerly spoken in various parts of western North America, from northern California to Baja California and Sonora; also in the south of Mexico, in parts of Oaxaca. Yana was a Hokan language studied by Sapir.

Back  -    New Search

Hokkien.

See Chinese.

Back  -    New Search

holophrase.

A sentence or utterance consisting of a single word. Especially of single-word utterances by children at an early stage in their development of language: called accordingly the holophrastic stage.

Back  -    New Search

homo-.

From the Greek word for ‘same’: thus homonyms (cf. -onym) are identical forms with different meanings, homonymy is a relation between such forms, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

homographs.

Forms which differ phonetically but are spelled in the same way: e.g. tear [t] and tear [t]. Cf. homophones.

Back  -    New Search

homonymic clash.

A clash between two homonyms, either of which could be used in similar contexts. A classic example is a posited clash in parts of south-west France between a word gat ‘cat’, derived from Latin cattus, and an identical form gat ‘cock’, predicted by regular processes of sound change from Latin gallus. In fact the second was replaced by other forms that changed or extended their meaning: faisan, historically ‘pheasant’, vicaire ‘curate’, and others. The explanation, proposed by Gilliéron, is that these replacements avoided the misunderstandings that the clash would often have caused.

Back  -    New Search

homonymy.

The relation between words whose forms are the same but whose meanings are different and cannot be connected: e.g. between pen ‘writing instrument’ and pen ‘enclosure’.
Distinguished from polysemy in that the meanings cannot be connected: therefore the words are treated as different lexical units. Also distinguished from cases of conversion: e.g. for either of these homonyms, that of pen (noun) to pen (verb). Also from syncretism, which is between forms of the same paradigm. Further distinctions can be drawn between homonymy of words as lexical units (e.g. the two lexical units pen) and e.g. identity of roots or other morphemes. Also between forms identical in both sound and spelling (such as the two words pen) and those that are the same in spelling only (homographs) or in sound regardless of spelling (homophones).
For ‘constructional homonymy’ see grammatical ambiguity.

Back  -    New Search

homophones.

Forms which are homonyms, at least phonetically. Often therefore of ones spelled differently: e.g. tier and tear [t].

Back  -    New Search

homorganic.

(Consonant) which has the same place of articulation as one which precedes or follows. Especially of a phonological unit that must be so realized: thus a nasal consonant in e.g. Italian is always homorganic with one which follows: [n] before [t] or [d] (andare ‘to go’), [] before [k] (cinque ‘five’) or [g], and so on.

Back  -    New Search

honorific (HON)

Pronoun, form of verb, etc. used in expressing respect for someone, e.g. of higher social status.
1 In the characteristic use this is a person referred to. E.g. in a sentence in Japanese meaning ‘The professor helped him’, the form for ‘helped’ might be marked to show respect for the professor who is referred to by its subject: this would be a subject honorific . In a sentence meaning ‘He helped the professor’, it might be marked in a different way to show respect for the professor as referred to, in this case, by its object: this would be an object honorific .
Top

2 Also, in some accounts, of polite forms. Such a form is then distinguished, as an addressee-controlled honorific , from subject or object honorifics, which are referent-controlled .
Top

Back  -    New Search

hortative.

See exhortative.

Back  -    New Search

host.

Form to which e.g. a clitic attaches. Thus, if-n't is a clitic in He isn't there, it has the host is.

Back  -    New Search

HPSG

= Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar.

Back  -    New Search

human.

Semantic feature of nouns, etc. characteristically used in reference to people. Thus who is distinguished from which as human ([+ human]) vs. non-human ([- human]); girl belongs to a class of human nouns. Hence the girl who came, not the girl which came.

Back  -    New Search

Humboldt, Wilhelm von

(1767–1835).
Prussian statesman and scholar, whose book-length introduction to a study of Kawi (Old Javanese), published posthumously in 1836, was described by Bloomfield, nearly a century later, as ‘the first great book on general linguistics’. In this and other work that dates essentially from the 1820s, Humboldt stressed both the fundamental unity of language in general, and the diversity of the individual languages that were seen as shaping the intellectual life of different nations and societies. This implied a programme of inquiry in which Humboldt made important contributions on three fronts: as a comparativist, whose work on Javanese included the first comparative study of the Austronesian or Malayo-Polynesian family; as a descriptive linguist, also engaging with Basque among others: and in respect of the distinctions between types (inflecting, agglutinating, incorporating) that inform the grammars of specific languages.
Two particular ideas have been seized on by admirers and followers. One is Humboldt's emphasis on language not as an object or product (Greek ergon) but as an activity (energeia) constantly renewed in interchanges among speakers. The other, which appears rather rarely in his own work, is that of the ‘inner form’ of a specific language, interpreted as the formative principle or principles behind its individual grammar and lexicon. This is influential in the 20th century especially in Germany through the work of L. Weisgerber and other ‘Neo-Humboldtians’.

Back  -    New Search

Hungarian.

Finno-Ugric, spoken in Hungary and by substantial minorities in Romania, Slovakia, and other adjoining countries. Attested from the Middle Ages, with increasing standardization from the 16th century.
The Ugric branch of Finno-Ugric includes Hungarian and two languages of the Urals called (after the river) ‘Ob-Ugric’ .

Back  -    New Search

‘hushing’.

Used of palato-alveolar sibilants such as [] in hush, as opposed to dental or alveolar sibilants such as [s] in hiss.

Back  -    New Search

‘hybrid word’.

One formed from elements that derive historically from different languages: e.g. amoral, with a negative prefix (a-) from Greek and the rest from Latin.

Back  -    New Search

hydronym.

A name for a river, lake, etc.: e.g. Danube, Bin Brook. See-onym.

Back  -    New Search

hypallage [h'paldzi:].

Figure of speech in which a is syntactically related to b but belongs more naturally with c. Stock examples are of the type John's drunken speech, where drunken modifies speech but it is John who was drunk.

Back  -    New Search

hyper-.

From a Greek word meaning ‘above’ or ‘over’. Hence e.g. hypercorrection for ‘over-correction’. Opp. hypo-(‘under’); hence e.g. hypernym, coined in opposition to hyponym (originally ‘hyp(o) + -onym’).

Back  -    New Search

hyperbaton [h'p:btn].

The ancient term for any departure from normal word order.

Back  -    New Search

hyperbole.

The term for ‘exaggeration’ in the ancient doctrine of figures of speech.

Back  -    New Search

hypercorrection.

1 The use of an incorrect form by a speaker trying to avoid ones that are stigmatized. E.g. some English speakers have or used to have a dialect with no [h]. But ‘dropping an h’ is and was stigmatized; so, in trying to avoid the stigma, they might use [h] even when it is not there in the prestige form: e.g. [h:mfl] for armful, where it is hypercorrect , as well as for harmful.

2 In sociolinguistics, of the increased use of one form in avoiding another. E.g. a group of speakers do not consistently use [h] in words like harmful. But because the lack of [h] is stigmatized, they tend to use it more often than one might predict from other factors, e.g. their position on a scale of social classes or with respect to level of education.
Top

Back  -    New Search

hypernymy.

The opposite of hyponymy. E.g. flower is a hypernym of tulip and of rose.

Back  -    New Search

hyphen (-).

Used to show divisions within words: e.g. disappointed has the morphological structure dis-appoint-ed. If an affix or other bound (1) form can end a word it is cited with a hyphen before it: thus -ed. If it can begin a word it is cited with a hyphen after it: thus dis-. If it can appear neither at the beginning nor at the end it is cited with hyphens before and after: e.g. in Latin, -ba-as a marker of the imperfect (canta-ba-t ‘was singing’).

Back  -    New Search

hypo-.

From a Greek word meaning ‘under’. Hence e.g. hypotaxis ‘ordering under’. Opp. hyper-.

Back  -    New Search

hypocoristic.

(Word, formation) imitating or reflecting the speech of children: e.g. tummy, originally in nursery speech, from stomach. Often of formations that have become systematic: e.g. for first names in German (Stephanie Steffi, Fritz Fritzi, etc.).

Back  -    New Search

hyponymy.

The relation between two lexical units in which the meaning of the first is included in that of the second. E.g. any tulip and any rose is also a flower: therefore the words tulip and rose are both hyponyms , and together are ‘co-hyponyms’ , of flower.

Back  -    New Search

hypotaxis [hp'takss].

Greek term for subordination, applied specifically to subordination of clauses or sentences. Opp. parataxis (‘arrangement under’ vs. ‘arrangement alongside’) for their coordination. E.g. he came is hypotactic in [I said [he came]], but paratactic in [[I promised] and [he came]].

Back  -    New Search

hypothetical

(conditional) . See remote.

Back  -    New Search

hypothetico-deductive method.

Scientific method in which propositions which follow from a general hypothesis are tested against experimental or other data to determine whether the hypothesis is confirmed or is false. Often applied in the 1960s and 1970s to the validation of a generative grammar. Thus the grammar is a hypothesis about the sentences of a language; from it one predicts that certain forms are grammatical and certain others are not; if these predictions accord with the judgements of speakers the grammar is to that extent confirmed; if not, it must in some respect be wrong.
The value of this method in linguistics is debated, in this and other applications.

Back  -    New Search

hysteron proteron.

Rhetorical term from Ancient Greek for putting first (‘proteron’) what should logically be later (‘hysteron’): e.g. in a recipe which says that the oven should be preheated to 200°C after it tells you to put the food in.

Back  -    New Search

I

I.

Syntactic category posited by Chomsky in the early 1980s, heading a phrase (IP or I-phrase) which is effectively a clause minus a complementizer. E.g. she married him would realize an IP within a CP or complementizer phrase since she married him: CP[since IP[she married him]]. Within this I itself would be realized by the tense of the verb (-ed).
‘I’ is short for original ‘INFL’, itself for ‘inflection’.

Back  -    New Search

IA

= Item and Arrangement.

Back  -    New Search

iambic.

(Foot) consisting of a light syllable followed by a heavy syllable. Borrowed into Metrical Phonology from the definition of an iamb in verse.

Back  -    New Search

Ibero-Romance.

The forms of Romance, including Spanish, Portuguese, and Catalan, that developed in the Iberian peninsula.

Back  -    New Search

IC-analysis.

See constituency.

Back  -    New Search

Icelandic.

North Germanic, attested from the Middle Ages by literature in a form described as Old Norse, at a time when the differentiation of North Germanic into separate languages was still at an early stage. The spelling of Old Norse devised in the mid-12th century, which is set out and justified in the anonymous ‘First Grammatical Treatise’, is remarkable as an early application of the phonemic method.

Back  -    New Search

iconicity.

Principle by which semantic relations are reflected in the formal patterns by which they are realized. Thus a direct object is a complement of a verb while an adverbial such as today is not: in that sense the semantic relation of verb to object is closer. In the order of words in English, direct objects are also closer to the verbs: I saw John today or Today I saw John, not I saw today John. In this way there is an iconic correspondence between the linear order of elements and their semantic pattern.
The term is from Peirce's theory of signs, of which ‘icons’ were one kind. But linguists' usage is now largely independent.

Back  -    New Search

ictus.

Traditionally of a rhythmical beat in a line of verse: thus in Latin verse a stressed syllable is seen as coinciding or not coinciding with the ictus of the relevant foot.

Back  -    New Search

idealization.

The process by which, e.g. the elements and rules of a language are established as a system underlying the phenomena of speech. Likewise of the elements so established: e.g. a phoneme seen as an ideal sound which underlies a shifting range of real sounds and real mechanisms by which they are produced.

Back  -    New Search

ideational.

(Meaning, function of language) involving the representation of ideas. Cf. cognitive meaning; also descriptive (3), referential, representational.

Back  -    New Search

ideogram.

A character in writing seen as representing an idea in abstraction from words. E.g. in ‘15’, the number itself is represented independently of the relevant word in English (fifteen), or in French (quinze), and so on.
Also ‘ideograph’ : sometimes used, especially in older treatments, for what is now more usually called a logogram.

Back  -    New Search

ideophone.

Used by Africanists of a distinct class of forms characterized by phonological structures that tend to be peculiar to them: e.g. by patterns of sound symbolism, reduplicative structures, or distinct patterns of tones.

Back  -    New Search

idiolect.

The speech or ‘dialect’ of a single individual. Hence idiolectal variation is variation within a language between one speaker and another.

Back  -    New Search

idiom.

A set expression in which two or more words are syntactically related, but with a meaning like that of a single lexical unit: e.g. ‘spill the beans’ in Someone has spilled the beans about the bank raid, or ‘put one's foot in it’ in He can never make a speech without putting his foot in it.
Not usual, as a technical term, in any other sense. For others current in ordinary usage cf. accent (2); dialect.

Back  -    New Search

‘idiom chunk’.

A part of an idiom separated from the rest by a syntactic process. E.g. in The beans were by then pretty well spilled (meaning that some secret was out) the beans is a detached chunk of the idiom ‘spill the beans’.

Back  -    New Search

idiophone.

See interjection.

Back  -    New Search

IE

= Indo-European.

Back  -    New Search

iff.

For ‘if and only if’.

Back  -    New Search

Igbo.

The official language in south-east Nigeria, native to an area from Port Harcourt northwards, including Onitsha, Enugu, and Afikpo. Variously classed, with others in the south of Nigeria, either as Eastern Kwa or as Benue-Congo.

Back  -    New Search

‘I-language’.

Chomsky's term from the mid-1980s for the knowledge of language internalized (‘I’) by individual speakers. Opp. E-language or ‘externalized language’.

Back  -    New Search

illative (ILL).

Case whose basic role is to indicate movement into something: e.g. schematically, I walked house-ILL ‘I walked into the house’.

Back  -    New Search

ill-formed.

Not well-formed.

Back  -    New Search

illocutionary.

Applied in the theory of speech acts to the force that an expression of some specific form will have when it is uttered. E.g. a speaker might stop someone and say ‘Please, can you help me?’ By virtue of its form (interrogative preceded by please) this would have the illocutionary force of a request for assistance.
Cf. locutionary; perlocutionary. In the theory developed by Austin and his successors, the simple act of uttering this sentence is a locutionary act; the illocutionary act is that of uttering it as a request; the perlocutionary act is what is accomplished by uttering it (e.g. the addressee might ignore the request, or might in fact help). But what is ‘illocutionary’ and what is ‘perlocutionary’ plainly depends on how much is judged to flow conventionally from the form of an utterance. E.g. if the chairman of a meeting says ‘This meeting is now closed’, this may be seen as a formula which has the illocutionary force of closing it. But its form is more generally that of a statement, and, as made by the chairman, it might instead be claimed to have that as its perlocutionary effect.

Back  -    New Search

Ilocano.

Austronesian language, native to the north-west of Luzon in the Philippines.

Back  -    New Search

‘image schema’.

Used informally by G. P. Lakoff and others of a general concept that structures our perception of the world: e.g. the concept of ‘a container’, or of ‘movement up and down’, or of ‘a long thin object’. Patterns of metaphor (2) can be seen as transformations relating one image schema to another.

Back  -    New Search

immanent.

Inherent. Thus one view of a language system is that it is a structure immanent, i.e. inherent, in the phenomena studied. Traditionally the opposite of ‘transcendent’.

Back  -    New Search

immediate.

Used where a relation has no intermediate term. Thus, in accounts of constituency, the immediate constituents of a unit are the smaller units into which it is directly analysed; in a phrase structure tree, a node A immediately dominates another node B if they are connected with no other node intervening.

Back  -    New Search

imparisyllabic.

Not parisyllabic.

Back  -    New Search

imperative (IMP).

(Construction, form of verb) whose primary role is in giving orders. E.g. Get out! is an imperative sentence; in Latin, i ‘go!’ is an imperative form of the verb.
Sometimes used simply in the sense of ‘order’. E.g. in Latin, a subjunctive such as eat ‘go-SUBJ-3SG’ can be what is traditionally a third-person imperative (‘May such or such a person go’). But, like declarative and interrogative, it is in principle a term in grammar, the role of ‘order’ being one that constructions, etc., including ones other than imperative, have in context.

Back  -    New Search

imperfect (IMPF).

Traditional term for forms of a verb that are past progressive as opposed to perfect: e.g. Latin vivebat (‘live-IMPF-3SG’) ‘was living, was alive’, as opposed to vixit ‘lived, has lived, is no longer alive’. Hence, e.g. of forms such as English was living.

Back  -    New Search

imperfective (IMPERF).

Not perfective: i.e. of forms used to refer to actions, etc. conceived as extending over a period of time, continuously or at intervals.
Cf. progressive. In a notional analysis of aspect the progressive in English or the imperfect in Latin or the Romance languages can be described as imperfective, while the simple past or ‘preterite’ is perfective. E.g. ‘imperfective’ is courting our daughter, was seeing her every weekend; ‘perfective’ met her last weekend.

Back  -    New Search

impersonal (IMPERS).

(Verb) which does not take a subject: e.g. Latin oportet ‘ought’ in quid me oportet facere? ‘What should I do?’ (lit. ‘what-ACC me-ACC ought to-do’). Thence of the construction taken by such a verb, and generally of constructions that are similar. E.g. It is nice to relax is impersonal since, although there is a subject (it), it is a dummy which does not refer to a specific individual or ‘person’.
The term originates in the description of languages like Latin which have subjects in the strictest sense: see subject (1). But it could in principle be extended to any in which some element is similarly distinguished.

Back  -    New Search

impersonal passive.

An impersonal construction in which the verb is passive in form. Thus in German Es wurde getanzt ‘There was dancing’, wurde getanzt is passive (lit. ‘was danced’); at the same time es is a dummy, as in e.g. Es schneit ‘It is snowing’, which does not refer to something that was being danced.
Also of other impersonal constructions in which the verb can be seen as in some way like a passive. E.g. in Spanish Se venden casas ‘Houses for sale’, the construction with se is described as impersonal except that the verb venden (‘sell-3PL’) agrees with casas (‘house-PL’). Although venden is active, its relation to casas is taken to be like that of a passive to its subject; so this sentence too is a ‘passive impersonal’.

Back  -    New Search

implication.

Relation in logic such that, if p is true, then q is also true. Commonly written p q: e.g. ‘girl (x) female (x)’ (‘If x is a girl then x is female’). Mutual implication , written p ? q, is the case where each proposition implies the other.

Back  -    New Search

implicational scale.

Any scale in which a feature associated with a given point implies the presence of those associated with all lower points. E.g. a scale in which points correspond to dialects, such that, at the lowest point, dialect A has undergone a sound change s_1; at the next highest dialect B has, in addition to s_1, undergone s_2; at the next highest dialect C has, in addition to s_1 and s_2, undergone s_3, and so on: i.e. the operation of sound change si implies that of all changes sj, where j < i. Also, e.g. in cases of gradience: thus form A might satisfy one criterion; form B both that and another, form C both those and another, and so on.
Accessibility scales in syntax reduce to the same model.

Back  -    New Search

implicational universal.

A linguistic universal of the form ‘if a then b’. E.g. if a language has phonetically nasal vowels, it also has oral vowels.

Back  -    New Search

implicature.

1 Any meaning that a sentence may have that goes beyond an account of its meaning in terms of truth conditions. This includes both conversational implicatures, defined initially as one kind of implicature within that definition, and conventional implicatures.

2 Also, loosely, in the sense of conversational implicature.
Top

Back  -    New Search

implosive.

A stop produced by an airstream mechanism in which air is initially rarefied above the larynx. In the simplest case, the glottis is closed and a stop is articulated at some place of articulation forward of it; the larynx is then lowered, so that, when the forward closure is released, air is drawn inwards into the space behind it. The mechanism is, on this basis, classed as glottalic and ingressive. But the drop in air pressure above the larynx also causes air to pass periodically upwards through the glottis: hence stops of this kind usually have an effect of voicing. A bilabial implosive [] and dental/alveolar implosive [] are widespread e.g. in West African languages.
The terms ‘implosif’ and ‘implosion’ have a different sense in French. E.g. in acteur ‘actor’ the c [k], which ends a syllable, is ‘implosive’; the following t [t], which begins one, is ‘explosive’.

Back  -    New Search

imprecative.

A sentence, especially a minor sentence, which includes a swear word or some other form used in abuse. Hence of some, like Damn you!, which are indeed, in origin, imprecations. Cf. expletive.

Back  -    New Search

impressionistic transcription.

A phonetic transcription of speech done by ear without, or as a prelude to, a phonological analysis; alternatively, one done by ear without the aid of instruments.

Back  -    New Search

inalienable possession.

Possessive relation in which the thing possessed is an inherent part of the possessor: e.g. in Mary's eyes, referring to the eyes that are part of Mary's own body. Opp. alienable possession, the two being distinguished in some languages.

Back  -    New Search

inanimate.

Not animate.

Back  -    New Search

inceptive

= inchoative.

Back  -    New Search

inchoative [n'ktv].

(Verb, aspect) indicating the initiation of some process or action. E.g. Latin senescere ‘to grow old’ or maturescere ‘to ripen’ are traditionally called inchoative verbs, and -esc-, by which they are formed from the words for ‘old person’ and ‘ripe’, an ‘inchoative suffix’. Also called ‘inceptive’ .

Back  -    New Search

‘incidence’.

The range of individual forms in which e.g. a particular sound unit is found. Differences of ‘incidence’ have been distinguished in dialectology from differences in e.g. the system of sound units itself.

Back  -    New Search

inclusion.

Technically of a relation between sets in which all members of a set A are also members of a set B. If so A is included in B; it is properly included if, in addition, at least one member of B is not a member of A.

Back  -    New Search

inclusive.

(Person, pronoun) used in referring to the speaker plus at least one addressee: e.g. Tagalog kata ‘you and I’, tayo ‘you and I and at least one other’.
An inclusive form used to refer to a single speaker and a single addressee is often called ‘dual’. One which refers or can refer to more than these is generally called ‘first plural inclusive’ (‘we’ including the addressee) in opposition to ‘first plural exclusive’ (‘we’ excluding the addressee). But a form referring to both speaker and addressee is logically as much a ‘you’ form as a ‘we’ form. Hence a language may in principle oppose an inclusive person (speaker and addressee) to, on the one hand, a first person (speaker but not addressee) and, on the other hand, a second person (addressee but not speaker). A language may also in principle distinguish a second plural inclusive (‘you’ plus the speaker) and a second plural exclusive (‘you’ without the speaker), both opposed to a first plural.

Back  -    New Search

incompatibility.

(Sense relation) among words that are mutually exclusive. E.g. between black and white: if something is black it cannot be white and if something is white it cannot be black.

Back  -    New Search

incorporation.

A regular process by which lexical units which are syntactically complements of verbs can also be realized as elements within the verb itself: e.g., schematically, hunt-rabbit-PROG-3SG ‘He is hunting rabbits, is rabbit-hunting’. Also of a pattern in which forms appearing only as affixes have meanings which correspond to those of forms appearing only as distinct words. E.g., schematically, hunt-RABBIT-PROG-3SG, where ‘RABBIT’ is a suffix different from, but linked semantically to, a lexical unit also meaning ‘rabbit’.
An incorporating language is one in which such patterns are systematic: ones of the second type, e.g. in Eskimo, were the earliest known.

Back  -    New Search

indeclinable.

(Noun, etc.) which, exceptionally for the language in question, does not have distinct inflections.

Back  -    New Search

indefinite.

Not referring to, or indicating reference to, an identifiable individual or set of individuals. E.g. in I have to see a student, the phrase a student does not indicate specifically which student the speaker has to see: it is accordingly an indefinite noun phrase . By the same token, a in a student is an indefinite article , someone in I have to see someone is an indefinite pronoun , and so on. Opp. definite.

Back  -    New Search

indefinite reference.

Reference to a specific individual or set of individuals not necessarily identifiable by an addressee. E.g. if I say to someone ‘I have lost a hammer’ I myself have a specific hammer in mind; but, to understand me, they do not have to know which it is. Contrast a hammer in ‘I must buy a hammer’, where there is no specific reference, or the hammer in ‘I have lost the hammer’, where the referent is one that the speaker can in turn identify.

Back  -    New Search

independent clause.

A clause which forms a sentence on its own: hence often equivalent to main clause.

Back  -    New Search

‘independent motivation’.

Support for an analysis based on independent, or allegedly independent, evidence. Thus an analysis of a phonological system might be supported by evidence both of sound changes and of the progressive loss of distinctions in aphasia.
Common in the 1960s and 1970s in the style of argument employed by advocates of transformations. E.g. in They expected me to leave, me has the form this pronoun has when it is an object: cf. They saw me. Therefore, in one analysis, it is on its own the object of expected: They expected me [to leave], not They expected [me to leave]. In addition, it corresponds to the subject of a passive: I was expected [to leave]. In that respect it resembles other elements analysed as objects: therefore this evidence might be claimed as ‘independent motivation’ for treating it as one.

Back  -    New Search

indeterminacy.

Strictly, perhaps, of cases where a division or distinction cannot be precisely drawn. E.g. in a normal pronunciation of a word like seeing there is no way of determining exactly and indisputably where the realization of see- ends and that of the ending -ing begins. Also, however, of cases where a decision will be made differently by different criteria. Many classic problems, e.g. of gradience, or in distinguishing homonymy from polysemy, involve indeterminacies of both kinds.

Back  -    New Search

indexical.

Term in philosophy for an expression whose extension is relative to a specific context, with a specific speaker, addressee, location in space, etc. E.g. here is an indexical expression, as in Mary lives here. Cf. deixis.

Back  -    New Search

Indian languages.

Those of the Indian subcontinent: specifically of the Indo-Aryan branch of Indo-European, covering part of Sri Lanka and most of the area from the Indian states of Maharashtra and Orissa northwards; of the Dravidian family mainly in south India and the north of Sri Lanka; and of the Munda family, in scattered parts of central and eastern India. Among others, English is used widely as a second language, and also has native speakers.

Back  -    New Search

Indian scripts.

Writing systems derived directly or indirectly from the Brahmi script, attested in ancient India from the second half of the 1st millennium BC. Modern forms include Devanagari, used in particular for Hindi, and the separate scripts, often with characters of very different shapes, that have developed for other major Indo-Aryan and for the Dravidian languages: in addition, those of Tibetan, and of most languages in South-east Asia, including Burmese, Khmer, Lao, and Thai. Earlier forms were used still more widely, in Central Asia with the spread of Buddhism and e.g. for Javanese before the Muslim conquest.
The basic type is alpha-syllabic, as Devanagari. The precise historical links, both within and outside India, are still partly uncertain: but for those in South-east Asia, the Mon script, attested in Burma (Myanmar) from the 11th to the 12th century AD, and before it the Grantha script, used in the coastal area of Tamil Nadu from the 5th century AD, were major intermediaries.

Back  -    New Search

Indic

= Indo-Aryan.

Back  -    New Search

indicative (IND).

1 (Form of verb, affix, etc.) which represents an unmarked mood in opposition to a subjunctive, imperative, etc. Hence that, in particular, of unqualified statements: thus Italian Entra Giovanni (‘enter-IND-3SG John’) ‘John's coming in’, as opposed e.g. to subjunctive Entri, signore (‘enter-SUBJ-3SG, sir’) ‘Do come in, sir’.

2 (Sentence) = declarative.
Top

Back  -    New Search

indices.

Commonly of subscripts or superscripts indicating whether phrases have the same or different referents: thus Maryi said shei would come, with the same index i, is a sentence meaning ‘Mary said she (Mary) would come’; Maryi said shej would come, with the different indices i and j, is one meaning ‘Mary said she (someone else) would come’.

Back  -    New Search

‘indirect anaphora’.

A relation between a phrase and some earlier expression which, though not in a strict sense an antecedent, will effectively indicate, in the light of people's general knowledge, who or what it refers to. E.g. people know that bicycles have chains: therefore, in I was riding my bicycle but the chain came loose, the phrase the chain will be understood, all else being equal, as referring to that of the bicycle referred to by the earlier phrase the bicycle. If so there is said to be a relation of ‘indirect anaphora’ between them.

Back  -    New Search

indirect object (IO).

An object whose semantic role is characteristically that of a recipient, e.g. to your sister in He blew a kiss to your sister; also, in most accounts, your sister in He blew your sister a kiss. Opp. direct object.
The relation between these sentences is often described in terms of dative movement. It is in part because that relation is possible that to your sister is distinguished, as an object, from directional phrases such as e.g. to the seaside in He sent his family to the seaside.

Back  -    New Search

indirect question.

1 A question as reported in indirect speech: e.g. where he was in I asked where he was.

2 An utterance with the force of a question which is not in an interrogative form. E.g. the declarative I would like to know his name might be uttered as an indirect question, with in part the same intention as ‘What is his name?’
Top

Back  -    New Search

indirect speech.

The reporting of something said, thought, etc. with deixis adapted to the viewpoint of the reporter. E.g. He said he would bring them might report a promise, originally ‘I will bring them’. But the person who made the promise was someone other than the reporter: hence, in the reporting, original I is changed to he. Also the promise was earlier than the report; hence, in addition, will is changed to would. With these adaptations, he would bring them is an example of, and is said to be ‘in’, indirect speech.
Opp. direct speech. E.g. in He said ‘I will bring them’, the promise is instead reported directly, with the deixis appropriate to when it was made.

Back  -    New Search

indirect speech act.

A speech act whose force differs from what is taken to be the literal meaning of the sentence uttered. Thus Could you close the window? has the form of an interrogative; therefore, in some accounts, it is literally a question. The act of uttering it as a request would then be indirect.
Cf. indirect question (2). Other instances were given blended names in the 1970s: see queclarative, whimperative.

Back  -    New Search

Indo-.

‘In India’: e.g. Indo-Aryan. Also in names for groupings of language families which include Indo-European. Thus Indo-Semitic is a conjectural family including Indo-European and Semitic, Indo-Uralic one in which it is lumped with Uralic. Indo-Hittite = Indo-European, but on the view that Hittite and other Anatolian languages form one major branch and all the other branches (Greek, Italic, Celtic, etc.) are subdivisions of another.

Back  -    New Search

Indo-Aryan.

Branch, within Indo-European, of Indo-Iranian: first attested by texts in Vedic (Sanskrit) from the 2nd millennium BC, and by inscriptions from the first.
The modern Indo-Aryan languages cover most of the north and centre of the Indian subcontinent, with outliers in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) and the Maldives. Hindi-Urdu and Bengali are by far the largest; of the remainder, Marathi, in the south of the main area, Gujarati in the south-west, Sindhi to the west, Punjabi in the north-west, Assamese in the east, Oriya in the south-east, and Sinhalese in Sri Lanka all have a current literary standard and are linked to major political units. Others, such as Bhojpuri or Maithili, also have speakers in the tens of millions.
Across the main area, separate languages have arisen largely by divisions within a geographical continuum. Hence internal branches are still not definitively established.

Back  -    New Search

Indo-European.

Family of languages including, at historically its western limit, most of the languages spoken in Europe and, at its eastern limit, those of all but the southern part of the Indian subcontinent. Usually divided into eleven main branches: in the order in which they are first attested, Anatolian (now extinct), Indo-Iranian, Greek, Italic (represented by the modern Romance languages), Celtic, Germanic (which includes English), Armenian, Tocharian (extinct), Slavic (Slavonic), Baltic (represented by Latvian and Lithuanian), and Albanian. Groupings larger than these are problematic to varying degrees: the safest hypothesis is that of a common Balto-Slavic.
The comparative method has its origin in the intensive study of Indo-European, especially in German-speaking universities, from the early 19th century. The size and complexity of the family, in comparison with many others that can be established with the same certainty, reflects in part the early date at which the forms in several branches can be compared.

Back  -    New Search

Indo-Iranian.

Branch of Indo-European divided in turn into Indo-Aryan and Iranian.

Back  -    New Search

Indonesian.

See Malay-Indonesian.

Back  -    New Search

induction.

Process of reasoning which moves from the particular to the general. E.g. from a series of observations of individual professors, all of whom work very hard, one might draw the inductive inference that all professors work very hard.
Opp. deduction: see also abduction.

Back  -    New Search

inessive.

Case whose basic role is to indicate position within something: thus, schematically, I-sit study-INESS ‘I am sitting in a study’.

Back  -    New Search

INF

= infinitive.

Back  -    New Search

infection.

Older term for the influence of one vowel on another, e.g. in metaphony or vowel harmony.

Back  -    New Search

infectum.

Term in Latin grammar for forms of a verb that are not marked as perfect (2). E.g. Latin regit ‘rules’ or regebat ‘was ruling’ are forms of, and based on the stem (reg-) of, the infectum; rexit ‘ruled, has ruled’ and rexerat ‘had ruled’, based on the stem rex-, are corresponding forms of the ‘perfectum’.

Back  -    New Search

infelicitous.

(Speech act) not meeting the required felicity conditions.

Back  -    New Search

inference.

Any conclusion drawn from a set of propositions, from something someone has said, and so on. This includes things that follow logically: cf. implication, entailment. It also includes things that, while not following logically, are implied, in an ordinary sense, e.g. in a specific context: cf. e.g. conversational implicature.

Back  -    New Search

inferential.

(Particle, inflection) indicating that what is said is based on inference and not on direct observation. E.g. schematically, They INFERENTIAL are indoors ‘They must be indoors’ (because their door is open, because they are not visible outside, and so on). Opposed to other evidential elements.

Back  -    New Search

infinitive (INF).

A non-finite form of a verb characteristically used in clauses and in other constructions subordinate to another verb: e.g., in English, the ‘bare infinitive’ do in I made him do it, and the infinitive with to, as it is usually described, in I forced him to do it. An infinitive clause , or infinitival clause , is one whose verb is in the infinitive form: thus in these examples, if clause boundaries are established after made and forced, both him do it and him to do it.
Originally of forms in e.g. Latin that also regularly headed noun phrases: thus, more marginally in English, To buy caviar is expensive.

Back  -    New Search

infix.

An affix or bound (1) morpheme which is inserted within another form. Thus in Latin rumpo ‘I break’ the root is rup-: cf. rup-t-us ‘broken’. The stem rump- then consists of the root with, in included position, an infix -m-.
Infixation is the process of inserting an infix; a form is infixal if, like rump-, it is formed with an infix or, like -m-, it is in the position of one.

Back  -    New Search

INFL ['nfl].

Name for the verbal inflection of a clause in Government and Binding Theory, later generalized as I.

Back  -    New Search

inflecting.

(Language, formation) in which words distinguish grammatical categories whose realizations cannot or cannot easily be separated. E.g. in Russian, nouns distinguish case and number; but a specific case and a specific number are never realized by distinct endings. Likewise verbs distinguish e.g. a perfective from an imperfective, commonly realized by a variation within their stems.
Opp. agglutinating, isolating, in a typology dating from the 19th century.

Back  -    New Search

inflection.

Any form or change of form which distinguishes different grammatical forms of the same lexical unit. E.g. plural books is distinguished from singular book by the inflection -s, which is by that token a plural inflection.
The term originally meant ‘modification’ (lit. ‘bending’): thus book is modified, by the addition of -s, to books.

Back  -    New Search

inflectional class.

A class of words or morphemes which have the same inflection or inflections. Thus sing is of the same inflectional class as sink or drink: as sing is distinguished from sang and sung, so sink is distinguished from sank and sunk, and drink from drank and drunk.
Major inflectional classes are often described as conjugations (of verbs) or declensions (of nouns).

Back  -    New Search

inflectional morphology.

Branch of morphology concerned with inflections: hence especially with both the semantic and the formal structure of paradigms. An inflectional affix is similarly an affix described as an inflection, a process by which e.g. such an affix is added is an inflectional formation , and so on.
Opp. derivational morphology. But the distinction has often been challenged, e.g. in Lexical Morphology.

Back  -    New Search

informant.

Any speaker of a language acting as a source for statements that a linguist makes about it. For their own language, linguists are often their own informants; in investigating one that they do not know or that is not theirs, they may work regularly with a single native speaker or group of speakers.
Sometimes replaced by ‘consultant’ or ‘language consultant’ , especially in the USA, where ‘informant’ has developed the sense of ‘informer’.

Back  -    New Search

‘informationally encapsulated’.

See modular.

Back  -    New Search

information structure.

The structure of a sentence or larger unit viewed as a means of communicating information to an addressee. Described in terms of given vs. new, theme (1) vs. rheme, topic (2) vs. comment, focus, etc.

Back  -    New Search

information theory.

Mathematical theory developed in the 1950s in which the quantity of ‘information’ carried by a channel of communication is defined in terms of the probability with which specific units may be transmitted. Suppose that messages may consist of any letter of the alphabet in any order: then the probability with which at any stage in the sequence any particular letter will be transmitted is constant. But suppose instead that messages consist of written words in English: then after e.g. initial f the probability that t or another f will follow is very low, that u will follow is relatively high, that r or a will follow even higher. In the second case the quantity of ‘information’ carried by the channel would be less.
Important in linguistics as a basis for one measure of redundancy.

Back  -    New Search

-ing form.

A verb form in English such as sleeping in those sleeping, We were sleeping, I like sleeping, Sleeping was impossible. Often so called because no term inherited from the grammatical tradition, such as present participle or gerund, is appropriate to all these uses.

Back  -    New Search

ingressive.

(Air stream or airstream mechanism) in which the direction of flow is inwards. Opp. egressive: for specific mechanisms see click, implosive.

Back  -    New Search

Ingvaeonic

= Anglo-Frisian.

Back  -    New Search

inherent feature.

One which characterizes a word, etc. in the lexicon as opposed to one assigned to it by a specific construction. E.g. in German a noun is inherently masculine, feminine, or neuter; in specific constructions it will be contingently singular or plural, or nominative singular, accusative singular, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

inheritance.

Transfer of properties under an operation. E.g. inquiry is a noun derived from inquire, by an operation under which it inherits the property of taking a prepositional phrase with into: They inquired [into his expenses], likewise their inquiry [into his expenses]. Also of the copying of features from a higher to a lower level of constituency. E.g. a sentence is passive; therefore a verb phrase and a verb within it are also passive. For this second sense cf. percolation.

Back  -    New Search

initial phrase marker.

Term in transformational grammar for a phrase structure tree derived by rules of a base component only, which is then subject to transformations.

Back  -    New Search

initial symbol.

See rewrite rule.

Back  -    New Search

Initial Teaching Alphabet.

A way of writing English proposed as a compromise between a phonetic transcription and the conventional spelling; devised by J. Pitman and promoted in several schools in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s on the theory that children would learn the spelling more easily if they learned this system first.

Back  -    New Search

initiator.

Used of whatever initiates a flow of air in the production of speech. Thus in the pulmonic airstream mechanism an airflow is initiated by the organs that control breathing.

Back  -    New Search

injunctive.

Term in Indo-European linguistics for the use of forms based on the stem of the indicative in orders and prohibitions. Attested mainly in Indo-Iranian.

Back  -    New Search

‘innate’.

Usual in linguistics since the 1960s in the loose sense of ‘in part at least determined by genetic inheritance’. Hence, in particular, the ‘innateness hypothesis’ , with reference to Chomsky's theory of universal grammar.

Back  -    New Search

inner form.

See Humboldt.

Back  -    New Search

innovation.

Any change by which a language diverges from others historically related to it. E.g. the order of words in Clearly I have lost represents an innovation in English as compared with the verb-second order of Old English and other Germanic languages. When two members of a family share an innovation, that is prima facie evidence that they are more closely related than either is to the others.

Back  -    New Search

in pausa.

At the end of, or before a break in, an utterance. E.g., in many forms of English, a word like beer ends in [] before a consonant or ‘in pausa’, but has a linking [r] before a vowel.

Back  -    New Search

instantaneous release.

Chomsky and Halle's term in SPE for the rapid release of a stop consonant, in which the resulting flow of air is not audibly turbulent. Hence a feature distinguishing e.g. [p] or [t] from affricates such as German pf or tsch [t]. Opp. delayed release.

Back  -    New Search

institutionalized

= established.

Back  -    New Search

instrumental (1).

Case or case role of elements indicating an instrument used for some purpose. Thus with a fork has an instrumental role in I dug it with a fork; also, in accounts following that of Case Grammar, a fork in A fork would dig it easily or I used a fork to dig it.

Back  -    New Search

instrumental (2).

(Function of language) in achieving some practical end. Cf. conative.

Back  -    New Search

instrumentalism.

Philosophical theory, developed in the late 19th century by J. Dewey, which holds that beliefs, hypotheses, etc. are instruments with which we engage with the world in which we live, and are therefore justified simply to the extent that they are successful and fruitful.

Back  -    New Search

integration.

Process by which a word, etc. borrowed from another language becomes part of the native system. Thus the [z] of rouge or mirage, both in origin loan words from French, is not fully integrated into English phonology, since its distribution, within the syllable and in relation to the vowels that it follows, is more restricted than that of [] (sh) and others to which it is most directly opposed. Likewise the words as wholes are not fully integrated, unlike words in [] such as push or brush, themselves much earlier borrowings from French, which are.

Back  -    New Search

intensifying.

(Word, intonation, inflection) which in any way adds emphasis to a sentence or some element within it. Thus, schematically, He did-INTENS it might mean ‘He really did it’.
‘Intensifier’ is used by Quirk et al., CGE, of a class of adverbial elements (in their terms a class of subjuncts) with an intensifying role that is either positive or negative. The positive ones are amplifiers and include, as amplifiers of the strongest degree, maximizers such as completely or utterly; the negative are downtoners and include, at the other end of a scale, minimizers such as hardly or scarcely.

Back  -    New Search

intension.

The properties that define a word or concept. An intensional definition of a class will correspondingly specify the properties that something must have to be a member of it. Opp. extension, extensional.
An intensional logic is one in which the validity of arguments depends on identity or difference in intension, opposed again to extension.

Back  -    New Search

intensity.

The physical correlate of perceived loudness, usually measured in decibels.

Back  -    New Search

intensive.

(Verb) which takes a predicative adjective or noun phrase: e.g. those of She is angry, He seemed a nice man. Also of the pattern of complementation associated with it: thus angry and a nice man are described as ‘intensive complements’ .
Cf. copular, predicative, both of which are used more widely.

Back  -    New Search

interchangeability.

The property of language by which the roles of speaker and addressee are interchangeable. Thus any sentence one might utter one would also understand if said by someone else and, in principle, vice versa. Defined as one of the proposed design features of language.

Back  -    New Search

interdental.

(Consonant) articulated with the tip of the tongue protruded between the teeth: e.g. in one pronunciation of (th) [] in thing.

Back  -    New Search

interference.

The influence that knowledge of one language has on the way one speaks another: e.g. in the speech of bilinguals, or as a cause of errors by someone learning a new language.

Back  -    New Search

interfix.

A morphological element serving simply as a link between other elements. E.g. -i- in Latin particeps ‘participant’ or aquifolia ‘holly’, seen as linking two members of a compound (part-i-ceps, aqu-i-folia).

Back  -    New Search

interjection.

Traditionally of forms that express ‘states of mind’ and do not enter into specific syntactic relations with other words: e.g. Wow, Yuk, Phew. Some, such as phew [F:], are also idiophones , with phonetic features peculiar to them.
A part of speech in ancient Roman accounts of Latin. Extended by some recent writers to a larger and more indeterminate category of which the traditional interjections are only part.

Back  -    New Search

interlanguage.

1 A language, or an artificial system like a language, used as an intermediary, e.g. in translation, between two others.

2 A system of rules said to develop, in the mind of someone learning a foreign language, which is intermediate between that of their native language and that of the one being learned.
Top

Back  -    New Search

inter-level.

A level of description defined as a link between two others: e.g. phonology defined, as by Halliday in the early 1960s, as one linking grammar and phonetics.

Back  -    New Search

internal argument.

One not external to a predicate (1) or verb phrase: thus specifically an object as opposed to a subject.

Back  -    New Search

internal causes.

Causes of change seen as internal to a language or to the community that speaks it. Thus an internal cause of sound change might be an increase in the coarticulation of adjacent consonants, or the pressure to maintain an audible difference between vowels; an external cause might be contact with the system of a neighbouring language.

Back  -    New Search

internal history.

The history of changes in the structure of a language, as opposed to its external history. E.g. it is part of the internal history of English that rules of word order changed over the early Middle Ages; part of its external history that e.g. Shakespeare wrote in it.

Back  -    New Search

‘internalize’.

Used by Chomsky from the late 1950s for the process of constructing representations in the mind. Thus, in learning a native language, a child was seen as ‘internalizing’ its grammar. Hence, in Chomsky's terminology in the 1980s, ‘internalized language’ or I-language.

Back  -    New Search

internal reconstruction.

The attempted reconstruction of earlier stages of a language on the evidence of that language alone. Thus there are alternations in English between e.g. [] and []: wise vs. wisdom, vice vs. vicious, etc. On that evidence alone, one might argue, first, that either or both vowels must show the effect of sound change, and, secondly, that the most plausible changes would derive wis(e) and vic(e) from reconstructed [wi:z], [vi:s].

Back  -    New Search

internal sandhi.

Processes of phonological modification (sandhi) found within words, at or across the boundaries of roots or affixes.

Back  -    New Search

internal syntax.

The relations, rules, etc. that apply within a syntactic unit, as opposed to those into which it enters, as a whole, within larger units.

Back  -    New Search

international language.

One used internationally; specifically, one recognized officially as a language of international meetings, diplomacy, etc.

Back  -    New Search

International Phonetic Alphabet.

The system of phonetic transcription developed and promoted by the International Phonetic Association. Consonants are classified by place and manner of articulation, with boxes in the resulting grid filled, where there is no appropriate letter in the Roman alphabet, with special letters partly resembling them. Secondary articulations, and some manners of articulation not distinguished by the Roman alphabet, are shown by diacritics. The transcription of vowels is according to the cardinal vowel system.
The increasing adoption of this system is without doubt one of the most important practical achievements of linguistics in the 20th century.

Back  -    New Search

International Phonetic Association.

Society founded in France in 1886 by Passy and called by this name since 1897. Its original aim was to promote the use of phonetic script in teaching modern European languages, and its journal, Le Maître Phonétique (‘The Phonetic Teacher’), published articles in the International Phonetic Alphabet which it devised. In the course of the 20th century its interests have become increasingly academic, with its centre shifted to Britain. Its present journal, the Journal of the International Phonetic Association, replaced Le Maître Phonétique in 1970.
Passy and his pupil (Daniel) Jones were leading figures for much of its history.

Back  -    New Search

interpersonal.

(Meaning, function of language) in developing and maintaining social relations between people. Alternatively, that is said to be the social function : the interpersonal then includes both that and the expressive (affective, emotive) function.

Back  -    New Search

interpretant.

Peirce's term for the effect that a sign has on someone who interprets or understands it. Hence pragmatics was originally defined by the relation that signs have to interpretants.

Back  -    New Search

interpreted.

(Logical calculus, etc.) assigned an interpretation in some system of formal semantics.

Back  -    New Search

‘Interpretive Semantics’.

Applied in the early 1970s to any model of transformational grammar in which semantic representations of sentences are derived from what are seen as purely formal representations of their syntax. The rules by which they were derived had been described by Chomsky in Aspects as ‘purely interpretive’. Such models included both the Standard Theory of Aspects and the modifications of it leading to the Extended Standard Theory.
Opp. Generative Semantics.

Back  -    New Search

interrogative.

(Construction, etc.) whose primary role is in asking questions: e.g. that of Is he here? as distinguished from the declarative He is here. An interrogative particle or interrogative inflection is one which marks an interrogative: e.g. in the equivalent sentence in Latin, a clitic -ne (adestne? ‘be-present-3SG-INTERROG’). An interrogative pronoun, adverb , etc. is one that represents a focus of questioning: e.g. who or what in Who did this?, What have they done?; where in Where are they taking us?
The terms ‘question’ and ‘interrogative’ are often interchanged. E.g. Is he here? is a question or is an interrogative sentence or ‘an interrogative’. But a distinction can and sometimes must be made. Thus Can't you shut up? has the construction of an interrogative, but its usual role would not be as a question but as a request or order. Cf. declarative; imperative.

Back  -    New Search

interrogative tag.

A tag in the form of an interrogative: e.g. has he? in He hasn't left, has he?

Back  -    New Search

interrupted

(consonant) = abrupt.

Back  -    New Search

intersection.

Technically of an operation on sets by which the intersection (or product ) of sets A and B is the set of all elements, possibly none, which are members of both. Cf. union (1).

Back  -    New Search

intervocalic.

Appearing between vowels. E.g. [p] is an intervocalic consonant in kipper ['kp].

Back  -    New Search

intonation.

A distinctive pattern of tones over a stretch of speech in principle longer than a word. Thus there is a difference in intonation between e.g. That's ‘ IT (‘I'm finished’) and That's ’ IT? (‘Is that all?’).
A description of intonation usually has three main aspects. First, the relevant stretches of speech must be identified: in that way sentences or utterances are divided into successive intonational units or tone groups. Secondly, a syllable or series of syllables within each will be described as nuclear or tonic: this will be a position of prominence, identified e.g. by a rapid change of pitch. Thirdly, a specific pattern of tones will be distinguished: this might be described as an overall tune or contour (rising, falling, falling and then rising, etc.) or might alternatively be divided into a sequence of smaller components, each with its own pitch level. Descriptions in terms of contours are usual e.g. in British treatments; the alternative treatment derives in particular from American accounts in the 1940s and 1950s, in which patterns of intonation were described as pitch morphemes composed of successive pitch phonemes.

Back  -    New Search

intonation group

= tone group.

Back  -    New Search

intransitive.

Construction in which a verb is related to a single noun or its equivalent: e.g. that of They vanished. An intransitive verb , or an intransitive sense of a verb, is one that takes such a construction: e.g. vanish, or dry with the sense it has in It will dry. Opp. transitive.

Back  -    New Search

intransitive preposition.

A word such as away in He walked away, seen as a preposition which takes no complement. Traditionally classed as an adverb, since, in the ancient account of parts of speech, prepositions were defined as preposed to a noun or some other element.

Back  -    New Search

intransitivizer.

Affix, etc. marking a verb as intransitive rather than transitive. E.g., schematically, Vase shattered-INTRANS ‘The vase shattered’.

Back  -    New Search

intrinsic allophone.

A variant of a phoneme which can be explained by the phonetic context, without invoking a specific phonological rule: e.g. one which is an effect of coarticulation. `Opp. extrinsic allophone; but the validity of the distinction depends in part at least on how the relation between phonetics and phonology is in general perceived.

Back  -    New Search

intrinsic ordering.

See ordered rules.

Back  -    New Search

intrinsic pitch.

The pitch of a vowel in abstraction from the vibration of the vocal cords. Thus [i] has a higher intrinsic pitch, in terms of the underlying resonance of the vocal tract, than [].

Back  -    New Search

intrusive r.

See linking r.

Back  -    New Search

intuition.

Variously of the intuitive grasp that people have or may have of the structure of their own language, and of the intuitive feeling that a linguist may have in investigating it. Likewise ‘counter-intuitive’.

Back  -    New Search

Inuit.

Often = Eskimo. Specifically of a branch of Eskimo within Eskimo-Aleut, spoken from the Norton Sound in Alaska across the Arctic to Greenland and Labrador.

Back  -    New Search

invariable word.

One which does not have two or more forms with different grammatical meanings. E.g. but or never, as compared e.g. with woman, which distinguishes singular woman and plural women.

Back  -    New Search

invariant.

Not changing. E.g. in the classic theory of the phoneme the distinctive features that characterize each unit are invariant; the features with which it is realized in different positions or in different combinations vary. The aim of phonological analysis is accordingly to discover invariants that underlie surface variation.

Back  -    New Search

inverse.

(Form of verb, affix) indicating, e.g. in Algonquian languages, that of two elements in a clause that differ on some scale of empathy, it is the one lower on the scale that is the agent.
Opp. direct . Thus, if third person forms are lower on the scale than first persons, a sentence meaning ‘I kissed the sister’ will be marked as direct: schematically, with the persons marked respectively by a prefix and a suffix, 1ST-kissed-DIR-3RD sister. A sentence meaning ‘The sister kissed me’ will instead be marked as inverse. Thus, with the persons marked in the same way in the same positions, 1ST-kissed-INV-3RD sister.

Back  -    New Search

inversion.

Any operation by which the order x + y is changed to y + x. E.g. an interrogative in English (Is he here?) is related to a corresponding declarative (He is here) by inversion of the subject (he) and a verb (in this case is).

Back  -    New Search

inverted commas.

Used variously for things other than individual forms considered in abstraction. Thus for glosses or translations: e.g. French arbre ‘tree’, Elle vient ‘She is coming’. Also for propositions seen as expressed by sentences: e.g. both French Elle vient and English She is coming express the proposition ‘She is coming’. Also for units represented at a higher level of abstraction: e.g. coming is a form of the verb ‘to come’. Also of a form as uttered on a specific occasion: thus ‘She's coming’ would represent an utterance of She's coming.

Back  -    New Search

‘invisible hand’ theory.

Model of change in language in which change in a given direction emerges, as if directed ‘by an invisible hand’, from the separate behaviour of individual speakers, directed in itself to strictly individual ends. An application to linguistics by R. Keller of an account by Adam Smith in economics.

Back  -    New Search

IO

= indirect object.

Back  -    New Search

IP.

1 = Item and Process.

2 A phrase (P) in Chomsky's Principles and Parameters Theory headed by I (= INFL).
Top

Back  -    New Search

IPA

= International Phonetic Alphabet, International Phonetic Association.

Back  -    New Search

Iranian.

Branch, within Indo-European, of Indo-Iranian, first attested by religious texts in Avestan and inscriptions in Old Persian from the reign of Darius I (522–486 BC). The modern languages are spoken mainly in a continuous area from eastern Turkey through Iran to Afghanistan and Tajikistan: Persian, Pashto, Kurdish, and Baluchi are in order of size the most important.

Back  -    New Search

irony.

Traditionally of a figure of speech in which one thing is said but the opposite is meant: e.g. ‘That's just what I needed!’, said as the tool one is using comes apart in one's hands. Usage in pragmatics or linguistics generally tends to reflect this, but others are also current, in literary studies especially.

Back  -    New Search

Iroquoian.

Family of languages spoken or formerly spoken in parts of eastern North America. The main group were and in part are in the Great Lakes region from Lake Huron eastwards: this includes Mohawk. Others include Cherokee, displaced to Oklahoma by ethnic cleansing in the 19th century.

Back  -    New Search

irrealis [re':ls].

(Form of verb) used to refer to something that has not happened or is unlikely to happen. E.g. had got is ‘an irrealis’ in the remote or unreal conditional if you had got there on time; likewise were in I was hoping you were in town tomorrow. Especially of past tenses used in this way.

Back  -    New Search

irregular.

See regular.

Back  -    New Search

irreversible binomial.

A pair of words in a fixed and parallel relation: e.g. (It is raining) cats and dogs, not dogs and cats; (just a few) odds and ends, not ends and odds.

Back  -    New Search

island.

A syntactic unit whose boundaries form a barrier to specific syntactic relations or processes. For an example see coordinate structure constraint: cf. complex NP constraint, wh-island constraint. An island constraint or condition is any such principle by which an island is defined.

Back  -    New Search

isochrony.

Principle by which phonological units tend to be equally spaced in time: e.g. syllables in languages that are syllable-timed, stresses in those that are stress-timed.

Back  -    New Search

isogloss.

A line on a map dividing areas whose dialects differ in some specific respect: e.g. between dialects in which a consonant is in principle voiced and those in which the corresponding consonant is voiceless, or those in which a certain thing is normally called x and those in which it is normally called y.
Major divisions between dialects are characterized by bundles of isoglosses , in which many such lines tend to run together.

Back  -    New Search

isolated opposition.

An opposition, especially in Prague School phonology, characterized by a unique pair of features: e.g. in Spanish, between trilled [r] (rr) in perro ‘dog’ and flapped [] (r) in pero ‘but’. Distinguished as such from members of a correlation.

Back  -    New Search

isolating.

(Language) in which each grammatical category is represented by a separate word. Opp. agglutinating; inflecting.
Early Chinese is a classic example. E.g. the sentence w qi xián zh yòng ‘I will employ the worthy’ is made up of five words, each of which is grammatically indivisible: ‘I (w) future (qi) worthy (xián) them (zh) employ (yòng)’.

Back  -    New Search

isomorphism.

Strictly, a term in mathematics for an exact correspondence between both the elements of two sets and the relations defined by operations on these elements. Used in linguistics, from the late 1940s, for a general principle by which the structuring of one level parallels or is made to parallel that of another. E.g. the relation of morpheme to allomorph was modelled on that of phoneme to allophone; a binary division of the syllable, into onset and rhyme, parallels that of the sentence into subject and predicate; semantic features, e.g. in componential analysis, parallel distinctive features in phonology.
The term was introduced in this sense by J. Kurylowicz, commenting on the work of Hjelmslev.

Back  -    New Search

Italian.

Romance language whose standard form, increasingly dominant since the political unification of Italy in the 19th century, has its ultimate source in the Tuscan dialect of Florence, developed as a literary language from the Middle Ages by Dante and others. Many of the regional varieties called ‘dialects’ differ from it, in the south especially, to a degree that in other external circumstances would count as a difference between languages; hence their speakers are in effect bilingual.
Attested in a form distinct from Latin from the 10th century AD.

Back  -    New Search

Italic.

Branch of Indo-European which includes Latin; also Oscan and Umbrian, attested by ancient inscriptions respectively from Pompeii and elsewhere in south Italy and from Gubbio in the Appennines.

Back  -    New Search

italics.

Usual for citing words and other forms in abstraction from their use. E.g. in saying ‘I must go home’, one utters the sentence I must go home, which includes, among others, the word home.

Back  -    New Search

Italo-Celtic.

See Celtic.

Back  -    New Search

Item and Arrangement.

One of three models of morphology distinguished in the 1950s by C. F. Hockett. The ‘items’ are morphemes (3); each morpheme is realized by one or more alternating morphs, and larger units, such as words, consist of ‘arrangements’ of morphemes, typically (at least) in sequence. E.g. duchesses will be represented as a sequence of three morphemes ‘duke’, whose allomorph in this context is [dt], followed by ‘-ess’, realized by a second morph [S], followed by the plural morpheme, realized by [Z].
Contrasted by Hockett with Item and Process, Word and Paradigm.

Back  -    New Search

Item and Process.

One of three models of morphology originally distinguished by C. F. Hockett in the 1950s. Contrasted with Item and Arrangement, Word and Paradigm.
The term is usually applied to models in which an initially simple element (traditionally the root) undergoes successive processes of internal change, affixation, etc. E.g. unsung [ns] might be derived from the root sing [s] by an internal change of [] to [], which forms the past participle, followed by the addition of the prefix un-[n], which forms a negative.

Back  -    New Search

iterative.

(Inflection, etc.) indicating repetition. E.g., schematically, They write-PAST-ITERAT Wednesday ‘They used to write on Wednesdays’. Cf. frequentative.

Back  -    New Search

J

Jacaltec.

Mayan language spoken in the interior of southern Guatemala, in an area close to the border with Mexico.

Back  -    New Search

Jakobson, Roman

(1896–1982).
Structural linguist, Russian in origin, in Brno before the Second World War and a leading member of the Prague School; in the USA from the 1940s. The driving principle in his work was that of a binary relation: in particular, the opposition of a positive or marked term to a negative or unmarked. In the 1930s he pioneered the concept of markedness in morphology, and developed with Trubetzkoy a theory of phonological systems that led, in the 1950s, to a proposal in which any such system is reduced to combinations of at most twelve universal features, each with a positive and a negative value. Through Halle, who was Jakobson's pupil and collaborator, this set of features was incorporated into Generative Phonology until the late 1960s, when it was replaced by that of Chomsky and Halle, SPE.
Jakobson's ideas have had a wide influence outside linguistics, through his own work, especially on formal structures in poetry, and his contacts with others, e.g. in the 1940s with the French anthropologist C. Lévi-Strauss. For other aspects of his thought see functions of language; also compact, for his vowel and consonant triangle.

Back  -    New Search

Japanese.

Spoken throughout Japan, and by emigration elsewhere. Attested from the 8th century AD in Chinese characters, some used on the basis of meaning and others for their phonetic value; subsequently written in a mixture of Chinese characters (kanji ) and two forms of syllabary (kana) that evolved from characters used phonetically: katakana (lit. ‘partial kana’), derived by omitting parts of one set of characters, and hiragana (‘plain kana’), derived from cursive forms of another. In normal practice, kanji is now used primarily for lexical words; hiragana for inflectional endings and words with grammatical meaning; katakana for western names and loan words from western languages; with, in addition, Roman letters e.g. for acronyms from western languages.
Ryukyuan, in the Okinawan islands in the south-west, is treated as either a group of dialects of Japanese, or a group of languages related to it. Beyond this, Japanese has no secure genetic relationship in any wider family.

Back  -    New Search

Jaqí.

See Aymará.

Back  -    New Search

Javanese.

Austronesian, spoken in central Java and by colonization elsewhere in Indonesia. Old Javanese (= Kawi ‘(language of) poetry’) is attested by inscriptions from the late 8th century AD and by literature from the 10th; ‘Middle Javanese’ refers to the period after the Islamic conquest of Java in the late 15th century. Written until the Dutch occupation in a script derived from southern India which survives, with older forms of the language, for learned and ceremonial purposes; now ordinarily replaced by Roman.

Back  -    New Search

jer.

One of two letters in the Cyrillic alphabet, one indicating that a preceding consonant is palatalized, the other, no longer in use for Russian, that it is not.

Back  -    New Search

Jespersen, Otto

(1860–1943).
Danish linguist whose most enduring work is in the theory of grammar and the grammar of English. The theory is set out especially in The Philosophy of Grammar (1924), and is founded on the intersecting concepts of ranks (1) as successive levels of subordination and of nexus (predication) vs. junction. In Analytical Syntax (1938) he developed a linear notation for these and other constructions. His major work on English is the Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles (7 vols., 1909–49), as rich throughout in insight as in examples. Before this he had made an important contribution to phonetics, in Lehrbuch der Phonetik (1904) and earlier work, including an attempt to develop an analphabetic notation for speech sounds. He is also remembered for his account of the evolution of languages, in Progress in Language (1894) and in the final part of Language (1920), in which he argued, against Schleicher especially, that the changes leading e.g. from the older to the modern Indo-European languages should be seen as improvements, not as decay.
Jespersen had a passionate interest in the applications of linguistics, playing a strong role in the movement for an international auxiliary language and in promoting new methods of teaching foreign languages.

Back  -    New Search

Jones, Daniel

(1881–1967).
English phonetician, a pupil of Passy and closely involved in the work of the International Phonetic Association. Jones established the system of cardinal vowels, and his work on the phonetics of Southern British RP or ‘Received Pronunciation’, embodied both in his Outline of English Phonetics (first published in 1914) and in a widely used pronouncing dictionary, is fundamental. He also made a significant contribution, in the tradition of Sweet, to the theory of the phoneme.

Back  -    New Search

Jones, William

(1746–94).
Orientalist, working as a lawyer and a judge in Calcutta from 1783. Cited in histories of linguistics for an address in 1786 to the Bengal Asiatic Society, which he founded, in the course of which he remarked as self-evident that Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, among others, must have descended from a common ancestor.

Back  -    New Search

Judaeo-.

From the Latin word for ‘Jew(ish)’. Judaeo-Spanish refers to forms of Spanish spoken in parts of the Ottoman empire by the descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain by Roman Catholics in the 15th century; Judaeo-German = Yiddish.

Back  -    New Search

junction (1).

Jespersen's term for constructions that involve subordination (= dependency) without predication: e.g. that of dreadfully tiresome meetings, where dreadfully is subordinate to tiresome, and tiresome in turn subordinate to meetings. In Jespersen's theory of ranks, meetings is the ‘primary’, tiresome the ‘secondary’, dreadfully the ‘tertiary’.
Opp. nexus.

Back  -    New Search

junction (2)

= sandhi.

Back  -    New Search

juncture.

The degree of linkage between successive sounds in speech. Thus, in a stock example, the [t] and [r] of nitrate are in close juncture; hence, in many speakers, the [t] is released as an affricate with the onset of voicing delayed. But the [t] and [r] of night-rate, where there is a boundary between two members of a compound, are in open juncture.
A juncture phoneme is a juncture conceived of as a unit at the level of phonemes. G. L. Trager and other Post-Bloomfieldians distinguished four such phonemes in English, some of which were to survive as boundary symbols in Generative Phonology.

Back  -    New Search

Junggrammatiker.

See Neogrammarians.

Back  -    New Search

jussive.

(Verb form, etc.) used in commands. Thus, in Let them be freed, the obsolescent use of let has jussive force in English. Cf. imperative: it is not clear that both terms are needed.

Back  -    New Search

juxtaposition.

Relation of sequence between adjacent units. Hence especially where a construction is realized by adjacency alone: thus in many languages the role of a possessive is marked by juxtaposition (schematically ‘Peter book’ or ‘book Peter’) without an inflection, etc. on either. Also available for a relation in which no specific construction is posited: thus successive sentences, if taken to be the largest unit of grammar, are then, from a grammarian's viewpoint, merely juxtaposed.

Back  -    New Search

K

Kabardian.

See Circassian.

Back  -    New Search

Kadai.

Family of languages in southern China and the neighbouring part of Vietnam. Grouped with Tai and Kam-Sui under ‘Tai-Kadai’.

Back  -    New Search

Kam-Sui.

Family of languages in southern China: Kam (or Dong ), in adjacent parts of the provinces of Guizhou, Hunan, and Guangxi, is the most important. Grouped with Tai and Kadai under ‘Tai-Kadai’.

Back  -    New Search

kanji.

See Japanese.

Back  -    New Search

Kannada.

Dravidian language, spoken in the Indian state of Karnataka (Mysore). Attested by literary texts from the 9th century AD, and earlier by inscriptions; written in a South Indian script very close to that of Telugu.

Back  -    New Search

Karen.

Group of languages spoken mainly in east Myanmar (Burma) at the latitude of the Irrawaddy delta; also in the extreme west of Thailand and southward along the boundary between Thailand and Myanmar. Either a branch of Tibeto-Burman or a separate branch, alongside Tibeto-Burman, within Sino-Tibetan.

Back  -    New Search

Kartvelian.

Family of languages, including Georgian, spoken to the south of the Caucasus mountains. Also called ‘South Caucasian’ .

Back  -    New Search

Kashmiri.

Indo-Aryan, spoken in the Vale of Kashmir in the north of India.

Back  -    New Search

Kashubian.

See Polish.

Back  -    New Search

katakana.

One of two syllabaries used for writing Japanese.

Back  -    New Search

Katharevusa.

Variety of Modern Greek formerly opposed to Demotic (2) as the ‘High’ form in a relation of diglossia. Now said, officially, to be suppressed.

Back  -    New Search

‘Katz—Postal hypothesis’.

Principle advanced by J. J. Katz and P. M. Postal in 1964, according to which the transformations by which a sentence was derived in the current model of transformational grammar had no relevance to its meaning. Translated in Chomsky's Standard Theory into the principle that meanings are determined by deep structures alone.

Back  -    New Search

Kazakh.

See Turkic.

Back  -    New Search

Kazan' School.

School of linguists centred on Baudouin de Courtenay, who taught in Kazan' in Russia from 1875 to 1883, and his pupil M. Kruszewski.

Back  -    New Search

k-command.

See command (2).

Back  -    New Search

kernel sentence.

Term introduced by Chomsky and (Zellig) Harris in the 1950s for one of an irreducible set of simple sentences, to whose structures the remaining sentences of a language, simple and complex, were related by successive transformations. Thus the complex sentence The cake which Harry baked is nice can be related, by transformations which combine two separate structures, to the kernel sentences The cake is nice and Harry baked the cake. The simple passive The tart was bought by Mary can likewise be related, by a transformation operating on a single structure, to the active kernel sentence Mary bought the tart.
The notion of kernel sentences played a central role in Chomsky's theory of transformational grammar until the mid-1960s, when transformations combining separate sentences were rejected in favour of rules which derived corresponding structures in a base component. Cf. generalized transformation.

Back  -    New Search

‘key’.

1 Used in studies of intonation for a distinction in an intonational unit between relatively narrow variation in pitch and variation which extends higher: e.g. between I'd be de ‘LIGHted said without emotional involvement and with a relatively low pitch at the beginning of ‘LIGH, and the same said enthusiastically, with a relatively high pitch instead.

2 Also, in the ethnography of speaking, of the manner (e.g. hurried or calm) in which speech is delivered.
Top

Back  -    New Search

key word.

A word or concept characteristic of the thought of a particular community in a particular period. E.g. ‘raison’ (reason) is a key word of the French Enlightenment; ‘rigo(u)r’ a key word for American linguists in the 1940s and 1950s.

Back  -    New Search

Khmer.

The national language of Cambodia (also called ‘Cambodian’ ). A member of the Mon-Khmer family, attested from at least the 7th century AD, originally in a South Indian script which has evolved into the present writing system.

Back  -    New Search

Khoisan.

Group of languages in southern Africa, spoken mainly in the Kalahari region in Namibia and Botswana: those, in particular, of the peoples collectively called Bushman. Two non-Bantu languages of Tanzania have also been included in it.

Back  -    New Search

Kikuyu.

Bantu, spoken in Central Province, Kenya.

Back  -    New Search

kinesics.

The study of meaningful gestures and other body movements in communication. Originally of a treatment modelled on American linguistics in the 1950s, with e.g. ‘kinemes’ as the smallest gestural units.

Back  -    New Search

kinetic tone

= contour tone.

Back  -    New Search

kinship terms.

Words identifying the relationship of other members of a person's family: e.g. sister or grandson. A kinship system is the system of oppositions among such terms in a given language or culture.

Back  -    New Search

Kiowa-Tanoan.

A small family of languages in the American South-west, primarily in Mexico and Oklahoma. Conjecturally related to Uto-Aztecan.

Back  -    New Search

Kirghiz.

See Turkic.

Back  -    New Search

Kiswahili

= Swahili.

Back  -    New Search

koiné.

1 The form of Greek that became general in the eastern Mediterranean after the conquests of Alexander in the 4th century BC. From a word meaning ‘(in) common’.

2 Generalized in sociolinguistics to any varieties of a language that arise historically by evening out differences among dialects. Thus standard languages may sometimes develop by a process of ‘koinéization’ .
Top

Back  -    New Search

Komi.

The main Finno-Ugric language in the region of the Urals; also called ‘Zyryan’ . The branch it belongs to is called ‘Permic’.

Back  -    New Search

Kongo.

Bantu, spoken in Congo, Zaire, and Angola, north and south of the River Congo from Brazzaville to the sea.

Back  -    New Search

Konkani.

The southernmost Indo-Aryan language, historically of Goa and a surrounding area, but also spoken through emigration elsewhere in south India, in parts of the states of Karnataka and Kerala.

Back  -    New Search

Kordofanian.

A group of languages centred on the Nuba Mountains in the south of Kordofan province, Sudan.

Back  -    New Search

Korean.

Limited historically to the Korean peninsula, and at best conjecturally related to any other language. Originally written in Chinese characters, which are still not wholly supplanted: more generally, however, and in North Korea especially, in an alphabet (see Han'gul) which in its modern form has twenty-four basic letters.

Back  -    New Search

Kru.

Family of languages in the south of Liberia and south-west Ivory Coast.

Back  -    New Search

Kurdish.

Iranian language spoken in various countries from western Turkey across north-east Iraq to the north-east of the Persian Gulf. There is a major division between northern and southern dialects, roughly at the level of Mosul.

Back  -    New Search

Kwa.

Group of languages in West Africa, including Akan in Ghana and, in accounts formerly at least accepted, Nigerian languages such as Yoruba and Igbo.

Back  -    New Search

Kwakiutl.

See Wakashan.

Back  -    New Search

kymograph.

An early instrument, in use in phonetics until the 1960s, which mechanically recorded e.g. muscular movements or changes of air pressure by traces on paper.

Back  -    New Search

L

L.

See diglossia.

Back  -    New Search

L_1, L_2

= first language, second language. Especially in discussion of language teaching, where L_2 is the ‘target language’, or language to be learned.

Back  -    New Search

labelled bracketing.

Notation in which the constituents of a syntactic or other unit are enclosed in square brackets which are labelled, by subscripts, for the categories to which they belong. Thus in NP[ A[tall] N[men]], tall is assigned to the category ‘adjective’ (A), men to the category ‘noun’ (N), and the whole is a constituent assigned to the class ‘noun phrase’ (NP).
The labels for categories are variously written before the opening brackets, as here, or after them: [NP [Atall] [Nmen]]. Occasionally they are subscripted to both the opening and the closing brackets: NP[ A[tall]A N[men]N ]NP.

Back  -    New Search

labial.

1 Cover term for bilabial and labiodental.

2 = bilabial in cases of double articulation (2). Thus [gb] is a labial velar; [jb] or [db] a labial palatal .
Top

Back  -    New Search

labialization.

Lip rounding as a secondary articulation. E.g. [] in shoe is phonetically labialized; in many languages, e.g. in the Caucasus, labialized or ‘rounded’ velars (kw, etc.) contrast with non-labialized.

Back  -    New Search

labiodental.

Articulated with the lower lip against the upper teeth: e.g. [f] in fin or [v] in veal.

Back  -    New Search

labiovelar.

1 A velar consonant accompanied by distinctive labialization: usually written kw, gw, and so on.

2 = labial velar.
Top

Back  -    New Search

Labov, William

(1927– ).
A pioneer in sociolinguistics from the mid-1960s, whose early work on class-based variation in the speech of New York and elsewhere led the field, both as a model of research and as the subject of theoretical and other criticism and refinement, into the 1980s. He has consistently advocated the application both of the findings of sociolinguistics and of sociolinguistic models of a speech community to the study of change in languages.

Back  -    New Search

LAD.

For ‘Language Acquisition Device’: posited by Chomsky in the 1960s as a device effectively present in the minds of children by which a grammar of their native language is constructed.

Back  -    New Search

lag.

See voice onset time; also progressive assimilation.

Back  -    New Search

LAGB

= Linguistics Association of Great Britain.

Back  -    New Search

Lakota.

See Siouan.

Back  -    New Search

lambda operator ().

Logical operator by which an expression which denotes a set is derived from one which represents a property, etc. by which the set is defined. Thus ‘x (clever (x))’ is a lambda expression denoting the set of all individuals who are clever, derived from a predication ‘clever (x)’ which includes x as a variable.
The operation is said to ‘abstract on’ the variable: hence ‘lambda abstraction’ . An expression such as ‘x (clever (x)) (Bill)’ (an individual Bill is a member of the set of all individuals who are clever) reduces, by what is called ‘lambda conversion’ , to ‘clever (Bill)’ (Bill is clever).

Back  -    New Search

laminal.

Articulated with the blade of the tongue. A laminoalveolar consonant, such as [t] in tip, is articulated with the blade against the ridge behind the upper teeth; a lamino-dental with the blade against the teeth themselves. Also called ‘laminar’ .

Back  -    New Search

‘landing site’.

Informally, in Government and Binding Theory, of a position into which some element is, or can be, moved.

Back  -    New Search

langage.

The phenomenon of language in general: = language (2). Term from French used especially in opposition to langue (= language (1) or language system) and parole.

Back  -    New Search

language.

1 A language in the ordinary sense: e.g. English or Japanese. Opp. dialect, also as in ordinary usage.

2 The phenomenon of vocal and written communication among human beings generally, again as in ordinary usage. Thus the subject-matter of linguistics includes both language as a general property of our species (sense 2) and particular languages (sense 1).
‘Language’ in sense 2 is often extended to cover other forms of communication; hence, in particular, ‘animal language’ for communicative behaviour in other species. ‘A language’ in sense 1 is defined more precisely in different ways according to different theories. For some it is a language system underlying the speech of a community: thus especially a langue as defined by Saussure. Alternatively, it is a system in the mind of an individual: thus especially I-language as defined by Chomsky in the mid-1980s. Others have conceived it as the set of sentences potentially observable in a speech community: thus especially a definition by Bloomfield in the 1920s. Alternatively, it is the set of sentences characterized or to be characterized by a generative grammar: thus Chomsky in the 1950s. A formal language is accordingly defined, by extension, in a way that is taken to apply not only to so-called natural languages (2), or languages in the ordinary sense 1, but also to artificial systems in logic, computing, etc.
Top

Back  -    New Search

‘language acquisition’.

Usually, if not qualified e.g. as ‘second language acquisition’, of the development of language in children. For ‘Language Acquisition Device’ see LAD.

Back  -    New Search

‘language consultant’

= informant.

Back  -    New Search

‘language death’.

The disappearance of a language whose speakers progressively switch to using another or others, e.g. of many languages in North America once spoken by people whose descendants speak only English.
Cf. dead language. But a language may become ‘dead’ in other ways: by a historical break in identity, as with Latin, or, as with others in North America and elsewhere, by physical extermination of their speakers.

Back  -    New Search

‘language deficit’.

See deficit theory.

Back  -    New Search

language faculty.

Faculty of the mind, in the traditional sense, controlling language. Used by Chomsky in the 1960s: hence the domain of universal grammar (2) and of I-language within a modular theory of the mind in general.

Back  -    New Search

language family.

See family.

Back  -    New Search

Language for Special Purposes.

Any programme directed towards the teaching of a foreign language for use in some specific context: thus English e.g. for air to ground communication with airports.

Back  -    New Search

language isolate.

A language that cannot to our knowledge be assigned to any larger family. Basque is a classic example.

Back  -    New Search

‘language murder’.

Language death represented as the killing off of a language by another whose speakers are e.g. politically dominant. French ‘glottophagie’ is perhaps less seriously tendentious.

Back  -    New Search

language planning.

Any attempt by a government, etc. to favour one language, or one form of a language, over another. This includes, e.g., the choice of an official language for a country or province; the official development of a standard form; the promotion by an academy or other body of native terms to be used in place of loan words.

Back  -    New Search

language sign.

See linguistic sign.

Back  -    New Search

‘language specific’.

(Rules, etc.) specific to a particular language: e.g. rules in English for the position of adverbs (I have often done it, not I often have done it) are, in part at least, peculiar to it. Opposed especially to principles, etc. that are hypothetically part of universal grammar, in that they hold whatever the language.

Back  -    New Search

‘language suicide’.

Process by which the speech of a community is assimilated to that of a larger community, to the point at which it loses its separate identity. Conceived as a form of voluntary ‘language death’, as opposed to language murder.
Cf. decreolization.

Back  -    New Search

language system.

The system of a specific language at a specific time, seen in abstraction from its history; from its use on specific occasions and by specific individuals; from other systems of culture, knowledge, etc.
The scope and status of language systems have been debated, under one name or another, throughout the 20th century. For some they are at best constructs, to be posited to the extent that they are useful. For others they are a real object of description, though conceived in varying ways. Cf. language.

Back  -    New Search

language universal

= linguistic universal.

Back  -    New Search

langue

= language system. French term borrowed from Saussure, for whom ‘la langue’ was a social reality (‘fait social’) constraining each speaker. Opposed in that sense to ‘langage’ (the phenomenon of language in general) and to individual speech performance or parole.

Back  -    New Search

langue véhiculaire.

French term for a language used in communication between members of societies whose own languages are different: e.g. French itself in much of West and Central Africa.

Back  -    New Search

Lao.

Language of the Tai family, spoken in the valley of the River Mekong, in northern Laos and downstream in both Laos and Thailand into Cambodia. Official in Laos; the script is derived from that of Khmer (Cambodian).

Back  -    New Search

Lappish.

See Sami.

Back  -    New Search

laryngeal.

1 = glottal: thus [h] is sometimes called a laryngeal fricative.

2 One of a set of consonants established in the reconstruction of an Indo-European protolanguage to explain, in particular, what are otherwise aberrant alternations and correspondences of vowels. The ‘laryngeal theory’ is the hypothesis, now generally accepted, that such consonants existed: they are presumed to have been pharyngeal fricatives or others articulated towards the back of the vocal tract, but the only direct evidence, found after they had been first proposed, is in Anatolian.
Top

Back  -    New Search

laryngealized.

Accompanied by creak: thus a laryngealized vowel is one produced with creaky voice.

Back  -    New Search

laryngoscopy.

Any of the successive techniques that have been used to study the action of the vocal cords.

Back  -    New Search

lateral.

Articulated in such a way that air flows past one or both sides of the tongue. E.g. [l] in leaf is a lateral resonant; Welsh ll in e.g. Llanelli is a voiceless lateral fricative ([la'neli]). Lateral plosion is the release of a plosive consonant by lowering the sides of the tongue: thus distinctively in affricates in some languages; also of a [t] or [d] in words like bottle [btl] or muddle [mdl].

Back  -    New Search

Latin.

Italic, originally the language of Rome, where first attested by inscriptions from before the 3rd century BC; subsequently of the whole of the western part of the Roman empire, and the ancestor of the Romance languages. A learned language from the early Middle Ages, linked especially with the Roman branch of Christianity, in whose liturgy it was obligatory until the 1960s.
Written in the Roman alphabet.

Back  -    New Search

Latinate.

(Word, construction, style) deriving from, or influenced by, Latin. Hence of a large set of forms in English, many though not all adapted directly from Latin, which have a distinct morphology and morphophonology. E.g. -ation in detestation is a Latinate suffix: it carries stress (-['en]) in a way that reflects its origin in Latin, and is almost always attached to forms, such as detest, that are themselves directly or ultimately from Latin.

Back  -    New Search

Latvian.

Indo-European, related to Lithuanian within the Baltic branch. Attested from the 16th century; now spoken by a little more than half the population of Latvia.

Back  -    New Search

law.

Sometimes in a strict sense, as e.g. of a sound law. Also, more generally, of laws that may hold only as broad tendencies. Cf. linguistic universal; principle; rule.

Back  -    New Search

lax.

Articulated, or claimed to be articulated, with lesser effort in the muscles of the vocal tract. Opp. tense (2).
‘Lax’ and ‘tense’ are applied both to overall articulatory settings, and to specific consonants or vowels. E.g. vowels with a broad or wide posture of the tongue have often been described as ‘lax’; also those with a retracted as opposed to advanced tongue root.

Back  -    New Search

layering.

Nesting of one unit within another. Hence in various specific cases in syntax: thus phrases or clauses show layering if they have smaller phrases or clauses within them; the structure of a clause is layered if the verb is seen as related e.g. to a direct object at one level of constituency, to an indirect object at a higher level, to a locative adverbial at a third higher level, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

lead.

See voice onset time.

Back  -    New Search

learnability.

1 Identified as a design feature of language, by which any individual language can, in principle, be acquired equally well by any member of our species.

2 Property of formal languages defined by a procedure which is designed to construct a grammar from successive sentences presented to it. A language is learnable if, after a sufficient number of sentences have been presented, a grammar can be constructed which does not have to be amended to cope with others. It is said to have ‘degree-Ø learnability’ if it is learnable on the basis of input which includes no embedded sentences: to have ‘degree-1 learnability’ if the input need include no sentence with more than one layer of embedding; and so on.
For sense 2 cf. discovery procedure. The mathematical theory of learnability is called ‘learnability theory’ .
Top

Back  -    New Search

learned language ['l:nd].

One whose only status is as a language taught to an educated élite: e.g. Latin as spoken or written in Europe from the early Middle Ages. Learned forms or learned formations are characteristically those perceived by speakers as belonging to or derived from a learned language: e.g. English rictus ‘grin’ is a learned form transparently from Latin.

Back  -    New Search

‘least effort’.

See principle of least effort.

Back  -    New Search

‘lect’.

Any distinct variety of a language: e.g. a regional dialect (‘dia-lect’), or one used at a specific social level (‘socio-lect’). ‘Lectal’ variation is accordingly variation between such varieties.

Back  -    New Search

left-branching.

(Structure) in which dependents successively precede their heads. E.g. in very tightly controlled policy, controlled depends on and precedes the head noun policy, tightly in turn depends on and precedes controlled, and very depends on and precedes tightly.
So called from the configuration of branches in a phrase structure tree: e.g. that represented by the bracketing [[[very tightly] controlled] policy]. Languages may accordingly be called ‘left-branching languages’ if their constructions are predominantly of this type: cf. centrifugal vs. centripetal, Head Parameter.

Back  -    New Search

left dislocation.

The construction of e.g. This next man, have I got to see him? Distinguished from simple fronting (This next man have I got to see?) by a pronoun (him) or other anaphoric element in the normal position of the dislocated element. Cf. right dislocation.

Back  -    New Search

length.

Phonetic or phonological feature, especially of vowels. E.g. in Latin the vowel of rosa (nominative singular of the word for ‘rose’) was short ([rosa]); that of ros (ablative singular of the same word) was long ([rosa:]). A phonological distinction may be realized, in part or entirely, by differences other than physical duration. E.g. the ‘long’ vowels of Dutch, in words like laat ‘late’ or leeg ‘empty’, differ systematically in quality and tongue posture from the ‘short’ vowels of e.g. lam ‘lamb’ or lek ‘leak’.
For long vs. short syllables see heavy syllable. Phonetically long consonants tend to be described as geminate.

Back  -    New Search

lenis ['li:ns].

(Consonant) articulated, or thought to be articulated, with lower muscular tension; hence traditionally of voiced consonants as opposed to voiceless. From Latin lenis ‘gentle, weak’. Opp. fortis: cf. lax vs. tense.

Back  -    New Search

lenition.

Any process by which a sound is, or is conceived as being, ‘weakened’. E.g. that by which, in the history of Spanish, a voiced stop ([b] [d] [g]) became a fricative ([ß] [ð] []) between vowels, seen as one which reduced the effort of articulation. Opp. fortition.

Back  -    New Search

Lepontic.

See Celtic.

Back  -    New Search

letter.

Originally of a unit of speech having both a written form and a phonetic value. Thus, in ancient accounts, the letter (Latin litera) was the smallest unit into which utterances, defined as movements of air that are representable in writing, were analysed. Now, as in everyday usage, of a character in writing only, especially in an alphabetic system.

Back  -    New Search

Lëtzebuergesch

= Luxembourgish.

Back  -    New Search

level.

The usual term since the 1940s for a distinct phase in the description of a language at which specific types of element and the relations between them are represented or investigated. Thus at the level of phonology one studies the sound structure of a language: words or larger units are represented as configurations of units (such as phonemes or syllables) that are specific to that level, and generalizations are stated about relations among them. At the level of syntax, sentences are represented as configurations of words or morphemes standing in specific constructions in relation to other such units. Each level is treated in at least partial abstraction from the others. Thus the phonological structure of a word is in general not relevant to its role in syntax; the precise construction in which a word stands is equally not relevant, in general, to its phonology.
Theories of levels, whether of analysis or of representation, are an important part of structural linguistics, especially in the middle decades of the 20th century. Some distinguish ordered series of procedures, in which one phase of analysis must precede another: thus, in particular, that of (Zellig) Harris and other Post-Bloomfieldians. Others present a hierarchy of supposedly greater or lesser degrees of abstraction, ranging from phonetics as the ‘lowest’ level to semantics as the ‘highest’. In many of these, levels are defined by the different components (2) of an integrated generative grammar.
Cf. plane; stratum.

Back  -    New Search

levelling.

Historical process by which e.g. a morphological formation becomes regular for all relevant instances.

Back  -    New Search

level ordering.

Grouping of processes into successive blocks, such that all those of block a must apply before any of those of block b. Argued, in particular, for processes of affixation. E.g. dis- in disloyal or -ic in graphic can be assigned to an inner group of affixes: call this group ‘class 1’. But un- in unhappy or -ness in happiness are among those that can be assigned to an outer group: call this ‘class 2’. In the model of level ordering all processes that add a class 1 affix would apply before any adding a class 2 affix: hence, it would be argued, it is possible to form words such as un-dis-loyal or graph-ic-ness (class 2 affixation following class 1 affixation), but there are no words in dis-un- or -ness-ic (class 1 affixation following class 2 affixation).
Level ordering is central to Lexical Phonology.

Back  -    New Search

level-skipping.

Term in e.g. Tagmemics for a case in which a unit of one rank in a hierarchy of size-levels functions directly in the construction of one at least two ranks above. Thus the levels of word and phrase are ‘skipped’ if a morpheme is seen as entering directly, as a morpheme, into the structure of a clause.

Back  -    New Search

levels of adequacy.

Different levels of success that a description of a language or a general theory of language can achieve. In Chomsky's account in the 1960s, a generative grammar is observationally adequate if it generates the sentences of a language correctly, and is descriptively adequate if, in addition, it describes their structure correctly. A theory of grammar is explanatorily adequate if it explains how speakers can arrive at a descriptively adequate knowledge of their language.

Back  -    New Search

level tone.

A tone which is perceived as having the same pitch throughout; hence in phonology = register tone. Opp. contour tone or ‘kinetic tone’.

Back  -    New Search

lexeme.

1 A word considered as a lexical unit, in abstraction from the specific forms it takes in specific constructions: e.g. the verb ‘sing’ or ‘to sing’, in abstraction from the various word forms sing, sings, sang, sung, singing.

2 Any other unit, e.g. a morpheme, seen as having lexical rather than grammatical meaning.
Top

Back  -    New Search

lexical.

Belonging to, or involving units that belong to, the lexicon. E.g. a lexical entry is an entry in the lexicon; a lexical item or lexical unit is a word, etc. which has such an entry; rules are lexically governed if they apply only to structures including certain lexical units.

Back  -    New Search

lexical ambiguity.

Ambiguity explained by reference to lexical meanings: e.g. that of I saw a bat, where a bat might refer to an animal or, among others, a table tennis bat. Cf. grammatical ambiguity.

Back  -    New Search

lexical category.

A class of units which have lexical meaning or are, in general, treated in the lexicon: e.g. noun as a category of words or morphemes such as tree or sky.
Used in Government and Binding Theory specifically of the syntactic categories noun (N), adjective (A), verb (V), and preposition (P), which in applications of X-bar syntax are the lexical categories opposed to the non-lexical I (INFL), etc.

Back  -    New Search

lexical decomposition.

The analysis of word meanings into smaller units which are seen as standing to one another in constructions like those of syntax. E.g. of the meaning of die into the units BECOME, NOT, and ALIVE, seen as standing in constructions like those that the words become, not, and alive would bear in He became not alive: [BECOME [NOT ALIVE]].
Mooted by Chomsky in the 1960s but developed especially by J. D. McCawley and other proponents of Generative Semantics.

Back  -    New Search

lexical diffusion.

The gradual spread of a phonetic or other change across the vocabulary of a language or across a speech community: e.g. the spread of [k] > [] (in chat, chanter, etc.) across north-west France, attested at the beginning of the 20th century by the survey for the Atlas linguistique de la France.
In the ideal case, the spread would be simultaneously in both respects. So, at a given moment, (a) some words will have changed, or will be used more often in the changed form, while others will not have changed, or will be used less often in a changed form; (b) some speakers will use changed forms, or will use changed forms more often, while others will not use them, or will use them less often. This would lead, again in the ideal case, to smooth variation on both dimensions.
Usual in this sense. But the term could also be used of the diffusion of individual lexical units.

Back  -    New Search

lexical field.

See semantic field.

Back  -    New Search

Lexical-Functional Grammar.

Model of syntax developed by J. Bresnan and R. Kaplan, subsequently with others, from the end of the 1970s. The original insight was that relations between, for example, an active and a passive can be treated just as well by rules that systematically relate entries in a lexicon (e.g. that of actives such as take to passives such as (be) taken) as by transformations that systematically relate the constructions of sentences (e.g. that of active John took it to that of passive It was taken by John). This idea was married to an account of predicates and arguments which, like that of Relational Grammar, takes syntactic functions or relations (subject, object, etc.) as primitive. In the developed model, sentences are represented in syntax on two levels, those of c-structure (i.e. constituency or phrase structure) and f-structure , which assigns the corresponding functions. Principles that are handled in terms of phrase structure in Chomsky's Principles and Parameters Theory (e.g. those of control or of command) are then reformulated in terms of functions.

Back  -    New Search

lexical gap.

A point within a system of sense relations at which a word might be expected but none exists. Thus in the system of words for a person's relations parent and child subsume both father and son (male) and mother and daughter (female); from this an analysis of the system might predict a similar term subsuming e.g. uncle and aunt. Then, since there is none, it might be described as having a gap at that point.

Back  -    New Search

‘Lexicalist Hypothesis’.

See Strong Lexicalist Hypothesis.

Back  -    New Search

lexicalization.

The representation of notional distinctions in the lexicon of individual languages. E.g. the distinction between an animal and the meat of an animal is often lexicalized (e.g. pig vs. pork, deer vs. venison) in English where it is not lexicalized in French.
The term could also be used, in principle, of a historical process by which, e.g. a former suffix becomes an independent lexical unit. Cf. grammaticalization (2).

Back  -    New Search

lexically conditioned.

(Alternation) among forms or processes in the context of different lexical units: e.g. between the vowel change in ring rang (past tense of ring ‘ring a bell, etc.’) and the suffix in ringed (past tense of ring ‘put a ring on’), or between the plural suffix of boys and that of children. Cf. grammatically conditioned; phonologically conditioned.

Back  -    New Search

lexical meaning.

Any aspect of meaning that is explained as part of a lexical entry for an individual unit: e.g. that of ‘to run’ in He ran out as opposed to that of ‘to walk’ in He walked out. A lexical word or lexical morpheme is one which has a lexical as opposed to a grammatical meaning.

Back  -    New Search

Lexical Morphology.

View of morphology current especially in the USA, within a broadly generative framework. The basic unit is the morpheme; words have a constituency structure of which morphemes are the minimal elements; and, in the extreme version, the entire construction of words, including those aspects that are traditionally called inflectional, belongs to an account of the lexicon. The belief that this version is correct is the Strong (or Strict) Lexicalist Hypothesis.

Back  -    New Search

Lexical Phonology.

Model of morphology and phonology developed in the 1980s in a partial reaction to classical Generative Phonology. The derivation of words is separate from, and in the organization of a generative grammar forms a component operating ahead of, their insertion into syntactic constructions: cf., in that respect, the general concept of Lexical Morphology. Within this component, phonological processes are sensitive to processes of affixation: e.g. in words like photógraphy (? phótograph), the placing of the accent and the associated distribution of vowel qualities are sensitive to the suffixation of -y and a boundary (photograph-y) specifically deriving from it. Processes are further divided into blocks by the principle of level ordering. Thus a morphological process like the suffixation of -y, with its attendant phonological processes, belongs to a set of rules applying, as a group, before the rules for suffixes such as -ness, which do not, among other things, entail a change of accent; before rules of compounding; before, in turn, any rules of phonology that reflect the combination of words in syntax.

Back  -    New Search

lexical redundancy rule.

Originally a rule in Generative Phonology which allowed entries in a lexicon to be shortened by the removal of predictable features. Thus a redundancy rule in English would state that, if a word begins with three successive consonants, the first can only be s. Then, in the entries for words like string or spring, there is no need to set out all the features that distinguish s from other consonants. One need simply indicate that the initial segment is consonantal; and, since the next two are also consonantal, the other features follow automatically.
Later lexical rules, sometimes also called ‘redundancy rules’ , are an extension of the same technique.

Back  -    New Search

lexical rule.

Any rule that expresses a generalization over sets of entries in a lexicon. Thus a form of metarule, though not usually so presented.
One widespread application is in derivational morphology. E.g. if there are entries in a lexicon for adjectives such as happy or black, a lexical rule can state that, if there is an entry for X, where X is an adjective, there is also, barring exceptions, an entry for X + -ness, where the whole is an abstract noun with a meaning corresponding to it. Hence happiness or blackness. Another application is in Lexical-Functional Grammar, where syntactic processes deriving e.g. passives are replaced by lexical rules deriving lexical units that take such constructions.
The term was also used by Chomsky in the 1960s of a general operation inserting lexical units into phrase structure trees.

Back  -    New Search

lexical stress.

Stress inherent in a lexical unit: see word stress.

Back  -    New Search

lexical word.

One with lexical meaning as opposed to grammatical meaning: thus, in this book, book is a lexical word, this a grammatical word.

Back  -    New Search

Lexicase.

A form of dependency grammar incorporating elements of Case Grammar, developed by S. Starosta from the 1970s.

Back  -    New Search

lexicography.

The writing of dictionaries, for practical use or for any other purpose; distinguishable as such from lexicology.

Back  -    New Search

lexicology.

Branch of linguistics concerned with the semantic structure of the lexicon: hence e.g. with semantic fields and sense relations. Treatments are often inspired by practice in lexicography, which in turn is sometimes presented, especially in continental Europe, as an application of it.

Back  -    New Search

lexicon.

That aspect of a language, or of a linguist's account of a language, that is centred on individual words or similar units. Its scope varies enormously from one theory to another: in some a simple subcomponent of a generative grammar; in others the basis, in itself, for most if not all specific grammatical patterns; in some seen as an unstructured list; in others as an elaborate network of entries related by lexical rules and by features shared at various levels.
Usually distinguished, as a theoretical concept, from a dictionary, as part of a practical description: hence e.g. a posited mental lexicon, not ‘mental dictionary’. Cf. lexicology vs. lexicography.

Back  -    New Search

lexicostatistics.

The statistical study of vocabulary; sometimes applied specifically to glottochronology.

Back  -    New Search

lexis.

1 Used generally of the vocabulary of a language.

2 Distinguished by Halliday in the early 1960s as an account of collocations across open classes of words, as opposed to that of closed systems within what was to become Systemic Grammar.
Top

Back  -    New Search

LF.

Abbreviation for Chomsky's level of Logical Form.

Back  -    New Search

LFG

= Lexical-Functional Grammar.

Back  -    New Search

liaison.

Term in French grammar for a pattern by which many words end in a consonant when, but only when, they appear before a vowel in certain syntactic contexts. E.g. les ‘the-PL’ has a final [z] when it appears ‘in liaison’ in les enfants ‘the children’; it does not when it appears before a consonant in les chats ‘the cats’. Seen traditionally as a phenomenon of ‘tying together’.

Back  -    New Search

‘license’.

To allow. Thus a lexical unit ‘licenses’ the elements that can accompany it; a syntactic element is ‘licensed’ under certain general conditions, or by a specific rule, and so on. An increasingly informal term especially among followers of Chomsky's Principles and Parameters Theory.

Back  -    New Search

light syllable.

One which counts rhythmically as one unit: see heavy syllable.

Back  -    New Search

light verb.

A verb such as make in make a turn or take in take a look, whose contribution to the meaning of the whole is less specific than in e.g. make a table or take a sandwich.

Back  -    New Search

Linear B.

Syllabary used to write a form of Greek (called ‘Mycenaean’) in the 15th to 13th centuries BC: the subject of a famous decipherment by M. Ventris in 1952. One of two non-pictographic scripts first discovered at the site of Knossos in Crete; the other, Linear A, has not been deciphered.

Back  -    New Search

linearization.

A syntactic process by which words and phrases are realized in a specific sequence. Thus, at one level, the construction of white and table in (a) white table might be described, without representation of sequence, as identical to that of blanche and table in its French equivalent (une) table blanche. But, by processes of linearization, the adjective and noun would be realized in two different orders.
Hence linearization rule , linear precedence rule, etc. Cf. order for ‘linear order’ vs. ‘structural order’.

Back  -    New Search

linear order.

See order.

Back  -    New Search

linear precedence rule.

A rule by which a syntactic element of one type precedes one of another: e.g. in English, by which a subject comes before a verb. Cf. linearization.

Back  -    New Search

Lingala.

Bantu, and an important lingua franca along the middle Congo and its tributaries (the Sangha and Oubangi) to the north. The name means ‘language of the river’; based historically on the language of one small area.

Back  -    New Search

lingua franca.

Any language used for communication between groups who have no other language in common: e.g. Swahili in much of East and Central Africa where it is not native. Cf. langue véhiculaire, also pidgin; in reference to Africa, in particular, these categories are not always easily distinguished.

Back  -    New Search

lingual.

Articulated with the tongue: usually of a lingual trill (e.g. Spanish rolled rr) as opposed to a uvular trill.

Back  -    New Search

linguist.

Usually, in linguistics, of someone who professes or practises the subject.

Back  -    New Search

linguistic area.

See Sprachbund.

Back  -    New Search

‘linguistic insecurity’.

Term in sociolinguistics for a hypothetical state of mind seen as giving rise to hypercorrection.

Back  -    New Search

Linguistic Institutes.

See Linguistic Society of America.

Back  -    New Search

linguistic palaeontology.

The attempt to relate the vocabulary of a prehistoric language, as reconstructed from descendants that are historically attested, to the time and place or other circumstances in which it may have been spoken. E.g. there are cognate words for ‘horse’ in Greek (híppos), Sanskrit (áva), Latin (equus), and other Indo-European languages. From this and other evidence a stem for ‘horse’ (ekwo-) is reconstructed for the prehistoric Indo-European protolanguage. One may then look at archaeological evidence of the distribution and domestication of the horse as part of an attempt to relate the protolanguage to the cultures of prehistoric peoples who may have spoken it.

Back  -    New Search

linguistic philosophy.

See ordinary language philosophy.

Back  -    New Search

linguistic relativism.

See Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

Back  -    New Search

Linguistics Association of Great Britain (LAGB).

Founded at the end of the 1950s; the Journal of Linguistics, published for it, first appeared in 1965. A society concerned mainly with synchronic linguistic theory, especially its more technical side.

Back  -    New Search

linguistic sign.

A word, morpheme, or other unit of a language system, seen as the union of an invariant form with an invariant meaning. Thus, in particular, the ‘sign’ as constituted, in the account of Saussure, by a relation of mutual dependence between a concept that is ‘signified’ (French signifié) and an ‘acoustic image’ of the form that ‘signifies’ it (French signifiant).
Also called a ‘language sign’ . Sign theories, or theories based on such a notion of linguistic signs, are characteristic especially of European structural linguistics, above all in the half-century from 1920 onwards.

Back  -    New Search

Linguistic Society of America (LSA).

Founded late in 1924, and the publisher from 1925 of the quarterly Language. The Society's Linguistic Institutes , organized each summer in different places, were in earlier years one of the main ways in which students were taught linguistics, and have had a major role in disseminating ideas.

Back  -    New Search

linguistic universal.

Strictly, a property that all languages have, or a statement that holds for all languages. Thus, trivially, the statement that all languages have elements that are phonetically vowels, or the property of having such elements. Loosely, and more commonly, of properties or statements that hold at least for a majority of languages: hence a subsidiary distinction between absolute universals and relative or statistical universals.
For further distinctions see formal universal; implicational universal; substantive universal; see also universal grammar.

Back  -    New Search

linguistic variable.

Usually = sociolinguistic variable.

Back  -    New Search

linguo-labial.

(Consonant) articulated with the blade of the tongue in contact with the upper lip.

Back  -    New Search

linking r.

The [r] of e.g. [klr] (clearing) or [klr t] (clear out), in a variety of English in which there is no [r] in forms such as [klz] (clears). Sometimes limited, at least as an obligatory element, to words where there is an r in the spelling. Where there is no r in the spelling it is often called an ‘intrusive r’ : e.g. in [dr:r] (drawing) or [klr dv:tsmnt] (Cola advertisement).

Back  -    New Search

lip rounding.

See labialization; rounded.

Back  -    New Search

liquid.

Cover term for ‘r’s and ‘l’s, especially in languages where their roles in phonology are similar. Used originally of these consonants in Ancient Greek, where both were variable (or ‘wet’) with respect to rules of syllabification and the weight of syllables.

Back  -    New Search

‘literal meaning’.

The meaning of a sentence or other expression as determined solely by those ascribed to the separate words, etc. of which it is composed and to the syntactic relations in which they stand. Cf. compositional meaning.

Back  -    New Search

Lithuanian.

Indo-European, related to Latvian within the Baltic branch. Attested from the 16th century; spoken by a large majority of the population of Lithuania.

Back  -    New Search

litotes [l'tti:z].

Term in rhetoric for understatement, especially by ‘ironic’ use of a negative: e.g. ‘That wasn’t at all a bad dinner’, meaning it was a very good one.

Back  -    New Search

l-marked.

Term in Government and Binding Theory for a complement of an ‘l’, where ‘l’ is one of the lexical categories N, A, V, or P.

Back  -    New Search

loan.

Anything introduced into a language by borrowing from another language. Hence loan word: also loan translation (= calque), loan shift (change of meaning under influence from another language), loan concept or semantic loan (concept introduced by borrowing), loan blend (blend of which one element is foreign), and so on.

Back  -    New Search

loan word.

A word imported by borrowing from another language. E.g. English chamber is one of many loan words introduced from Old French in the Middle Ages; karma a borrowing from Sanskrit in the 19th century; blitz one from German in the 1940s.
Sometimes adapted directly to fit the sound patterns of the borrowing language: thus, strikingly, for most English loan words into Japanese. But often adapted gradually or only in part: e.g. among educated speakers of British English in the case of perceived borrowings from French. Hence in many languages there are phonological elements specific to loan words, or a ‘loan word phonology’ whose patterns can be described as separate from those of the main body of vocabulary.

Back  -    New Search

LOC

= locative.

Back  -    New Search

local (1).

(Rule, relation, etc.) restricted to the domain defined by a single node in a phrase structure tree. E.g. in They said he had hurt himself the relation of himself to he is local, since it holds only within a clause as defined by a node labelled S: They said s[he had hurt himself]. Cf. bounded; unbounded.

Back  -    New Search

local (2).

(Case) whose primary role is to indicate positions or movements in space: thus a locative, allative, illative, etc.

Back  -    New Search

localism.

Theory in which a range of semantic categories, including case roles and those reflecting differences in time or duration, are reduced to concepts of location and movement in space. E.g. an action like cooking originates in an agent and is directed to whatever is cooked. So, in He cooked the vegetables, there is metaphorically movement from the subject, with the case role of agent, to the object, with the case role of goal or patient. In He died in an armchair the dying is literally located in space; in He died on Sunday it is metaphorically located in time.
Localist theories have been developed especially by Hjelmslev in the 1930s and more generally, from the 1970s, by J. Anderson.

Back  -    New Search

locational.

Indicating location. E.g. ‘locational cases’ are one subtype of local cases, indicating position as opposed to direction, etc. of movement.

Back  -    New Search

locative (LOC).

(Case) whose primary role is in relating a referent to some point or location in space: e.g., schematically, Mary lives London- LOC ‘Mary lives in London’, Peter is office-LOC ‘Peter is at the office’. Often distinguished from cases which indicate a more specific location: e.g. an inessive (indicating position inside something), or a superessive (indicating position above or on top of something).
Also of prepositions, phrases, etc. Thus at is locative, or has a locative use in e.g. He is at his office; in the same example, at his office is a locative phrase, or locative expression.

Back  -    New Search

locus.

Place: thus a ‘locus of change’ is a place where change occurs, ‘locus of articulation’ = place of articulation, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

locutionary.

Applied in the theory of speech acts to the simple act of saying something. E.g. if one says ‘I need a drink’ one performs the locutionary act of uttering the sentence I need a drink. Cf. illocutionary; perlocutionary.

Back  -    New Search

logical.

1 In, or in some system of, logic: e.g. ‘&’, as defined in the propositional calculus, is a ‘logical connective’ .

2 Concerned with aspects of meaning representable in such a system. Thus, in particular, the logical form of a sentence or proposition is a representation of its structure in terms of units or elements relevant to logical relations, to the calculus of truth values, etc. Cf. logical relations; also Logical Form as originally conceived by Chomsky in the 1970s.
Top

Back  -    New Search

Logical Form (LF).

The most abstract representation of a sentence in Chomsky's Principles and Parameters Theory. Opp. Phonetic Form, as the least abstract.
Originally defined, in the mid-1970s, as a representation of the semantic structure of a sentence in so far as it is determined solely by rules of grammar. Later, in Government and Binding Theory in the 1980s, explicitly a level of syntax, seen as interfacing with conceptual and other cognitive systems.

Back  -    New Search

logical positivism.

See positivism.

Back  -    New Search

logical relations.

Semantic relations among the parts of a sentence as opposed, especially by grammarians of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, to ‘grammatical relations’ of agreement, government of cases, etc. E.g. in A majority of criminals is stupid, majority would be ‘grammatically’ the head noun and is would be in grammatical agreement with it. But ‘logically’ a majority of qualifies criminals, like most in most criminals.

Back  -    New Search

‘logical subject’.

1 An element seen as a ‘subject’ in that, like the subject in many basic transitive constructions, it identifies who or what is responsible for an action or process. E.g. (of) lung cancer would be the logical subject of Smokers die of lung cancer.

2 Also applied, in transformational grammar in the 1960s, to subjects in deep structure as opposed to surface structure.
Opp. grammatical subject; psychological subject.
Top

Back  -    New Search

logogram.

A character in writing which represents a word as a whole. Distinguished especially from a phonogram, which represents a sound or group of sounds; also from a pictogram or an ideogram, which represent an object or idea independently of words.

Back  -    New Search

logophoric.

(Pronoun, etc.) used in indirect speech to refer to the person whose speech is being reported: thus, schematically, Jane said that LOGOPHORIC would come ‘Jane said that she (Jane) would come’, as opposed to Jane said that she (someone else) would come.

Back  -    New Search

Lolo-Burmese.

Branch of Tibeto-Burman, branching in turn into a group which includes Burmese, and a Lolo group of which the most important is Yi , in the Chinese province of Sichuan.

Back  -    New Search

‘London School’.

The group of linguists centred on, or felt by commentators to be linked to, Firth.

Back  -    New Search

long

(vowel, consonant) . See length. For ‘long syllable’ see heavy syllable.

Back  -    New Search

long-distance.

(Anaphora) not constrained within a defined syntactic domain. Thus, if we accept the constraints proposed in Government and Binding Theory, herself is an instance of ‘long-distance reflexivization’ in Miss Bingley was left to all the satisfaction of having forced him to say what gave no one any pain but herself. Cf. unbounded.

Back  -    New Search

longitudinal.

(Survey, etc.) comparing data obtained from the same or similar individuals at different points in time. E.g. a study of the speech of a group of children as it develops between the ages of two and five, or of a dialect community as it is now compared to how it was a generation ago.

Back  -    New Search

loudness.

The auditory property of sounds which corresponds in part to their acoustic amplitude or intensity. Measured in decibels.

Back  -    New Search

low.

1 (Tone, intonation) distinguished by relatively low pitch.

2 (Vowel) = open. In the scheme of Chomsky and Halle, SPE, the feature [+ low] is that of a sound ‘produced by lowering the body of the tongue below the level that it occupies in the neutral position’: hence also a feature of pharyngeal consonants.
Opp. in both senses to high.
Top

Back  -    New Search

Low (L).

See diglossia.

Back  -    New Search

lowering.

Change or process by which a vowel becomes more open. E.g. that of hid is lowered, to the point at which it is identical with that of head, in some forms of American English. Opp. raising.

Back  -    New Search

Low German.

See German.

Back  -    New Search

LSA

= Linguistic Society of America.

Back  -    New Search

Luba.

Bantu language spoken widely in eastern Zaire (Kasai Occidental, Kasai Oriental, and Katanga provinces).

Back  -    New Search

Luganda.

Bantu language, spoken in south-east Uganda between Lake Victoria and Lake Kyogo.

Back  -    New Search

Luo.

See Nilotic.

Back  -    New Search

Luxembourgish.

West Germanic, spoken mainly by the native population of Luxembourg, where it is, since the mid-1980s, an official language with French and German.

Back  -    New Search

Lyons, John

(1932– ).
British linguist, originally a Classicist, whose first book, Structural Semantics (1963), is a study of part of the vocabulary of Plato. Two later and much longer works, Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics (1968) and Semantics (2 vols., 1977), have had a profound influence, often on scholars who, having read the first as a textbook, have not appreciated how original it was. A theorist whose work is centred on semantics in a broad sense, Lyons is a leading exponent of structural linguistics in the late 20th century, notable both for scope of synthesis and for extreme care in detail, especially in distinguishing concepts and in a scrupulous use of terminology. His work on the classification of sense relations is fundamental.

Back  -    New Search

M

Macedonian.

South Slavic, spoken mainly in the former Yugoslav province of Macedonia. Written in Cyrillic.

Back  -    New Search

macro-.

In its ordinary sense, as ‘macroeconomics’ or ‘macromolecule’. Also used specifically in names for enlarged or hypothetically enlarged families of languages: e.g. ‘Macro-Arawakan’ consists of Arawakan plus other groups classed, in one current conjecture, with it. See family for ‘macrofamily’ in general.

Back  -    New Search

macrolinguistics.

Defined by G. L. Trager in the late 1940s as the study of language in all aspects, as distinct from ‘microlinguistics’, which dealt solely with the formal aspect of language systems.

Back  -    New Search

macron (¯).

Traditional sign for a long vowel: thus Latin rgs ‘kings’ was phonetically [re:ge:s]. See also X-bar syntax.

Back  -    New Search

Madurese.

Austronesian, spoken in Madura and other islands of the north-east of Java.

Back  -    New Search

main clause.

A clause which bears no relation, or no relation other than coordination, to any other or larger clause. Thus the sentence I said I wouldn't is as a whole a single main clause; in He came but I had to leave two main clauses are linked in coordination by but. Opp. subordinate clause: cf. independent clause, superordinate clause.

Back  -    New Search

main verb.

1 The verb in a main clause: e.g. asked is the main verb in They asked why we left, as opposed to left as a subordinate verb, or verb in a subordinate clause.

2 One with lexical meaning as opposed to an auxiliary.
Top

Back  -    New Search

Maithili.

An Indo-Aryan language, with its own literary tradition, spoken north of the Ganges in Bihar and southern Nepal.

Back  -    New Search

‘major class features’.

Cover term in Chomsky and Halle, SPE, for distinctive features defined by degrees of stricture. Opp. ‘cavity features’, involving place of articulation, and manner of articulation features.

Back  -    New Search

major sentence.

See minor sentence.

Back  -    New Search

major word class.

1 One which is not part of a larger word class. Thus the parts of speech were in origin an attempt to establish the major word classes, or major syntactic categories, of Ancient Greek.

2 One which is large or open, or whose members have lexical rather than grammatical meaning: e.g. that of nouns as opposed to that of articles.
Top

Back  -    New Search

majuscule.

Term in palaeography for large letters, such as capitals, or scripts in which all letters have the same height. Opp. minuscule.

Back  -    New Search

Makua.

A Bantu language of north central Mozambique.

Back  -    New Search

Malagasy.

Austronesian language, spoken throughout Madagascar, where it is an official language.

Back  -    New Search

malapropism.

Use of a word in error in place of one that sounds like it: e.g. in ‘It's a strange receptacle’, for ‘It's a strange spectacle’. From the character Mrs Malaprop in Sheridan's play The Rivals.

Back  -    New Search

Malayalam.

Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala. Written in a South Indian script; the language itself is closely related to Tamil, from which it had diverged before the earliest literary texts, in the 13th century AD.

Back  -    New Search

Malay-Indonesian.

Austronesian language, commonly referred to as Malay , standardized in an official form both in Indonesia (Indonesian or Bahasa Indonesia ‘language (of) Indonesia’) and in Brunei, Singapore, and Malaysia (Bahasa Malaysia). Native to an area including, in particular, the Malay Peninsula and east Sumatra; hence straddling a major trade route through the Malacca Straits and carried thence from the colonial period, in a pidginized form now called ‘Bazaar Malay’, as a lingua franca elsewhere. A language with a written literature after the adoption of Islam in the 15th century: formerly in the Arabic, now generally in the Roman alphabet.

Back  -    New Search

Malayo-Polynesian

= Austronesian; alternatively, the largest group within Austronesian, covering all except Formosan.

Back  -    New Search

Maltese.

Semitic; basically a variety of Arabic but heavily influenced, in vocabulary and grammar, by Italian and Sicilian. Written in the Roman alphabet and a literary language independent, through religion, of Classical Arabic.

Back  -    New Search

mand.

An utterance by which a speaker tries to get an addressee to do something: thus a command, demand, request, etc.

Back  -    New Search

Mandarin.

See Chinese.

Back  -    New Search

Mande.

Family of languages in West Africa, centred on the west of Guinea and adjoining parts of Mali, Ivory Coast, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Bambara, Maninka , and Dyula are closely related members, spoken in the north of this area.

Back  -    New Search

manifestation

= exponence. The manifestation mode of a linguistic unit is defined by Pike in terms of the varying etic units that may realize it.

Back  -    New Search

Maninka.

See Mande.

Back  -    New Search

manner.

(Adverb, adverbial) of a type which characteristically qualifies the sense of a verb: e.g. well is a manner adverb or adverb of manner in He wrote it well; with care is a similar adverbial in He wrote it with care.
For the ‘maxim of manner’ see maxims of conversation.

Back  -    New Search

manner of articulation.

Cover term for any factor in the production of a consonant other than its place of articulation. E.g. both [p] and [b] are bilabial, but in their manner of articulation one is voiceless and the other voiced; both [b] and [m] are also bilabial, but in their manner of articulation one is an oral stop and the other nasal; both [t] in chop and [] in shop are palato-alveolar, but in their manner of articulation one is an affricate and the other a fricative.

Back  -    New Search

Manx.

Formerly native in the Isle of Man, between England and Ireland. Celtic, of the same branch as Irish and Scottish Gaelic.

Back  -    New Search

Maori.

Polynesian, once spoken throughout New Zealand, now restricted to an area in the north-east of North Island.

Back  -    New Search

mapping.

Term in mathematics for a function which associates each member of a set A with a member of another set B. The function is said to map A into B; it maps A onto B if, in addition, there is no member of B that is not associated with at least one member of A.

Back  -    New Search

Marathi.

Indo-Aryan, the official language of the Indian state of Maharashtra. Written in Devanagari; with other major Indo-Aryan languages, such as Hindi-Urdu to the north, it was distinct from around AD 1000.

Back  -    New Search

margin.

Anything not assigned to a nucleus: thus the periphery (1) of a clause, or the onset and coda of a syllable.

Back  -    New Search

marginal area.

One whose dialect is relatively unexposed, in terms of a wave model, to changes initiated elsewhere; hence often geographically peripheral.

Back  -    New Search

mark.

Term in Prague School phonology for a feature seen as present in a marked member of an opposition but absent in the unmarked. E.g. in an opposition between [p] and [b], [b] is distinguished by the ‘mark’ of voicing. Central, in particular, to accounts of correlations: thus in [p] vs. [b], [t] vs. [d], etc. voice is the ‘mark of’ a correlation that is thereby one ‘of voice’.

Back  -    New Search

marked.

1 Having a feature, or the positive value of a feature, as opposed to lacking it or having the negative value. E.g. a nasalized vowel in French is marked, as specifically ‘nasal’ or [+ nasal], in opposition to an oral vowel, characterized negatively as ‘not nasal’ or [- nasal]. Likewise, in many accounts, a past tense in English is marked, as [+ past] or as used specifically in referring to past time, while the present is distinguished negatively as ‘not specifically past’ or [- past].

2 Having a feature or a value of a feature which is not that predicted or expected, by some general principle, e.g. from other features. Thus a back vowel which is produced with the lips spread is marked in terms of a general principle by which, unless there is a specific statement to the contrary, back vowels are rounded.
Top

3 Thence, in general, of any unit, construction, etc. which is in any way a special case, or which is simply rarer. E.g. the order of words in ‘YOU I ’ WILL see (‘you though not anyone else’) is marked as opposed to that of I will see you.
Opp. unmarked; cf. default.
Top

Back  -    New Search

markedness reversal.

Any shift, over time or e.g. between dialects, in what is marked and what is unmarked. E.g. the construction of Nor had he vanished, with the verb in second position, is marked (3) in Modern English; that of Then he had vanished is unmarked. But the former derives from the unmarked order in Old English.

Back  -    New Search

marker.

Any unit or feature conceived (a) as the realization of a unit, etc. at a more abstract level of representation, or (b) as indicating something to a potential addressee. Thus a ‘case marker’ or ‘tense marker’ is an inflection, etc. which realizes a case or a tense; a boundary marker indicates a boundary e.g. between words; a social marker gives an indication of the status of a speaker in society.
Sometimes used, without qualification, of a unit seen as marking a syntactic construction: e.g. of in the roof of our house is a ‘marker’ of the relation between the roof and our house. See also discourse marker; semantic marker.

Back  -    New Search

marking convention.

Term in Chomsky and Halle, SPE, for one of a set of general principles seen as specifying the marked (2) vs. unmarked values of phonological features. Thus, by one such convention, the feature [± nasal] has [+ nasal] as its marked value and [- nasal] as its unmarked: i.e. a consonant or vowel is implicitly oral (or non-nasal) unless it is stated explicitly to be nasal.

Back  -    New Search

Markov process.

See finite state grammar.

Back  -    New Search

Martinet, André

(1907– ).
Structural linguist, influenced especially by the ideas and specific theories of the pre-war Prague School. His earlier work, done partly in New York during and after the Second World War, developed Prague School phonology and, in particular, a structuralist account of sound change as arising, in part, from internal pressures within a phonological system. This was developed most fully in Économie des changements phonétiques (1955), published after his return to Europe. Of his later writings, Éléments de linguistique générale (1960) is a brief introduction to structural (or functional) linguistics which has had a major influence in France and beyond.

Back  -    New Search

Martin of Dacia.

See Modistae.

Back  -    New Search

Marwari.

See Rajasthani.

Back  -    New Search

masculine (MASC).

Gender of words characterized as a class by nouns denoting males. Thus French garçon ‘boy’ is a masculine noun; in le garçon ‘the boy’, le ‘the-MASC’ is a masculine form of the article; in English, by extension, he is a masculine pronoun.

Back  -    New Search

‘mass comparison’.

The comparison of sets of languages in terms of similarities of individual units across any subset. Seen by Greenberg and his followers as a method of genetic classification which validly extends, or even replaces, the comparative method; certainly one which creates vastly larger groupings.
Also called, more recently, ‘multilateral comparison’ .

Back  -    New Search

mass noun

= uncountable.

Back  -    New Search

‘matched guize’.

Experimental method in which subjects hear separate recordings of the same speaker, using e.g. different accents or different vocabulary. Its purpose is to exclude from the experiment any factor, other than those that are under investigation, which, if different speakers were used, might interfere with subjects' reactions.

Back  -    New Search

mate.

See clausemate.

Back  -    New Search

mathematical linguistics.

Usually of the theory of grammars as formal (2) systems. Thus a theorem might relate e.g. the weak generative capacity of two types of grammar.

Back  -    New Search

matrix.

Usually of a two-dimensional display: e.g. a feature matrix. For ‘matrix sentence’ see embedding.

Back  -    New Search

maximal projection.

Any category in X-bar syntax which has the highest level of barring. A maximal projection of , e.g. N is, in notation, NP or, assuming two levels of barring, N?. The sense of ‘projection’ derives from that of the projection principle.

Back  -    New Search

maximizer.

See intensifying.

Back  -    New Search

maxims of conversation.

A set of principles advanced by Grice, as part of his account of implicatures. Thus, to illustrate, a speaker might say ‘Bill has two cars’. This would be true, in a strict sense, even if Bill had e.g. five cars. But by a maxim ‘of quantity’ speakers are not expected to give less information than is appropriate; therefore it carries the implicature (strictly, the speaker implicates) that Bill has no more than two cars.
The underlying assumption is that communication requires cooperation between speakers and people spoken to. Together, therefore, the maxims are special cases of what Grice in general called the Cooperative Principle . By a maxim of quality , speakers are not expected to say anything they believe to be false or for which they lack adequate evidence. By the maxim of quantity , as above, they are not expected to give either less or more information than is needed. By a maxim of ‘relation’ they are not expected to say things that are irrelevant. By a maxim of manner they are expected to be brief and orderly, and to avoid obscurity or ambiguity. In Grice's account, implicatures arise both from speakers observing such maxims, as in the example given, and when they deliberately flout them. E.g. a speaker might be asked a question and in reply say something quite irrelevant: the person asking the question might then gather that it was thought improper and that no answer will be given.

Back  -    New Search

Mayan.

Family of languages in Central America, spoken in the Yucatán Peninsula and to the south and west, in parts of Guatemala and the Mexican states of Chiapas and Tabasco. Yucatec , in the Mexican part of the peninsula and the north of Belize, has the greatest number of speakers.
The Mayan script is found in three manuscripts that survived the Spanish conquest, and in earlier inscriptions. Now increasingly deciphered, it included logograms, often combined on the rebus principle, and phonetic determinatives derived from them. Apparently developed by speakers of the Cholan branch of Mayan (now mainly in the states of Chiapas and Tabasco) and transmitted to the branch that includes Yucatec.

Back  -    New Search

Mbundu.

Bantu language spoken in north-west Angola, in the province that includes Luanda.

Back  -    New Search

m-command.

See command (2).

Back  -    New Search

ME

= Middle English.

Back  -    New Search

meaning.

Traditionally of something said to be ‘expressed by’ a sentence. E.g. I hate parsnips would express the thought, judgement, or proposition ‘I hate parsnips’. Forms that express something are meaningful , ones that do not are meaningless . Thence also of the words, constructions, etc. that make up a sentence: e.g. parsnip means ‘parsnip’.
Modern theories are often elaborations of this. Thus, in one view that is widespread in linguistics:
(a) There is a distinction between the meaning of a sentence, independent of any context, and the meaning that it will have as an utterance on a particular occasion.
(b) Sentence meanings are part of the language system, and form a level of semantic representation independent of other levels.
(c) Representations at that level are derivable from representations at the level of syntax, given a lexicon which specifies the meanings of words and a set of semantic rules (2) associated with constructions. (d) The meanings of utterances, as intended by the speaker or as understood by a hearer, follow from separate principles that are in the domain of pragmatics. In the extreme case, this leads to a division in which pragmatics is concerned with everything that does not fall under a system of formal semantics.

Other theories may, for a start, reject (a). Therefore the meanings of sentences are not part of a language system, though, for some, the meanings of words and individual syntactic constructions are. Others may reject that also: hence, in particular, an account of word meaning based on the uses of words in specific contexts, both within an utterance and in terms of a context of situation. In what is again the extreme view, neither words nor sentences can be assigned meanings independently of situations in which they are uttered.

Back  -    New Search

‘meaning-changing’.

Not meaning-preserving.

Back  -    New Search

meaning postulate.

A representation of a sense relation between two lexical units which takes the form of an implication between general propositions that include them. Thus the relation of hyponymy between daisy and flower is represented by the meaning postulate ‘daisy (x) flower (x)’: ‘if x is a daisy x is also a flower’. Likewise the relation between the converse terms buy and sell may be represented by a postulate ‘buy (x, y, z) ? sell (z, y, x)’: ‘If x buys y from z then z sells y to x, and vice versa’.

Back  -    New Search

‘meaning-preserving’.

(Rule (2) of syntax) whose application is deemed not to affect the meaning of a sentence: e.g. a rule of transformational grammar by which I took off my coat I took my coat off. A rule which does not ‘preserve meaning’ is ‘meaning-changing’ : e.g. one, as formulated in early transformational grammar, by which declarative He is here interrogative Is he here?

Back  -    New Search

‘mean length of utterance’ (MLU).

Measure proposed, in studies of children's language, of the average number of grammatical units in what are deemed to be separate ‘utterances’. Taken to be an index of a child's linguistic development.

Back  -    New Search

measure phrase.

Any noun phrase indicating quantity, size, distance, etc.: e.g. a few pounds in I've put on a few pounds or in a few pounds of apples.

Back  -    New Search

‘mechanism’.

Bloomfield's term for the view that processes traditionally called mental are purely physical and no different in principle from other workings of the human body. Opp. mentalism, and identified by him with a physicalist view of science generally.

Back  -    New Search

mediae.

Ancient term for voiced plosives, such as Latin b, seen as ‘middle’ in relation to a tenuis or voiceless plosive, such as p, and an ‘aspirate’, such as ph.

Back  -    New Search

medial.

1 Neither initial nor final. E.g. in created stress falls on a medial syllable: [kri:'etd].

2 (Clause, form of verb) that can only appear as the dependent of another in a system of clause chaining.
Top

Back  -    New Search

medio-passive.

(Form, etc.) whose role is variously middle or passive.

Back  -    New Search

meditative

= deliberative.

Back  -    New Search

medium.

Physical means by which language is transmitted. Thus speech is transmitted through the phonic medium or medium of sound, written language through the graphic medium , sign language through the medium of hand gestures.

Back  -    New Search

Meillet, Antoine

(1866–1936).
French Indo-Europeanist, an early pupil of Saussure, whose Introduction à l’étude comparative des langues indo-européennes (1st edn. 1912), with works on Armenian and other branches, is still indispensable. Important as an organizer of French linguistics in the first part of the 20th century: also as a general linguist many of whose ideas have later been developed by others. Thus he is the acknowledged source for Bloomfield's and through him many current definitions of the sentence; also for the notion of grammaticalization (2), identified by him but developed particularly since the early 1980s.

Back  -    New Search

Melanesia.

Group of islands in the south-west Pacific running from New Guinea in the west to Fiji in the east. The languages of New Guinea are mainly grouped as Papuan, with some in smaller islands to the west and east. The other languages of Melanesia are Austronesian, mainly Oceanic.

Back  -    New Search

meliorative

= ameliorative.

Back  -    New Search

mellow.

Jakobson's term for a distinctive feature that is the opposite of strident.

Back  -    New Search

melody units.

Originally of phonological features assigned in Autosegmental Phonology to the segmental tier: cf. skeletal tier.

Back  -    New Search

Menomini.

Algonquian language of the peninsula between Lake Michigan and Lake Superior, studied in detail by Bloomfield.

Back  -    New Search

mentalism.

Applied by Bloomfield to the traditional view that the mind is a non-physical entity controlling but distinct from the body; opposed by him to mechanism or physicalism. Later applied, especially by linguists who attacked Bloomfield and his followers, merely to the view that the mind is a legitimate object of study.

Back  -    New Search

mental lexicon.

A lexicon as assumed by psycholinguists to be represented in the minds of speakers.

Back  -    New Search

mention.

The use of a word, etc. to refer to itself. Opp. use : e.g. cat is ‘mentioned’ in What is the definition of ‘cat’?; it is ‘used’ in The cat is in the garden.

Back  -    New Search

merger.

Change by which two units, etc. that were once distinct become one. Especially in phonology: e.g. voiceless [] in white [t] or which [t] has merged, for many speakers, with voiced [w] in wight [wt] or witch [Wt]. Opp. split.

Back  -    New Search

Meroitic.

Ancient language of north Sudan, attested by inscriptions from the early 1st millennium AD. The writing system is derived from that of Egyptian, but virtually alphabetic.

Back  -    New Search

meronymy.

Relation between lexical units where the objects, etc. denoted by one are parts of those denoted by the other: e.g. sleeve is a meronym of coat, dress, or blouse. Cf. synecdoche.

Back  -    New Search

Meso-American.

See Central American languages.

Back  -    New Search

mesolect.

Variety of a language intermediate between an acrolect and a basilect. From Greek mesos ‘middle’.

Back  -    New Search

meta-.

Prefix used in terms for constructs or investigations on a higher plane or of a higher order of abstraction. Thus a metalanguage is a ‘language’ of a higher order than its object language; a metarule is a higher-order rule; a set of metarules can be said to form a metagrammar .
Some terms are specific to linguistics, others more general. If a grammar is a theory about a language, a theory of grammar is correspondingly a metatheory . A study of the character of a science, e.g. linguistics, is a ‘metascience’ . A higher-order explanation of the principles of syntax might be called a ‘metasyntax’, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

metalanguage.

A language used to make statements about a language. The language about which they are made is correspondingly the object language .
Typically of artificially constructed systems. E.g. in the programme of generative grammar as conceived by Chomsky in the 1950s, a theory of grammar can be said to specify a formal metalanguage in which rules which form the grammar of a specific object language (English, French, etc.) are written. But languages in the ordinary sense are also used ‘metalinguistically’. Thus a Spanish grammar of English uses Spanish, or a variety of Spanish, as a metalanguage for the description of English; in an English grammar written in English, the same language is both metalanguage and object language; if someone says, e.g. that cough is pronounced [kf] they too are making a ‘metalinguistic’ statement about that word.

Back  -    New Search

metalinguistic.

Function of language in referring to itself; cf. metalanguage. Called by Jakobson the ‘metalingual’ function.

Back  -    New Search

metalinguistics.

See microlinguistics.

Back  -    New Search

metanalysis.

Change in the position of a word boundary. E.g. ewt became newt by a shift of the boundary in an ewt, napron became apron by the opposite shift in a napron.

Back  -    New Search

metaphony [m'tafni].

Sound change in which one or more phonetic features of a vowel come to match those of a vowel in an adjacent syllable: thence of phonological processes that result from it or are formally similar. Umlaut is one of the commonest; see also vowel harmony.

Back  -    New Search

metaphor.

1 Figure of speech in which a word or expression normally used of one kind of object, action, etc. is extended to another. This may lead to metaphoric change in meaning: thus what is now the normal sense of lousy is in origin a metaphorical extension from the basic sense ‘full of lice’.

2 Used by G. P. Lakoff in the 1980s of a general pattern in which one domain is systematically conceived and spoken of in terms of another. E.g. terms directly applicable to war, as one domain, are systematically applied to that of courtship: She was besieged by suitors, I have lost count of her conquests, and so on. Cf. image schema.
Top

Back  -    New Search

metaplasm.

Ancient term for any alteration in the form of a word, e.g. to make it fit a line of verse.

Back  -    New Search

metarule.

A higher-order rule expressing a generalization over a set of lower-order rules (2). Central especially to Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar. For example, a set of phrase structure rules will specify the structure of the verb phrase in active sentences. Another set might specify that of verb phrases in the passive. But there are systematic correspondences between them; accordingly they can be related by a metarule which, in effect, derives the rules for the passive from those for the active.
Cf. rule schema. Lexical rules are also a form of metarule, often used for similar ends.

Back  -    New Search

metathesis [m'tass].

Change or process by which the order of successive sounds is changed. E.g. wasp derives from a metathesized form, with s before p, of a word attested in Old English both as wæsp and as wæps or wæfs.

Back  -    New Search

metonymy [m'tnmi].

Figure of speech in which a word or expression normally or strictly used of one thing is used of something physically or otherwise associated with it: e.g. the Pentagon (strictly a building) when used of the military inhabiting it. This may lead to metonymic change of meaning: e.g. the sense of bureau changed successively from ‘cloth used to cover desks’, first to ‘desk’ itself, then to ‘agency, etc. (working from a desk)’.
Defined in the most general sense as any figure based on ‘contiguity’: as such often taken to include e.g. synecdoche: opposed in this sense to metaphor as a figure based on ‘similarity’.

Back  -    New Search

metrical grid.

See Metrical Phonology.

Back  -    New Search

Metrical Phonology.

Model developed by various scholars from the late 1970s, in which accentuation in English and other languages is explained in terms of a hierarchy of strong and weak units. In the illustration, the first syllable of maker is strong (s), the second weak (w); in addition, maker as a whole is strong in relation to cuckoo clock. Therefore ma-is the most prominent syllable of the phrase. Within cuckoo clock, cuckoo and cu-are in turn strong in relation to clock and -ckoo. Therefore cu- is the next most prominent syllable.
Distinguished from earlier accounts in Generative Phonology by an insistence that stress is a matter of relative prominence, not a distinctive feature with absolute values. In early accounts the pattern is shown by a ‘metrical grid’ , in effect a bar chart representing a sequence of syllables in time on the horizontal dimension and their relative prominence by the height of bars on the vertical dimension.

A tree structure in Metrical Phonology

Back  -    New Search

metrics.

The study of metre in poetry, in part as it reflects the phonological structure of syllables and words in relevant languages.

Back  -    New Search

Miao-Yao.

Family of languages in south China and the north of Indochina. Hmong or Miao is the largest and belongs to one branch; Mien or Yao is the main member of the other. Also called ‘Hmong-Mien’ .

Back  -    New Search

microlinguistics.

The study of language systems in abstraction from whatever is seen as lying outside them. Coined by G. L. Trager in the late 1940s, and defined as excluding the study of meaning: that belonged instead to a separate field of ‘metalinguistics’ , seen as relating the formal system of language to other ‘cultural systems’. Later redefined by other criteria, e.g. as the study of language systems in distinction from that of paralanguage.

Back  -    New Search

Micronesia.

Area in the west Pacific including the Gilbert and Marshall Islands, the Caroline Islands, and the Marianas. The languages are Austronesian, mostly of the Oceanic branch.

Back  -    New Search

mid.

(Vowel) intermediate between open (or low) and close (or high). E.g. in the production of [] in pet the position of the lower jaw and the body of the tongue is between those for [a] in pat (open, low) and for [] in pit (close, high).

Back  -    New Search

middle.

Originally of forms of verbs in Ancient Greek whose sense was broadly reflexive: e.g., schematically, I bought-MIDDLE house ‘I bought myself a house’. Called ‘middle’ because seen as intermediate between active and passive.
Thence of similar reflexive forms in other languages. Also of verbs in intransitive constructions that are understood reflexively: e.g. shaved in I shaved, meaning ‘I shaved myself’. Also of intransitives with a passive-like relation to their subject: e.g. cuts in This stone cuts easily, meaning ‘can be cut easily’.

Back  -    New Search

Middle English (ME).

Conventional term for the period in the history of English between the Norman conquest (1066) and the accession of Henry VII (1485).

Back  -    New Search

mid-sagittal.

(Plane) dividing the body into equal left and right halves. Hence the plane on which the vocal tract is represented by a diagram from front to back.

Back  -    New Search

mimesis.

Imitation: e.g. forms of words are mimetic in cases of onomatopoeia.

Back  -    New Search

Minimal Attachment Principle.

Principle in psychological theories of speech processing, by which, in parsing a sentence, successive words are construed in ways which lead to minimal additions to already established levels of phrase structure. An explanation, it has been claimed, for the phenomenon of garden path sentences.

Back  -    New Search

minimal free form.

A word as defined by Bloomfield in the 1930s. E.g. singing is free (1) in that it can form an utterance on its own: A. ‘What are you doing?’ B. ‘Singing.’ So is sing: ‘Sing!’ But -ing is not: therefore singing is a minimal free form, in that it cannot be analysed exhaustively into smaller units each of which is itself free.

Back  -    New Search

‘minimalism’.

Programme for Principles and Parameters Theory proposed by Chomsky in the early 1990s, which initially assumed no more than a necessary minimum of types of statement and levels of representation. Specifically, there has to be some level (call it Logical Form) at which an internalized language interfaces with systems of meaning seen as lying outside it. There has to be another level (call it Phonetic Form) at which it interfaces with phonetic systems also lying outside it. There has to be a lexicon, from which many of the properties both of Logical Forms and of Phonetic Forms will flow. There will be further conditions, expressed as output conditions or filters, on representations at each level. But it was then an empirical question, to be investigated in this programme, whether and what other forms of statement, or levels of representation, are needed.
Increasingly, by the mid-1990s, a label for current formulations of Principles and Parameters Theory, much as ‘Government and Binding Theory’ was used as a general label in the 1980s.

Back  -    New Search

minimal pair.

A pair of words distinguished by a single phoneme: e.g. tip [tp] and pip [pp]. A pair test is a test in which speakers of a language are presented with possible minimal pairs and asked whether they are the same forms or different.

Back  -    New Search

minimizer.

See intensifying.

Back  -    New Search

minor rule.

One restricted to a small class of units: thus especially to a class of exceptions.

Back  -    New Search

minor sentence.

Any sentence in whose construction words are limited to specific combinations: e.g. an exclamation like God help us!, whose construction, with ‘subjunctive’ help, is restricted in normal use to this and a few other fixed expressions. Major sentences are of types which are not so limited, e.g. a declarative like God helps us: cf. Jane helps us, Jane rescues us, God rescues us, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

minor word class.

A word class which is closed, or whose members are seen as having grammatical meaning as opposed to lexical meaning. E.g. articles belong to a minor word class, or a minor syntactic category; prepositions form a minor class in some accounts but a major in others.

Back  -    New Search

minuscule.

Not majuscule.

Back  -    New Search

MIT

= Massachusetts Institute of Technology: hence in reference to the school of Chomsky, who has worked there since the 1950s.

Back  -    New Search

mixed language.

1 One which could be classed genetically, with equal plausibility, in more than one way. Often in the assertion that no language is in fact mixed in this sense.

2 One whose vocabulary is historically from one source, but whose grammatical structure is from another. The extreme case is again more hypothetical than demonstrated.
Top

Back  -    New Search

Mixe-Zoquean.

See Central American languages.

Back  -    New Search

‘mixing of levels’.

The use of results obtained in one phase of the analysis of a language as the basis for a phase of analysis held to precede it. Proscribed by many Post-Bloomfieldians in the 1950s, in the interests of exact method: thus, if phonological analysis precedes grammatical analysis, a phonologist cannot, without mixing levels, refer e.g. to word boundaries.

Back  -    New Search

MLU

= mean length of utterance.

Back  -    New Search

modal.

(Particle, etc.) indicating modality: e.g. possibly and probably might be described as modal adverbs.
Specifically of a class of modal verbs in English, whose uses are typically deontic or epistemic. E.g. can or must: compare deontic You can come in (permission) with You must come in (obligation); epistemic She could have arrived already (possibility) with She must have arrived already (necessity). Thence of verbs in other languages, whether a distinct syntactic class or not, whose meanings are similar.

Back  -    New Search

modality.

Category covering indications either of a kind of speech act or of the degree of certainty with which something is said. Thus He left at once (declarative) differs in modality from Leave at once! (imperative); He can't have left (epistemic) from You can't leave now (deontic); You must leave (obligation) from You can leave if you like (permission); He has perhaps left (with a qualifier perhaps) from He has definitely left.
Cf. mood. Ideally mood might be defined as a grammatical category in specific languages and modality as a notional category which subsumes it. But it is not clear that, as a notional term, it would be univocal.

Back  -    New Search

modal logic.

Any system of logic with operators that distinguish modality. E.g. in which N and P are operators corresponding to necessity and possibility: N p ‘it is necessary that p’; P p ‘It is possible that p’.

Back  -    New Search

modal voice.

Normal vibration of the vocal cords in the production of speech, as opposed e.g. to falsetto.

Back  -    New Search

model.

Often of a general way of conceiving or describing some aspect of one's subject-matter. Thus a model of sound change is a view of how, in general, such change takes place; hence, in addition, a way in which particular changes may be described. A model of syntax is similarly a general view of the relations in which words stand, of the rules that govern these relations, etc.; hence, again, a pattern that may be followed in describing the syntax of particular languages. ‘Model’, in this sense, is often harmlessly interchangeable with ‘theory’.
Also in the sense of e.g. a computer model. Thus a system for parsing in computational linguistics might be seen as ‘modelling’, or be presented as a model of, one aspect of the process by which speech is perceived. Distinguished, in this case, from a theory: thus it would not follow, and might not be claimed, that such a model was part of a correct view of perception.

Back  -    New Search

model-theoretic semantics.

An account of meaning in which sentences are interpreted in terms of a model of, or abstract formal structure representing, an actual or possible state of the world: cf. possible world. Usually, at least, an account of truth conditions; i.e. sentences are interpreted as true or false in such a model.
Cf. Montague Grammar.

Back  -    New Search

modes of signifying.

See Modistae.

Back  -    New Search

modification (1).

Type of syntactic construction in which a head is accompanied by an element typically not required by it. E.g. nouns do not in general require an accompanying adjective: therefore, in I like white chocolate, the construction of the object, white chocolate, is one in which white modifies chocolate.
Also called ‘attribution’ ; the accompanying element (in this example white) is a modifier (or ‘attribute’ ). Cf. complement, complementation.

Back  -    New Search

modification (2).

Morphological process by which a part or parts of a form are altered: e.g. that by which sing or ring past tense sang or rang.

Back  -    New Search

modifier.

See modification (1).

Back  -    New Search

Modistae.

School of grammarians centred on Paris in the second half of the 13th century. Named after a tripartite theory of ‘modes’, of being, of understanding, and of signifying, in terms of which the different parts of speech, in the system inherited from antiquity, were seen as representing reality in different ways. E.g. a verb was conceived as signifying ‘through the mode of’ existence independent of specific substance. The account of parts of speech and of their accidents, based in detail on the same underlying philosophy, leads to a theory of syntax in which different types of construction are distinguished by the relation between depending and ‘terminating’ elements. E.g. in the sentence John's brother likes tall girls, the verb (likes) would depend on girls in a transitive construction: in ancient terms, there is a ‘crossing over’ to another ‘person’. It would also depend on brother in an intransitive construction, both these being constructions ‘of acts’: i.e. concerned with processes. Brother would then depend on John's, again transitively, and tall on girls, again intransitively. These would be constructions ‘of persons’, concerned with participants, not ‘of acts’.
The theory was developed by Martin of Dacia and others in the mid-13th century, though best known from a systematization by Thomas of Erfurt some decades later. Abandoned in the 14th century, when its philosophical basis was destroyed by nominalism.

Back  -    New Search

modular.

(Theory) which assumes that the mind is structured into separate modules or components, each governed by its own principles and operating independently of others. Hence, in linguistics, of any theory which assumes that internalized languages are separate from other cognitive structures, or any model of such languages, e.g. that of Government and Binding Theory, which is in turn composed of smaller modules.
Often applied specifically to a theory proposed by J. A. Fodor in the 1980s, in which speech processing, to a level of ‘logical form’, is an ‘input’ system comparable e.g. to the processing of information from the eyes. Such input systems are seen as ‘informationally encapsulated’, in the sense that processes internal to them have no direct access to information from the ‘central processes’ with which, as wholes, they connect.

Back  -    New Search

modulation.

Bloomfield's term for grammatical features of stress and intonation. Hence She's coming might be said to have different modulations in SHE's coming and She's COming. Also used to refer to differences in paralanguage.

Back  -    New Search

modus ponens.

Term in logic for the form of reasoning by which, if q follows from p, and p is true, then q is also true. Modus tollens is the form by which, if q follows from p, and q is false, then p is also false.
Latin for ‘method of affirming’ and ‘method of denying’.

Back  -    New Search

Mohawk.

See Iroquoian.

Back  -    New Search

Mon.

See Mon-Khmer.

Back  -    New Search

moneme.

Martinet's term (French ‘monème’) for a minimal linguistic sign: e.g. French travaillons ‘(we) are working’ can be analysed into monemes travaill-‘work’ and -ons. For the general sense cf. morpheme (2). ‘Monèmes’ are divided into ‘lexèmes’ such as travaill-and ‘morphèmes’ such as -ons: cf. lexeme (2), morpheme (1).

Back  -    New Search

Mongolian.

Family of languages spoken mainly in the Mongolian Republic and an adjacent part of China: the language also called ‘Mongolian’ is its main member. A proposed branch of Altaic.
Classical Mongolian is the language of the Mongols in the Middle Ages, attested from the 13th century in a script derived ultimately from the Semitic alphabet used for Aramaic.

Back  -    New Search

Mon-Khmer.

Family of languages in South-east Asia. Khmer and Vietnamese are the most important; Mon , though now with far fewer speakers, was the language of the people dominant in the delta area of Burma (Myanmar) from, in particular, the 6th to 11th centuries AD, and was written in one of the earliest Indian scripts in the region.
The family has been grouped with Munda in Austro-Asiatic.

Back  -    New Search

mono-.

Prefix from the Greek word for ‘alone’ or ‘single’. Thus a monosyllabic word, or monosyllable , consists of a single syllable; a monomorphemic word or phrase consists of a single morpheme; a monotransitive verb takes just one object. Commonly opp. di-/bi-, tri-, poly-/multi-.

Back  -    New Search

monogenesis.

Single origin, e.g. of languages. Thus distinguishing especially the theory, held e.g. by those who believe that they can establish etymons in Proto-World, that language originally evolved in a single population. Opp. polygenesis.

Back  -    New Search

monolingual.

Not bilingual or multilingual. Thus, in a strict sense, having a single native language.

Back  -    New Search

monophthong.

A vowel which is not part of a diphthong or triphthong: e.g. [a] in cat [kat].
Cf. pure vowel. But a unit may often be described as monophthongal in phonology when the vowel by which it is realized either is not, or is not consistently, pure: e.g. that of more, realized variously as [:] or [].

Back  -    New Search

monostratal.

Having a single level of representation, e.g. of an account or model of syntax. Opp. multistratal.

Back  -    New Search

monosystemic.

Firth's term for analyses which establish single overall systems, e.g. an overall system of consonants, as opposed to one which is polysystemic, which he advocated.

Back  -    New Search

monotransitive.

Taking or including a single object: e.g. of the construction of He broke a plate, or of the verb break, in taking that construction.

Back  -    New Search

monovalent.

(Verb) whose valency has just one element: e.g. the intransitive die in He died.

Back  -    New Search

Montague Grammar.

Treatment of syntax and semantics developing work by R. Montague before his death in the early 1970s. Based on the belief that the techniques of formal semantics, familiar in application to artificial systems of logic, were equally appropriate to languages in the ordinary sense. Hence for any language (a) a set of syntactically well-formed expressions had to be specified by a formal system of syntax; (b) these expressions had to be assigned interpretations in an appropriate system of logic. In Montague's account, the syntactic categories were those of a categorial grammar, the form of rules combining categories being, however, essentially unconstrained. In addition, each syntactic rule was associated with a semantic rule that derived the semantic interpretation of its output from the semantic interpretations of its inputs. In later work, both the application of formal semantics and this rule to rule hypothesis have been associated with more restricted systems of syntax, especially in Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar.

Back  -    New Search

mood.

Grammatical category distinguishing modality. Originally of an inflectional category of verbs in Greek and Latin, opposing in particular indicative and subjunctive: thence of other systems of modality marked by verbs, of distinctions in modality between constructions, and so on. ‘Modality’ and ‘mood’ are therefore used in the same sense, by different scholars, in some contexts.

Back  -    New Search

mora.

A unit of syllable weight applicable to languages in which long or heavy syllables are distinguished from short or light syllables. Different measures have been proposed; but e.g. a syllable ending in a short vowel might have one mora and one which ends in a long vowel or a consonant two morae.

Back  -    New Search

Moré.

See Gur.

Back  -    New Search

morph.

The smallest sequence of phonological units into which words are divided in an analysis of morphemes. Thus the form [nstrtt] (unstretched) will be divided into the morphs [n], realizing a negative morpheme, [strt], realizing the root morpheme ‘stretch’, and [t], realizing e.g. the past-tense morpheme.

Back  -    New Search

morpheme.

A unit of grammar smaller than the word. E.g. distasteful is composed of morphemes realized by dis-, taste, and -ful.
The term was introduced in the late 19th century, and has had three main senses.
1 A unit smaller than the word which has grammatical as opposed to lexical meaning. The original sense, still current in French: opp., in French, ‘lexème’ (earlier ‘sémantème’); cf. moneme.
Top

2 Any configuration of phonological units within a word which has either grammatical or lexical meaning: thus, in distasteful, any of the sequences [ds], [test], and [fl] or, in a basic form, [fl]. Cf. morph.
Top

3 An invariant lexical or grammatical unit realized by one or more configurations of phonological units. E.g. [ds] in distasteful might be seen as one realization of a more abstract ‘negative’ morpheme also realized, e.g. by [n] in unpleasant. Cf. allomorph.
Sense 1 is virtually obsolete in English-speaking countries, where usage has tended to hover between sense 2 and sense 3.
Top

Back  -    New Search

morpheme-structure rule.

Used in the 1960s of a form of lexical redundancy rule by which features were added to underspecified representations, in the lexicon, of the phonological forms of morphemes. A morpheme-structure condition was a filter that could apply equivalently to representations that were fully specified.

Back  -    New Search

morphemics.

Morphology, conceived as a branch of linguistics which takes the morpheme as its basic unit.

Back  -    New Search

morpholexical rule.

A rule for allomorphy stated over the lexical entries for individual morphemes, ahead of rules which specify phonological processes.

Back  -    New Search

morphological process.

Any of the formal processes or operations by which the forms of words are derived from stems or roots. E.g. reran is derived from the root run by two morphological processes, one adding re-(run rerun), the other changing u to a (rerun reran).
For types of morphological process see affix; compound; modification (2); reduplication; subtraction; suppletion.

Back  -    New Search

morphologization.

Process of grammaticalization (2) which results specifically in what was formerly a word becoming an element within a word.

Back  -    New Search

morphology.

The study of the grammatical structure of words and the categories realized by them. Thus a morphological analysis will divide girls into girl and -s, which realizes ‘plural’; singer into sing and -er, which marks it as a noun denoting an agent.
A category is ‘morphological’ if it is realized within words. Thus morphological case is case as realized by different elements within nouns or words of other classes, as opposed to case roles realized by independent words or word order; a morphological causative is a causative form of a verb as opposed to a causative construction, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

morphoneme

= morphophoneme; likewise morphonemics , morphonology = morphophonemics, morphophonology.

Back  -    New Search

morphophoneme.

Unit posited in the 1930s to account for alternations in morphology which are recurrent but not automatic. E.g. knives or loaves has a [v] ([nv], [lv]) where knife or loaf has an [f]. The alternation is recurrent, since it is found in more than one word. But it is not automatic, since it is not found e.g. in oaf and oafs, both of which have [f], or in hive and hives, both of which have [v]. To account for it, forms such as knife and loaf are said to end in a morphophoneme ‘F’, identical to [f] except that, when the plural ending follows, it is realized by [v]. Thus, in terms of processes, [nF] + plural [nv]-, but [f] (oaf) + plural is unchanged.
Usually written, as here, with a capital letter. But, like phonemes, morphophonemes can be analysed into features. E.g. ‘F’ might have the same phonetic features as [f] plus a diacritic feature which may be said to ‘trigger’ the alternation. The same diacritic feature might also distinguish a morphophoneme ‘S’ in house (plural [hazz]) or ‘’ in wreath (plural [ri:ðz]).

Back  -    New Search

morphophonemics.

See morphophonology.

Back  -    New Search

morphophonemic script.

See phonemic script.

Back  -    New Search

morphophonology.

Branch of linguistics concerned with rules or alternations intermediate between morphology and phonology. Called ‘morphophonemics’ by most linguists in the USA, and defined by C. F. Hockett in the 1950s in a sense that covered the entire relation between representations of sentences in terms of morphemes (3) and their representations in terms of phonemes. Usual definitions are less wide: thus, in particular, a morphophonological rule or alternation is one which (a) applies to phonological elements, but (b) applies only under certain morphological conditions. E.g. in capacious vs. capacity, [e] (in cap[e]cious) alternates with [a] (in cap[a]city). The alternation is not restricted to this pair of forms: compare ver[e]cious and ver[a]city, or loqu[e]cious and loqu[a]city. Thus (a) it concerns the vowels [e] and [a], not the form capac-as a whole. But (b) it applies to words with a certain morphological structure, basically derived from that of Latin. Therefore, in many accounts, it is morphophonological, not simply phonological.
Cf. morphophoneme.

Back  -    New Search

morphosyntactic.

(Category, feature) distinguishing forms within an inflectional paradigm. Thus the paradigms of nouns in Latin, Russian, and many other languages have two dimensions, formed by the morphosyntactic categories of number (singular or plural) and case (nominative, accusative, etc.).
Called ‘morphosyntactic’ from the role such categories play in both morphology and syntax. The term ‘category’ is traditionally used both of the feature that distinguishes the dimension in general (e.g. number or case) and the specific terms or values (e.g. singular or nominative) along it. Alternatively, the former is a ‘morphosyntactic category’ , while the latter are specific ‘morphosyntactic features’ (or ‘morphosyntactic properties’). E.g. Latin puellam ‘girl-ACCSG’ is characterized by the morphosyntactic features accusative (ACC) and singular (SG), which are terms respectively in the morphosyntactic categories of case and number. Alternatively, again, a category as a whole may be represented as a variable feature which has two or more values: e.g. number in Latin as the binary feature [± plural].

Back  -    New Search

morphosyntactic word.

A representation of a word in terms of its grammatical properties, as opposed to a phonetic or written word form. E.g. ‘the past tense of run’ or ‘run-PAST’ is the morphosyntactic word realized by the word form ran.

Back  -    New Search

morphotactics.

The study of relations of sequence, etc. among morphemes. Thus it is an aspect of the morphotactics of English that e.g. the prefix un-(in unkind or unhinge) comes before the form to which it is added. Usually of the arrangement of morphemes within words, but also of their relations within sentences, if morphemes are taken to be the smallest syntactic units.

Back  -    New Search

morphotonemics.

Morphophonology or morphophonemics involving alternations of tones in tone languages.

Back  -    New Search

‘mother’.

Relation of a node in a phrase structure tree to any ‘daughter’ node that it immediately dominates.

Back  -    New Search

motherese.

Form of speech used especially by mothers in talking to very young children: also called ‘baby-talk’ , ‘caregiver speech’ , ‘caretaker speech’ .

Back  -    New Search

‘mother-in-law language’.

See avoidance style.

Back  -    New Search

‘mother tongue’

= native language.

Back  -    New Search

motivation.

The opposite of arbitrariness. Thus the relation between form and meaning is motivated , or partly motivated, in a case of onomatopoeia; also e.g. where forms are derived by a semantically regular process of word-formation. See also iconicity.

Back  -    New Search

Motu.

Austronesian language in the region of Port Moresby; Hiri Motu or ‘Police Motu’ is a simplified or pidginized form still spoken widely in Papua New Guinea.

Back  -    New Search

move .

A principle in Principles and Parameters Theory by which any element can be moved to another syntactic position, subject to restrictions imposed either by other principles or parameters or in specific instances.

Back  -    New Search

movement rule.

Any rule (2) formulated as a process by which a unit is moved: e.g. one of wh-movement. A movement chain is formed, in Government and Binding Theory, by the linkages between a unit and successive traces left in positions from which it is moved.

Back  -    New Search

mu (µ).

Symbol for a mora.

Back  -    New Search

multi-.

From the Latin word for ‘many’: cf. poly-.

Back  -    New Search

multilateral comparison

= mass comparison.

Back  -    New Search

multilateral opposition.

One between terms distinguished by more than one feature. Especially of phonemes: e.g. [p] and [s] in English are in a multilateral opposition, since they are distinguished within the consonant system by both place and manner of articulation. Opp. bilateral.

Back  -    New Search

multilingual.

1 (Person) having equal control of more than two native languages.

2 (Community) in which more than two languages are native. Thence loosely, as bilingual, e.g. of someone who has some command of more than two languages.
Top

Back  -    New Search

multiplex.

See social network.

Back  -    New Search

multistratal.

Having a series of levels of representation. E.g. Government and Binding Theory in the 1980s assumed a multistratal model of syntax. Opp. monostratal.

Back  -    New Search

multivalued.

Not binary. Thus a multivalued feature is one whose values are not simply ‘+’ and ‘-’: e.g. that of vowel height if it is seen as involving a gradual opposition. Likewise a multivalued logic is one in which propositions may be other than just true or false.

Back  -    New Search

Munda.

Family of languages spoken in scattered areas of central and eastern India: a proposed branch of Austro-Asiatic.

Back  -    New Search

murmured.

Articulated with breathy voice: i.e. with the vocal cords vibrating but in a position that allows an airflow greater than in voiced sounds. The h in ahead is typically murmured: phonetically ['fid]. Murmur is distinctive for stops in e.g. Hindi-Urdu, where those called ‘voiced aspirates’ are murmured [bfilig;], [dfilig;], etc.

Back  -    New Search

Muskogean.

A small family of languages native to parts of the south-eastern USA, from Texas to Florida. Choctaw (Mississippi) is the least moribund.

Back  -    New Search

mutation.

Generally, of sound changes that lead to alternations between phonemes. Specifically, in Celtic, of grammatically conditioned alternations of consonants, especially at the beginnings of words. E.g. basic [k] in Welsh cath ‘cat’ [ka:] [g] in y gath ‘the cat’ [ ga:]; [h] in fy nghath i ‘my cat’ [ ha: i]; [x] in ei chath hi ‘her cat’ [i xa: hi]. These are instances of, respectively, ‘soft mutation’, ‘nasal mutation’, and ‘spirant mutation’.

Back  -    New Search

mute.

An old term for an oral stop. Defined in antiquity as one that could not be uttered without an accompanying vowel: hence, in itself, ‘silent’.

Back  -    New Search

mutual knowledge.

The knowledge that a speaker and addressee are seen as jointly taking for granted at a given point in an interchange. E.g. if A says to B ‘Jones is coming’, one condition for successful communication is that A and B should share the knowledge of who Jones is: specifically, B knows who A means by ‘Jones’, A knows that B knows this, B knows that A knows that, and so on. Often in accounts which argue that complete success in communication is possible if but only if all relevant knowledge is shared, in this sense, completely.
Also called ‘shared knowledge’ ; cf. background knowledge.

Back  -    New Search

mutually intelligible.

(Dialects, languages) each of which can be understood, or understood sufficiently for ordinary purposes, by speakers of the other: e.g. Danish and Norwegian or, to a lesser degree, Danish and Swedish. Often seen as a necessary property of dialects.

Back  -    New Search

Mycenaean.

Form of Greek attested in the 2nd millennium BC, on the site of Mycenae and elsewhere, by records in Linear B.

Back  -    New Search

N

N.

1 = noun.

2 = nasal.
Top

Back  -    New Search

Na-Dené.

Conjectural family linking Athabaskan with three other North American languages (in ascending order Eyak, Tlingit, Haida). Proposed by Sapir; still contested.

Back  -    New Search

Nahuatl.

Uto-Aztecan language, spoken in various parts of central Mexico. The language of the Aztecs; important also as a second language before and after the Spanish conquest. Written at the time of the conquest in a script derived from the Mayan.

Back  -    New Search

narratology.

The formal analysis of narrative texts, on lines inspired by or seen as similar to European structural linguistics.

Back  -    New Search

Narrow Bantu

= Bantu.

Back  -    New Search

Narrow Romic.

See Sweet.

Back  -    New Search

narrow transcription.

A phonetic transcription which is detailed down to the level at which features can be distinguished. Thus a narrow transcription of one pronunciation of stray might be expected to indicate that the stop is released by a fricative, that the place of articulation of [s] is slightly backer than in say, that in all three consonants the lips are rounded, and so on. Opp. broad transcription.

Back  -    New Search

narrow vowel.

One in whose production the tongue is bunched towards the centre so that its upper surface is relatively convex in cross-section. A possible factor in distinguishing e.g. [i:] from [] in English, or in similar distinctions in other northern European languages. Opp. wide vowel.

Back  -    New Search

nasal.

Produced with lowering of the soft palate, so that air may pass through the nose. Thus [m] and [n] in man [man] are nasal stops or, if not classed as stops, are nasals; the vowel of French saint, conventionally [], is a nasal vowel .
Opp. oral. The nasal cavity is the additional resonating chamber formed by the passages through the nose when the soft palate is lowered.

Back  -    New Search

nasal assimilation.

Usually of a process by which nasal consonants have the same place of articulation as adjacent oral consonants. E.g. the n of unkind tends to be either velar ([]), or to be realized with overlapping [n] and [], by assimilation to the velar plosive that follows.

Back  -    New Search

nasalization.

Change or process by which vowels or consonants become nasal. Thus, in the history of French, the vowel of Latin unus ‘one’ or manus ‘hand’ will have been nasalized, in the context of a following nasal consonant, before, at a later stage, that consonant was lost: thus Modern French un (conservatively [œ]), main ([m]).
Also of the lowering of the velum seen as comparable to a secondary articulation. Thus ‘nasalized vowel’ = nasal vowel.

Back  -    New Search

nasal release.

The release of a closure by lowering of the soft palate, so that air passes outwards through the nose: e.g. that of the [t] in [btn] (button). Also called ‘nasal plosion’ .

Back  -    New Search

national language.

One which is a source or sign of identity for a nation. Potentially distinguished from an official language: e.g. until the mid-1980s Luxembourg had two official languages (French and German), but the national language was then, as it is now, Luxembourgish.

Back  -    New Search

native.

(Form, word, etc.) which is not historically a result of borrowing. E.g. cow, which has cognates in other Germanic languages, is native to English; beef, which derives from a form borrowed from Old French, is not.

Back  -    New Search

native language.

A language that people have acquired naturally as children, as opposed to one learned later, e.g. through formal education. By the same token they are native speakers .

Back  -    New Search

nativism.

The theory that specific properties of the mind are inherited, not acquired. Hence especially, in linguistics, of Chomsky's theory of the development of language in children from genetically inherited principles of universal grammar.
Empiricism is the philosophical doctrine traditionally opposed to nativism.

Back  -    New Search

nativized.

(Form, etc.) which is historically a loan but is no different, nor perceived as different, from those that are native. E.g. cheer, from the word for ‘face’ in Old French, is nativized in English; rouge is not.

Back  -    New Search

natural class.

Any class, of sounds especially, whose members share some property that distinguishes it from others. E.g. in English [m], [n], and [] form a natural class; [n] and, say, [h] do not.

Back  -    New Search

‘natural gender’.

See gender (1).

Back  -    New Search

Natural Generative Phonology.

Model developed by J. B. Hooper and others in the 1970s and early 1980s, in reaction to Generative Phonology as developed by Halle. Distinguished by a strict division between phonology and morphophonology, and by attempts to constrain either phonological rules or the forms on which they operate by conditions which exclude abstract representations. These include a condition by which rules are ordered only intrinsically.

Back  -    New Search

natural language.

1 An imagined or invented system similar to a language except that the relation between forms and meanings is natural rather than arbitrary: e.g. one in which, say, all the words for animals begin with b, all those for mammals with ba, all those for primates with bac, and so on.

2 A language in the ordinary sense, which is or has been learned and spoken naturally by a community, as opposed to an artificial system resembling a language in one or more respects.
Attempts to develop ‘languages’ which would be natural in sense 1 are characteristic of the Universal Language Movement from the mid-17th century. But these were not, of course, natural in sense 2. Conversely, languages which are gratuitously described as natural in sense 2 are not ‘natural’ in sense 1.
Top

Back  -    New Search

Natural Morphology.

A broad approach to morphology, developed especially in Germany and Austria from the early 1980s, in which both the structural tendencies of languages in general, and the specific processes of change in individual languages, are explained in part by the operation of hypothetically universal laws of naturalness. Thus it is easier to understand words if their morphological structure is transparent: hence, in particular, if categories are realized by affixes (English bake-d or hen-s) rather than e.g. by vowel change (English took or men). In that sense affixation is more natural: hence, in languages generally, it is the commonest process and, as specific languages change, the tendency, all else being equal, is for its scope to increase. E.g. in the history of English, plurals with affixes, like cows, have tended to replace ones that are less transparent, like kine. By other proposed laws, it is natural e.g. that a plural, which is marked (1) in opposition to a singular, should be realized by the presence rather than the absence of an affix: plural hen-s vs. singular hen, not plural hen vs. singular hen-s. Hence, again, this pattern is found more widely across languages, and, again, specific changes will tend towards it.
Laws such as these reduce to a general principle of iconicity. But one law may conflict with another, and conflicts may be resolved in different ways in different types of language. Moreover, any law may conflict with structures inherent in a specific system. Hence all apply, as above, ‘all else being equal’.

Back  -    New Search

naturalness.

The property of rules, relations, principles, etc. that are in some degree explicable by factors lying outside language or outside the domain of a language system. Thus a bird name such as chiffchaff or peewit is natural to the extent that it reflects the song or call of the bird itself; a process by which a velar consonant is palatalized between front vowels is natural in terms of the movements that the tongue must make in articulating it; a principle in syntax by which words linked in meaning also tend to be next to each other is natural in so far as it makes a sentence easier to produce or to understand.
Opp. arbitrariness, in cases like the first especially.

Back  -    New Search

Natural Phonology.

Theory developed by D. Stampe at the end of the 1960s, which proposed a universal set of phonetically ‘natural’ processes. These were seen as genetically inherited by any child, but variously confirmed or inhibited as a specific language is acquired.

Back  -    New Search

Natural Serialization Principle.

Principle proposed by T. Vennemann in the 1970s, by which the order of verbs and their complements, conceived as a relation between an ‘operand’ and ‘operators’, tends to be paralleled by that of other elements seen as standing in a similar relation in other constructions. Thus if, in a given language, verbs precede their complements that language will also tend to have prepositions (operands) which precede their own complements (operators); if verbs follow their complements it will tend instead to have postpositions. Cf. VO vs. OV languages.

Back  -    New Search

Navajo.

Athabaskan language spoken in the American South-west, in an area from east of the Grand Canyon into north-west New Mexico: also spelled ‘Navaho’ . With speakers in six figures, it is now by far the largest indigenous language of North America.

Back  -    New Search

negative.

(Sentence, construction, form) whose basic role is in asserting that something is not the case. E.g. He is not coming is a negative sentence, marked as such by the negative particle not. Also of similar elements or processes within words: e.g. unhappy is a negative adjective, whose sense negates that of happy. Opp. affirmative; positive.

Back  -    New Search

‘negative face’.

See face.

Back  -    New Search

negative polarity item.

A word, etc. whose sense is possible in negative sentences but not or not normally in positive sentences: e.g. any in the negative I didn't buy any, with a sense that it does not have in the positive (I bought ANy). Cf. positive polarity item.

Back  -    New Search

negative raising.

The raising (2) of a negative element. E.g., in I don't think he's coming, n't is part of the main clause: [I don't think [he's coming]]. But the sense is like that of I think he isn't coming; therefore it is seen as raised from the subordinate clause. Also called, at one time, ‘negative transportation’ .

Back  -    New Search

‘negative transfer’

= interference.

Back  -    New Search

negator.

Any negative element: e.g. never in English, (ne) … pas in French.

Back  -    New Search

Neo-Bloomfieldians

= Post-Bloomfieldians.

Back  -    New Search

‘neoclassical’.

Term proposed by L. Bauer for formations such as those of astronaut or Russophile, in which forms not found as independent words are combined in a pattern derived from or reflecting those of compounds in Greek or Latin.

Back  -    New Search

Neo-Firthians.

School of linguists following Halliday.

Back  -    New Search

Neogrammarians (German Junggrammatiker) .

School of linguists originating in Leipzig in the 1870s. The tenet for which they are most often cited is the ‘Regularity Principle’ , according to which changes in sounds, to the extent that they operate mechanically, develop according to laws that admit no exception. Such mechanical changes, whose causes were seen as physical, were contrasted with other forms of change, including borrowing and change explained by analogy, whose causes were psychological.
The Regularity Principle was made explicit by A. Leskien in 1876 and by Brugmann in 1878. Neogrammarian ideas in general are best represented by Paul's Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte, first published in 1880; the movement has been seen by many in the 20th century as the start of scientific linguistics.

Back  -    New Search

Neo-Humboldtians.

School of theorists in Germany, founded between the wars by L. Weisgerber, which developed in particular the concept of a language as a force that shapes the life of, and the perception of reality in, a society or nation. Cf. Humboldt.

Back  -    New Search

Neolinguistics.

Movement in Italy in the first half of the 20th century, led by M. G. Bartoli under the influence of Croce's philosophy of language. Influential mainly in the field of areal linguistics (‘linguistica spaziale’), especially for the insight that, where different words with a similar meaning are distributed across related languages over a large area, those in peripheral regions are likely to be older and those in the centre to be innovations.

Back  -    New Search

neologism.

Any new word which is introduced into a language, by whatever process. E.g. Eurocracy, for the bureaucracy of the European Union, would be a possible neologism in English, either derived from Eurocrat or by a direct process of blending.

Back  -    New Search

Nepali.

Indo-Aryan, spoken in Nepal, where it is the official language, in Sikkim, and in the north of West Bengal. Written in Devanagari, in which it is attested from the 13th to the 14th century AD.

Back  -    New Search

nesting.

The inclusion of one syntactic unit within another. Cf. layering; also self-embedding.

Back  -    New Search

networks.

See connectionism; social networks.

Back  -    New Search

neurolinguistics.

Branch of neurology or linguistics concerned in principle with the physical representation of language or linguistic processes in the brain.

Back  -    New Search

neustic.

See phrastic.

Back  -    New Search

neuter (NEUT).

Gender (1) distinguished as an unmarked term opposed to the animate genders masculine and feminine. Hence characterized by, or at least tending to include, nouns denoting material substances and inanimate objects. E.g. in German the words for ‘water’ and the substance ‘wood’ are among a large subset of such words that are neuter (das Wasser ‘the-NEUT water’, das Holz ‘the-NEUT wood’).
The term is from the Latin word for ‘neither’: i.e. neither masculine nor feminine.

Back  -    New Search

‘neuter verb’.

See active (1).

Back  -    New Search

neutral.

Usually in the sense of ‘intermediate between extremes’: hence neutral vowel. The ‘neutral position’ of the tongue is its position at rest when it is not being used e.g. in speaking.

Back  -    New Search

neutralizable.

(Opposition, contrast) that undergoes neutralization: opp. constant opposition.

Back  -    New Search

neutralization.

The suppression in one position in a word or syllable of an opposition between phonemes operative in other positions. E.g. [t] in German contrasts with [d] in most positions (Torf ‘peat’ vs. Dorf ‘village’; Leiter ‘leader’ vs. leider ‘unfortunately’), but not at the end of a word: despite the spelling, Hut ‘hat’ and Tod ‘death’ end identically ([hu:t], [to:t]). In the classic account by Trubetzkoy the opposition is described as neutralized in this position (called the ‘position of neutralization’ ): the [t] of Hut or Tod then represents an archiphoneme, defined by the distinctive features that [t] and [d] have in common.
Later extended to other cases where a distinction between units is suppressed: thus, in particular, absolute neutralization. Also e.g. in morphology, for systematic patterns of syncretism: thus, in German again, the distinctions between cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative) are said to be ‘neutralized’ in the plural.

Back  -    New Search

neutral vowel.

A vowel such as [] in e.g. fatality [f'talti], which is neither close nor open, neither back nor front, with the lips neither rounded nor spread. Often so called because, in addition, it can be seen as neutralizing differences between other vowels: thus the [] of fatality corresponds to [e] in fatal, that of ph[]tography to [] in photograph, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

new.

See given.

Back  -    New Search

New Guinea.

See Melanesia.

Back  -    New Search

‘next-speaker selection’.

The selection, by what is said by one participant in a conversation, of another participant as the one who is meant to speak next. Thus, if A asks ‘Can you come, John?’, A intends that a participant called John should reply. See Conversation Analysis for the notion of a ‘turn-taking’ system in which such ‘turns’ are said to be regulated.

Back  -    New Search

nexus.

Jespersen's term for any construction involving predication: e.g. the independent nexus in The door creaks or the ‘dependent’ nexus in (I heard) the door creaking.
A nexus substantive is a noun whose construction is like one of predication: e.g. analysis or happiness in their analysis of the problem (cf. They analysed the problem) or his happiness (cf. He is happy). ‘Nexus negation’ has been suggested by Lyons for negation of a predication (e.g. by (could)n't in He couldn't have not seen her) as opposed to ‘predicate negation’ or negation of a predicate, as in (I) have not seen her.

Back  -    New Search

Ngala.

Bantu, important as a second language in part of the extreme north of Zaire and into the Central African Republic.

Back  -    New Search

NGP

= Natural Generative Phonology.

Back  -    New Search

Nguni.

Group of closely similar languages or dialects of the Bantu family in the extreme south of its range: they include Xhosa and Zulu.

Back  -    New Search

‘NICE’ properties.

Acronym originally proposed by R. D. Huddleston for four properties by which auxiliary verbs in English are distinguished from full verbs. Auxiliaries have negative forms (N): hadn't, can't, and so on. The order of subject and auxiliary can be inverted (I): Can he?, Had he left? They can be used in elliptical or ‘coded’ utterances (C) that can only be understood in context: he can (understand ‘sing’, ‘come tomorrow’, …), She had. They can be stressed in emphatic confirmation (E) of a statement: She CAN do it, He HAD left.

Back  -    New Search

‘Niger-Congo’.

See African languages.

Back  -    New Search

‘Nilo-Saharan’.

See African languages.

Back  -    New Search

Nilotic.

A group of languages in East Africa, from the limits of Arabic and other Semitic and Cushitic languages southwards. Luo , spoken mainly in Nyanza Province, Kenya, is the largest.

Back  -    New Search

NLP

= Natural Language Processing: i.e. any processing by computer of sentences, texts, etc. in natural languages (2).

Back  -    New Search

‘No Alternation Condition’.

Proposed in the early 1970s as a constraint which would eliminate the use or misuse of free rides in Generative Phonology: i.e. a rule could apply only to forms which were involved in a relevant alternation.

Back  -    New Search

node.

Any of the points connected by lines (arcs) in e.g. a tree diagram.

Back  -    New Search

node admissibility condition.

Any condition on e.g. phrase structure trees by which a specific configuration of nodes and arcs is well-formed. Thus a phrase structure rule X Y + Z can be interpreted as a node admissibility condition by which a well-formed tree can include a node X which immediately dominates (i.e. is connected by arcs to) two successive nodes Y and Z.

Back  -    New Search

noise.

A sound or component of sounds that is not periodic: thus in speech of, e.g. fricatives, such as [f] and [s] in farce, as opposed to vowels. Also, as generally in models of communication, of extraneous sound that interferes with or obscures a signal.

Back  -    New Search

NOM

= nominative, nominal.

Back  -    New Search

nomen actionis

= action noun.

Back  -    New Search

nomen agentis

= agent noun.

Back  -    New Search

‘nomenclature’.

A collection of names: thus it is sometimes stressed that a language, or its lexicon, are not a ‘mere nomenclature’.

Back  -    New Search

nominal.

Of or belonging to nouns (Latin ‘nomina’). Thus child in childish is a nominal root or nominal stem ; he and the party are noun phrases and so nominal constituents of He loved the party. In the system of parts of speech nouns originally included adjectives: hence, in particular, a nominal sentence or clause is one in which the predicative element is an adjective or noun phrase without a copula. Thus, exceptionally in English, Nothing easier! In some modern accounts, the categories noun and adjective are likewise said to share a feature [+ nominal], in opposition to verbs and prepositions, which are [- nominal].

Back  -    New Search

‘nominal aphasia’.

Aphasia characterized by anomia: also called ‘anomic aphasia’ .

Back  -    New Search

nominalism.

The doctrine in philosophy that universals are merely names (Latin ‘nomina’) to which nothing corresponds in reality except the individual entities referred to. William of Ockham, in the early 14th century, was an important advocate, often cited out of context for the dictum known as ‘Ockham's razor’, that ‘entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity’.
Opp. realism.

Back  -    New Search

nominalization.

Any process by which either a noun or a syntactic unit functioning as a noun phrase is derived from any other kind of unit. E.g. the nouns sadness and government are nominalizations of the adjective sad and the verb govern; their handling of the problem, in many accounts, of the sentence They handled the problem.

Back  -    New Search

nominal relative clause

= free relative clause.

Back  -    New Search

nominative (NOM).

Case whose basic role, or one of whose basic roles, is to indicate a subject (1) of all classes of verb. Thus, in Latin, miles portas claudit (‘soldier-NOM gates closes’) ‘A soldier is closing the gates’, where the verb is transitive; miles venit (‘soldier-NOM has-come’) ‘A soldier has come’, where it is intransitive.

Back  -    New Search

‘nominative-accusative language’

= accusative language.

Back  -    New Search

non-.

As a straightforward negative: e.g. non-distinctive features are those that are not distinctive; non-terminal nodes in tree diagrams are ones that are not terminal; non-canonical forms are ones that do not conform to a pattern usual, or canonical, in a language. Also specifically of unmarked terms in oppositions: e.g. the present sing is ‘non-past’, or [- past], in opposition to past, or [+ past], sang.

Back  -    New Search

non-anterior.

Not anterior. E.g. vowels are ‘non-anterior’; also any consonant whose place of articulation is no further forward than the back of the alveolar ridge: [], [k], [q], etc.

Back  -    New Search

Non-Catenative Morphology.

Account of morphology developed by J. J. McCarthy in the early 1980s by analogy with Autosegmental Phonology. Basically a technique for representing systems such as that of Arabic, in which, e.g. the word for ‘book’ (Egyptian Arabic [kita:b]) and the word for ‘he wrote’ [katab] have the same consonantal root (k…t…b) but two different patterns of vowels. In the representation proposed the root is assigned to one tier, analogous to those of Autosegmental Phonology, and the vowel pattern to another; both units will then be realized discontinuously.

Back  -    New Search

nonce-word.

A word coined on a specific occasion. Thus there is no established word bananaphobia; but it might be invented as a nonce-word, e.g. for the condition of some person who refuses to have bananas in the house. Hence of a word attested only once in the textual record of a language or some earlier stage of a language: = hapax legomenon.

Back  -    New Search

non-configurational language.

One that is not configurational: i.e. one in which the order of individual words is free (4), and whose sentences have a structure that it is hard or unilluminating to represent by phrase structure trees. Hence ‘non-configurational structure’ , of the structure of such sentences or of such a language generally.

Back  -    New Search

non-count (noun)

= uncountable.

Back  -    New Search

non-discrete.

Having no precise bound. Thus a non-discrete language is one where the distinction between grammatical (2) and ungrammatical is conceived explicitly as one of degree; a non-discrete category is one whose membership is similarly not absolute; a non-discrete grammar is one which includes such categories, or otherwise characterizes such a language. Cf. discrete; fuzzy; gradience.

Back  -    New Search

non-finite.

(Verb, verb form) which is not finite: thus an infinitive, participle, or any other form whose role is nominal or adjectival. If a clause has such a form as its central element it is in turn a non-finite clause .

Back  -    New Search

non-linear phonology.

Any school or model of phonology which establishes basic units over a domain larger than that of an individual consonant or vowel. Especially those developed since the 1970s in reaction to the segmental feature matrices of classic Generative Phonology.
See, in particular, Autosegmental Phonology, Metrical Phonology; also Prosodic Phonology, Articulatory Phonology.

Back  -    New Search

non-nuclear

(argument, valent) . See nucleus (1).

Back  -    New Search

non-restrictive.

(Modifier) which does not restrict the reference of a phrase to which or to whose head it relates. In My father, who is very sorry, can't come, the noun phrase my father will refer to the speaker's father, and will do so regardless of the presence or absence of the relative clause (who is very sorry) that follows; therefore who is very sorry is a non-restrictive (also called an appositional) relative clause . The adjective poor is likewise non-restrictive in My poor ‘ FAther can't ’ COME; with or without it, the same person will again be referred to.

Back  -    New Search

‘non-sentence’.

Usually of a sequence of words that is not grammatical (2): e.g. in the case of English, Out it put as compared with grammatical Put it out.

Back  -    New Search

‘non-verbal communication’.

Strictly, perhaps, of communication by means other than words. Typically, however, of communication in human beings by non-vocal gestures, and of so-called ‘body language’ generally, if it is taken to be ‘communication’.

Back  -    New Search

‘no ordering condition’.

Proposed constraint, e.g. on Generative Phonology, that rules should not be ordered except by the application of general principles.

Back  -    New Search

Nootka.

See Wakashan.

Back  -    New Search

norm.

A set of patterns in speech which are usual across a community, but are not seen as constrained by a language system. Thus a front open vowel [a] might be distinguished, in a language system, from a front mid vowel, a back open vowel, and so on. But within the range of phonetic realizations that this implies, a particular quality might be the norm, or the norm e.g in informal speech as opposed to formal, or e.g. for men as opposed to women. A language system might include no rule for the order, say, of verbs and objects. Nevertheless one order might be the norm, or might be the norm except in special circumstances.
The distinction between system and norm is central e.g. to Coseriu's account of change in language.

Back  -    New Search

normative.

(Grammar, rule) seeking to establish or prescribe usage: e.g. one which recommends a choice between alternative constructions, or chooses between forms in different dialects, or proposes standardizations in spelling.

Back  -    New Search

Norse.

See Old Norse.

Back  -    New Search

North American languages.

The indigenous languages of America north of Mexico, now largely extinguished by the use of English especially. Genetically of many different families, some still tentative, and at best conjecturally or speculatively assigned to larger groupings.
The most northerly is Eskimo-Aleut, from Greenland westwards to Siberia; to its south, across Canada as far as the Rockies and in much of the eastern USA, the majority of languages are or were Algonquian. In the east of the continent Iroquoian, centred in the area of Lake Erie, is another established family; also Muskogean, in parts of an area of much greater fragmentation in the south-east. Caddoan and Siouan languages are or again were spoken in the central plains; these are tentatively, but only tentatively, grouped with Iroquoian. To the west, the two most widespread families are Uto-Aztecan, which extends into parts of northern and central Mexico, and Athabaskan, in both the states of the American South-west and in western Canada and Alaska. But the South-west is a fragmented area which includes e.g. Kiowa-Tanoan as one smaller grouping. The Pacific area is in places even more so, with Salishan and Wakashan to the north, but languages tentatively classed as Hokan and Penutian scattered, with others, in the centre.

Back  -    New Search

North Germanic.

Division of Germanic which includes the Germanic languages of Scandinavia (Danish, Norwegian, Swedish), Faeroese, and Icelandic. Traditionally distinguished from East Germanic (Gothic) and West Germanic.

Back  -    New Search

Norwegian.

Either of the two main varieties of North Germanic spoken in Norway: Bokmål , derived from the written form of Danish used before political independence in the early 19th century, and Nynorsk , developed after independence on the basis of rural dialects. Bokmål is used more widely, especially in writing; tension between them is not yet resolved.

Back  -    New Search

‘Nostratic’.

Conjectural family of languages whose branches are usually said to include at least Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic, Altaic, Dravidian, Kartvelian, and Uralic. Divers others are added by divers enthusiasts.
From Latin nostras ‘of our part of the world’. An old conjecture, but despite continuing attempts to give substance to it, still the kind of hypothesis one believes to the extent that one believes in that kind of hypothesis.

Back  -    New Search

notation.

Any device or convention falling within the ordinary meaning of this term. Thus the representation of back as [bak] is an example of phonetic notation; X—Y is the notational convention for ‘between X and Y’.

Back  -    New Search

‘notational variant’.

Rarely in any precise sense. Usually of a model of grammar, etc. argued to be in some relevant respect essentially the same as another, at least superficially different, model.

Back  -    New Search

notional.

(Category, distinction) defined by our perception of the world in which acts of speech take place, independently of the structure of a specific language. Thus time is a notional category: for any act of speech, there is a time when the words are uttered, there are other times preceding it and others that are to come. It may be represented, in a particular language, by the grammatical category of tense. But time and tense are of a different order; and, although the basic role of tenses is to indicate time, they commonly have other roles as well. Equally, time is commonly indicated in ways other than by tense: e.g. by adverbs such as today or yesterday.
For similar distinctions between notional and grammatical categories cf. e.g. modality and mood; participants vs. persons.

Back  -    New Search

notional agreement.

Agreement determined, contrary to a pattern of grammatical agreement, by the meaning of a word or phrase involved. E.g. in The council have agreed, the subject is grammatically singular; therefore, by the rule of grammar that applies in general, the verb might be expected to be has. But it refers to a body with several members: therefore have (as in The members have agreed) is also, notionally rather than grammatically, compatible with it.

Back  -    New Search

notional syllabus.

Strategy for teaching a language based on and organized by the functions that utterances can have and the notional categories that their elements relate to. E.g. expressions of time might form a single topic, not parts of disparate topics, such as adverbs, tenses, prepositions.

Back  -    New Search

noun (N).

One of a class of words whose characteristic role is as an argument of a verb and which is characteristically that of words denoting concrete entities. E.g. dog or tree; also words such as music or anger which, though not denoting concrete entities, have the same or similar roles in syntax. Nouns and verbs have been seen since antiquity as two ‘principal’ parts of speech, without which a sentence could not be complete. For similar reasons they are widely seen as substantive universals.

Back  -    New Search

noun class.

Usually in reference to systems in which a class to which a noun is assigned is reflected in the forms that are taken by other elements syntactically related to it. Thus the system of gender (1) in many European languages: e.g. in German das Mädchen ‘the girl’, the form of the article (‘the-NEUT’) reflects the membership of Mädchen ‘girl’ in the class of neuter nouns.
Often synonymous with ‘gender’ (itself from a word in Latin meaning, in this context, ‘class’ or ‘kind’). But in many such systems the number of classes is much larger, and the semantic divisions, to the extent that semantic principles operate, are not based on sex.

Back  -    New Search

noun classification.

1 The classification of nouns, e.g. into noun classes distinguished by properties such as gender.

2 Specifically of their classification by systems of classifiers.
Top

Back  -    New Search

noun clause.

A clause whose syntactic role is seen as like that of a noun or noun phrase: thus, in particular, a ‘subject clause’ such as what happened in What happened is unclear, or ‘object clause’ such as that I would help in I said that I would help.

Back  -    New Search

noun-complement.

A complement of a noun, as opposed to that of a verb or adjective: e.g. that they were married as complement of news in the news that they were married.

Back  -    New Search

noun incorporation.

See incorporation.

Back  -    New Search

noun phrase (NP).

A phrase whose head (1) is a noun: e.g. a young girl or the girl that you knew, both headed by girl. Thence, in many accounts, of any unit whose place in a construction is seen as shared with such a phrase: e.g. she in She was coming, where its role as subject is like that of the girl in The girl was coming, or the clause that she was coming in Mary told us that she was coming, where its role is like that of the news in Mary told us the news.

Back  -    New Search

NP

= noun phrase.

Back  -    New Search

NP accessibility hierarchy.

An accessibility scale proposed in the 1970s with respect to the formation of relative clauses. It takes for granted that all languages distinguish subjects (S), direct objects (DO), indirect objects (IO), and oblique elements (Obl). The scale can then be written thus: S > DO > IO > Obl. I.e., in some languages, relative pronouns or their equivalent may only have the role of S. In others, they may only have the role of S or DO, in others only those of S, DO, or IO. But in none can they have a role that is lower on the scale without having all those that are higher.

Back  -    New Search

NP-trace.

A trace left, in terms of Government and Binding Theory, when a noun phrase is moved into the position of a subject: e.g. in Jill seems [t to be pleased], where t is left by the movement of Jill, in what is correspondingly described as ‘NP-movement’ , from a subordinate to a larger clause.
The process is usually defined more widely, but limited in its effect to movement into subject position.

Back  -    New Search

n-tuple.

Any ordered set of n elements. Usually enclosed in round or angled brackets: thus, with n = 3, the triple (a, b, c) or <a, b, c>.

Back  -    New Search

Nubian.

Language or family of languages in Sudan and south Egypt, mainly in the region of Lake Nasser, attested by manuscripts of the late 1st and early 2nd millennia AD. Written in an alphabet largely derived from that of Coptic.

Back  -    New Search

nuclear argument.

An argument within a nucleus (1). I.e. = argument, unless the definition of either ‘nucleus’ or ‘argument’ is such that some arguments are non-nuclear.

Back  -    New Search

nuclear predication

= nucleus (1).

Back  -    New Search

nuclear stress.

Stress falling on the nucleus (3) of a unit of intonation. The ‘Nuclear Stress Rule’ is a rule of English, according to Chomsky and Halle, SPE, by which the normal or default position of the nucleus is on the last word in such a unit.

Back  -    New Search

nucleus (1).

A part of a clause consisting, in the usual definition, of a verb plus any elements that are obligatory arguments or are otherwise within its valency. E.g. in I sent it to London on Sunday, the verb (sent or ‘to send’) is one that requires both a subject and an object (I, it) and specifically one that allows directional phrases (to London). But the remaining element, on Sunday, can appear freely and optionally with any verb whatever. Therefore, by this definition, the elements I, sent, it, and to London form the nucleus, with on Sunday non-nuclear, or forming a periphery (1) in relation to it.
By another definition, the nucleus in this example might consist of the verb and its obligatory valents alone: I, sent, it. As an optional element, to London would then be a non-nuclear argument or valent which, with on Sunday, would be part of the periphery. In alternative terminology, the nucleus (in either definition) is the ‘core’ : in that case, ‘nucleus’ is sometimes reserved for the role filled by the verb, as in turn its central element. Such concepts are central in e.g. Role and Reference Grammar, where the nucleus is explicitly a unit in the constituency of clauses.

Back  -    New Search

nucleus (2).

The central element in a syllable, usually a vowel or diphthong: e.g. [] in the first syllable (min-) of [mnd] (minder). Opp. onset; coda.

Back  -    New Search

nucleus (3).

The tonic syllable in an intonational unit. Thus in BILL helped (‘Well, certainly Bill did’) the nucleus or nuclear syllable is Bill.

Back  -    New Search

null.

Having no phonetic or other realization. Cf. zero: e.g. in many accounts, the relative clause in someone you saw has a zero, i.e. null, relative pronoun. Empty (2) is used equivalently.

Back  -    New Search

null-subject parameter.

Parameter in Chomsky's Principles and Parameters Theory distinguishing languages in which verbs must have an overt subject from those in which they need not. English is one in which such a subject is obligatory: Mary has come, but not simply Has come. But in e.g. Italian it is not needed: Maria è venuta ‘Mary (lit.) is come’ or simply È venuta ‘(She) is come’. Italian is, in that sense, a ‘null-subject language’ .
Also (and originally) called the ‘pro-drop parameter’ ; thus Italian is in the same sense a ‘pro-drop language’ . When Chomsky introduced this parameter in the early 1980s, the distinction was seen as linked, in universal grammar (2), to several others. E.g. Italian, hypothetically by virtue of being a pro-drop language, also has a construction in which a subject follows the verb: È venuta Maria (lit.) ‘is come Mary’. English, once more, does not: Mary has come, but not Has come Mary.

Back  -    New Search

number.

Inflectional category basically distinguishing reference to one individual from reference to more than one. The simplest distinction is between singular (one) and plural (any number larger than one): e.g., in English, singular woman vs. plural women. But many languages also distinguish, in particular, a dual (two).

Back  -    New Search

numeral.

One of a set of words or other expressions indicating precise numbers: e.g. three or forty-nine; also the ordinal numerals third or forty-ninth.

Back  -    New Search

numeral classifier.

See classifier.

Back  -    New Search

numerative.

Another term for a numeral classifier.

Back  -    New Search

Nyanja.

Bantu language, spoken in central and southern Malawi and in parts of neighbouring countries (Zambia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe); also called Chichewa .

Back  -    New Search

Nynorsk.

See Norwegian.

Back  -    New Search

O

O

= object.

Back  -    New Search

Obj

= object.

Back  -    New Search

object (O).

1 An element in the basic sentence construction of a language such as English which characteristically represents someone or something, other than that represented by the subject (1), that is involved in an action, process, etc. referred to. E.g. him in I met him; both her and a flower (respectively the indirect object and the direct object) in I will give her a flower; also, on the assumption that it is syntactically the same element, that I did in I said that I did.

2 An element standing in a similar relation of government or complementation to a preposition: e.g. Washington in from Washington.
Top

3 Any element, in any type of language, which characteristically includes the semantic role of patient. Cf. subject (3): thus, in typological studies, a language may be classified as an SVO language simply because that is the commonest order, in texts, of agent, verb, and patient.
Top

Back  -    New Search

object clause.

One which is a complement or object of a verb: e.g. who it was in I asked who it was, or that I could not come in I explained to them that I could not come.

Back  -    New Search

object complement.

An adjective, noun, or noun phrase which directly completes the construction of a verb and an object: e.g. their chairman in They elected her their chairman, or larger in I need them larger. Also called an ‘objective complement’ .

Back  -    New Search

object control.

Relation of control in which the subject of a non-finite verb is supplied by the object of a main clause. E.g. in I asked him to leave, the subject of to leave is supplied by him as the object of asked.

Back  -    New Search

object honorific.

See honorific.

Back  -    New Search

objective.

Case which is that of, among others, an object. E.g. me is the objective form of the first-person pronoun, as in Kiss me. Opp. subjective: these terms are more likely to be used, instead of nominative and accusative, when a language has no other contrast of cases.

Back  -    New Search

objective complement

= object complement.

Back  -    New Search

objective genitive.

A noun, etc. in the genitive case, or its equivalent, whose semantic relation to a head noun is like that of an object to a transitive verb. E.g. my in my acquittal: cf. (They) acquitted me. Opp. subjective genitive.

Back  -    New Search

object language.

See metalanguage.

Back  -    New Search

object of result.

A direct object such as a fence in I put up a fence: i.e. the fence exists as a result of being put up. Also called an ‘effected object’ , as opposed to an affected object.

Back  -    New Search

object raising.

Raising (2) of an object; hence an alternative term for tough-movement.

Back  -    New Search

obligatory.

1 (Element) that cannot be deleted from a syntactic or other structure. E.g. in She left quickly, neither the subject (She) nor the verb (left) can be removed from the construction: cf. She quickly, Left quickly. Therefore both are obligatory. But She left is complete without quickly: therefore the adverb is optional.

2 (Rule (2)) that must apply wherever it can apply.Cf. optional (2).
Top

Back  -    New Search

Obligatory Contour Principle.

Principle in phonology, originally proposed for tones, by which identical units are not associated independently with two successive positions on a skeletal tier. Since extended to units of other kinds.

Back  -    New Search

obligatory valent.

See valency.

Back  -    New Search

oblique (/).

See slash.

Back  -    New Search

oblique 2.

1 (Case) in e.g. Latin other than the nominative and (where it is distinct) the vocative. In an ancient account the nominative is the ‘direct’ or ‘upright’ case (Latin ‘casus rectus’) and the other cases ‘slant off’ from it.

2 Any syntactic element accompanying a verb which is not a subject or object, or the equivalent. E.g. in I took the painting to London by train, both to London and by train are oblique.
Top

Back  -    New Search

observational adequacy.

See levels of adequacy.

Back  -    New Search

‘observer's paradox’.

The problem, faced by sociolinguists in particular, that, in observing or interviewing people to find out about their habits of speech, investigators will, by their own presence and participation, tend to influence the forms that are used. First described in these terms by Labov in the late 1960s.

Back  -    New Search

obsolescent.

Disappearing. E.g. wireless is an obsolescent form in British English, still used at times by some older speakers, but very largely replaced by radio; Scottish Gaelic is to all appearances an obsolescent language, being replaced more and more by English.

Back  -    New Search

obstruent.

Consonant produced with an obstruction of the air flow above the larynx. Thus a stop or an affricate, in which it is obstructed completely, or a fricative, in which it is obstructed sufficiently to cause audible turbulence. Opp. approximant; resonant; sonorant.

Back  -    New Search

Ob-Ugric.

See Hungarian.

Back  -    New Search

obviative (OBV).

A distinct third-person form used to refer to an individual, etc. other than that or those on which reference is already focused in a given sentence or series of sentences. Opp. proximative .
Suppose e.g. that a speaker is already talking about a person Bill. For ‘he (Bill)’ the form used will be proximative (schematically, he-PROX). If someone else is then referred to the form will be obviative. E.g. with subscript indices to show identity of reference: Billi also asked Charlesj but hej-OBV told himi-PROX that hei-PROX couldn't. Hej-OBV didn't sound pleased.

Back  -    New Search

Occitan.

Romance language broadly of the southern half of France: the dialects included in it stretch from Gascony and Limousin eastwards, with the exclusion of those assigned to Franco-Provençal. Now very widely supplanted by French. The term ‘Occitan’ replaces earlier ‘Provençal’, now tending to be used of the dialect of Provence specifically.

Back  -    New Search

occlusion

= closure.

Back  -    New Search

Oceanic.

Branch of Austronesian which includes Polynesian: also most of the other languages of Micronesia and most of the Austronesian languages of Melanesia.

Back  -    New Search

‘Ockham's razor’.

See nominalism.

Back  -    New Search

OCP

= Obligatory Contour Principle.

Back  -    New Search

OE

= Old English; likewise OF = Old French, OHG = Old High German, ON = Old Norse, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

OED

= The Oxford English Dictionary, originally edited by Sir James Murray (1st edn. 1933).

Back  -    New Search

oesophagus.

Canal through which food is carried from the throat to the stomach. ‘Oesophageal voice’ is a substitute for normal voice (1), in effect a controlled belching, traditionally taught to people whose larynx had been removed by surgery.

Back  -    New Search

off-glide.

See glide.

Back  -    New Search

official language.

One recognized or approved for use in the administration of a country or some other political unit. E.g. the official languages of the European Union are German, English, French, etc.

Back  -    New Search

OFOM

= one form one meaning.

Back  -    New Search

Oghams.

Alphabet attested by inscriptions in the British Isles from the centuries after the collapse of the Roman empire. The letters are formed by groups of one or more lines inscribed horizontally to the left or right of, or diagonally across, a vertical line or the edge of e.g. a stone. The precise origins both of the system and of its name are uncertain.

Back  -    New Search

Ojibwa.

Algonquian language centred in the north of the Great Lakes Region of Canada.

Back  -    New Search

old

(information) = given.

Back  -    New Search

Old Church Slavonic.

The earliest known Slavic language, attested by texts composed from the 9th century AD; surviving into the modern period in the liturgy of the Orthodox Churches.

Back  -    New Search

Old English (OE).

Conventional term for the period in the history of English that ended with the Norman conquest in 1066.

Back  -    New Search

Old French.

See French.

Back  -    New Search

Old High German.

See German.

Back  -    New Search

Old Irish.

See Gaelic.

Back  -    New Search

Old Norse.

Traditional name for Old Icelandic, in which there are texts from the 11th century AD.

Back  -    New Search

Omotic.

Family of languages in the south of Ethiopia, traditionally seen as a branch within Cushitic.

Back  -    New Search

-on.

Introduced in Stratificational Grammar to distinguish the minimal units at each level of representation. At the phonological level, the minimal constituents of phonemes were distinctive features: i.e. ‘phonons’. At the morphological level, morphemes were in turn composed of units realized by phonemes: i.e. ‘morphons’. At the level of syntax or ‘lexology’ the minimal unit was the word: i.e. the ‘lexon’. In semantics or ‘semology’ it was in turn the ‘semon’.

Back  -    New Search

‘one form one meaning’.

Principle by which forms and meanings tend to correspond one-to-one. Invoked especially in historical morphology: i.e. it is claimed that languages change, or there is pressure on them to change, in ways that maximize conformity to it.
On a strict analysis, this should subsume four subprinciples. (a) The same form should not have different meanings in different contexts. E.g. -s should not, ideally, mark the plural in cats but a form of a verb in eats. (b) The same meaning should not be carried by different forms. E.g. if the past participle is marked by -ed in waited, it should not, ideally, be marked by -en in taken. (c) A single form should not have separate meanings simultaneously. E.g. in Latin, -m in puella-m ‘girl-ACCSG’ should not, ideally, mark both case and number. (d) A single meaning should not be carried by two or more forms in succession. E.g. in German ge-komm-en ‘(has) come’, the past participle should not, ideally, be marked by both ge- and -en. But what is usually meant is simply case (b): i.e. the principle is invoked to explain the replacement, by analogy, of (in general) irregular alternants by regular.

Back  -    New Search

one-place.

(Predicate (2)) taking only one argument: e.g. the verb ‘disappear’ in The butterflies disappeared, or the adjective, if adjectives are so described, in The water is cold.

Back  -    New Search

on-glide.

See glide.

Back  -    New Search

onomasiology.

The study of vocabulary from the viewpoint of the things or concepts denoted: e.g. of the words for a group of plants in a specific area, or of words for colours across languages. Originally seen in opposition to semasiology.

Back  -    New Search

onomastics.

The study of personal names, e.g. Mary or Smith. Alternatively, that of both personal names and place-names.

Back  -    New Search

onomatopoeia.

A word or process of forming words whose phonetic form is perceived as imitating a sound, or sound associated with something, that they denote. E.g. peewit or Dutch kievit are onomatopoeic words for a lapwing, whose cry they mimic.

Back  -    New Search

onset.

The part of a syllable, if any, that comes before its vowel or nucleus: e.g. [st] in [sti:m] (steam).

Back  -    New Search

ontogeny.

Biologists' term for the origin and development of an individual organism. The ontogeny of language is therefore its development in children, as opposed to its ‘phylogeny’, which is its evolution in our species. Thence ‘ontogenetic’ : opp. phylogenetic.

Back  -    New Search

ontology.

Branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of existence. The question whether and in what sense a language system or its elements exist is therefore an ontological question, or concerns the ‘ontology of’ language.

Back  -    New Search

-onym.

From the Greek word for ‘name’, used:
1 In terms for relations among words: e.g. antonym ‘opposite-name’, hyponym ‘under-name’.
Top

2 In terms invented by analogy with toponym ‘place-name’. Thus hydronym ‘water-name’, phytonym ‘plant-name’, oronym ‘mountain-name’, and so on, for scholars who expect their readers to know Greek, ad lib.
Top

Back  -    New Search

opacity.

The degree to which a more abstract representation differs from a less abstract. Especially of the correspondence between levels of representation in syntax: e.g. an underlying structure in which tenses are seen as forming the predicate of a higher clause (s[heVP[PAST s[he VP[go]]]]) is more opaque than one in which, as on the surface, there is only one clause (s[he VP[go-PAST]]). Opp. transparency.
See also referentially opaque. The term ‘opacity’ was briefly used by Chomsky, at the end of the 1970s, for a principle soon recast in Government and Binding Theory.

Back  -    New Search

open approximation.

A narrowing of the space between articulators which is not enough to cause a turbulence in the flow of air through the mouth: e.g. in the articulation of both [i:] and [l] in [i:l] (eel). Defined as the least of three degrees of stricture.

Back  -    New Search

open class.

A class of words or morphemes to which new members can readily be added. E.g. one can list all the determiners in English (the, this, etc.); therefore that class is ‘closed’. But one cannot list all the nouns since, however long an attempted list may be, it will always be possible for speakers to coin ones that are new or to borrow them from another language. Therefore the class of nouns is open.

Back  -    New Search

open conditional.

See remote.

Back  -    New Search

open juncture.

A degree of linkage between successive sounds characteristic of boundaries between words. Thus in seal in [si:l n] there is open juncture between [l] and the following []; hence, in most varieties of English, the l is to some degree ‘dark’ or velarized. In see Lyn [si: l:n] there is open juncture between [l] and the preceding [i:]; hence, in most varieties, it is ‘clear’ and, in addition, the [i:] may be longer.
Opp. close juncture as the normal degree of linkage within simple words.

Back  -    New Search

open-mid

(vowel) = half-open.

Back  -    New Search

open syllable.

One which ends with a vowel: e.g. the first syllable, [fi:], of feeling. Opp. closed.

Back  -    New Search

open transition.

Linkage between sounds not characterized by coarticulation. Opp. close; cf. open vs. close juncture.

Back  -    New Search

open vowel.

One produced with the mouth wide open, so that the body of the tongue is lowered: e.g. those of hat and heart. Opp. close: alternatively, open vowels are ‘low’ and close vowels are ‘high’. See cardinal vowels.

Back  -    New Search

open vs. pivot.

See pivot (1).

Back  -    New Search

operand.

Whatever undergoes an operation: e.g. sing as the form that undergoes a morphological process by which sing sang.

Back  -    New Search

operant-conditioning.

Theory of learning developed by B. F. Skinner in the context of behaviourism, in which specific items of behaviour (called ‘operants’) were seen as positively or negatively ‘reinforced’ (i.e. encouraged or discouraged) by their consequences (e.g. rewards or punishment) for the learner. Progressively abandoned, with behaviourism in general, after the 1950s.

Back  -    New Search

operation.

Usually of a process established within a grammar. Thus the rule in English by which plural nouns have the ending -s can be formulated, in part, as an operation by which e.g. cat (singular noun or root) is changed, by the addition of -s, to cats. In notation, cat cats.

Back  -    New Search

operator.

Term in logic and mathematics for a sign which represents an operation: e.g. ‘+’ as a sign for addition. Hence, in linguistics, of syntactic elements seen as corresponding to an operator in some standard system of logic: e.g. quantifiers (2). Also generally of elements seen as relating others: e.g. in Jack and Jill, the conjunction (and) as one relating Jack and Jill; in Jack loves Jill, the predicate (2) or predicator (love) as one that relates Jack and Jill as its arguments.
Sometimes restricted arbitrarily to a particular element. E.g. for Quirk et al., CGE, an operator is a first or only auxiliary, seen as linking a subject (he in He has been seeing her) to a ‘predication’ (been seeing her).

Back  -    New Search

opposite terms.

See antonymy.

Back  -    New Search

opposition.

Any paradigmatic relation between units, etc. that are distinct in a given language. E.g. [t] and [d] are distinct phonemes in English; therefore there is an opposition, specifically in this case a bilateral opposition, between them. At another level woman contrasts with, and therefore stands in an opposition to, girl, or man, or baby, or cat, or, still less directly, table, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

optative.

(Inflection, etc.) characteristic of wishes: thus, schematically, She marry-OPT me ‘I wish she would marry me’. Ancient Greek distinguished optatives from subjunctives: hence a term in the traditional category of mood.

Back  -    New Search

Optimality Theory.

Theory of constraints in phonology, floated in the early to mid-1990s, in which any universal constraint on the form that units can take is capable, in principle, of being broken; in any particular case, however, the constraints will be arranged in a hierarchy from least readily to most readily broken, and their optimal application to forms in a particular language can be computed from this.

Back  -    New Search

optional.

1 (Element) that can be deleted from a syntactic or other structure. E.g. the object (a newspaper) is optional in the construction of I was reading a newspaper: cf. I was reading.

2 (Rule (2)) that may or may not apply. Thus a grammar might include an optional rule by which e.g. away in I threw away the bottle might be moved after the object: I threw the bottle away.
Opp. obligatory.
Top

Back  -    New Search

optional valent.

See valency.

Back  -    New Search

oral.

(Sound) produced with the soft palate (or velum) raised, so that air does not pass through the nose. Opp. nasal: e.g. [t] in toe is an oral stop , in contrast to the nasal stop in no; the vowel of French va ‘goes’ is an oral vowel , in contrast to the nasal vowel of vin ‘wine’.
The oral cavity is the resonating chamber formed by the mouth, as opposed to the pharynx (throat) or to the nasal cavity, formed by the passages through the nose.

Back  -    New Search

orality.

Used to distinguish the character of a society in which spoken language has the roles associated, in literate societies e.g. in Europe, with writing: thus, in particular, that of having an oral rather than a written literature.

Back  -    New Search

oratio obliqua.

Latin for indirect speech. Opp. oratio recta = direct speech.

Back  -    New Search

order.

In the literal sense of sequence: e.g. Harry comes before left in Harry left. Also, in European structural linguistics, of relationship in some abstract structure. Thus red comes before box in a red box, and, in its French translation, une boîte rouge, rouge ‘red’ comes after boîte ‘box’. In that way their ‘linear order’ is different. But both red and rouge are adjectives which modify nouns (box, boîte); in that way their syntactic relationship or ‘structural order’ are the same.

Back  -    New Search

ordered rules.

Rules in a generative grammar that must apply in a specified order. E.g. in one account of a plural such as knives, a rule by which the final consonant of knife is voiced must apply in advance of one by which the ending -s would be devoiced. Thus [nf] + [z] [navz], whereas, if the order of rules were reversed, it would be changed to [nfs]: cf., in cliffs, [klf] + [z] [klfs].
A distinction has been drawn between extrinsic ordering and intrinsic ordering . In a case of extrinsic ordering a grammar must stipulate explicitly that rule a precedes rule b. In a case of intrinsic ordering it need not. Thus rule b may not in practice be applicable unless rule a has applied first. Alternatively, their order may follow from some general principle. Thus, in the case of knives, the rule by which [f] is voiced deals with an irregularity, and it is taken to be a general principle that rules for irregularities apply before ones that are more regular.

Back  -    New Search

ordering paradox.

Any case in Generative Phonology in which, if rule a is ordered before rule b, one set of forms will be derived wrongly and, if b is ordered before a, another set will be.

Back  -    New Search

ordinal numeral.

One which indicates an ordered position in a series: e.g. third or twenty-first. Distinguished from a cardinal numeral.

Back  -    New Search

ordinary language philosophy.

Movement in philosophy, centred on Oxford in the 1950s, which sought to analyse the uses of words in ordinary language as a means of resolving or removing problems that were created when they were used as philosophical terms. E.g. meaning is a countable noun (This word has three meanings, etc.); such nouns characteristically denote self-standing entities (cf. tree or child); hence, in philosophy, problems arise as to the nature of ‘meanings’, seen as objects of description existing independently of the forms that ‘have’ them.
The later work of Wittgenstein is now the most influential in this vein.

Back  -    New Search

Oriya.

Indo-Aryan language, spoken in east central India, mainly in Orissa, where it has official status.

Back  -    New Search

oropharyngeal.

(Cavity) formed by the mouth (‘oro’) and the throat (‘pharynge-’).

Back  -    New Search

orthoepy.

Older term used from the 17th century for the study of pronunciation: strictly of correct pronunciation (‘ortho-’ as in ‘orthodoxy’).

Back  -    New Search

Oscan.

See Italic.

Back  -    New Search

Ossetic.

Iranian language spoken in an area in and to the north of the Caucasus Mountains.

Back  -    New Search

ostension.

Pointing out. An ostensive definition is one which points to individual instances: e.g. of chair by pointing out one or more individual chairs, or of cut by performing the action of cutting.

Back  -    New Search

OSV language.

One in which an object (3), subject (3), and verb are at least basically or most commonly in that order. Opp. SVO language, etc.

Back  -    New Search

‘other-initiated’

(‘repair’) . See repair.

Back  -    New Search

‘other-repair’.

See repair.

Back  -    New Search

Oto-Manguean.

A family of languages in Mexico. Those of a branch called ‘Oto-Pamean’ are spoken mainly in the state of México; others in or mainly in the state of Oaxaca.

Back  -    New Search

output condition.

See filter.

Back  -    New Search

overcorrection.

See hypercorrection.

Back  -    New Search

overdifferentiation.

The failure, in acquiring a second or foreign language, to suppress distinctions that are made in one's first or native language. Thus [d] and [ð] realize the same phoneme (written d) in Spanish; sounds similar to these realize different phonemes in English; therefore, in learning Spanish, a speaker of English may continue to differentiate them.

Back  -    New Search

overextension.

Extension of a word, rule, etc. beyond its usual domain of application. Especially in reference to the speech of young children: e.g. doggie might at first be applied not just to a dog, but to cats and other small animals, a fur hat, etc.

Back  -    New Search

‘overgeneration’.

The generation by one part of a generative grammar of forms that are then excluded by another. The strategy is common especially in accounts of derivational morphology and compounding. E.g. there is a process by which compounds can be formed from an adjective and a noun: black + leg blackleg. If this applies to any combination it will overgenerate: e.g. white + wrist whitewrist. But let it do so: forms like whitewrist are then implicitly excluded by a lexicon which will have entries only for the words that actually exist.

Back  -    New Search

overlap.

In the ordinary sense. E.g. in accounts from the 1940s and 1950s two phonemes are described as overlapping if one has among its allophones at least one sound that is also, possibly in other contexts, an allophone of the other.

Back  -    New Search

over-long.

Phonological feature of vowels standing in a three-way contrast of duration: e.g. [a] is short, a distinct [a'] would be ‘long’, [a:] would be ‘over-long’.

Back  -    New Search

overt.

Not null; not covert.

Back  -    New Search

OV language.

One in which a verb (V) follows, or basically or usually follows, its object (O): e.g. Japanese. Defined in some typologies by this and a set of associated patterns: see VO vs. OV languages.

Back  -    New Search

OVS language.

One in which an object (3), verb, and subject (3) are at least basically or most commonly in that order. Opp. SVO language, etc.

Back  -    New Search

oxymoron [ks'm:rn].

Term in rhetoric for the deliberate coupling of words that are strictly contradictory: e.g. in a devout atheist, or I am relaxing strenuously.

Back  -    New Search

oxytone.

A word, originally one in Ancient Greek, that has an (acute) accent on the last syllable: opp. barytone.

Back  -    New Search

P

P.

1 = preposition, postposition.

2 = predicator, predicate (2). E.g. I saw him has the elements SPO (subject, predicator, object).
Top

3 See patient.
Top

Back  -    New Search

Pahlavi.

Middle Persian.

Back  -    New Search

pair test.

See minimal pair.

Back  -    New Search

palaeography.

The study of ancient documents and forms of writing.

Back  -    New Search

palaeontology.

See linguistic palaeontology.

Back  -    New Search

‘Palaeosiberian’.

See Siberian languages.

Back  -    New Search

palatal.

Articulated with the front of the tongue against the hard palate: e.g. the palatal nasal ([]) in Spanish niño ['nio] ‘child’ or French baigner [bee] ‘to bathe’. Often extended to include palatoalveolars (e.g. [] in French chanter [te] ‘to sing’).

Back  -    New Search

palatalization.

1 Change or process resulting in a sound articulated broadly in the palatal or palato-alveolar region. E.g. the [t] of Italian amici ‘friends’ [a'miti] represents the palatalization of an earlier [k] in Latin [a'mi:ki:].

2 Secondary articulation in which a stop or fricative articulated elsewhere is accompanied by approximation of the tongue towards the hard palate: e.g. in Russian, where ‘soft’ consonants, such as the [tj] of the infinitive ending, are palatalized.
Top

Back  -    New Search

palato-alveolar.

Articulated with the blade of the tongue against the back of the alveolar ridge, e.g. English [] in ship.

Back  -    New Search

palatography.

Any technique for recording contact between the tongue and the roof of the mouth in the articulation of speech sounds. The record is a palatogram : e.g. a photograph showing where a substance sprayed on the palate has been wiped off. A record over time is obtained by electropalatography.

Back  -    New Search

palilalia.

Speech disorder described as the involuntary repetition of words or larger units.

Back  -    New Search

Pama-Nyungan.

See Australian languages.

Back  -    New Search

‘panchronic’.

(Study, phenomenon) not restricted to specific points in time. Thus, variously, of universal properties of language, of patterns of change recurring across languages, of features of a specific language that are constant over long periods, etc. Opp. diachronic; synchronic.

Back  -    New Search

Pini.

Ancient Indian grammarian (probably c.500 BC), whose rules for Sanskrit, under the title Adhyyi (‘eight chapters’), eclipsed the work of his predecessors and became the foundation of linguistics in India. They include a detailed account of morphology and morphophonology, in which the basic structure of the word is clearly set out, and which was to become a model, in the early 19th century, for the comparative analysis of Indo-European by Western scholars. In the 20th century Pini's descriptive devices, which included the use of ordered rules and zero elements, have had a direct influence on Bloomfield and, through him, on generative grammar and Generative Phonology especially.

Back  -    New Search

panlectal.

(Grammar, etc.) embracing all varieties (or ‘lects’) of a language.

Back  -    New Search

Panoan.

See South American languages.

Back  -    New Search

Papuan.

Cover term for the indigenous languages of New Guinea, excepting a minority that is Austronesian; also a few in parts of neighbouring islands. On present knowledge they are of up to 60 families, with no firm reason to believe that they are all genetically related.

Back  -    New Search

para-.

From the Ancient Greek for ‘by the side of’: hence e.g. parataxis ‘arrangement alongside’; paralanguage ‘behaviour accompanying language’. Also freely in the jargon for language disorders: paragrammatism; ‘paraphasia’ (wrong choice of words), ‘paralexia’ (error in reading), and so on.

Back  -    New Search

paradigm.

The forms of a given noun, verb, etc. arranged systematically according to their grammatical features. In the illustration below, those of the Latin word for ‘table’ (mensa) are arranged in two dimensions, one defined by features of case (nominative, vocative, etc.) and the other by number (singular, plural).
In the teaching tradition, paradigms such as that of mensa are learned as models (the original meaning of the Greek word from which ‘paradigm’ comes) from which a pupil can deduce the corresponding forms of other words belonging to the same inflectional class. In a current account, this is one form of Word and Paradigm morphology.

SG

PL

NOM

mensa

mensae

VOC

mensa

mensae

ACC

mensam

menss

GEN

mensae

mensrum

DAT

mensae

menss

ABL

mens

menss

Back  -    New Search

paradigmatic.

1 (Relation) Specifically between an individual unit and others that can replace it in a given sequence: e.g. between cat and any other unit (dog, house, etc.) that can replace it in the sequence I saw the cat, or between [p] in spear [sp] and [t] in steer [st].

2 Generally between contrasting units, whether or not they so replace each other: e.g. between sing and any other form of ‘to sing’ (sings, singing, sang, sung).
Opp. syntagmatic. Distinguished in sense 1 in the 1930s: cf. associative relation.
Top

Back  -    New Search

paradigm economy.

Principle by which the number of major inflectional classes of nouns, verbs, etc. is always smaller than it would be if the numbers of alternative inflections at individual places in a paradigm were multiplied together. Thus in Latin there were at least two endings of the nominative singular, at least two of the genitive singular, perhaps three of the ablative singular, and so on. So, if these alternations were independent, the number of inflectional classes for nouns in general would already be greater than twelve. But in fact they are interdependent: nouns with ending -e in the ablative can only have ending -is in the genitive, and so on. Therefore the number of paradigms, in the original sense of models for inflectional classes, is actually quite small.
Formulated as an absolute constraint, under this name, by A. Carstairs in the 1980s.

Back  -    New Search

paragoge [par'gdzi].

The development of an additional sound or sounds at the end of a word: e.g. the [t] of pheasant (compare French faisan). The loss of sounds in this position is apocope.

Back  -    New Search

‘paragrammatism’.

A grammatical error in the speech of someone suffering from aphasia, seen as an instance of a disorder also called ‘paragrammatism’ .

Back  -    New Search

paralanguage.

Any aspect of vocal behaviour which can be seen as meaningful but is not described as part of the language system. Thus, in particular, aspects of voice quality; of the speed, loudness, and overall pitch of speech; of the use of hesitation; of intonation to the extent that it is not covered by an account of phonology.
By the nature of this definition, the boundaries of paralanguage are (unavoidably) imprecise.

Back  -    New Search

paralinguistics.

The study of paralanguage.

Back  -    New Search

Parallel Distributed Processing.

See connectionism.

Back  -    New Search

parallelism.

The use for stylistic effect of sentences or other units that are parallel in form: e.g. My wife is gone; my children are drug addicts; my house is falling down;… What can I do? Constructions linking similar members can likewise be called ‘parallel constructions’ : thus coordination (cf. parataxis) or correlative constructions.

Back  -    New Search

parameter.

1 A limited range of values of some characteristic property. E.g. the realization of a vowel may vary within certain parameters, defined by a range of vowel heights, or of formant frequencies, and so on.

2 A principle in Chomsky's theory of universal grammar which specifies a finite set of alternatives. E.g. the null-subject or ‘pro-drop’ parameter specifies that a language either may or may not allow the subject of a sentence to be null. As a child acquires a language, parameters are said to be ‘set’ according to experience. E.g. children acquiring English will develop a grammar in which the null-subject parameter is set negatively; hence English speakers cannot say e.g. Are coming for They are coming. But for children learning Italian it will be set positively; hence Italian speakers can say Vengono ‘(They) are coming’.
Top

Back  -    New Search

parasitic gap.

A null syntactic element, as seen from a viewpoint such as that of Government and Binding Theory, which can be null only because it is related to another gap left by an element that has been moved. E.g. the object of reading is seen as a null element (Ø) in Which did you mark without reading Ø properly? But this is not possible when mark is followed by its own object (I marked these without reading properly). Therefore the ‘gap’ (Ø) is said to be parasitic on a trace left by wh-movement: Which did you mark t…?
In ordinary terms, which is related as direct object to both mark and reading, or, at least arguably, to the whole of mark without reading properly. Cf., with coordination, Which did you mark and not read properly?

Back  -    New Search

parasynthetic.

1 (Compound) one of whose members includes an affix which is related in meaning to the whole: e.g. red-lipped = [red lip]-ed ‘having (-ed) red lips’. Cf. bracketing paradox.

2 Also, especially in French (‘parasynthétique’), of a derived verb formed by the addition of both a prefix and a suffix: e.g. re-juven-ate.
Top

Back  -    New Search

parataxis.

1 The ancient term for coordination, applied especially to that of clauses or sentences. Opp. hypotaxis.

2 A syntactic relation between successive units marked only by intonation: e.g. in I am tired, I am hungry, said with the same intonation as I am tired and I am hungry. Sense 1 is the original, the term being simply the Greek for ‘coordination’. Sense 2 is that of Bloomfield.
Thence paratactic , also in both senses.
Top

Back  -    New Search

‘paratone’.

A postulated sequence of units in speech, defined as such by their intonation, thought to constitute a larger unit like a ‘paragraph’ in writing.

Back  -    New Search

parentheses ().

See round brackets.

Back  -    New Search

parenthesis.

A syntactic unit which interrupts a larger unit: e.g. in Bill—let's face it—is too young, the parenthesis let's face it interrupts the clause Bill is too young. Defined by Bloomfield and others as a form of parataxis (2): i.e. the relation of the parenthesis to the unit that encloses it is seen as marked in speech only by the intonation.

Back  -    New Search

parenthetical verb.

A verb such as think that can be used in a parenthesis like He comes, I think, tomorrow.

Back  -    New Search

parent language.

An earlier language from which one or more later languages (the ‘daughter languages’) are immediately descended. Cf. ancestor language.

Back  -    New Search

parisyllabic.

‘Having equal syllables’. Traditionally of Latin or Greek nouns which have the same number of syllables in all cases in the singular.

Back  -    New Search

parole.

Defined by Saussure as the ‘executive’ aspect of language, comprising the combination of signs in the mind of a speaker and the ‘psycho-physical’ mechanisms by which they are externalized. Thence also of the utterances so produced.
Opp. langue; cf. langage.

Back  -    New Search

paronomasia.

Play on words of similar sound: e.g. in Pope Gregory's ‘Not Angles but angels’ (Latin non Angli sed angeli). Thence = pun in general.

Back  -    New Search

paronyms.

Words which are linked by a similarity of form. Hence paronymic attraction = popular etymology.

Back  -    New Search

paroxytone.

A word, originally one in Ancient Greek, which has an (acute) accent on the second syllable from the end. Cf. oxytone.

Back  -    New Search

parsing.

The task of assigning words to parts of speech with their appropriate accidents, traditionally set e.g. to pupils learning Latin grammar. Thence generally of the assignment of syntactic structures to sentences, especially by parsing programmes, or parsers , in computational linguistics or, by analogy, in psychological theories of speech processing.

Back  -    New Search

Part., PART.

Variously = participle, particle, partitive.

Back  -    New Search

partial assimilation.

Assimilation in respect of some but not all features.

Back  -    New Search

partial reduplication.

See reduplication.

Back  -    New Search

partial suppletion.

See suppletion.

Back  -    New Search

‘partial synonymy’.

See synonymy.

Back  -    New Search

participants.

1 Those involved directly in an act, or series of acts, of speech: thus a speaker, a person or persons spoken to, and any others taking part in a conversation, etc.

2 An individual, etc. involved in an event or process: e.g. John hugged Susan describes an event in which the participants are someone called John and someone called Susan. Thence of the phrases, and the semantic roles of the phrases, by which they are referred to. Thus in this sentence the participants are John, with the semantic role of agent, and Susan, with the role of patient; alternatively, John and Susan have the ‘participant roles’ of agent and patient.
Cf. person: for sense 2, actants; also case role
Top

Back  -    New Search

.participial adjective.

An adjective whose form is that of a participle: e.g. interested in I was interested, or interesting in a very interesting book.

Back  -    New Search

‘participial relative clause’.

A form with a participle whose role is like that of a relative clause: e.g. coming tomorrow in the people coming tomorrow; compare the people who are coming tomorrow.

Back  -    New Search

participle.

Term for a part of speech, originally applied to adjectival forms of verbs in Ancient Greek. Described as a ‘sharing’ element (Greek metokh) because such forms were inflected systematically both for tense and aspect, seen as a defining property of verbs, and for case, seen as a defining property of nouns. Thence of forms of verbs in other languages whose syntax is at least basically or in part similar: thus English forms in -ing, which have an adjective-like use in e.g. the man sitting over there, or forms in -ed, such as invited in the people invited to the wedding.
Participles in -ing are often distinguished in English grammar from gerunds, also in -ing, on the grounds that only the former have an adjective-like role.

Back  -    New Search

particle.

Used of divers classes of uninflected words in divers languages. Usually of words that are short, sometimes though not always clitic, and generally not falling easily under any of the traditional parts of speech. A typical example is the enclitic ge in Ancient Greek, basically a marker of emphasis: keînós ge … ‘THAT (man) …’, or ‘THAT (man) at least …’.
Used by e.g. C. F. Hockett in the 1950s of all forms that do not take inflections. Also by Jespersen of all the elements, e.g. in English, traditionally called adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections. Thence, specifically in English, of the second element of a phrasal verb: e.g. up in I picked it up.

Back  -    New Search

particle movement.

Posited movement of the ‘particle’ in a phrasal verb from its position in e.g. I will back up Charles to that of I will back Charles up.

Back  -    New Search

partitive (PART).

(Case, construction, etc.) by which reference is made to some part of a whole. Thus, schematically, I ate bread-PART ‘I ate some but not all of the bread’. Hence, more loosely or more generally, of any form or use of a form which can be translated by ‘some’: e.g. de (of) as partitive in French J'ai mangé du pain ‘I ate some (lit. ‘of the’) bread’.

Back  -    New Search

parts of speech.

A system of word classes, developed first for Ancient Greek and for Latin; thence extended, with modifications, to many other languages. The parts of speech canonical in Latin grammars were (in the order e.g. of Donatus) noun, pronoun, verb, participle, conjunction, preposition, interjection. The system canonical in Greek grammars included the article.
The ancient term (Lat. partes orationis) means, more precisely, ‘parts of the sentence’. A ‘part’ was thus an element of syntax necessarily or potentially related to other ‘parts’ (noun to verb, adverb to verb, preposition to noun, and so on).

Back  -    New Search

Pashto.

Iranian language, spoken across north-central Afghanistan and in the North-West Frontier province of Pakistan; also the extreme north-east of Iran. Official with Dari (Persian) in Afghanistan; the writing system is derived from Arabic through Persian.

Back  -    New Search

passive (1) (PASS).

(Construction, sentence, etc.) in which a marked form of a verb has a subject which is characteristically a patient. Thus The countryside is destroyed by motorways is a passive sentence in which the subject, the countryside, refers to what is suffering destruction, and the verb has the marked form of a participle (destroyed) linked to an auxiliary (is).
Also (and more traditionally) of the form of verb in such a construction. E.g. in this example, destroyed is a passive participle; alternatively, is destroyed as a whole is the passive corresponding to destroy in Motorways destroy the countryside.
Opp. active (1).

Back  -    New Search

passive (2)

(knowledge, vocabulary) . See active (2).

Back  -    New Search

passive articulator.

See articulator.

Back  -    New Search

passive participle.

1 Any participle which is passive (1).

2 Specifically of forms in English such as painted in It is being painted or the part already painted: distinguished as such from a past participle (2) such as painted in I have painted it.
Top

Back  -    New Search

Passy, Paul

(1859–1940)
. French phonetician and founder of the International Phonetic Association.

Back  -    New Search

past.

See tense (1).

Back  -    New Search

past anterior.

Form of verb used in referring to an event prior to another event itself prior to the time of speaking. Cf. past perfect.

Back  -    New Search

past participle.

1 Any participle which is past in tense (1).

2 Conventionally of forms such as English painted in has painted. Distinguished, in some accounts, from the same form as a passive participle (2); alternatively, both are ‘-en forms’, from the ending in e.g. taken.
Top

Back  -    New Search

past perfect.

See perfect.

Back  -    New Search

path.

Any route in e.g. a tree diagram from one node to another; any sequence of links between successive stages in a derivation (1).

Back  -    New Search

patient (P).

1 Noun phrase or the equivalent that identifies an individual, etc. undergoing some process or targeted by some action. E.g. the house is a patient in I painted the house; Mary in I kissed Mary.

2 Thence of a syntactic role which is characteristically that of a patient. E.g. a direct object in English tends to be a patient, especially a patient rather than an agent. Therefore direct objects and elements in other languages which are in this respect equivalent to them may be called, in general, patients.
The sense is that of Latin patiens, ‘suffering’ or ‘undergoing’. Abbreviated to P especially in cross-linguistic studies, where opp. A for agent (2); also opp. S (3).
Top

Back  -    New Search

patronymic.

Name derived from that of a father or ancestor: e.g. Johnson, originally ‘son of John’. Thence of family names generally.

Back  -    New Search

pattern.

Used in accounts of Arabic and other Semitic languages of a pattern of syllable-forming elements that combine with a consonantal root. E.g. the root ktb combines with one pattern, or pattern morpheme , in katab ‘he wrote’, with another in yi-ktib ‘he writes’, with another in kita:b ‘book’.

Back  -    New Search

pattern congruity.

Criterion in phonology which appeals to regularities in patterning. E.g. [t] in church might in principle realize two successive consonants or one. But words in English do not generally begin with sequences of stop plus fricative: the putative exceptions are precisely [t] and [dz]. So, to regularize the pattern, these too should be seen as realizing single consonants.

Back  -    New Search

paucal.

Inflection, etc. used in referring to a small as opposed to a large number of individuals: e.g. as a term in the category of number, in opposition to plural.

Back  -    New Search

Paul, Hermann

(1846–1921)
. Germanist and general linguist, whose Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte (‘Principles of Language History’), only one of the massive array of his publications, went through five substantive editions from 1880 to 1920. Its treatment is based on a view of language as a historical or cultural phenomenon, grounded in the psychology of the individual speaker: in a discussion of dialect Paul remarks that, strictly speaking, there are as many languages as there are speakers. The study of language is necessarily historical: apparent exceptions either are not real exceptions or are simply restricted by lack of data. In the processes that lead to change in language, both physical and psychological factors operate. The latter include, in particular, the operation of analogy, in the learning of word forms by children and as an explanation for morphological change, and in syntax, where it explains the constant production by speakers of new sentences that they have neither said nor heard previously.
Paul's Prinzipien was the most important theoretical work within the Neogrammarian movement, and the most admired book on general linguistics of its day. Its influence on later theorists, notably Bloomfield, is far greater than is sometimes recognized.

Back  -    New Search

pause.

Any interval in speaking between words or parts of words, whether of silence (hence ‘silent pause’ ) or ‘filled’ by a hesitation form. Thence, in practice, of e.g. the prolongation of a word or part of a word, without pause in a strict sense, if seen as having a similar function.

Back  -    New Search

P-Celtic.

Branch of Celtic so called from a sound-change by which Indo-European kw became p. Represented in the modern period by the ‘Brythonic’ languages (Welsh, Breton, Cornish).

Back  -    New Search

PDP.

See connectionism.

Back  -    New Search

peak

(of syllable) = nucleus (2).

Back  -    New Search

Peirce, Charles Sanders

(1839–1914)
. American philosopher, referred to in linguistics mainly (1) for his definition of abduction as a process of practical reasoning; (2) for a threefold typology of signs according to the relation between the signal carrying the sign and the object. The relation is iconic if the signal bears a physical resemblance to some aspect of the object: e.g. outside language, a diagram or map, or, in language, an example of onomatopoeia. It is indexical if the signal is directly connected with the object: e.g. smoke as a signal of fire or, it is argued, an indexical such as here. It is symbolic if the relation is simply a matter of convention: e.g. a green light as a signal to traffic, or, in language, any word with the property of arbitrariness.
Peirce and Saussure are seen as the joint founders of a general theory of signs (Peirce's ‘semiotic’).

Back  -    New Search

pejorative.

Used to refer to someone or something unfavourably. Thus the earlier sense of beast ‘large animal’ has been virtually replaced by the pejorative sense, e.g. in The beast hit me. Also of a change by which a word, etc. comes to be used in such a way: e.g. it is possible that animal might in the future undergo a similar pejorative change.
Opp. (a)meliorative.

Back  -    New Search

pental.

(Numeral system) based on five, as opposed to a decimal system based on ten.

Back  -    New Search

‘Penthouse Principle’.

Principle which alleges that any syntactic process applying to subordinate (i.e. lower) clauses can also apply to main (i.e. topmost) clauses.

Back  -    New Search

penultimate.

Second from the end. E.g. the accent of computer [km'pju:t] is on the penultimate syllable or vowel, or on the penult .

Back  -    New Search

Penutian.

Proposed family of languages, spoken or formerly spoken in various parts of western North America, from central California to the north of British Columbia. Takelma , now extinct, was the subject of a classic description by Sapir.

Back  -    New Search

percolation.

Copying of features typically from a lower to a higher level of constituency. Especially in Lexical Morphology, where features of morphemes ‘percolate’ upwards to the level of the word. E.g. in excitement the suffix, -ment, is one that forms nouns; that is, it has the feature [+ Noun]. From there the feature percolates to the word as a whole. Therefore excitement itself is [+ Noun]; that is, it is a noun. Similarly, the ending -s in horses has a feature [+ Plural]; by percolation, horses as a whole is [+ Plural].
The category of the word is thus seen as determined by the affix. So, by one definition, the affix is the head (1) of the word.
Unification, in essence, is a similar process in syntax.

Back  -    New Search

perfect (PF).

1 Traditional term for a past tense used of an action, etc. considered as a completed whole: opposed e.g. in Latin to imperfect and pluperfect.

2 Thence of any verb form used of actions, etc. seen as prior to a specific or implicit moment in time. Thus in I had worked in Oxford for three years the form had worked is past perfect : i.e. working in Oxford was over a period before some moment of time which is itself in the past. In I have worked in Oxford for three years or I have finished already, the forms have worked, have finished are similarly present perfect : the reference is to working or finishing up to or before the moment of speaking. In I will have worked there for three years, or I will have finished by Friday, the working or finishing is prior to a moment in the future: hence these are often described as future perfect.
Also abbreviated ‘PERF’; but this might usefully be reserved for perfective.
Top

Back  -    New Search

perfective (PERF).

Verb form, etc. used of actions or processes conceived as simple events located at an undivided moment of time. Opp. imperfective; also e.g. progressive, durative, habitual, iterative.
Thus, schematically, perfective go-PAST-PERF-I to London ‘I went to London’ vs. imperfective go-PAST-IMPERF-I to London ‘I was on my way to London’; perfective open-PRES-PERF-I the parcel ‘I open, have this moment opened the parcel’ vs. imperfective open-PRES-IMPERF-I the parcel ‘I am engaged in opening the parcel’. Widespread as an opposition between related verbs in Russian and other Slavic languages: hence central in many general accounts of aspect.

Back  -    New Search

perfectum.

Term in Latin grammar for forms of the verb based on, or on the stem of, the tense traditionally called ‘past perfect’. Cf. infectum.

Back  -    New Search

‘performance’.

Defined by Chomsky in the 1960s as ‘the actual use of language in concrete situations’: opp. competence. Used subsequently in wider senses, of the utterances as such that speakers produce, of mental processes thought to be involved in the production and understanding of speech, and so on. Cf. parole.

Back  -    New Search

performative.

An utterance by which a speaker does something, as opposed to a constative, by which a speaker makes a statement which may be true or false. E.g. if one says ‘I surrender’ that is itself an act of surrender; if one says ‘I’ll do it tonight’ one thereby makes a promise. An explicit performative is one in which a specific verb is used to make the nature of the act clear: e.g. ‘I promise you I'll do it tonight’, or ‘I invite you to come tomorrow’. A verb such as promise or invite is in turn a performative verb , or is ‘used performatively’, in such utterances.

Back  -    New Search

‘performative hypothesis’.

The notion, fashionable in the early 1970s, that every sentence has a performative verb as part of its underlying syntactic structure. E.g. Prices slumped derives from a structure like I say to you [prices slumped]; Did prices slump? from one like I ask you [prices slumped], and so on.

Back  -    New Search

periodic (1).

(Sound) characterized by regular recurrence of an identical wave form. Thence periodicity , as the property of such sounds. Opp. aperiodic.

Back  -    New Search

periodic (2).

Term in rhetoric for a sentence, passage, or style which includes large numbers of subordinate clauses. A ‘period’ is traditionally any complete sentence: thence of such sentences in particular.

Back  -    New Search

periphery.

1 The elements of a clause other than its nucleus or ‘core’. E.g. in I sent it to London last Tuesday the adverbial last Tuesday is a peripheral element accompanying the nucleus I sent it to London. A peripheral case or case role is likewise one associated with peripheral elements.

2 Those aspects of a grammar which, according to Chomsky, do not belong to core grammar.
Top

Back  -    New Search

periphrastic.

(Form, construction) in which independent words are described as having the same roles as inflections. E.g. more beautiful is a periphrastic form of the comparative, in which the role of more is the same as that of -er in prettier. Likewise the present perfect have written is one of a set of periphrastic forms seen as forming part of the same semantic system as the simple present (write) or past (wrote).

Back  -    New Search

perispomenon [prs'pmnn].

The Greek word for the circumflex accent.

Back  -    New Search

perlative.

Case whose basic role is to indicate the course of, or a location intermediate in, a movement. Thus, schematically, walks door-PERL ‘walks through the door’.

Back  -    New Search

perlocutionary.

Term applied in the theory of speech acts to the effect brought about by an utterance in the particular circumstances in which it is uttered. Cf. locutionary, illocutionary.
E.g. a wife might say to her husband ‘Have you remembered to mend the steps?’ The perlocutionary effect might be that perhaps intended, that he goes and mends them. Or it might be that he loses his temper, or simply replies ‘Yes, dear’.

Back  -    New Search

permansive.

(Tense, aspect) indicating that a state, etc. is persistent or permanent. Cf. durative.

Back  -    New Search

permissive.

(Mood, modality) indicating permission. E.g. can is permissive in You can show it to me if you like; let in They let us leave is in some accounts a ‘permissive’ causative, in opposition to make in They made us leave.

Back  -    New Search

perseveration.

Term in psychology for repetition or continuation. A ‘perseveration error’ is a slip of the tongue in which a sound, etc. in one word is repeated in one that follows: e.g. cold curkey for cold turkey. Perseverative coarticulation is coarticulation in which the articulation of a preceding unit accompanies or overlaps that of the unit following. E.g. in boot the lip rounding of [u:], with raising of the back of the tongue towards the soft palate, may ‘persevere’ in the articulation of [t]. Hence perseverative assimilation = progressive assimilation.
The opposite of anticipation; cf. anticipatory.

Back  -    New Search

Persian.

Iranian, spoken mainly in Iran, where called Farsi and native to about half the population; also forming a continuum with Dari, spoken mainly in parts of Afghanistan, and Tajiki, centred in Tajikistan. Written in the Arabic alphabet, with minor adaptations.
Modern Persian evolved from Middle Persian after the Muslim conquest of the Sassanid empire in the 7th to 8th centuries AD. Old Persian is an earlier form attested by inscriptions of the Achaemenid empire before its conquest by Alexander.

Back  -    New Search

person.

Grammatical category distinguishing speakers and addressees from each other and from other individuals, etc. referred to. Traditionally, a form referring to (or including reference to) the speaker is first person : e.g. the pronouns I and we. One referring to (or including reference to) one or more addressees is second person : e.g. you. One which involves reference to neither is third person : e.g. he, she, it, they. Some languages also distinguish an inclusive person, referring to or necessarily including reference to both the speaker and the addressee or addressees.
The term is from Latin persona ‘character in a play’ and its sense is therefore like that of participant (1). But it is helpful to distinguish participants as a notional category from person as the grammatical category corresponding to it. Thus a specific language may have a form identifying that the speaker is involved in some way in an event referred to: its meaning might thus be represented, in terms of participants, by a feature [+ speaker]. But it might not be opposed directly, within a single system, to other ‘persons’.

Back  -    New Search

‘personal infinitive’.

A form, e.g. in Portuguese, which is classed as an infinitive on grounds of syntax but is inflected for person. E.g., schematically, I-heard the neighbours to-shut-3PL the door ‘I heard the neighbours shut the door’.

Back  -    New Search

personal pronoun.

One of a set of pronouns that distinguish persons: e.g. I, we, you, he, she, it, they. Often used of a set distinguishing reference to speakers and addressees only, reference to other participants being indicated by forms whose grammar is different.

Back  -    New Search

person deixis.

Deixis depending on the identity of speakers, addressees, and others. E.g. that of I: if Bill Bloggs is the speaker it refers to him, if Mary Tonks to her, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

personification.

Reference to something general or abstract as if it were an individual: e.g. love is personified in Love conquers all.

Back  -    New Search

Peters–Ritchie theorem.

A theorem proved by P. S. Peters and R. W. Ritchie in the late 1960s, establishing that any formal language that can in general be characterized by a generative grammar can be generated by a transformational grammar of a kind that Chomsky's Standard Theory allowed. At the time this put paid to the hope that the weak generative capacity of such grammars could be or had been restricted.

Back  -    New Search

PF =

Phonetic Form.

Back  -    New Search

PF =

perfect.

Back  -    New Search

pharyngeal.

(Consonant) articulated with the root of the tongue or the epiglottis against or approximated to the back wall of the pharynx. E.g. in Arabic the word for ‘eye’ (Egyptian Arabic [e:n]) begins with a voiced pharyngeal fricative.

Back  -    New Search

pharyngealization.

Secondary articulation in which the root of the tongue is drawn back so that the pharynx (throat) is narrowed. The emphatic consonants in Arabic are described as pharyngealized, though their effect on neighbouring vowels is not like that of the consonants whose primary articulation is pharyngeal.

Back  -    New Search

phase.

Used by F. R. Palmer and others for the opposition between perfect and non-perfect in English. Thus see and saw (non-perfect) differ in phase from has seen (present perfect) and had seen (past perfect), while differing in aspect from is seeing and was seeing.

Back  -    New Search

phatic.

(Function of language) in maintaining or developing relations between speakers. Phatic communion was defined by the anthropologist B. Malinowski in the 1920s as ‘a type of speech in which ties of union are created by a mere exchange of words’. The phatic function was defined by Jakobson in 1960 in terms of orientation towards the physical and psychological contact between speaker and addressee, as opposed to orientation towards either individually, or towards the state of the world, etc.

Back  -    New Search

philology.

Used in English both of the scholarly study of literary texts (e.g. ‘classical philology’, ‘modern philology’) and in the same sense as ‘historical linguistics’ (see comparative philology), or ‘linguistics’ in general. The Philological Society is a linguistic society founded in London in 1842, and its journal, the Transactions of the Philological Society, is the oldest in the field.

Back  -    New Search

philosophical grammar.

A study of grammar based on philosophical principles conceived as underlying all languages; cf. universal grammar (1). Applied particularly to a tradition dominant in the 17th and 18th centuries, of which the grammars of Port Royal and of (James) Harris are outstanding examples.

Back  -    New Search

Phoenician.

Ancient Semitic language, originally of what is now Lebanon, spread by trade and migration to Carthage and elsewhere across the Mediterranean. Attested from the 11th century BC, in a Semitic alphabet believed to be the specific forerunner of that of Greek.

Back  -    New Search

phonaesthesis

= sound symbolism. A phonaestheme is a sound or group of sounds, e.g. the sibilants of hiss, fizz, buzz, etc., that enters into a pattern of sound symbolism.

Back  -    New Search

phonation.

The specific action of the vocal cords in the production of speech. Phonation types include in particular voice (1), in which the vocal cords vibrate, vs. voicelessness, in which they are open; also creak, falsetto, whisper. Normal or ‘modal’ voice is also distinguished from breathy voice or murmur; and, in some accounts, from slack voice and stiff voice.
The distinction in singing between ‘head voice’ and ‘chest’ (= normal or modal) voice may be wholly or largely one of phonation, but the physiology of head voice is less clear.

Back  -    New Search

phonatory setting.

An articulatory setting which involves a persistent feature of phonation: e.g. persistent creaky voice or falsetto.

Back  -    New Search

phone.

A speech sound which is identified as the realization of a single phoneme: e.g. [t], [], and [p] are phones which realize successive phonemes in [tp] (chip). Allophones are different phones by which an identical phoneme can be realized.

Back  -    New Search

phonematic.

Of or involving phonemes or other similar elements. In Prosodic Phonology a phonematic unit is one associated with a single position in a linear structure, as opposed to a prosody, whose domain is (at least potentially) larger.

Back  -    New Search

phoneme.

The smallest distinct sound unit in a given language: e.g. [tp] in English realizes three successive phonemes represented in spelling by the letters t, i, and p.
Detailed definitions vary from one theory to another. But, in general, two words are composed of different phonemes only if they differ phonetically in ways that are found to make a difference in meaning. Thus in English, [] and [a] are different phonemes since, for example, [tp] does not mean the same as [tap], nor [pt] the same as [pat]. The individual phonemes are then the smallest units in each word that distinguish meanings and, in addition, are realized over distinct time spans. By the second criterion [] and [a] are single phonemes since they cannot be analysed into smaller units meeting the criterion, each with its own distinct time span.
Thence phonemic ; e.g. a phonemic transcription of a word, etc. is its representation as a sequence or other combination of phonemes. Also phonemics , for the branch of linguistics in which phonemes are identified.

Back  -    New Search

phonemic script.

One in which the characters correspond, or tend to correspond, to phonemes. Sometimes called ‘phonetic’: e.g. the spelling of Welsh is ‘phonetic’ in the sense that, though the phonemes of Welsh are not represented unambiguously, the correspondences between particular letters and particular phonemes is consistent.
Distinguished in principle from a morphophonemic script , in which the letters tend to correspond, as partly in the spelling of English, to morphophonemes.

Back  -    New Search

phonetic determinative.

See determinative.

Back  -    New Search

‘Phonetic Form’ (PF).

The least abstract representation of a sentence in Chomsky's theory of grammar since the early 1980s. Both Phonetic and Logical Form are conceived as representations which interface with other systems, respectively phonetic and semantic.
Occasionally glossed by the earlier term surface structure.

Back  -    New Search

phonetic naturalness.

Property of rules in phonology or morphophonology that correspond in some degree to phonetic effects explicable by the movements and structure of the vocal organs. E.g., in articulating a sequence such as [ata], the voicing of [a] may continue during part of the production of [t]: this can be explained as an effect of coarticulation. A rule by which a voiceless stop is changed to a voiced stop between vowels is to that extent phonetically natural, or more natural than one by which e.g. it becomes an ejective.
Often, therefore, ascribed to rules that correspond to widely attested sound-changes, on the assumption that they have phonetic causes.

Back  -    New Search

phonetic notation.

Any system of representing sounds in a phonetic transcription.

Back  -    New Search

‘phonetic representation’.

A representation of the sounds that make up a sentence, seen as one level of representation in Chomsky's theory of grammar in the 1960s.

Back  -    New Search

phonetics.

The study of the nature, production, and perception of sounds of speech, in abstraction from the phonology of any specific language. Variously divided into acoustic phonetics, articulatory phonetics , etc. according to the specific aspects investigated.
The relation of phonetics to phonology is problematic. In one view the physical and other mechanisms can and should be studied without reference to their conceivable exploitation in speech. This can lead to the conclusion that phonetics is not part of linguistics. In another view, phonetic distinctions can only be those exploited in one language or another.

Back  -    New Search

phonetic similarity.

Advanced as one criterion in the identification of phonemes. Thus the English clear and dark l are sufficiently alike to be treated as variant realizations of the same phoneme; but a non-contrasting [h] and [], for example, would not be.

Back  -    New Search

phonetic transcription.

Any written representation of successive speech sounds, in a notation, such as the alphabet of the International Phonetic Association, designed to be used universally for this purpose. Conventionally enclosed in square brackets: e.g. [s'g:] is a phonetic transcription, in one version of this alphabet in use for English, of cigar.
Phonetic transcriptions may show varying degrees of detail: see broad transcription, narrow transcription. They have therefore been seen variously as distinct from or equivalent to representations of phonemes.

Back  -    New Search

phonic.

(Medium, substance) consisting of sounds. E.g. speech is opposed as a ‘phonic medium’ for language to writing as an orthographic or graphic medium.

Back  -    New Search

phonogram.

A symbol in writing which represents a sound or sequence of sounds: opposed especially to a logogram, which represents a semantic unit.

Back  -    New Search

phonologically conditioned.

(Alternation) among forms appropriate to different phonological contexts: e.g. in English, between different realizations of the regular plural ending: [Z] after [s], [z], [], or [z] (e.g. in horses); [s] after other consonants if voiceless (e.g. in cats); [z] after vowels and other consonants if voiced (e.g. in cows or dogs). Opp. grammatically conditioned; lexically conditioned.

Back  -    New Search

phonological system.

The sound system of a language in general. Specifically, in the terminology of the Prague School, of a structure of oppositions among phonemes defined by the phonetic features that distinguish them. Hence vowel system , of a system formed by vowel phonemes, consonant system , and so on.
In the illustration, six short vowels in Southern British English are displayed as a system within the phonological space defined by the distinctive features Front ([], [], [a]) vs. Back ([], [], []) on one dimension, Close ([], []) vs. Mid ([], []) vs. Open ([a], []) on the other.

Front

Back

Close

Mid

Open

a

A vowel system

Back  -    New Search

phonological word.

A word distinguished as a unit of phonology. Sometimes different from a word in syntax: e.g. I've in I've done it is a single phonological word, but in syntax it is two words. Likewise a ‘phonological phrase’ or ‘phonological clause’ , delimited e.g. by intonation.

Back  -    New Search

phonologization.

Historical process by which a phonetic difference becomes a difference between phonemes. Thus a distinction between allophones of ‘c’ in Latin was phonologized in the history of the Romance languages: e.g. Latin cadit ‘falls’ > Italian cade [kade], but celat ‘conceals’ > cela [tla].

Back  -    New Search

phonology.

The study of the sound systems of individual languages and of the nature of such systems generally. Distinguished as such from phonetics; other distinctions, between phonology and morphophonology, phonology and morphology, etc., vary among schools.
In many accounts, and most accounts before 1960, the central unit of phonology is the phoneme. For specific theories, including some that are based on radically different units, see Articulatory Phonology, Autosegmental Phonology, Dependency Phonology, Generative Phonology, Government Phonology, Lexical Phonology, Metrical Phonology, Natural Generative Phonology, Optimality Theory, Prosodic Phonology. Jakobson, Sapir, and Trubetzkoy were pioneers of the subject in the period before the Second World War.

Back  -    New Search

phonotactics.

The relations of sequence, etc. in which phonemes or other phonological units stand. Thus it is an aspect of the phonotactics of English that words can begin with a sequence of consonants such as [str] (string) but not e.g. [sfl].

Back  -    New Search

phrasal.

Involving a phrase or phrases. Thus phrasal verbs are phrases (2) seen as equivalent to single verbs; of the song in the end of the song is a ‘phrasal genitive’ ; more efficient is a ‘phrasal comparative’ , and so on. A phrasal category (e.g. noun phrase) is a category of phrases as opposed to one of words or morphemes.

Back  -    New Search

phrasal coordination.

Coordination of phrases that cannot be seen as reduced from coordination of sentences. E.g. in John and my sister met at last, the coordination of John and my sister cannot be reduced to a coordination of John met at last and My sister met at last.
Opp. sentential coordination . E.g. John and my sister were there can be treated as a reduction of John was there and my sister was there.

Back  -    New Search

phrasal verb.

1 Any combination of two or more words that is treated as, or as equivalent to, a verb: e.g. ‘take pictures of’ in They took pictures of me might be seen as a phrasal verb equivalent to photograph in They photographed me.

2 Specifically of a unit in English which is formed from a verb with the addition of a preposition or adverb which can variously precede or follow an object: e.g. take up in I'll take up your offer, He took my offer up. The second element is usually called a particle; hence ‘particle movement’ or ‘particle shift’ is a syntactic process moving e.g. up from (hypothetically) a position before the object to a position after.
A phrasal verb in sense 2 is usually distinguished from a prepositional verb by, among other things, the possibility of ‘particle movement’.
Top

Back  -    New Search

phrase.

1 A syntactic unit that is not a clause. Hence, in particular, the largest unit which has some word of a specific category as its head. E.g. in the government in Moscow the whole is a phrase whose head (2) is government; within this in Moscow is a phrase headed by in; within that Moscow is the head of a phrase of which it is the only element.

2 Any syntactic unit which includes more than one word and is not an entire sentence. E.g. in They [said [they [liked cheese]]] all the units bracketed are (on this analysis) phrases.
Sense 1 is now the usual technical sense, though precise definitions vary. Sense 2 was Bloomfield's, and the apparent source of ‘phrase structure’ in e.g. phrase structure grammar. For specific kinds of phrase, basically though not always exclusively in sense 1, see especially noun phrase; prepositional phrase; verb phrase.
Top

Back  -    New Search

phrase marker.

The term originally used by Chomsky for the structure assigned to a string of elements by a phrase structure grammar. Hence equivalent to phrase structure tree. Abbreviated to P-marker ; cf. T-marker.

Back  -    New Search

phrase order.

See word order.

Back  -    New Search

phrase structure grammar.

Any form of generative grammar consisting only of phrase structure rules. Hence any grammar which assigns to sentences a type of structure that can be represented by a single phrase structure tree.
For varying formulations see context-free grammar; context-sensitive grammar; Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar; Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar; X-bar syntax. In its classic form a transformational grammar has a phrase structure grammar as its base component.

Back  -    New Search

phrase structure rule.

A rule which states that a phrase of a specific category may have one or more constituents, each in turn of a specific category. E.g. a rule S NP + VP, which was standard in the 1960s, states that a sentence (S) may or must consist of a noun phrase (NP) followed by a verb phrase (VP).
The notation derives from Chomsky's formulation in the 1950s, in which phrase structure rules were conceived as rewrite rules.

Back  -    New Search

phrase structure tree.

A tree diagram which shows the division of a form into successively smaller constituents and labels each as belonging to one or more categories. In the illustration, a sentence (S) is divided into two constituents: boys, which is assigned to the categories noun (N) and noun phrase (NP), and play well, which is assigned to the category verb phrase (VP). The latter in turn is divided into play, which is a verb (V), and well, which is an adverb (Adv).

A phrase structure tree

Back  -    New Search

phrastic.

Term introduced in philosophy by R. M. Hare for whatever in a sentence is neutral between command, statement, etc. E.g. ‘your shutting the door in the immediate future’ is said to be the phrastic of both Shut the door and You are going to shut the door. The aspect that differentiates these sentences is the ‘neustic’ .
Cf. proposition for the notion of ‘propositional content’.

Back  -    New Search

phylogeny.

Biologists’ term for the evolution of a species or other group of organisms. Theories of the phylogeny of language are similarly theories about what is traditionally called the ‘origin of language’. Thence ‘phylogenetic’ : opp. ontogeny, ontogenetic.

Back  -    New Search

‘phylum’.

A group of language families among which deeper genetic relationships have been posited. See family; also stock. Where ‘stocks’ and ‘phyla’ are distinguished ‘phyla’ are usually the larger.

Back  -    New Search

Piaget, Jean

(1896–1980)
. Swiss psychologist, whose studies of the cognitive development of children have had wide influence. These distinguish successively higher levels of intelligence, from the ‘sensorimotor’ to the ‘formal operational’, and successive stages in which a child passes from one to another, building on and in part reorganizing what has been learned earlier.

Back  -    New Search

pictogram.

A symbol in a writing system, or in a precursor of writing, which represents an object, etc. by a picture of it; also called a ‘pictograph’ . Cf. ideogram; logogram.

Back  -    New Search

pidgin.

A simplified form of speech developed as a medium of trade, or through other extended but limited contact, between groups of speakers who have no other language in common: e.g. the simplified forms of English, French, or Dutch which are assumed to be the origin of creoles in the West Indies. Pidginization (sc. of a base language such as English) is the process by which a pidgin is formed; creolization is in turn the process by which they are seen as developing into creoles.

Back  -    New Search

PIE.

For ‘Proto-Indo-European’: see protolanguage.

Back  -    New Search

pied piping.

Syntactic process in which a movement of one element is accompanied by that of others related to it. E.g., in the film which we saw the end of, which is seen as moved from a position as complement of of: the film [we saw [the end of which]]. In the film of which we saw the end, of, by pied piping, moves with it; in the film the end of which we saw, the whole of the end of.

Back  -    New Search

Pike, Kenneth Lee

(1912– )
. American linguist, for much of his career director of the Summer Institute of Linguistics. His earliest major work is in phonetics and phonology and includes important studies of tone languages in Central America. In Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior, published in its definitive form in 1967, Pike described a language as structured on three interpenetrating levels, of phonology, grammar, and lexicon, and distinguished three ‘modes’ of any structural unit: the feature mode, defined by its opposition to other units; the manifestation mode, defined by its realization in speech; and the distribution mode, defined by its roles in larger units. In a similar spirit, he has contrasted a ‘particle’ view of language, which is focused on the individual unit, with a ‘wave’ view and a ‘field’ view, focused respectively on linear relations among units in speech and the structure of relations within the overall system.
See Tagmemics for Pike's model of grammar. This has been widely applied to languages studied by members of the Summer Institute of Linguistics.

Back  -    New Search

Pilipino.

See Tagalog.

Back  -    New Search

Pinyin.

Roman alphabet for Mandarin Chinese, authorized by the Chinese government since the late 1950s, and increasingly replacing earlier systems. Tones are shown by accents: e.g. the name of the system itself is pnyn, with two high-level tones; that of the city formerly written in English as ‘Peking’ is Bijng, where the tone on the first syllable is basically a low rise.

Back  -    New Search

pitch.

The property of sounds as perceived by a hearer that corresponds to the physical property of frequency. Thus a vowel which from the viewpoint of articulatory phonetics is produced with more rapid vibration of the vocal cords will, from an acoustic viewpoint, have a higher fundamental frequency and, from an auditory viewpoint, be perceived as having higher pitch.

Back  -    New Search

pitch accent.

An accent (1) which is primarily realized by differences of pitch between accented and unaccented syllables. E.g. that of Ancient Greek, where, for instance, the accented syllable of ánthro:pos ‘man’ was distinguished by a relatively high pitch; that of anthrô:pu: ‘of (a) man’ by an initially high pitch which then fell.
See stress for the contrasting term ‘stress accent’. See also tone; tone language. In the strictest usage a tone language is one in which all syllables are distinguished equally: in languages with an accent one particular syllable, such as the an- of ánthro:pos, is prominent. But the distinction is often confused in practice.

Back  -    New Search

pitch morpheme.

An intonational tone or contour, seen as a morpheme consisting of a sequence of pitch phonemes. Thus the sentence They love me would consist of four morphemes, the ‘segmental’ units they, love, and me, and a suprasegmental morpheme that, in a notation current in the 1950s, might be the sequence 2 3 1: mid to low pitch (‘2’) on they, mid to high pitch (‘3’) on love, low pitch (‘1’) on me.

Back  -    New Search

pitch phoneme.

A phonological unit of pitch in tone languages; cf. toneme. Also a minimal component, in some analyses of intonation, of a pitch morpheme.

Back  -    New Search

pivot.

1 Used by M. D. S. Braine in the 1960s, in an analysis of the speech of very young children. An utterance like ‘Me hungry’, ‘Me happy’, or ‘Me banana’ was seen as relating a pivot (me), which is one of a small class of words that recur frequently, to a member of an ‘open’ class (hungry, happy, banana,…).

2 Used by R. M. W. Dixon of a syntactic element which, like a subject (1) in e.g. English, can be related to verbs or predicates in several successive clauses. Thus, in Mary came to meet us and drive us home, the subject Mary is a pivot related successively to came, to the infinitive to meet us, and to drive us home.
Top

Back  -    New Search

PL

= plural.

Back  -    New Search

place.

(Adverb, adverbial) indicating location. E.g. in the garden is an adverbial of place (or a place or locative adverbial) in I was sitting in the garden.

Back  -    New Search

place of articulation.

A position in the mouth by which a consonant is classified, defined by the point of maximal contact or near contact between an active and a passive articulator. In kick, for example, the place of articulation of both consonants is velar: in phonetic notation, [kk]. That is, the position of maximal contact (in this instance closure) is between the back of the tongue and the velum or soft part of the palate.
Opp. manner of articulation. For the main places of articulation, starting from the front of the mouth, see bilabial, labiodental, dental, alveolar, palato-alveolar, retroflex, palatal, velar, uvular, pharyngeal, glottal.

Back  -    New Search

plain.

Used in Jakobson's scheme of distinctive features in the sense of non-flat or non-sharp.

Back  -    New Search

plane.

Used by Hjelmslev and others in the sense of level. Thus, in particular, the content plane vs. the expression plane.

Back  -    New Search

Plato

(429–347 BC)
. Ancient Greek philosopher, one of whose shorter dialogues, the Cratylus, is the earliest discussion in the Western tradition of the relations between words and things. The main character, Socrates, is represented as disputing first the view that the relations are justified by convention only, and then the view that, interfering factors apart, they are systematic and natural. The main conclusion is that words cannot be taken as a guide to reality. Several other dialogues also deal in passing with problems of language. In particular, a passage in the Sophist makes clear the distinction, in the sentence, between what are later called a subject (e.g. Theaetetus in Theaetetus is flying) and a predicate (is flying). Only when both are present—when a subject is identified and something is said about it—can a linguistic expression be seen as true (Theaetetus is indeed flying) or as false.
A central idea in Plato's philosophy is the doctrine of ideal forms (traditionally translated ‘ideas’) that underlie the world as we perceive it. Thus an ideal ‘horse’ underlies the varying forms of individual horses, an ideal ‘goodness’ different concrete forms of goodness, and so on. As one form of realism this remains influential: e.g. a language is an ideal entity that underlies the varying concrete manifestations of speech.

Back  -    New Search

Plattdeutsch

= Low German.

Back  -    New Search

pleonasm.

Term in rhetoric for repetition or superfluous expression. Hence, in grammar, a category is sometimes said to be represented pleonastically if it is realized by more than one affix, word, etc.

Back  -    New Search

plereme.

Hjelmslev's term for a unit of content. A pleremic system of writing is accordingly one which represents lexical or grammatical units as opposed to sounds or syllables: e.g. that of Chinese.
From the Greek word for ‘full’: opp. ceneme, cenemic.

Back  -    New Search

plosive.

A stop produced with air flowing outwards from the lungs: e.g. [t] in tea or [d] in do. Distinguished as such from stops in which the airstream mechanism is different or more complex, such as ejectives or implosives.

Back  -    New Search

‘pluperfect’.

Traditionally of a verb form in Latin whose basic use was as a past perfect: e.g. venerat ‘had come’, i.e. had come by some moment of time before the moment of speaking. Thence e.g. of forms such as had come in English. The ancient term was ‘more-than-perfect’ (plusquamperfectum): opposed to ‘perfect’ and imperfect (‘not perfect’ or ‘less than perfect’).

Back  -    New Search

plural (PL).

Semantic feature of forms used in referring to more than one, or more than some small number of individuals. Often a term in the category of number: e.g. plural rooms (‘room-PL’) in opposition to room, or -s itself as a plural ending. But it may also be the meaning of an independent particle, or a derivational affix.

Back  -    New Search

pluralia tantum.

Latin ‘plurals only’: i.e. nouns, like oats or trousers, which appear only in a plural form.

Back  -    New Search

plus sign (+).

Used in three main ways:
1 To mark sequence: e.g. a phrase structure rule X Y + Z says that an X consists or may consist of a Y followed by a Z.
2 As a symbol specifically for a boundary between morphemes: e.g. [kat + s] (cats). Cf. double cross (#).
3 To mark a positive value for a feature: e.g. a front vowel has the feature [+ Front].

Back  -    New Search

P-marker

= phrase marker.

Back  -    New Search

‘poetic’.

(Function of language) defined by Jakobson in terms of orientation towards, or focus on, ‘the message for its own sake’. Thus, in ordinary speech, it is by virtue of the poetic function that, e.g. in coordination, one will tend to put shorter phrases first: I remember especially the wine and the view from the terrace, rather than, although in terms of other functions they are equivalent,… the view from the terrace and the wine.

Back  -    New Search

point of articulation

= place of articulation.

Back  -    New Search

polar interrogative.

An interrogative sentence or construction whose primary use is in asking questions to be answered ‘yes’ or ‘no’: e.g. Are you ready?
Also polar question , yes–no question : opp. wh-interrogative, focused interrogative, x-interrogative.

Back  -    New Search

polarity.

The opposition between positive (e.g. yes or I will come) and negative (e.g. no or I will not come). See tag for ‘reversed polarity’.

Back  -    New Search

‘polarity item’.

See negative polarity item; positive polarity item.

Back  -    New Search

Polish.

West Slavic; most speakers are in Poland, with the next largest group in the USA. Attested by continuous texts from the 14th century AD, though evidence of names in Polish is found earlier: for most of its recorded history it has been in close contact with forms of German especially.
Cassubian or Kashubian , on the Baltic coast, is usually treated as a dialect of Polish, though more strikingly differentiated than others.

Back  -    New Search

polite form.

A form used to show deference to an addressee: e.g. Japanese ki-masi-ta ‘come-POLITE-PAST’ as opposed to unmarked ki-ta ‘come-PAST’ (‘came’). Also e.g. of the pronoun and the verb form in French vous venez ‘you are coming’, when said to one person. But it might be better to regard the ‘vous’-forms simply as the unmarked forms of the second person in general, as opposed to marked singular familiar forms in e.g. tu viens.
Often linked, as in Japanese, with a more general system of honorifics.

Back  -    New Search

poly-.

Involving many rather than either one or two. E.g. a ‘polyglossic’ community is like one that is diglossic except that more than two languages or varieties are involved; a ‘polylectal’ grammar is one covering several (dia)lects; polysyndeton is coordination in which several successive members are all linked by conjunctions; a polysyllabic word (or polysyllable ) is one with many, e.g. more than two, syllables.
Cf. multi-.

Back  -    New Search

polygenesis.

Multiple origin, e.g. of language. Opp. monogenesis.

Back  -    New Search

Polynesian.

Branch of Austronesian which includes all the languages of the Polynesian triangle (New Zealand—Hawaii—Easter Island) and a few in Micronesia and Melanesia.

Back  -    New Search

polysemy [p'lsmi] [pl'si:mi].

The case of a single word having two or more related senses. Thus the noun screen is polysemous [pl'si:ms], since it is used variously of a fire screen, a cinema screen, a television screen, and so on.
Cf. homonymy. The difference, in principle, is that in cases of homonymy the senses are quite unconnected; therefore they are not treated as belonging to the same word. But there are inevitably cases that are indeterminate.

Back  -    New Search

‘polysynthetic’.

(Type of language) in which there is a pattern of incorporation or in which, in general, affixes realize a range of semantic categories beyond those of synthetic (1) languages in e.g. Europe.

Back  -    New Search

polysystemic.

(Analysis) in which the system of contrasts established at each point in a linear or other structure is treated independently of those established elsewhere. E.g. though will realize one term in a system operative in the structure of subordinate clauses (He came though he was late); others will be realized by since, because, etc. In He came, though it will realize a term in a quite different system; compare however, nevertheless, etc.
Opp. monosystemic. The principle involved is central to Prosodic Phonology, and in Firth's work generally.

Back  -    New Search

popular etymology.

The process by which a form is reshaped to resemble another form, or sequence of forms, already in the language. E.g. French beaupré ‘bowsprit’ was derived historically by the reshaping of Dutch boegspriet, or a similar loan from another Germanic language, into a compound apparently formed from beau ‘beautiful’ and pré ‘meadow’.
Also called ‘folk etymology’ ; cf. paronym for ‘paronymic attraction’.

Back  -    New Search

‘portmanteau morph’.

A morph which is said to realize two or more successive morphemes. E.g. in French au théâtre ‘to the theatre’, au is a single morph ([o]) which simultaneously realizes a preposition (elsewhere à) and the definite article (elsewhere le).

Back  -    New Search

Port Royal.

Religious and educational centre in 17th-century France, whose works on logic and grammar included a learner's manual of Latin (1st edn., by C. Lancelot, 1644) and a Grammaire générale et raisonnée (by Lancelot and A. Arnauld, 1660) of great influence, in France and beyond, over the next hundred and more years. A purportedly universal grammar (hence ‘générale’), based on principles of human reason and thought (hence ‘raisonnée’), its technique of analysis stands in the Post-Renaissance tradition initiated by Sanctius, and is sometimes re- or misinterpreted, following a reading by Chomsky in the 1960s, as drawing distinctions like those then current between deep structure and surface structure. E.g. an expression such as an invisible God (‘Dieu invisible’) is described in terms of a proposition or ‘judgement’ God is invisible; a finite verb, such as comes, is analysed, following Aristotle, into a copula (is) which links the subject to a participle ((in a state of) coming); a form such as to in I gave it to Jane realizes the same category of case as a dative in e.g. Latin.

Back  -    New Search

Portuguese.

Romance, spoken mainly in Brazil and Portugal but also as a second language, with official status, in Angola, Mozambique, and other former Portuguese colonies. Historically related to Galician in north-west Spain; a national language after the independence of Portugal in the 12th century; carried to Brazil, Africa, and the Far East by trade and colonization in the 16th. European and Brazilian Portuguese are now distinct varieties of what is still a common language.

Back  -    New Search

position.

Used both of position in a literal sense (e.g. the is the first word in The plumber rang) and of position in an abstract structure established by analysis: e.g. the plumber occupies the position of subject in the same sentence. Cf. order.
A positional variant of a phoneme is its realization in a specific position: e.g. unaspirated [p] in spin is a variant of this phoneme in a position after [s]. Likewise ‘positional allophone’.

Back  -    New Search

position of neutralization.

See neutralization.

Back  -    New Search

positive.

1 = affirmative: e.g. I am coming is a positive sentence, in contrast to the negative I am not coming.

2 (Adjective or adverb) not marked for a grade of comparison: e.g. happy is positive, in contrast to happier or happiest.
Top

Back  -    New Search

‘positive face’.

See face.

Back  -    New Search

positive polarity item.

A word, etc. whose sense is possible in positive sentences but not, or not normally, in negative sentences: e.g. pretty in It's pretty expensive, where a simple negation (It isn't pretty exPENsive) would be unlikely. Cf. negative polarity item.

Back  -    New Search

positivism.

Philosophical system developed in the 19th century by A. Comte which starts from the assumption that all knowledge is based on positive and observable facts, and therefore, directly or indirectly, on the findings of the physical sciences. Hence, in particular, a system that rejected metaphysics and other a priori speculation.
Logical positivism was a development in Vienna in the 1920s and 1930s whose central doctrine was a ‘verification principle’, by which the meaning of any statement is the method by which it can be verified through the senses. Hence statements which could not be so verified were strictly meaningless. Positivist ideas were developed in linguistics by Bloomfield especially; they were succeeded, in the Vienna school and, during the 1960s, in linguistics, by a different philosophy of science developed by K. Popper, in which the basic criterion for a scientific statement is not that it should be verifiable but simply that it should have empirical content and, if wrong, should be falsifiable.

Back  -    New Search

possessive (POSS).

(Case, preposition, etc.) whose basic use, or one of whose basic uses, is to indicate the relation between someone who possesses something and the thing that they possess. E.g.-'s marks the possessive construction in Mary's coat; my is a possessive pronoun in my coat; Mary's and mine are likewise independent possessives in That coat is Mary's, or That coat is mine.
Cf. genitive. Where the terms are distinguished it is usually in one of two ways. In the first, ‘genitive’ is used of a case, etc. marking in general a noun which modifies another noun. ‘Possessive’ is then used when the semantic relation is specifically one of possession. Alternatively, ‘genitive’ may be used specifically of constructions, etc. where the ‘possessor’ (Mary's, etc.) is marked, while, in ‘possessive’ constructions in other languages, the ‘possessed’ element (in Latin, possessum ) is often marked instead.

Back  -    New Search

possessive compound

= bahuvrihi.

Back  -    New Search

‘possessor ascension’.

Syntactic process proposed for some languages by which an element indicating a possessor is moved from a noun phrase into the structure of a clause containing it: e.g. schematically, [My leg] hurt I leg hurt ‘My leg is hurt’.

Back  -    New Search

‘possible world’.

Any state in which the world could be: a proposition, e.g. as expressed by a sentence, may accordingly be true in some ‘possible worlds’ and false in others.
Cf. truth conditions; model-theoretic semantics.

Back  -    New Search

POSS-ing construction.

That of e.g. John's driving in John's driving is terrible, jointly marked by possessive-'s (POSS) and the -ing of driving. Distinguished from that of e.g. John driving is terrible, where John is not possessive.

Back  -    New Search

post-.

After or behind. E.g. a post-vocalic consonant is one preceded by a vowel; a postalveolar has a place of articulation behind that of an alveolar; a post-lexical rule applies at a stage in a derivation after lexical units have been introduced.

Back  -    New Search

postalveolar.

Articulated towards the back of the ridge behind the upper teeth: i.e. with the tongue in a position between that of an alveolar, as in too [tu:], and a palato-alveolar, as in chew [tu:].

Back  -    New Search

Post-Bloomfieldians.

School of linguistic theoreticians dominant in the USA in the 1940s and 1950s: leading members included (Zellig) Harris, C. F. Hockett, and G. L. Trager. They developed ideas derived from Bloomfield's in an extreme form, especially the principle that the distributions of forms should be analysed independently and in advance of their meanings, and the notion that a description of a language could be justified by following a rigid hierarchy of procedures. Such procedures were later characterized by Chomsky as discovery procedures.
Chomsky's earliest work was heavily influenced, both in its philosophy and in detail, by Harris and other Post-Bloomfieldians. But after 1960 he derided them as representatives of structural or taxonomic linguistics, and within a few years both the school and its direct influence diminished sharply.

Back  -    New Search

‘post-creole continuum’.

See creole continuum.

Back  -    New Search

post-cyclic(al).

See cyclic(al) principle.

Back  -    New Search

postdeterminer.

Used of an element seen as last in a possible sequence of determiners. E.g. in those people, the determiner is those. In those three people or those few people, it is followed by a postdeterminer three or few. In all those three people it is also preceded by a ‘predeterminer’ all.
Also, at least potentially, of any determiner that comes after the element it ‘determines’.

Back  -    New Search

postmodifier.

In principle, any modifier that follows its head. Specifically of an element in English which modifies and follows a noun: e.g. over there in the man over there, or who watch television in children who watch television. Cf. premodifier.

Back  -    New Search

postposition.

An element, e.g. in Japanese, related to a noun phrase in the same way as a preposition, except that it comes after instead of before. Thus, schematically, ‘OF’ would be a postposition in [red house] OF ‘of the red house’; likewise ‘ON’ in [[[red house] OF] roof] ON ‘on the roof of the red house’. Though not usually so treated, the clitic-'s could be seen as a postposition in e.g. my friend's daughter, my friend in Washington's daughter.
A postpositional phrase is likewise the equivalent, with a postposition, of a prepositional phrase.

Back  -    New Search

potential.

(Mood, particle, etc.) indicating possibility or ability. E.g., schematically, You think-POTENTIAL that… ‘You might think that …’.

Back  -    New Search

power

= weak generative capacity. E.g. context-free grammars are more powerful than finite state grammars since any language that can be generated by a grammar of the latter type can also be generated by one of the former, but not vice versa.
Also, loosely, of rules. E.g. transformational rules are informally said to be ‘more powerful’ than phrase structure rules, or to be ‘too powerful’. That is, more or too many kinds of operation can be accomplished by them.

Back  -    New Search

PP

= prepositional phrase, postpositional phrase.

Back  -    New Search

pragmatic.

Treated as belonging to pragmatics. Thus a ‘pragmatic presupposition’ is a presupposition that does not fall under some restricted conception of semantics; pragmatic ambiguity is ambiguity that does not have to do with e.g. truth conditions.

Back  -    New Search

pragmatics.

Usually conceived as a branch of semantics concerned with the meanings that sentences have in particular contexts in which they are uttered. E.g. There's a car coming is seen as, out of context, a statement that a car is coming. But in a particular context it might be a warning to a pedestrian not to step onto a road, an expression of hope that people invited to a dinner are at last arriving, and so on. Hence, in particular, pragmatics is seen as the study of implicatures as opposed to ‘literal meanings’ or truth conditions of sentences.
Invented by C. W. Morris in the 1930s, for a branch of semiotics opposed to ‘syntax’, seen as concerned with relations among signs, and ‘semantics’, seen as concerned with relations between signs and their denotata. The field of pragmatics was in turn the relations between signs and their interpretants. Its use in linguistics dates from the 1970s and often depends, in practice, on the definition of a narrower field of meaning, e.g. one restricted to truth conditions, whose study pragmatics is then seen as supplementing.

Back  -    New Search

Prague School.

School of linguistics centred on the Prague Linguistic Circle. Recognizable as such from the late 1920s: its journal, Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague, was published from 1929 until the Second World War. Leading figures included two Russian émigrés, Trubetzkoy (in Vienna) and Jakobson (then in Brno), with Czechs of whom V. Mathesius was the senior.
United among structural linguists by an emphasis on the function of units: e.g. in phonology, on the role of phonemes in distinguishing and demarcating words; in syntax, on the role of sentence structure in context. Important in the 1930s above all for phonology, where ideas originating in this period are the source for later work especially by Jakobson and Martinet. A functional view of the sentence, fostered by Mathesius, was to lead in the 1950s to the theory of Functional Sentence Perspective.

Back  -    New Search

Prakrit.

See Sanskrit.

Back  -    New Search

pre-.

Before in time or position. E.g. a prevocalic consonant is one that comes before a vowel; a preterminal node in a tree diagram is one that immediately dominates a terminal node; the prelinguistic stage in a child's development is one which precedes the appearance of identifiable linguistic units.

Back  -    New Search

preaspiration.

The end of voice (1) in e.g. a vowel before the articulation of a following voiceless consonant. Thus [t] is preaspirated in e.g. [te] (where [] is a voiceless continuation of []) or [hte]: common e.g. in Scottish Gaelic or Icelandic.

Back  -    New Search

precative.

Indicating or constituting a direct request. Thus Please leave the room is precative in one classification of modality.

Back  -    New Search

pre-cyclic(al).

See cyclic(al) principle.

Back  -    New Search

predeterminer.

Used of an element seen as the first of a possible sequence of determiners. E.g. in her children the determiner is her. In both her children or all her children it is preceded by a predeterminer both or all. In all her many children it is also followed by a ‘postdeterminer’ many.
Also, at least potentially, of any determiner that comes before the element it ‘determines’.

Back  -    New Search

predicate.

1 A part of a clause or sentence traditionally seen as representing what is said of, or predicated of , the subject. E.g. in My wife bought a coat in London, the subject my wife refers to someone of whom it is said, in the predicate, that she bought a coat in London.

2 A verb or other unit which takes a set of arguments within a sentence. Thus, in the same example, ‘buy’ is a two-place predicate whose arguments are represented by my wife and a coat.
The senses are respectively from ancient and from modern logic. For sense (1) cf. verb phrase, but that is sometimes used of a smaller unit within the predicate. For sense (2) cf. predicator. But that is often used of the specific word in the construction (e.g. bought); moreover it is not used by logicians.
Top

Back  -    New Search

predicate calculus.

Branch of mathematical logic which deals with expressions containing predicates, arguments, and quantifiers. For quantifiers see existential quantifier, universal quantifier; for predicates and arguments cf. argument, predicate (2).

Back  -    New Search

predicate nominal.

A predicative noun or noun phrase: e.g. a friend in She is just a friend.

Back  -    New Search

predication.

The relation of either a predicate (1) to its subject, or of a predicate (2) to its arguments.

Back  -    New Search

‘predication theory’.

Usually of an account of predicates (2).

Back  -    New Search

predicative.

(Adjective, etc.) which forms part of a predicate (1) and has a direct semantic relation to the subject: e.g. angry is predicative in He is angry, the noun phrase a fool is predicative in He is a fool.
Predicative adjectives are distinguished from those standing in a relation of attribution. Thus angry is used predicatively in He is angry, but is attributive, or is used attributively, in e.g. angry customers.

Back  -    New Search

predicator.

An element in a clause that determines, wholly or in part, the other elements that its construction may or must have. Characteristically a verb: thus in I bought a present for Zoé the verb (‘buy’) is one that must have both a subject (I) and a direct object (a present), and allows a benefactive (for Zoé). Also, in many accounts, of predicative adjectives: e.g. mad is the predicator in She was mad at me.
Cf. predicate (2).

Back  -    New Search

predictive.

(Inflection, particle, etc.) marking a prediction. Thus is going to might be described as predictive in It's going to fall any minute.

Back  -    New Search

prefix.

An affix which comes before the form to which it is joined: e.g. un- in unkind. Prefixation is the process of adding a prefix, and a prefixal form is one either derived by prefixation or occupying the position of a prefix. Thus, in the first sense, unkind is a ‘prefixal negative’.

Back  -    New Search

premodifier.

In principle, any modifier that precedes its head. Specifically, an element in English which modifies and precedes a noun: e.g. good in good people, broken in a broken reed, or pond in pond life. Cf. postmodifier.

Back  -    New Search

prenasalized.

(Phonological unit) consisting of an oral consonant briefly preceded by the corresponding nasal. E.g. in the consonant written ‘nd’ in Swahili, the soft palate is initially lowered, with the back of the tongue in contact with it. After a brief interval the soft palate is raised: thus, with voicing, [nd]. Prenasalized stops, such as [nd], are common in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere; the term is also applied to phonologically single units in which a nasal briefly precedes a fricative.

Back  -    New Search

preparatory conditions.

One kind of felicity condition that a speech act has to meet if it is to be appropriate or successful. E.g. if A asks B to open the door the preparatory conditions are (a) that B is able to open it, and (b) that B is not going to open it of his own accord. Distinguished especially from sincerity conditions: e.g. it is a sincerity condition, in the same case, that A wants B to open the door.

Back  -    New Search

prepose.

To place before: sometimes, therefore, specifically of the fronting of elements in syntax.

Back  -    New Search

preposition.

A word or other syntactic element of a class whose members typically come before a noun phrase and which is characterized by ones which basically indicate spatial relations: e.g. on in on the mat, behind in behind the sofa, throughout in throughout Asia. Also on in e.g. on Saturday, on receipt, or on my honour, where the temporal and other senses are secondary. Also e.g. during in during August, although the temporal sense is basic.
One of the parts of speech, traditionally defined by its position. Hence postposition, of elements which are similar except that they come after a noun or noun phrase; also ‘adposition’, as a term which covers both.

Back  -    New Search

prepositional phrase (PP).

A phrase consisting of a preposition or sequence of prepositions followed by a noun phrase or the equivalent: e.g. by Monday, out of the kitchen. In recent accounts, the preposition is the head (2) of the phrase, and the noun, etc. its complement or object.
The precise application of this term depends on what is classed as a preposition and what as the equivalent of a noun phrase. E.g. after breakfast is a prepositional phrase; so, in some accounts, are after eating breakfast, since eating breakfast, or after I had eaten breakfast. Alternatively, the last in particular is a clause introduced by after in the role of a conjunction.

Back  -    New Search

prepositional verb.

A unit in English which is formed from a verb and a preposition or two prepositions which directly follow it: thus ‘care for’ in I didn't care for the soup, or ‘put up with’ in I put up with it for too long. Distinguished from phrasal verbs (2) e.g. because the verb and preposition cannot be separated: They backed the neighbours up, with the phrasal verb ‘back up’; but not They didn't care the neighbours for.

Back  -    New Search

preposition stranding.

Syntactic process by which a preposition in English is left without a following complement: e.g. to is stranded in the address (which) I sent it to.
The term ‘stranding’ could, in principle, be used more generally: i.e. preposition stranding would be merely one instance.

Back  -    New Search

prescriptive (1).

(Grammar, rule) which aims to ‘prescribe’ what is judged to be correct rather than to ‘describe’ actual usage. Hence, in practice, one that may defy usage: e.g. a rule in English by which it is incorrect to say It's him that will suffer, with ‘accusative’ him, instead of It's he that will suffer, with the ‘nominative’.
Opposed to one sense of descriptive (1).

Back  -    New Search

prescriptive (2).

(Inflection, etc.) indicating e.g. some arrangement that has been made. Thus, schematically, sit-PRESCR-3PL-here ‘They are to sit here’ or, in a question, sit-PRESCR-1SG? ‘Should I sit?’

Back  -    New Search

present.

See tense (1).

Back  -    New Search

presentational.

(Construction, particle, etc.) which introduces a topic or new topic of discourse. Thus the construction with there has a presentational role in e.g. There was a man who was following me yesterday. Also of forms such as French voici in the presentation e.g. of an individual: Voici mon ami ‘Here is my friend’.

Back  -    New Search

present participle.

1 A participle which is present in tense.

2 Conventionally of forms such as English walking or running, or, in English, such forms when they are not gerunds. Cf. -ing form.
Top

Back  -    New Search

present perfect.

See perfect.

Back  -    New Search

presequence.

Used in Conversation Analysis for a ‘turn’, or sequence of ‘turns’, seen as preliminary to some interchange. E.g. ‘Excuse me’ (said to a stranger in the street); ‘Morning’ (said to a shopkeeper); ‘Morning: what can I do for you today?’ (said by the shopkeeper in return).

Back  -    New Search

prestige.

In the ordinary sense, of languages, dialects, forms, etc. E.g. Standard English has greater prestige in England than a Midlands dialect; aren't I? or am I not? are prestige forms as compared with ain't I?
‘Overt’ prestige is often contrasted with ‘covert prestige’, by which a form overtly seen as less prestigious is the one in practice used or favoured.

Back  -    New Search

presupposition.

Relation between propositions by which a presupposes b if, for a to have a truth-value, b must be true. Thus, in one analysis, ‘The King of France is bald’ is neither true nor false unless the presupposed ‘There is a King of France’ is true. Term developed in philosophy by P. F. Strawson; thence into linguistics in the late 1960s, where used in ways increasingly closer to its ordinary sense, of sentences and of utterances instancing them. E.g. I'm sorry John is not here presupposes ‘John is not here’; also that this is known to an addressee or addressees. I apologize for calling you a communist presupposes that (in the belief of the speaker or the addressee or both) being a communist is bad, and so on.
Distinctions were commonly drawn between ‘semantic presuppositions’ , e.g. of ‘The King of France is bald’ or of the sentence The King of France is bald, and ‘pragmatic presuppositions’ which either held in particular contexts or otherwise fell outside a restricted definition of semantics. In Generative Semantics the presuppositions of sentences were an important part of their semantic representations.

Back  -    New Search

preterite

= past tense. Usually used to distinguish the simple past in Modern European languages (e.g. took) from periphrastic forms such as the present perfect (e.g. has taken) or past imperfect (was takig).

Back  -    New Search

pretheoretical.

(Term, etc.) not or not yet defined in a specific theoretical system. E.g. one might refer to the number of languages spoken in Europe, or identify a sentence in a text, using ‘language’ and ‘sentence’ in pretheoretical senses which do not rest, or have to rest, on formal explications of what languages or sentences are. A pretheoretical observation is similarly one which is made ahead of any theory which is proposed e.g. to account for it.

Back  -    New Search

prevarication.

Deviation from what is correct: hence, as a term for a proposed design feature of language, of the potential for speakers to tell lies; cf. displacement.

Back  -    New Search

preverb.

An element which comes before the root of a verb and forms a lexical unit with it. E.g. re- in remake, pre- in precook; Latin de- in desino ‘I desist’; German ein- in einlassen ‘to let in’.
Typically of elements like these that are not straightforward prefixes. Thus re- and pre- have levels of stress ([,ri:'mek], [,pri:'kk]) higher than those in e.g. recall or precede. De- in Latin is effectively a preposition (de ‘down from’) forming the first member of a compound. Forms like ein- in German are attached to the verb in some constructions and separated from it in others. It is perhaps for this last case that the term is most useful.

Back  -    New Search

primary

(in syntax) . See ranks (1).

Back  -    New Search

primary articulation.

1 See secondary articulation (1).

2 See double articulation (1).
Top

Back  -    New Search

primary cardinal vowels.

See cardinal vowels.

Back  -    New Search

‘primary linguistic data’.

Used by Chomsky in the 1960s of the utterances heard by and of other external sources of information available to a child as a basis for the development of language.

Back  -    New Search

primary stress (').

The main stress in a word, as opposed to any subsidiary or secondary stress. E.g. in characteristic the primary stress is on -ris-; there is also a secondary stress on cha-: in phonetic notation [,karkt'rstk].

Back  -    New Search

primitive.

(Unit, etc.) from which others are derived but which is itself underived. E.g. words like fish or man are traditionally primitive words, while fishy or manliness are derived words. Often = element (1): e.g. the morpheme is the primitive unit, or is a primitive, in many accounts of grammar; a semantic feature is primitive in many accounts of meaning: i.e. neither is derived from simpler elements at the same level of representation.
In formal systems, primitives are a set of undefined terms on the basis of which all other terms are defined.

Back  -    New Search

principal parts.

A small set of forms within a large paradigm, chosen in such a way that all the others can be predicted from them. Thus, in Latin, the principal parts of a verb are traditionally the first-person singular of the present indicative (e.g. capio ‘I take’), the corresponding infinitive (capere ‘to take’), the first-person singular of the perfect indicative (cepi ‘I took’), and the supine (captum); from the last one can predict the past and the future participles, from the third all other perfect forms, from the first two all the remainder.

Back  -    New Search

principle.

Usually of a general principle of language, grammar, etc. which is hypothetically valid for all languages, as opposed to a rule which is formulated for a particular language. Hence in any theory of universal grammar specific rules (e.g. a rule for reflexives in English) are reduced to general principles (e.g. a principle applying to reflexives in any language) as far as possible.

Back  -    New Search

principle of least effort.

Principle by which, it is claimed, speakers do not exert themselves more than is necessary for successful communication. Hence, in particular, a principle of ease of articulation : thus if voiceless consonants change to voiced between vowels, the reason, it is argued, is that in articulating the sequence greater effort would be required to alter the posture of the vocal cords. Also invoked e.g. in pragmatics: thus if a speaker says ‘I haven't’, leaving the rest to be understood from the context, it is because, it is argued, the ellipsis is more economical.

Back  -    New Search

Principles and Parameters Theory.

The theory of universal grammar (2) developed by Chomsky from the early 1980s onwards. The version which was current in the 1980s is generally known as Government and Binding Theory.

Back  -    New Search

Priscian

(5th–6th century AD)
. Grammarian of Latin, working in Constantinople. Heavily influenced by Apollonius Dyscolus, whose scholarship he praised. His main work, the Institutiones Grammaticae or ‘Principles of Grammar’, is a large-scale survey of the properties and inflections of the individual parts of speech followed by two parts (traditionally called the ‘Priscianus minor’) on syntax. It had a major influence on linguistic thought in medieval Europe.

Back  -    New Search

private verb.

A verb such as think or see, which refers to a mental activity or sensation of which an external observer will not be directly aware. Partly distinguished in English by their grammar: e.g. verbs like see will normally be used with can (I can see it) where others might be progressive or simple present (I am reading it, I read it).

Back  -    New Search

privative.

1 (Opposition) between marked and unmarked phonemes which are distinguished by the presence or absence of some phonetic feature: e.g. between a voiced consonant or a long vowel, seen as having the feature of voice (1) or of length, and a voiceless consonant or a short vowel, seen as lacking it. Opp. equipollent.

2 = negative. Thus a negative prefix a(n)- is called ‘privative’ in Ancient Greek: e.g. in an-áxios ‘un-worthy’.
Top

Back  -    New Search

privilege of occurrence.

Used by Bloomfield and others of the distribution of a syntactic unit relative to larger constructions. E.g. the privilege of occurrence of him includes those of following a preposition like to in the construction of a prepositional phrase, of following a verb like saw in that of a verb phrase, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

pro [pr].

A phonetically null element present, according to Government and Binding Theory, whenever a finite verb has no apparent subject. E.g. Italian Vengono ‘They are coming’ has ‘pro’ as its subject: pro vengono.
One of a set of so-called empty categories: called ‘little pro’ to distinguish it from PRO.

Back  -    New Search

PRO [pr].

A phonetically null element posited by Government and Binding Theory in constructions where a non-finite verb has no overt subject. E.g. in She wanted to leave, PRO is said to be the subject of to leave: She wanted [PRO to leave]. Likewise e.g. of eating in [PRO eating people] is wrong.
One of a set of so-called empty categories: called ‘big PRO’ to distinguish it from pro.

Back  -    New Search

pro-.

See pro-form.

Back  -    New Search

process.

In its general sense: also specifically of any operation established in the grammar of a language by which a form a, as represented at a particular level of description, is derived from another form b, also at that level. Thus, in many accounts, a representation of a passive sentence is derived by a syntactic process, or process at the level of syntax, from that of a corresponding active. Similarly, the past tense sang may be derived, by a morphological process, from sing.
Hence a distinction in particular between historical processes (in the general sense) e.g. of sound-change and synchronic processes (in the specific sense) by which phonological or other elements are seen as interchanged within the language system as established at a specific stage.

Back  -    New Search

proclitic.

A clitic attached phonologically to the word which follows: e.g. lo ‘it’ in Italian lo faccio ‘I'm doing it’ (phonologically [lo'fatto]). Opp. enclitic.

Back  -    New Search

prodelision.

Process by which a vowel at the beginning of a word is lost after a vowel at the end of the word preceding. The reverse of elision.

Back  -    New Search

‘pro-drop’.

See null-subject parameter.

Back  -    New Search

productivity.

The property of permitting novel combinations of elements. Often referred to as a design feature of language in general: thus it is possible for any speaker to combine words into a sentence that they have neither spoken nor heard before. Also of specific rules, formations, or constructions: e.g. the formation of adjectives in -able is productive in that speakers can readily create new ones (Is it climb-up- able?, It's not vacuum-able, etc.).

Back  -    New Search

pro-form.

Any form, such as a pronoun, that is treated as ‘standing for’ another form whose meaning can be understood. In She came, who she refers to will be understood from the context in which it is uttered: in that sense, it ‘stands for’ a form that would be more explicit (Jane, the girl in the red dress, etc.). Similarly, in Jane wants a red one, a pro-form one ‘stands for’ a noun (a red dress, or a red car); in Jane said so, a pro-form so ‘stands for’ a form like that she would come.
Generalized from ‘pro-noun’. A form like so in Jane said so, since it stands for an embedded sentence, may likewise be described as a pro-sentence , one ‘standing for’ a verb phrase a ‘pro-VP’ , and so on.

Back  -    New Search

progressive (PROG).

Feature of verbal forms used to refer to actions, etc. seen as in progress without necessary time limits. E.g. am reading is present progressive in I am reading your book, was reading past progressive in I was reading your book. More generally, the progressive in English is marked by a construction in which a form of the auxiliary ‘be’ (am, was, etc.) is linked to an -ing form.
Also called ‘continuous’ . The distinction between progressive and non-progressive (I am reading vs. I read) is one of aspect.

Back  -    New Search

progressive assimilation.

Assimilation in which elements are changed to match features of elements that precede them. E.g. the ending -s is voiced [z] in words like sees [si:z], but in writes or weeps it is assimilated to the preceding voiceless consonant ([rts], [wi:ps]).
Opp. regressive assimilation. The sense is that of features, such as voicelessness, being projected forwards or persisting: hence also called ‘perseverative’ , as in corresponding accounts of coarticulation; also referred to as a ‘lag’, again in the sense that a feature does not shut off instantly.

Back  -    New Search

prohibitive.

(Inflection, particle, etc.) indicating a prohibition: e.g. Latin ne is prohibitive in ne metuas (PROHIB fear-PRESSUBJ-2SG) ‘Don't be afraid’. Often described as ‘negative imperative’.

Back  -    New Search

projection of X.

Phrase headed by an X. E.g. in [the [book on the table]], if so analysed, the phrases within brackets are headed by a noun (N) and so are projections of N. The largest projection of X is the maximal projection.

Back  -    New Search

projection principle.

Principle in Government and Binding Theory by which the range of elements with which a lexical unit combines are projected from the lexicon as restrictions on syntactic structures that contain it. E.g. put takes an object noun phrase and a locative phrase: put [the book] [on the shelf]. These requirements will be specified by its entry in a lexicon. So, by the projection principle, any syntactic structure in which put appears must, at whatever level, have elements that satisfy them.
Just as a lexical unit restricts the structures that can contain it, so a structure itself is possible only if there are lexical units that allow (or license) it. E.g. the construction with an object and a locative (put the book on the shelf) exists precisely because there are verbs such as put that take it. Therefore there is no need to specify it or other such constructions independently of the individual entries in the lexicon.
See also extended projection principle.

Back  -    New Search

‘projection rules’.

Rules proposed by J. J. Katz and colleagues in the 1960s by which the semantic representations of sentences were derived from the representations of words by a repeated process of amalgamation.

Back  -    New Search

prolepsis

[pr'li:pss]. Any construction in which a phrase, etc. is construed with an element earlier than the one to which it is logically related. E.g. -n't might be described as proleptic in I didn't think he would come; compare I thought he would not come.
Usually of Latin or Ancient Greek. E.g. me ‘me’ is a proleptic accusative in Scis me (‘You-know me-ACC’) in quibus sim gaudiis (‘how happy I am’).

Back  -    New Search

prominent.

Standing out for whatever reason. Thus especially of accented syllables which may stand out e.g. in their pitch, in their duration, in vowel quality, in loudness, or in any combination of these.
Hence prominence sometimes = accent (1) or stress.

Back  -    New Search

promissive.

Indicating or constituting a promise: thus will can be promissive e.g. in I will certainly help.

Back  -    New Search

promotion.

Syntactic process by which the role of an element is changed to one that is seen as higher on some scale or hierarchy of functions. E.g. the role of subject is seen as higher than that of a direct object; cf. NP accessibility hierarchy. Accordingly, a change of active to passive will promote a direct object (this letter in Mary wrote this letter) to the subject position (this letter in This letter was written by Mary).
Also called ‘advancement’ . The opposite process is demotion or ‘retreat’ . Thus, in the same example, the subject of the active construction (Mary) is demoted to an oblique element (by Mary) in the passive.

Back  -    New Search

pronominal.

Of or belonging to the class of pronouns (Latin pronomina). Both ‘pronoun’ and the feature [+ pronominal] are used in Government and Binding Theory of noun phrases, including some pronouns in the usual sense, that cannot have an antecedent within a specified syntactic domain.

Back  -    New Search

pronominalization.

The replacement of a noun phrase by a pronoun, conceived as a syntactic process. Thus in transformational grammars John hurt himself was at first seen as derived from John hurt John, with the replacement of the second John by himself. ‘Backward pronominalization’ is the case in which the pronoun then stands in a relation of cataphora.

Back  -    New Search

pronominal verb

= reflexive verb.

Back  -    New Search

pronoun (Pron).

An element of a class whose members typically form noun phrases whose meaning is minimally specified. E.g. she is a pronoun which, of itself, does no more than identify its referent as a single person or thing which is or is classed or conceived as female.
Traditionally said to ‘stand for’ nouns or noun phrases. E.g. in She came, the pronoun stands for any of the more specific expressions Lucienne, Marilyn Monroe, the girl in the corner, etc. Hence defined, partly but not wholly by that criterion, as one of the ancient parts of speech. Cf. pro-form: but N.B. (a) that term tends to be used only of elements that are anaphoric; (b) a noun phrase may be anaphoric (e.g. the idiot in I signalled to Bill but the idiot didn't see me), but not thereby a pronoun.

Back  -    New Search

proparoxytone [prpa'rkstn].

A word, originally one in Ancient Greek, which has an (acute) accent on the third syllable from the end. Cf. oxytone; paroxytone.

Back  -    New Search

proper.

In a strict or true sense. E.g. a proper noun is traditionally a ‘proper name’, or name in the strict sense; proper inclusion is inclusion in the true sense, as opposed to identity; if by a definition of constituency each phrase is a constituent of itself, any smaller unit is a ‘proper constituent’; if each node in a tree diagram is defined as dominating itself, the relation between it and any genuinely lower node is one of ‘proper dominance’.

Back  -    New Search

proper noun.

Noun which is the name of a specific individual or of a set of individuals distinguished only by their having that name: e.g. the name Mary as applied to specific girls, or London as applied to one or more specific cities. Opp. common noun.

Back  -    New Search

proportional analogy.

Any pattern in which a differs in form and meaning from b as c differs from d: in notation, a: b = c: d. The creation of such proportions is one factor in analogy as a process of language change.
‘Proportion’ is in origin the Latin word that corresponded to Greek analogía.

Back  -    New Search

proportional opposition.

One which is paralleled by others. E.g. within a correlation of voicing, an opposition between [t] and [d] is proportional to similar oppositions between [p] and [b], [k] and [g], etc. Opp. isolated opposition.

Back  -    New Search

proposition.

Whatever is seen as expressed by a sentence which makes a statement. Hence, for example, the same proposition might be said to be expressed by both I understand French and, in Italian, Capisco il francese. It is a property of propositions that they have truth values. Thus this proposition would have the value ‘true’ if the speaker did understand French and the value ‘false’ if the speaker did not.
The ‘propositional content’ of a sentence is that part of its meaning which is seen, in some accounts, as reducible to a proposition. E.g. The porters had shut the gates, The gates had been shut by the porters, Had the porters shut the gates?, If only the porters had shut the gates! would be said to have the same propositional content, though in other respects their meanings differ.

Back  -    New Search

propositional calculus.

Branch of mathematical logic in which propositions are treated as unanalysed wholes. E.g. let p be one proposition and q be another: by the definition of an operator &, p & q is true if and only if both p is true and q is true.
Propositions are analysed in the predicate calculus.

Back  -    New Search

prop-word

= dummy.

Back  -    New Search

proscribe.

To condemn as e.g. contrary to a rule. Thus prescriptive grammars of English tend to proscribe the use of like in He did it like I did it, on the grounds that like is an adjective and not a conjunction.

Back  -    New Search

pro-sentence.

See pro-form.

Back  -    New Search

prosodic features.

Stress, pitch, and length, seen as phonetic features e.g. in the scheme of Chomsky and Halle, SPE.

Back  -    New Search

Prosodic Phonology.

Account of phonology developed by Firth and his followers, and distinguished from others by two main features. One is the polysystemic principle, by which the system of contrasts at one point in a syllabic or other structure is established independently of those obtaining at others. E.g. in a CVC structure (consonant + vowel + consonant), one system is said to operate at the first ‘C’ position, another at the second. The other is the role of prosodies in accounting for interdependencies between successive places in a structure. E.g. in a VC structure a single prosodic contrast might be realized by a longer vowel plus a partly voiced consonant (e.g. -ag in lag) vs. a shorter vowel with the consonant voiceless (e.g. -ack in lack). In the final analysis, the linear structure can itself be seen as an aspect of realization: thus the C in a VC structure is there precisely because there are contrasting units wholly or partly realized in that way.
Prosodic Phonology did not develop further after Firth's death in 1960, and later theories of non-linear phonology were at first conceived independently.

Back  -    New Search

prosody.

Traditionally, the study of metres in verse. Usually, in linguistics, of rhythm and intonation in speech: e.g. the contour of an intonation, as falling, rising, etc., is a prosodic contour.
In Prosodic Phonology, a prosody is an abstract unit which is realized, or potentially realized, at two or more different places in a linear structure. Thus in some dialects of Spanish a final [h] is associated e.g. with a relative lowering of an unstressed back vowel: ['lißrh] (libros) ‘books’ vs. ['lißr] (libro) ‘book’. Hence both features may be said to realize a single prosodic contrast, between say an ‘H’ prosody, in libros, and a ‘non-H’ prosody, in libro.

Back  -    New Search

prospective.

(Aspect, etc.) indicating something that is about to happen. E.g., schematically, explode-PROSP-it ‘It will explode any second’.

Back  -    New Search

protasis ['prtss].

The conditional clause in a conditional sentence: e.g. if I had money in If I had money, I would buy it. The term was also the word in Ancient Greek for a premiss.

Back  -    New Search

prothetic [pr'tk].

(Vowel, etc.) that has developed historically at the beginning of a word. E.g. the e of establish is in origin a prothetic vowel in Old French establir, from Latin stabilire.

Back  -    New Search

protoform.

A form reconstructed as belonging to a protolanguage. Cf. etymon.

Back  -    New Search

protolanguage.

An unattested language from which a group of attested languages are taken to be historically derived. Thus Proto-Indo-European is the protolanguage posited as a source for all the Indo-European languages, Proto-Germanic the source for English and the other Germanic languages, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

prototype theory.

Theory of word meaning according to which meanings are identified, in part at least, by characteristic instances of whatever class of objects, etc. a word denotes. E.g. people think of song-birds, such as a robin, as having more of the central character of a bird than others, such as ducks, falcons, or ostriches. In that sense, a robin or the like is a prototypical instance, or prototype , of a bird. But birds are the denotation of bird. So, it is argued, the meaning of bird should in turn be identified by its prototype: ‘robins and the like in the first instance, plus other species that, to varying degrees, share some of their character’.
Prototype theories are often linked with the view that denotations have no precise limits: e.g. bats are merely less ‘robin-like’ than ducks, and so on. A notion of prototypes has also been applied to other aspects of language. E.g. green is a ‘prototypical’ adjective, while asleep, with its more restricted syntax, is marginal; the ‘prototypical’ meaning of the interrogative construction is in asking questions; and so on.

Back  -    New Search

‘Proto-World’.

Conjectural protolanguage from which, according to some applications of mass comparison, all later languages have developed.

Back  -    New Search

Provençal.

See Occitan.

Back  -    New Search

pro-verb.

A pro-form standing for a verb or verb phrase: e.g. did so in When I was asked to help I did so, seen as standing for (I) did help.

Back  -    New Search

‘proxemics’.

Term invented in the 1950s for the study of the role played in communication by the degree of physical distance between speakers.

Back  -    New Search

proximal.

(Demonstrative, etc.) whose basic role is to identify someone or something as closer to, rather than remote from, the speaker: e.g. this in this side of the street as opposed to distal that in that side of the street.
‘Proximate’ and ‘proximative’ are used in the same sense.

Back  -    New Search

proximative (PROX)

. See obviative.

Back  -    New Search

Prt

= particle.

Back  -    New Search

‘pruning’.

A process by which specific nodes were eliminated from a phrase structure tree if, by another process, branches originating from them had been removed or deleted. In vogue especially in the late 1960s.

Back  -    New Search

pseudo-.

As pseudo-cleft: i.e. like a cleft but not one. Thus an adjective to which elements such as pronouns can be related has been described as a ‘pseudo-adjective’ : e.g. British in the British argument that they (i.e. the British) are neutral. The construction of e.g. John is reading, where read is a verb that can also take an object, has been described as ‘pseudo-intransitive’ ; a passive like It has not been sat in, where it does not correspond to an object in the active, as ‘pseudo-passive’ ; the apparent relative clause in There is someone who wants to see you as an example of a ‘pseudo-relative clause’ , and so on.

Back  -    New Search

pseudo-cleft.

(Construction) of e.g. What I want is my supper: cf. cleft. Typically of sentences in which the subject of the copula (is) is a free relative clause (What I want). But also, in some usage, of others similar in form and function: e.g. All I want is my supper, The reason is that I am hungry. A ‘reversed pseudo-cleft’ is e.g. My supper is what I want.
Examples like the first are also described as wh-clefts .

Back  -    New Search

PSG

= phrase structure grammar.

Back  -    New Search

PS-rule

= phrase structure rule.

Back  -    New Search

psycholinguistics.

Any study of language in or from the viewpoint of psychology. Applied since the 1960s to two main fields: the empirical study of the development of language in children (‘developmental psycholinguistics’ ); and the investigation through experiments of the psychological mechanisms for the production and understanding of speech (‘experimental psycholinguistics’ ).

Back  -    New Search

‘psychological reality’.

The reality of a grammar, etc. as a purported account of structures represented in the mind of a speaker. Often opposed, in discussion of the merits of alternative grammars, to criteria of simplicity, elegance, and internal consistency.

Back  -    New Search

psychological subject.

An element seen as a ‘subject’ in that, like many subjects in the usual sense, it identifies who or what a sentence is about. E.g. on Monday in On Monday it will be my birthday, seen as a statement about Monday.
Opp. grammatical subject, logical subject. A term from the late 19th century: cf. theme (1) or topic (2), which have effectively replaced it.

Back  -    New Search

pulmonic.

(Air stream or airstream mechanism) in which a flow is initiated by a change in the volume of the lungs. Most normal speech is produced by such an air stream, specifically by a pulmonic egressive air stream, in which air flows outwards as the volume of the lungs is reduced.

Back  -    New Search

punctual.

(Aspect) marking an action, etc. taking place at an undivided moment of time: e.g. that of woke in I woke up at 5.00 this morning.

Back  -    New Search

Punic.

The form of Phoenician spoken in ancient Carthage.

Back  -    New Search

Punjabi.

Indo-Aryan, spoken in the Punjab provinces of Pakistan and India; also through emigration in Britain and elsewhere. Like Hindi-Urdu, it is written differently by adherents of different religions: by Muslims in an Arabic script derived from that of Persian; by Sikhs in Gurmukhi, developed from other Indian scripts as a vehicle for the Sikh scriptures; by Hindus in Gurmukhi or Devanagari. A distinct literary language from the 11th century.

Back  -    New Search

pure vowel.

A vowel with no perceptible change in quality from beginning to end: e.g. the [i:] of meat in the pronunciation of some English speakers, as distinct from [i], etc. in others. Cf. monophthong.

Back  -    New Search

purism.

Any movement, etc. to protect the supposed ‘purity’ of a language, e.g. by seeking to remove or prevent the introduction of loan words, or to prevent the spread of internal changes or stylistic tendencies judged to be ‘corruptions’. French attitudes to ‘Franglais’ illustrate one classic pattern.

Back  -    New Search

‘purport’.

Hjelmslev's term in English (Danish mening) for factors common to the substance, of content or of expression, in all languages: e.g. in his example, the ‘thought’ common to English I do not know, French je ne sais pas, Danish jeg véd det ikke, etc.

Back  -    New Search

purposive.

(Construction, etc.) used to indicate an aim or purpose: e.g. to see my mother is purposive in I went home to see my mother. Cf. final, telic; but ‘purposive’ is now more usual.

Back  -    New Search

push chain.

See chain shift.

Back  -    New Search

Q

Q-Celtic.

Branch of Celtic that did not undergo the change by which, in P-Celtic, Indo-European kw became p. Represented in the modern period by the ‘Goidelic’ languages (Irish and Scottish Gaelic).

Back  -    New Search

quadrisyllabic.

Having four syllables. A word such as dictatorship is thus a quadrisyllable .

Back  -    New Search

qualifier.

The semantic role characteristic of an element that in syntax stands in a relation of modification (1): e.g. in heavy furniture the modifier heavy qualifies furniture; in sang sweetly the modifier sweetly qualifies sang. Hence also = modifier.

Back  -    New Search

quality.

1 See vowel quality.

2 See maxims of conversation.
Top

3 Ancient term (Latin qualitas) for the property of being of one sort rather than another. Thus the traditional ‘qualities’ or sorts of nouns are proper nouns, common nouns, etc.
Top

Back  -    New Search

quantal.

Characterized by distinct steps as opposed to continuous variation. Applied to the acoustics of speech in work by K. N. Stevens from the early 1970s: thus, in particular, [i] [u] [a] are quantal vowels , in whose production precise and distinct acoustic signals, as described by the patterning of formants (1), can be achieved by variations in the size of the corresponding resonating chambers that are themselves imprecise.

Back  -    New Search

quantified.

(Noun phrase, pronoun) which includes a quantifier (2): e.g. all people, everyone.

Back  -    New Search

quantifier.

1 Any word or expression which gives a relative or indefinite indication of quantity. E.g. many in many children or few in the few children who came: distinguished as such from a numeral, which gives a precise and absolute indication of quantity, e.g. in the three children who came. Applied by Quirk et al., CGE, specifically to elements, such as many or few, that, with numerals, have the position in a noun phrase of a postdeterminer.

2 An operator in logic such as the existential quantifier (?) and the universal quantifier (?). Thence, in linguistics, of a class of determiners such as some, no, all, or most, characterized by ones whose meaning can be represented by expressions containing such an operator. E.g. that of all in All birds fly can be shown by the universal quantifier in an expression (?x) (bird (x) fly (x)) ‘For all x, if x is a bird, then x flies’; that of no in No snakes fly with the existential quantifier in ~(?x) (snake (x) & fly (x)) ‘There exists no x, such that x is a snake and x flies’.
Sense 2 is now more usual, at least in theoretical work. But confusion can arise quite easily. See also generalized quantifier.
Top

Back  -    New Search

quantifier floating.

Proposed syntactic process by which a quantifier (2) is detached from its phrase. E.g. in Birds can all fly, the quantifier all is seen as having ‘floated’ from its position as a determiner in All birds can fly.

Back  -    New Search

‘quantifier raising’.

Proposed movement, in Government and Binding Theory, of an expression with a quantifier (2) into a position in Logical Form outside the sentence unit to which it belongs in D-structure. E.g. of someone in I love someone to its position in [someone [I love t]], from which it then ‘binds’ its trace (t).

Back  -    New Search

quantity.

1 Variously of the length of vowels and of the distinction between heavy syllables and light syllables, especially with reference to their role in verse in Latin and other older Indo-European languages.

2 See maxims of conversation.
Top

Back  -    New Search

Quechua(n).

Language (Quechua) or family of closely related languages (Quechuan) spoken in large parts of the Andes, from the south of Colombia to the north of Argentina. Widespread over the Inca empire when it was conquered in the 16th century and, though losing some speakers to Spanish, still expanding at the expense of other indigenous languages. Not securely assigned to any larger family.

Back  -    New Search

‘queclarative’.

An utterance which has the form of an interrogative (or ‘question’) but the force of a statement (or ‘declarative’): e.g. ‘What use is that?’, meaning that it is no use.

Back  -    New Search

question.

See interrogative. A question marker is e.g. a particle that distinguishes a sentence as interrogative, a syntactic process which forms an interrogative construction is one of question formation , and so on.

Back  -    New Search

question mark (?).

Used e.g. to register doubt as to whether a form is grammatical: thus ?It has been being built for ages (if the grammarian's judgement is that this is not fully acceptable); ?It has been being built for ages (if judged to be even more doubtful).

Back  -    New Search

Quirk, Charles Randolph

(1920– ).
Grammarian of English, founder of the Survey of English Usage and the leading author, with S. Greenbaum, G. Leech, and J. Svartvik, of two influential grammars, A Grammar of Contemporary English (1972) and its successor, A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (CGE), in 1985.

Back  -    New Search

quotative.

(Particle, inflection) indicating that what is said has been heard from someone else and is not based on direct observation: e.g., schematically, he QUOT is rich ‘It is said, I have been told that he is rich’. Opposed to other evidential elements.

Back  -    New Search

quotes (‘ ’).

See inverted commas.

Back  -    New Search

R

radical.

1 Of, in, etc. a root (1).

2 One of a set of smaller elements, corresponding to semantic categories, into which characters in Chinese writing are analysed and by which they are classified and grouped in dictionaries.
Top

3 (Sound) articulated with the root or ‘radix’ of the tongue: i.e. with the back as opposed to the upper surface. Also taken to include sounds articulated with the epiglottis.
Top

Back  -    New Search

raising (1).

Change or process by which a vowel is articulated with the tongue closer to the roof of the mouth. Thus, in the history of English, the vowel of beet was raised, as part of the Great Vowel Shift, from [e:] to [i:]. Opp. lowering.

Back  -    New Search

raising (2).

A syntactic process by which a noun phrase or other element is moved from a subordinate clause into the structure of the larger clause that includes it. E.g. in I believe him to be honest what is believed is ‘He is honest’; therefore, at one level, him is claimed to be the subject of a clause marked by the infinitive: I believe [him to be honest]. But its form is that of an object, as in the simple sentence I believe him. Therefore, it is claimed, the pronoun must be raised to that position in the main clause: I believe him [to be honest].
The example given is one of ‘raising to object’: i.e. of a postulated raising to object position. ‘Raising to subject’ is posited, for partly similar reasons, in e.g. He seems to be honest (from It seems [he is honest] or [He is honest] seems). For other instances see negative raising, tough-movement; cf. also clause union, clitic climbing. The term ‘raising’ is often used even by those who believe that this treatment itself is wrong, especially in distinguishing ‘raising to object’ and ‘raising to subject’, with raising verbs, from constructions said to involve relations of control.

Back  -    New Search

raising verb.

One which takes the kind of construction for which raising (2) is posited: e.g. believe in I believe him to be honest, or seem in He seems to be honest, as opposed, in particular, to a control verb (or ‘Equi verb’) such as ask in I asked him to be honest or want in He wants to be honest.

Back  -    New Search

Rajasthani.

A group of Indo-Aryan languages of which Marwari , centred in the Indian state of Rajasthan, is the most important. Also = Marwari specifically.

Back  -    New Search

ranks.

1 Jespersen's term for successive levels of subordination or dependency. E.g. in the junction very cold water, water has the highest rank and is a primary ; cold has the next highest and is a secondary ; very has the lowest and is a tertiary . Jespersen emphasized that the hierarchy of ranks is independent of word classes or parts of speech. E.g. a substantive (noun) is primary in this example, but in silk dresses a substantive is secondary; in the poor the adjective poor is primary, and so on. The ranks are also distinguished in a predication (Jespersen's nexus): e.g. He (primary) writes (secondary) dreadfully (tertiary).

2 Halliday's term for successively larger grammatical units. E.g. in My brother came on Saturday, the successive words are units of one rank; the successive phrases (in Halliday's account my brother, came, and on Saturday) are units of the rank above that; above that, in turn, the whole is a clause; above that, it is also a sentence. Rank-shifting is the process by which a unit may form part of a larger unit either of its own or of a lower rank: e.g. in the dance on Saturday, on Saturday is a rank-shifted phrase which is part of a larger phrase; in the dance which you promised, which you promised is similarly a rank-shifted clause. Also called, more specifically, ‘downward rank-shifting’ .
Top

Back  -    New Search

rapid speech.

Usually of speech distinguished by phonetic modifications not found or found to a lesser degree in slower or more careful speech. The forms resulting are allegro forms.

Back  -    New Search

Rask, Rasmus

(1787–1832)
. Danish linguist, the author of several grammars, whose work on the comparative phonology and morphology of European languages stands at the threshold of the development of the comparative grammar of Indo-European. Notable especially for an early formulation of what was to become known, with less justice, as Grimm's Law.

Back  -    New Search

rate.

Used technically of the speed, measured e.g. in syllables per second, with which speech is produced. Also called ‘tempo’ .

Back  -    New Search

rationalism.

The philosophical doctrine that knowledge is based on reason rather than on the experience of the senses: opposed in that sense to empiricism. Invoked by Chomsky in the 1960s in arguing for specific factors other than the input from sense experience in a child's acquisition of language.

Back  -    New Search

‘reading’.

Used in the 1960s of one way of understanding an ambiguous expression. E.g. I cooked his goose has two ‘readings’, one when understood literally, the other as an idiom.

Back  -    New Search

readjustment rule.

Any of a series of rules of various sorts introduced into the theory of transformational grammar by Chomsky and Halle, SPE. According to the theory, the surface structures derived by syntactic transformations were given a phonetic interpretation by rules of phonology. But they were not in all respects interpretable directly: e.g. some boundaries between syntactic units did not correspond to those of phonological units. Therefore rules were required to ‘readjust’ them.

Back  -    New Search

ready-made.

(Sentence) seen as a fixed expression, as opposed to one created freely by speakers on specific occasions. Hence of many more or less ritual utterances: Have a nice day!, Mind your backs!, The more the merrier, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

real.

Occasionally as the opposite of ‘unreal’: e.g. if he comes is or expresses a ‘real’ condition, as opposed to the ‘unreal’ or remote condition in if he came. Latin ‘realis’ has been used similarly in opposition to irrealis.

Back  -    New Search

realism.

The doctrine in philosophy that universals have a real existence, over and above the individual entities that they subsume. Plato's theory of forms or ‘ideas’ is characteristic. Distinguished in the Middle Ages from the opposite doctrine of nominalism.

Back  -    New Search

realistic.

In its ordinary sense: hence used e.g. of a grammar claimed to satisfy criteria of psychological reality.

Back  -    New Search

realization.

The relation between the representation of a form at one level of abstraction and its representation at another more abstract level. E.g. the word children might be represented at one level by the grammatical units ‘child’ and ‘plural’; at a lower or less abstract level, these would be realized by the phonetic form ['tldrn].

Back  -    New Search

reanalysis

= restructuring. Used especially of a posited change in syntax by which forms are reassigned to different constituents or to different categories. Thus, in one account, the construction of I said [that he left], where that is a conjunction introducing a subordinate clause, is said to derive from an earlier construction in which that was a pronoun to which a subordinate sentence was juxtaposed: I said that [he left].

Back  -    New Search

reason.

(Adverbial, clause, conjunction) indicating a reason: e.g. because or because he was happy in He smiled because he was happy.

Back  -    New Search

rebus principle.

The principle by which, in some systems of writing, symbols representing one or more words are combined to represent another word which is similar in sound. Suppose that English eye [] were represented by a single character <eye>, and deer [d] by a single character <deer>; then, by the rebus principle, idea [d] might be represented by the combination <eye><deer>.

Back  -    New Search

‘Received Pronunciation’ (RP).

An accent of English identified by (Daniel) Jones as characteristic of educated speakers in the south of Britain. Still one form of Southern British English: a variety reflecting changes since the period in which Jones described it is sometimes called ‘Advanced Received Pronunciation’ or ‘Advanced RP’ .

Back  -    New Search

recessive.

(Accent) which falls as early (i.e. as far back in a unit) as possible. Thus, in the structure of the word in Ancient Greek, the accent could in principle fall on any of the last three syllables. In a verb form such as eléipomen ‘we were leaving’ it is ‘thrown back’ to the earliest position that it is allowed.

Back  -    New Search

recipient.

Semantic role of a word or phrase which identifies an individual or individuals receiving something: e.g. that of me in They gave me a ticket, or of I in I received a ticket.
Usually distinguished as a notional case role from the dative as a morphological case partly corresponding to it.

Back  -    New Search

reciprocal.

(Pronoun, inflection, etc.) indicating that an action or process is reciprocated by participants. E.g. each other is reciprocal, or a reciprocal, in Mary and Jane like each other: i.e. Mary likes Jane and Jane likes Mary.

Back  -    New Search

reconstruction.

The formulation of hypotheses about the form that words or other units had in a period earlier than that in which they are attested. E.g. English have and German hab- (in haben) are derived from the same form in the protolanguage common to languages of the Germanic family. Neither it nor any other word of the protolanguage is known from direct evidence. But by inference from the findings of the comparative method it can be reconstructed as a protoform aß-.
Reconstructed forms are distinguished, as in this illustration, by an asterisk.

Back  -    New Search

recoverability condition.

A proposed condition on syntactic processes by which, if a unit is deleted, it must still be possible to determine what that unit was. If this is accepted, there could not e.g. be a general rule by which an object is deleted in a sentence such as I was reading. For the specific object involved (a letter, your book, the Koran, etc.) would not be recoverable from subsequent representations of its structure.

Back  -    New Search

rection

= government.

Back  -    New Search

recurrent.

Instanced in more than one unit. Thus the alternation between [i:] in obsc[i:]ne and [] in obsc[]nity is a recurrent alternation since it is also found e.g. in serene and serenity.

Back  -    New Search

recursive.

(Rule) that can reapply to a form or construction that is itself partly or wholly derived by it. Thus, by a rule of syntax, a noun phrase (NP) can include a modifying prepositional phrase (PP): NP[the fish PP[in the pool]]. This in turn includes a noun phrase (NP[the fish PP[in NP[the pool]]]); that in turn can include a further prepositional phrase (NP[the fish PP[in NP[the pool PP[in the garden]]]]), and so on.
In this construction both ‘noun phrase’ and ‘prepositional phrase’ are recursive categories . The pattern or phenomenon in general is recursion .

Back  -    New Search

recursive language.

A formal language for which there is a procedure which will determine, in a finite number of steps, whether or not a given string is a member of it. A recursively enumerable language is one for which there is a procedure which can similarly determine that a given string is a member, but none which can determine that it is not a member.

Back  -    New Search

reduced clause.

A unit derived from a finite clause by the omission of a subject and a copula or auxiliary: e.g. while driving in We talked while driving can be seen as reduced from while we were driving. Thence of other units seen as clauses shortened from their full form: e.g. Bill happy would for many grammarians be a clause, reduced by the omission of a copula (to be), in She made Bill happy.

Back  -    New Search

reduced passive.

An agentless passive seen as derived by a process of reduction from the structure of a full passive with an agent (3): e.g. I was rescued as opposed to I was rescued by the police.

Back  -    New Search

reduced vowel.

A vowel which is shortened or centralized, especially one which is merged with others, by some phonological or morphological process: e.g. the []s of ph[]togr[]phy, as compared with the corresponding unreduced vowels of ph[]togr[:]ph.

Back  -    New Search

redundancy.

The property of having more structure than is minimally necessary. A bridge, for example, needs a certain number of components if it is to stand up. In practice, however, the structure of bridges is redundant; hence, if one component were to fail, the others would still be enough to ensure that it remained standing. Similarly, in languages, a certain number of elements are needed to distinguish each word or sentence from others. But the structures in which these elements are combined are redundant, so that if e.g. an individual element is indistinct the whole may still be correctly understood.
Suppose, by contrast, that every combination of phonemes formed a word and, in addition, every combination of words formed a sentence. Then, if a single phoneme were mispronounced or misheard, an entire sentence could in principle be mistaken for another. But in fact the structures at both levels are highly redundant. E.g. if a word in English begins with r only a vowel can follow; if a sentence begins with the it cannot be followed by an element that is syntactically a finite verb; if a subject is plural the verb must normally agree with it. In that sense every element is to some degree predictable from those that accompany it, and the dangers of misunderstanding are effectively removed.

Back  -    New Search

redundancy rule.

See lexical redundancy rule.

Back  -    New Search

reduplication.

1 A morphological process by which all or part of a form is repeated. E.g. the Latin stem momord-(in momordi ‘I bit’) is derived from a root mord-by reduplication of the initial consonant and vowel: mord- mo-mord-. This is a case of partial reduplication ; in complete reduplication the whole form is repeated.

2 Any syntactic pattern in which words are repeated: e.g. very is reduplicated in This cake is very very good. Often systematic: e.g., in Afrikaans, Die ongeluk (‘the accident’) het hier-hier gebeur (lit. ‘has here-here happened’), meaning ‘The accident happened right here’.
Top

Back  -    New Search

reduplicative compound.

One whose second member is derived by repetition of the whole or part of the first; cf. echo-word. Also generally, in Quirk et al., CGE, of compounds whose members rhyme: e.g. walkie-talkie, busy lizzy.

Back  -    New Search

‘Reed and Kellogg diagrams’.

Representations of the syntactic structure of sentences, named after their formulation by A. Reed and B. Kellogg in the late 19th century and taught in schools in the USA for several generations. A line is drawn with the relations between the main words in the sentence shown above it: thus, in the illustration, subject men, verb ate, object cheese. The roles of words directly or indirectly subordinate to them are shown successively underneath: thus, in the illustration, the is subordinate to men; strong and, in succession, with and onion to cheese.

A Reed and Kellogg diagram

Back  -    New Search

reference.

The relation between a part of an utterance and an individual or set of individuals that it identifies. Thus one might say, on some specific occasion, ‘That man is my brother’: the noun phrase that man is thereby used as a referring expression whose referent is a specific man whose identity the addressee must either know or be able to determine.
Distinguished by philosophers from sense (2), and by Lyons especially from denotation. E.g. the man is a phrase that, in such an utterance, is used to refer to a man; the noun man, as a lexical unit, denotes a class of individuals that are thereby called ‘men’, and has a sense distinguished, in a network of sense relations, from those of woman, boy, elephant, etc. But these distinctions are not needed for all purposes, and actual usage, as in many entries in this dictionary, is more fluid.

Back  -    New Search

reference grammar.

A grammar, in the ordinary sense, designed as a book for reference rather than, e.g., for working through in teaching. Quirk et al., CGE, is one such grammar for English.

Back  -    New Search

reference tracking.

Keeping track of the individuals referred to at successive points in a sentence, conversation, etc. E.g. in Sarah promised Mary that she would see her tomorrow if she had time, the person spoken to must keep track of who the pronouns she and her refer to: thus, as it would most likely be meant, … she (Sarah) would see her (Mary) if she (Sarah) had time.
For relations and categories involved in reference tracking see especially anaphora; switch-reference.

Back  -    New Search

referent-controlled honorific.

See honorific.

Back  -    New Search

referential.

(Meaning, function of language) involving reference to entities, events, states of affairs, etc. Cf. descriptive; ideational; representational.

Back  -    New Search

referential indices.

See indices.

Back  -    New Search

referentially opaque.

(Context) in which one cannot validly draw an inference by replacing one expression with another whose reference is identical. E.g. if Bill's murderer is Jill's brother, it follows from ‘John lives next door to Bill's murderer’ that John lives next door to Jill's brother, but from ‘The police have identified Smith's murderer’ it does not follow that the police have identified Jill's brother.

Back  -    New Search

referring expression.

See reference.

Back  -    New Search

reflectiveness

= reflexivity.

Back  -    New Search

reflex.

A later form which is derived by direct transmission from one postulated or attested earlier. E.g. both English cow and French boeuf are reflexes of the same word in Indo-European (reconstructed in the nominative singular as gw ou-s).

Back  -    New Search

reflexive (REFL).

(Pronoun) characteristically interpreted as anaphoric to an element elsewhere in the sentence. E.g. in Mary chose herSELF, herself is a reflexive referring to the same person (Mary) as the subject Mary. Also of a suffix, etc. indicating that a second participant in a process or action is the same as the first: schematically, Mary chose-REFL (Mary chose herself) vs. Mary chose her, Mary chose-3SG (Mary chose someone else). Cf. middle. Also e.g. of any distinct construction that includes a reflexive.

Back  -    New Search

reflexive passive.

An impersonal passive in e.g. Spanish if analysed as a reflexive. E.g. Se venden casas, analysed as se ‘themselves’ venden ‘sell-3PL’ casas ‘house-PL’ (hence ‘Houses for sale’).

Back  -    New Search

reflexive verb.

A verb containing or accompanied by a reflexive element. Especially one in which the two together are treated as a lexical unit.
The latter case is common in descriptions of Romance languages. E.g. French s’asseoir ‘sit down’ is a reflexive verb in which asseoir ‘seat, set down’ is obligatorily accompanied by a reflexive (s(e), etc.) matching its subject. The term is not usual in accounts of English: but compare e.g. the sense of ‘kick oneself’ in I could kick myself for forgetting it.

Back  -    New Search

reflexivity.

The property of language by which it can be used to talk about language itself. A proposed design feature; cf. metalanguage, metalinguistic.

Back  -    New Search

reflexivization.

A syntactic process, posited in early transformational grammars, by which reflexives, where appropriate, replaced noun phrases. Cf. pronominalization.

Back  -    New Search

regimen.

Used by Jespersen of the element governed by a preposition: e.g. Cambridge in to Cambridge.

Back  -    New Search

register.

1 A set of features of speech or writing characteristic of a particular type of linguistic activity or a particular group when engaging in it. E.g. journalese is a register different from that in which sermons are delivered, or in which smutty stories are told.

2 A feature of phonation distinguishing different series of vowels or syllables: e.g. of ‘clear’ or normal voice vs. breathy voice or murmur in several Mon-Khmer languages.
Top

3 A set of tones, e.g. in Wu Chinese, distinguished as a set by a high or a low pitch range.
Top

Back  -    New Search

register tone.

Tone distinguished from others solely by a relative level of pitch within a speaker's pitch range: e.g. a high tone vs. a low tone. Opp. contour tone; cf. register (3).

Back  -    New Search

regressive assimilation.

Assimilation in which elements are changed to match features of elements that follow them. E.g. the [k] of Latin [le:k-s] ‘law-NOMSG’ (written lex) is voiceless in contact with the suffix -[s] which follows; cf. [le:g-is] (legis) ‘law-GENSG’.
Opp. progressive assimilation. The sense is that of features, such as voicelessness, being thrown back or anticipated: hence also called ‘anticipatory’ , as in corresponding accounts of coarticulation.

Back  -    New Search

regular.

(Form) which conforms to a rule whose application is predicted by some general property of a unit. E.g. the unit table is a noun; from this it is predicted, by a default rule, that its plural is in -s; therefore tables, which is formed according to that rule, is regular or is a regular plural. Men, by contrast, is an exception to the rule and is irregular .
Regularity is often relative to specific classes of units. E.g. in Latin, the default rule for the stem of the passive participle was to add -t-after the stem or conjugation vowel: am-a-‘love’, with conjugation vowel -a-, am-a-t-‘loved’. Such forms are therefore regular for verbs in general. But for verbs whose conjugation vowel was -e-the default rule was to add -it-to the root: mon-e-‘warn’, but mon-it-‘warned’. Accordingly such forms were regular for that class in particular.

Back  -    New Search

regularity principle.

See Neogrammarians.

Back  -    New Search

reify.

To treat an abstract concept or construct as if it were something having physical reality. E.g. the ‘mental lexicon’ seen by psycholinguists as represented in the brains of speakers is arguably no more than a reification of the concepts underlying the writing of dictionaries.

Back  -    New Search

‘reinforcement’.

See operant-conditioning.

Back  -    New Search

related.

(Languages) which belong to the same family in a genetic classification. E.g. English and French are related within Indo-European. Cf. cognate.

Back  -    New Search

relation.

Any linkage established among elements. Thus, in sea [si:], [s] and [i:] are related as onset and nucleus of a syllable; in They vanished, they is related as subject to the verb vanished. These are instances of syntagmatic relations. In the phonology of English, [s] is related as a voiceless consonant to [z] as the corresponding voiced consonant; in its grammar, they as plural is related to he, she, and it as the corresponding singulars. These are instances of paradigmatic relations. Also of any other linkage: e.g. in some accounts of meaning, a representation of the syntax of a sentence is paired with, i.e. is related to, a semantic representation.
Formally interchangeable with the concept of an operation: thus x y expresses a relation between x and y. Often interchanged in practice, especially in specific collocations, with that of a role or function. E.g. in They vanished, they stands in the relation of ‘subject of’ to vanished; alternatively, it has the syntactic function (or ‘grammatical role’, etc.) of subject.

Back  -    New Search

relational adjective.

An adjective derived from a noun whose role is in effect to relate that noun to a noun that it qualifies. E.g. routière in French police routière ‘traffic police’: lit. ‘police’ (police) to do with the ‘road’ (route).

Back  -    New Search

Relational Grammar.

Theory of syntax developed by D. M.Perlmutter, P. M. Postal, and others in the 1970s, in opposition to the account of syntactic functions or relations (subject, object, etc.) proposed by Chomsky in the 1960s. For Chomsky these were derived notions: e.g. a subject was defined as a noun phrase (NP) directly dominated, in a phrase structure tree, by a sentence node (S). In Relational Grammar they were taken as primitive. E.g. in the construction of Bill visited Mary, Bill and Mary are ‘terms’ which bear distinct ‘term relations’ (subject of, direct object of) to the verb. In the corresponding passive (Mary was visited by Bill), the object term (Mary) is promoted to subject, and so on.
Many accounts of functional syntax have their origin, in part, in Relational Grammar. Arc Pair Grammar, from the late 1970s, was a more direct offshoot.

Back  -    New Search

relational hierarchy.

Version, in Relational Grammar, of the NP accessibility hierarchy.

Back  -    New Search

relational noun.

A noun whose meaning involves a relationship between one entity and another: e.g. husband ‘man in a relation of marriage to a wife’.

Back  -    New Search

relative chronology.

One in which events are ordered in time, but without specific dates. E.g. one can deduce from the evidence of Sanskrit that a sound-change by which [k] > [t] before front vowels preceded one by which the front vowel [e] > [a]: but both are prehistoric and the times over which they took place are unknown.

Back  -    New Search

relative clause.

A clause which modifies the head of a noun phrase and typically includes a pronoun or other element whose reference is linked to it. E.g. in the man who came, a relative clause who came modifies man: cf. modification (1). Within this clause, who is a relative pronoun (traditionally seen as anaphoric to man) which does not have an independent referent.
Thence to clauses with a similar element that are not modifiers: e.g. who dares is a free relative clause in Who dares wins. Also to modifying clauses in which a relative pronoun is seen as null or deleted. Thus you saw, or, with a null element, Ø you saw, is a relative clause in That is the man you saw.

Back  -    New Search

relative pronoun.

See relative clause.

Back  -    New Search

relative superlative.

A superlative which indicates pre-eminence within a set, as opposed to an elative (2). E.g. tallest in the tallest person I know indicates pre-eminence in height among the specific set of people that the speaker knows.

Back  -    New Search

‘relative universal’.

A property or statement that holds for most languages but not for all. E.g. the property of having phonologically distinct bilabial consonants: though almost every language has them, some do or did not.
Cf. statistical universal. A linguistic universal that is genuinely universal is described by contrast as an ‘absolute universal’.

Back  -    New Search

relativism.

See Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.

Back  -    New Search

relativization.

The formation of relative clauses: specifically, the process by which one element is represented by a relative pronoun or its equivalent. E.g. the subject is relativized in the people who came; a locative in the place where we live.

Back  -    New Search

release.

The ending of closure in the articulation of a plosive consonant. In some languages consonants are said to be ‘unreleased’ in various positions: i.e. their release is inaudible, either because the air pressure before and behind the closure has been equalized, or because it occurs during the articulation of another consonant that follows. Thus the [k] of French acteur is typically ‘released’ while that of English actor is not.

Back  -    New Search

Relevance Theory.

Theory of pragmatics developed in the 1980s by D. Sperber and D. M. S. Wilson. Often seen as a consolidation of Grice's theory of maxims of conversation, but distinguished from others by a technical concept of ‘relevance’, defined as a property that any utterance, or a proposition that it communicates, must, in the nature of communication, necessarily have. Relevance is relative to a set of existing ‘assumptions’ that constitute the context, or ongoing ‘cognitive environment’, in which an act of speech takes place, and the ‘assumptions’ that it adds to this set, though necessarily ‘relevant’, will be relevant to it in varying degrees.
Often applied, with other theories that make distinctions effectively between semantics and pragmatics, in reducing the former to the scope which is conventionally that of a language system.

Back  -    New Search

relevant.

Used technically or semi-technically:
1 Of data or findings taken to bear on some phase or aspect of linguistic analysis. Thus information about sounds is relevant to phonological analysis, but it was long disputed whether, or how far, information about grammar should be.
Top

2 Of whatever bears on the meaning of an utterance. Thus if someone says ‘Come in!’ it may be relevant that they are in their office, that there has been a knock on the door, etc.: it may not be relevant that e.g. they have brown eyes or that their carpet is dirty. The context of an utterance might accordingly be defined as the features of the total environment that are relevant to its production or interpretation.
Top

3 Of an utterance said on a specific occasion. Thus, in the theory of maxims of conversation, speakers are expected, by a maxim of ‘relation’, to make their contribution to an interchange relevant rather than irrelevant. Cf. Relevance Theory.
Top

Back  -    New Search

‘relexification’.

The replacement of the vocabulary of one language by that of another. Thus, in an extreme case, language A might be described as a ‘relexification of’ language B: i.e. the words or morphemes are different, but their structures are in other respects essentially the same.
The ‘relexification hypothesis’ is the theory that pidgins, e.g. in West Africa and the West Indies, developed from a single original form by successive changes of the ‘base language’. Thus a pidgin whose vocabulary was based on French might be ‘relexified’ to form a new one based on English, that in turn ‘relexified’ to form one based on Dutch, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

‘relic form’.

A form preserved only in the dialect of a specific area. A ‘relic area’ is likewise one in whose dialect such forms have tended to persist.

Back  -    New Search

remote.

(Conditional clause) expressing a condition either not met or less likely to have been or to be met. E.g. If Bill had only tried to see her…(implying that he did not); If she could find a way to get to Paris in two hours…(implying that it is unlikely that she could).
Cf. counterfactual. These and other terms are often used equivalently: e.g. the condition in If he had seen her… is counterfactual (= remote, = unreal, = hypothetical), as opposed to the ‘open’ condition in If he saw her … But (a) a condition in the future is always in a strict sense ‘open’; (b) the distinction drawn in languages is often between remote and non-remote (If I had seen her I would certainly have told her, If I saw her I certainly told her) rather than, in a strict sense, contrary to vs. possibly in accordance with fact.

Back  -    New Search

renewal of connection.

Firth's term for the relation re-established, by statements of exponence, between an abstract unit, structure, etc. and the data from which the abstraction has been made.

Back  -    New Search

reordering of rules.

See rule ordering.

Back  -    New Search

‘repair’.

Used in Conversation Analysis of any instance in which speakers correct themselves, or correct what other speakers have said, or query it, or clarify what they or someone else has said, and so on. A ‘repair sequence’ is a turn, or any part of a ‘turn’, or any succession of ‘turns’, by which any of these things is done.
‘Repairs’ are variously classed as ‘self-repair’ (corrections, etc. made by speakers themselves responsible) vs. ‘other-repair’ (made by their interlocutors); as ‘self-initiated’ (made by a speaker without querying or prompting) vs. ‘other-initiated’ (made in response to querying or prompting).

Back  -    New Search

repertoire.

Used semi-technically e.g. of the range of styles or varieties of a language available to or mastered by a speaker or writer.

Back  -    New Search

replacive.

A process of morphological modification (2) treated, in some accounts, as an allomorph of a morpheme. E.g. in sang vs. sing, [I] [a] is a ‘replacive’ or ‘replacive morph’ seen as an allomorph of the morpheme ‘past’.

Back  -    New Search

reported speech.

One utterance as reported by another: e.g. a promise by a speaker to mend something as reported, by a subordinate clause, in a later utterance ‘He promised he would mend it’. Strictly including cases of both indirect speech, as in this example, and direct speech; often, however, used of indirect speech specifically.

Back  -    New Search

representation.

The structure assigned to a form at any level of description or analysis. E.g. a phonetic transcription is one kind of representation at a phonetic level; a phrase structure tree is a common form of representation at the level of syntax; a semantic representation is a description of a sentence or other unit at a separate level of meaning.

Back  -    New Search

representational.

(Function of language) in representing or describing events, states of affairs, etc. Cf. descriptive; ideational; referential.

Back  -    New Search

representative.

Type of speech act by which a speaker represents a state of affairs: thus especially a statement. Cf. representational.

Back  -    New Search

resonance.

The physical effect in which a vibrating body, e.g. the body of air within the vocal tract, selectively reinforces or prolongs a sound produced by the vibration of another, e.g. of the vocal cords. Thus resonants are speech sounds, or one kind of speech sound, in which the vocal tract above the larynx acts solely as a resonating chamber.

Back  -    New Search

resonant.

A speech sound in whose production air flows smoothly through the vocal tract, without audible turbulence. Hence specifically of consonants that are neither stops nor fricatives: e.g. [1]. Opp. obstruent; cf. approximant, sonorant.

Back  -    New Search

respect.

1 In the sense of ‘with respect to’. Thus a dative of respect indicates e.g. someone with respect to whom a statement holds: schematically, You-DAT (‘so far as you are concerned’) that is all.

2 In the sense of ‘showing respect to’: thus pronouns ‘of respect’ are honorifics.
Top

Back  -    New Search

REST

= Revised Extended Standard Theory.

Back  -    New Search

‘restricted code’.

See deficit theory.

Back  -    New Search

restricted language.

Firth's term for the subset of vocabulary, constructions, etc. used in some very specific situation or for some very specific purpose: e.g. the language of heraldic blazons, or the language used in nautical weather forecasts.

Back  -    New Search

restriction of meaning.

Change by which the meaning of a word is narrowed by the addition of a feature or features that were not previously part of it: e.g. that by which deer, formerly a word for ‘animal’ in general, came to denote one specific kind of animal. Cf. extension.

Back  -    New Search

restrictive.

(Modifier) which restricts the potential reference of the phrase of which it is part: e.g. cheap in cheap wine (meaning not wine in general but specifically wine that is cheap). Likewise in wine that is cheap the modifying clause that is cheap is a restrictive relative clause.
Restrictive relative clauses are also called ‘defining relative clauses’ . Opp. non-restrictive; also appositional.

Back  -    New Search

restructuring.

1 A syntactic or other process by which the structure assigned to a form is changed without change to the form itself. E.g. in It was made safe, made safe might be treated as a complex verbal unit (v[made safe]) derived by restructuring from a verb plus a reduced underlying sentence (v[made] s[safe]). Typically of this and similar cases of clause union.

2 A change at an underlying level posited in the history of a language. E.g. in phonology, a form might for one generation of speakers have a diphthong or triphthong: thus English [ta] (tyre). In terms of Generative Phonology that is both its underlying and its phonetic representation. Then, for a later generation of speakers, its phonetic realization might become progressively monophthongal: phonetic [ta:] but, in terms of a general hypothesis developed by Generative Phonologists in the late 1960s, still [ta] at the underlying level. Finally, a later generation descended from these, who hear only the phonetic form [ta:], might ‘restructure’ the underlying representation in turn: underlying [ta:] = phonetic [ta:].
Also called reanalysis.
Top

Back  -    New Search

result.

See object of result; resultative.

Back  -    New Search

resultative.

Used of verbal compounds, e.g. in Chinese, of which the second member indicates a result of what is indicated by the first: schematically, hit-kill, find-possess, and so on. Also of elements in a clause referring to the result of an action or process: e.g. solid in The lake froze solid. Also of e.g. an aspect indicating a result: thus are destroyed might be described as resultative in All my plans are now destroyed.
Cf. factitive.

Back  -    New Search

resumptive.

(Pronoun, etc.) seen as duplicating the role of a phrase which has the same reference. Common with clitic pronouns in some Romance languages: e.g. schematically, Peter him-see-1 SG ‘I can see Peter’, where him ‘resumes’ Peter.
A pronoun such as he is also ‘resumptive’, in a different sense, in e.g. John's the only one who I don't know if he has had it.

Back  -    New Search

retracted.

(Speech sound) in whose production the tongue or part of the tongue is drawn back in contrast to another. E.g. the vowel in hid [hd] is both retracted and lowered in relation to the cardinal vowel [i].
‘Retracted Tongue Root’ is the opposite of Advanced Tongue Root.

Back  -    New Search

retreat.

See promotion.

Back  -    New Search

retroflex.

Articulated with the tip of the tongue or the underside of the tip against the back of the alveolar ridge. Distinctive e.g. in Indian languages such as Hindi-Urdu, where retroflex [t], [d], etc. contrast with dentals.

Back  -    New Search

reverential

= honorific.

Back  -    New Search

reversal of rules.

See rule inversion.

Back  -    New Search

reversed polarity.

See tag.

Back  -    New Search

‘reversed pseudo-cleft’.

See pseudo-cleft.

Back  -    New Search

Revised Extended Standard Theory.

Used in the late 1970s to label the version then current of Chomsky's Extended Standard Theory. Rapidly superseded by Government and Binding Theory.

Back  -    New Search

rewrite rule.

A rule (2) which is interpreted as an instruction to replace one string of elements with another. Thus, given the string a b c, a rule b x y is an instruction to rewrite it as a x y c.
In Chomsky's initial formulation a generative grammar was a series of rewrite rules. A string consisting of an initial symbol S was first successively rewritten by phrase structure rules. E.g. a rule S NP + VP would be interpreted as an instruction to rewrite S as NP VP; a rule NP Det + N as an instruction to rewrite that as Det N VP; a rule N horse, man, … as an instruction to rewrite that in turn as one of Det horse VP, Det man VP, and so on. The resulting strings might then be rewritten further, e.g. in a transformational grammar, by successive transformations.

Back  -    New Search

R-expression.

Term in Government and Binding Theory for a noun phrase whose reference is never determined by a relation of anaphora to an antecedent: e.g. Bill as opposed to he or himself.

Back  -    New Search

RG

= Relational Grammar.

Back  -    New Search

Rhaeto-Romance.

Group of Romance dialects which includes Romansch in south-east Switzerland; Ladin, in parts of the South Tyrol in Italy; and Friulan, in the area of Italy bordering Slovenia.

Back  -    New Search

rheme.

A part of a sentence communicating information relative to whatever is indicated by the theme (1). E.g. in The problem is that it is so cold, the theme might be the problem: i.e. that there is a problem is known or anticipated, and the point of the sentence is to explain what it is. The rheme would then be is that it is so cold.
The division between theme and rheme is often seen as one of degree. E.g. in The problem is that it is so cold at NIGHT, the problem might be maximally thematic, while at night (with the intonational stress on night) is maximally rhematic . The intervening part would then be transitional (or a transition ) between them.

Back  -    New Search

‘Rhenish fan’.

A transitional area between High German and Low German or Dutch, defined by the divergence of a series of isoglosses from an area east of Cologne westwards. A famous finding of dialectology at the close of the 19th century.

Back  -    New Search

rhetoric.

Traditionally a discipline concerned with the effective use of language, to persuade, give pleasure, and so on. Distinguished from grammar in the ancient Western system of education; from grammar and dialectic or logic as one of three elementary subjects (called in Latin the ‘trivium’) in a scheme inherited by the Middle Ages. Rhetoric tended, in the nature of things, to overlap grammar, and many topics once claimed for it are now claimed instead for sundry branches of, or on the borders of, linguistics: especially for parts of syntax, pragmatics, stylistics, and sociolinguistics.

Back  -    New Search

rhetorical question.

Traditional term for a question which does not invite a reply: e.g. How can I climb that?, if implying ‘I can't climb it’.

Back  -    New Search

rhotacism.

Replacement by r. Thus, in the history of Latin, a single s, as in the infinitive suffix -se, was generally rhotacized between vowels: e.g. rege-se ‘to rule’ > regere (cf., with a preceding consonant, es-se ‘to be’).

Back  -    New Search

rhotic ['rtk].

Having an r. E.g. dialects spoken in the south-west of England are ‘rhotic’, since they retain an [r] in words like tower or turn, which have phonetically no [r] in ‘non-rhotic’ dialects. Also as a general term for ‘r’-sounds: a class of rhotics will thus include a lingual [r], uvular [R], retroflex [r], and so on.
From the Greek name of the letter ‘r’: thence ‘rhoticization’ or rhotacism for the introduction of r or a change resulting in r.

Back  -    New Search

rhyme.

The nucleus and coda of a syllable, taken as a unit in opposition to the onset. E.g. [kri:m] (cream) has the structure [kr] (onset) plus [i:m] (rhyme).

Back  -    New Search

rhyzotonic.

(Word) having its accent on the root: e.g. happiness, with stress on the root happy, as contrasted with arhyzotonic sensation, with stress on the suffix-ation.

Back  -    New Search

right-branching.

(Structure) in which heads successively precede their dependents. E.g. in people living in London, the last element London is the dependent of in, these in turn depend on living, that in turn depends on people.
From the configuration of branches in a phrase structure tree: e.g. that represented by the equivalent bracketing [people [living [in London]]]. Right-branching languages are those in which such structures predominate: cf. centrifugal vs. centripetal; also Head Parameter.

Back  -    New Search

right dislocation.

Construction of e.g. They are far too tight, these trousers you bought. As in left dislocation, the element ‘dislocated’ (in right dislocation to the end of the sentence) is related to a pronoun (in this example they) in its normal position.

Back  -    New Search

‘right node raising’.

The construction of e.g. I posted and I faxed an answer, seen as deriving from the coordination of I posted an answer and I faxed an answer, with fusion of the identical objects into a single phrase whose dominating node, in terms of a phrase structure tree, is ‘raised’ to form a new branch: [ [I posted and I faxed] an answer].

Back  -    New Search

rill fricative.

One in which air flows through a narrowed channel at the centre of the place of articulation: thus a sibilant such as [s] in sin or [] in shin. Also called a ‘groove fricative’ : opp. slit fricative.

Back  -    New Search

rising.

1 (Diphthong) of which the second part or element is prominent: e.g. [j] or [] in Italian viene (accented viéne) ‘is coming’.

2 (Tone or intonation) in which the pitch rises from relatively low to relatively high.
Opp. falling in both senses.
Top

Back  -    New Search

RNR

= right node raising.

Back  -    New Search

role.

See function.

Back  -    New Search

Role and Reference Grammar.

Approach to syntax so named by W. A. Foley and R. D. Van Valin, who have developed it since the mid-1980s. Broadly functional in that the treatment of constructions is in principle integrated with an account of their use in communication: distinguished from others especially by an analysis of layering in clauses in which the verb is the centre and the nucleus (1), consisting of the verb and all its arguments or valents, forms an inner constituent within an outer constituent that includes its peripheral elements. Influenced in this and other respects by languages whose structure is not like that of English: but, e.g. in English, [yesterday nucleus[everybody v[played] music] all morning].

Back  -    New Search

rolled.

(Consonant) articulated with a trill: e.g. the rolled [r], written rr, in Spanish perro ‘dog’.

Back  -    New Search

Roman alphabet.

First developed in the 7th century BC, on the model of that of Etruscan. Originally very local; carried from the 1st century BC throughout what became the western Roman Empire, and from the late 15th century AD, by the political expansion of western Europe, worldwide. The original alphabet had twenty-one letters; in its standard ancient form it had twenty-three, of which two (Y and Z) were introduced in words transparently borrowed from Greek. J, V, and W were not distinguished from I and U until the Middle Ages.

Back  -    New Search

Romance.

Branch of Indo-European consisting of the languages that have developed historically from Latin. Originally spoken mainly in the south and west of continental Europe, where French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish are national languages imposed on what was earlier, in large part, a dialect continuum; thence, through colonization, in the Americas and elsewhere. The family also includes Rumanian; other important languages and dialects include Catalan, Friulan, Franco-Provençal, Galician, Occitan (Provençal), Romansch, Sardinian.

Back  -    New Search

Romanian.

See Rumanian.

Back  -    New Search

Romanization.

The replacement of an earlier writing system with one based on the Roman alphabet.

Back  -    New Search

Romansch.

Rhaeto-Romance dialect with official status in Switzerland; spoken in the canton of Graubünden (Grisons), though losing ground extensively to German.

Back  -    New Search

Romany.

Indo-Aryan, with a variety of dialects spoken by populations of Gypsies in Europe and beyond, now mainly concentrated in the Balkans. Local varieties tend to be influenced strongly by other languages in the communities with which Gypsies are in contact.

Back  -    New Search

Romic.

(Narrow vs. Broad) . See Sweet.

Back  -    New Search

root.

1 A form from which words or parts of words are derived and which is not itself derivable from any smaller or simpler form: e.g. carefully is derived from careful which is in turn derived from the root care. Likewise in etymology: e.g. care is from an Indo-European root reconstructed as gar-.

2 A node in a phrase structure tree or other branching structure which no other node dominates.
Top

Back  -    New Search

‘root compound’.

One which does not parallel a verbal construction: e.g. fish-hook as opposed to a so-called ‘synthetic’ compound such as salmon-fisher.

Back  -    New Search

‘root modality’.

Any modality other than epistemic: thus can would be a ‘root modal’ (whether indicating ability or permission) in You can do it.

Back  -    New Search

root transformation.

One whose application is restricted to main clauses. Claimed in the late 1970s to be the only kind that could derive structures unlike those derivable by rules of a base component.

Back  -    New Search

round brackets ().

Used specifically to show that an element may or may not be present. E.g. a rule u 0 /—(C) # states that u becomes o before a word boundary (—#), whether or not a consonant (C) intervenes. Likewise in citing examples. Thus the (sleeping) man is a conflation of the sleeping man and the man; the (asleep) girl of the asleep girl and the girl, with the asterisk showing that the first is ungrammatical.

Back  -    New Search

rounded.

(Vowel, consonant) produced with rounding of the lips: e.g. [u:] in you [ju:]. Opp. spread, unrounded, neutral; cf. labialization.

Back  -    New Search

RP

= Received Pronunciation.

Back  -    New Search

rule.

1 In the ordinary sense: e.g. it is a rule in English, barring specific exceptions, that a modifying adjective comes before a noun that it modifies (good books) and not after (books good). The main test for a rule is that when it is broken it is clear how the form would be corrected; e.g. in Girt with many a baron bold (Gray), the words baron bold, in which the adjective comes after the noun by poetic licence, could in principle be corrected to bold baron.

2 Any of the formal expressions that constitute a generative grammar: e.g. the phrase structure rule PP P + NP (‘prepositional phrases consist of a preposition followed by a noun’), seen as one of a set that together determine what may and may not be a sentence of the language.
An individual rule in sense 2 is not necessarily in itself a rule in sense 1. Hence, in particular, a distinction drawn by some psycholinguists and sociolinguists at the end of the 1960s, between a categorical rule , which if not applied is broken, and a variable rule , which may at will be applied or not applied, or applies in n per cent of cases, and so on.
Top

Back  -    New Search

rule feature.

See diacritic feature.

Back  -    New Search

‘rule inversion’.

Pattern of language change in which a rule posited at one stage is in effect replaced, at a later stage, by one whose operation is the reverse. E.g., in some dialects of English, [r] was lost when it was not followed by a vowel: thus earlier [bi:r] (beer) > [b]. Since it remained in words like beery, it might be posited that at that stage the basic form of beer retained an underlying r which was deleted, where appropriate, by a corresponding synchronic rule. But at a later stage it may be argued that such words no longer have an underlying r. Hence no rule deletes it; instead it is inserted when, as in words like beery, a vowel follows.
Also called ‘rule reversal’ . The change in the underlying form can also be seen as one case of restructuring.

Back  -    New Search

rule ordering.

See ordered rules. Rule reordering is a hypothetical pattern of language change in which the relative order of two or more rules, as posited in the grammars internalized by one generation of speakers, changes in those posited for a later generation. E.g. rule a might at an earlier stage bleed rule b; at a later, a might follow b instead. So, all else being equal, b would then apply more generally.

Back  -    New Search

rule reversal

= rule inversion.

Back  -    New Search

rule schema.

Any expression in a generative grammar which is formally a combination of two or more rules under an abbreviatory convention.

Back  -    New Search

‘rules of construal’.

See construe.

Back  -    New Search

‘rule to rule hypothesis’.

Principle by which each rule of syntax is paired with a corresponding rule of semantics. Introduced through Montague Grammar in particular, and widely assumed in theories of semantics based on the notion of compositional meaning.

Back  -    New Search

Rumanian.

Romance, spoken mainly in Romania and Moldavia. Attested in the Cyrillic alphabet from the late 15th century; written in the Roman alphabet only since independence in the late 19th century. The standard language is based on that of the former principality of Wallachia, which included Bucharest.
Arumanian , spoken especially in parts of Albania and northern Greece, is one of three other forms of ‘Rumanian’, in a wide sense, collectively called ‘Daco-Romance’.

Back  -    New Search

Rundi.

See Rwanda-Rundi.

Back  -    New Search

Runic alphabet.

Used for Germanic languages, especially North Germanic, in what is now Sweden and elsewhere, from the 3rd to the 5th century AD until supplanted, with the spread of Latin Christianity from the early Middle Ages, by the Roman alphabet. Derived from one or other of the alphabets in use in the Mediterranean: whether Greek, Etruscan, or Roman has been long debated. Called ‘futhark’ from the successive phonetic values of the first six letters.

Back  -    New Search

Russian.

Slavic, related within East Slavic to Ukrainian and Belorussian, from which it has diverged since the late 11th century AD. Written in Cyrillic; the first language of more than half the population of the former Soviet Union and a second language for many more.

Back  -    New Search

Rwanda-Rundi.

Bantu: Rwanda, spoken mainly in the state of Rwanda, and Rundi, spoken mainly in Burundi, can alternatively be classed as different languages each to some degree intelligible to speakers of the other.

Back  -    New Search

S

S. 1.

1 = sentence.

2 2. = subject.
Top

3 3. The single argument which forms the valency of the verb in an intransitive construction, as opposed to the agent (A) and patient (P) in a transitive.
For or S' see S-bar.
Top

Back  -    New Search

sagittal.

(Plane) dividing the body from front to back: often = mid-sagittal.

Back  -    New Search

‘salient’

= prominent.

Back  -    New Search

Salishan.

Family of languages, now extinct or moribund, in the north-west USA and British Columbia.

Back  -    New Search

Sami.

Finno-Ugric language spoken in northern Norway and adjacent parts of neighbouring countries. Traditionally called ‘Lappish’.

Back  -    New Search

Samoyedic.

Group of languages spoken mainly in Siberia, classed with Finno-Ugric under Uralic. Only Nenets or Yurak, between the Mezen' and the Yenisei, has speakers in five figures.

Back  -    New Search

Sanctius.

Latinized name of Francisco Sánchez de las Brozas (1523–1600), professor at Salamanca, whose theoretical work on Latin grammar, Minerva: seu de causis linguae latinae, appeared in its definitive form in 1587. In the context of the 16th century, it is remarkable for the space devoted to syntax: of its four books, the second and third deal with nominal and with verbal constructions respectively. For recent commentators, its interest has lain above all in the use of ellipsis, with other figures, in relating actual forms and constructions to expanded representations of their logical structure. Sanctius took this much further than earlier grammarians, and his work was an acknowledged source for similar procedures in the grammars of Port Royal.

Back  -    New Search

sandhi.

Ancient Indian term for the modification and fusion of sounds at or across the boundaries of grammatical units. E.g. short -a + i- fused in Sanskrit, both within vowels and across word boundaries, to -e-. Introduced into the terminology of 20th-century linguistics by Bloomfield especially.

Back  -    New Search

Sango.

See Ubangi.

Back  -    New Search

Sanskrit.

Indo-Aryan language of ancient India, first attested, in the form called Vedic, by religious chants transmitted orally but thought to date from the 2nd millennium BC. Classical Sanskrit is the form which became standard after the middle of the first millennium BC, by which time the spoken language was progressively evolving into vernacular forms (called Prakrits ). Thereafter a learned language with a rich literature, written and spoken throughout India until the present.
Written in various scripts, now mainly in Devanagari. The earliest inscriptions in the Indian subcontinent are from the second half of the 1st millennium BC. Western encounters with Sanskrit, from the latter part of the 18th century, were decisive in the recognition of Indo-European and the development of the comparative method.

Back  -    New Search

Sapir, Edward

(1884–1939)
. American linguist and anthropologist, trained by Boas and the leading authority in his lifetime on North American languages, many of which he studied directly, at levels ranging from the superficial to the detailed and profound. From 1910 to 1925 the chief ethnologist at the Geological Survey of Canada; subsequently professor at the University of Chicago and at Yale.
Language (1921) develops many ideas that are central to structural linguistics, and was remarkable, in particular, both for its emphasis on the diversity of languages, for which Sapir drew extensively on his own studies in North America, and for a new and penetrating scheme of typological classification. In later work he made important contributions to the theory of the phoneme and, though disregarded by his immediate successors, to the descriptive account of word meaning.
Often contrasted with Bloomfield as a mentalist: i.e. with most others of their generation, he did not share Bloomfield's physicalist or mechanist psychology. A majority of the American linguists who became prominent in the late 1930s and 1940s are Sapir's pupils.

Back  -    New Search

‘Sapir-Whorf hypothesis’.

The notion, currently associated in the English-speaking world with work by the American scholar B. L. Whorf and programmatic statements by Sapir, that the semantic structure of the language which a person speaks either determines or limits the ways in which they are able to form conceptions of the world in which they live.
Also called the hypothesis of ‘linguistic relativism’ or, in an extreme form, of ‘linguistic determinism’ . The history of this and related ideas is in fact much longer, stretching back through Humboldt and his followers to the 18th century.

Back  -    New Search

Sardinian.

Romance language, distinct from Italian. Also called ‘Sard’ : the main dialect, in central Sardinia, is Logudorese.

Back  -    New Search

satellite.

An element which belongs to the periphery of a clause as opposed to its nucleus. E.g. in I can't come tomorrow or I can't come because I am busy, a nucleus I can't come has as its satellite tomorrow or because I am busy.

Back  -    New Search

satm language.

An Indo-European language belonging to any branch in which a velar stop, attested in other branches, changed to a sibilant fricative or affricate. From the word for ‘hundred’ in Avestan, in which this change has taken place: opp. ‘centum language’, from the cognate form in Latin, in which it has not.

Back  -    New Search

Saussure, Ferdinand de

(1857–1913)
. Swiss linguist whose Cours de linguistique générale was published in 1916 after his death on the basis of notes taken by students at successive courses of lectures. This work has been much interpreted and reinterpreted, but its most important single contribution, in the context of the early 20th century, was the doctrine that the synchronic study of a particular ‘state’ of a language should be separate from, and seen as logically prior to, the diachronic study of changes from one state to another. This stands in sharp contrast to ideas held generally at the end of the 19th century, and was to become a defining feature of structural linguistics, common to all schools. But other ideas have also had a wide influence. One is an analysis of the phenomenon of language in general (French ‘language’) into an ‘executive’ side (‘parole’) concerned with the production, transmission, and reception of speech, and an underlying language system (‘langue’), seen as having objective reality in a specific society. Though less accepted in English-speaking countries (and rejected explicitly e.g. by Firth), this has been central to much European structuralism, and can be linked with Chomsky's contrast, in the 1960s, between competence and performance. Another basic doctrine is that the language system (‘langue’) is no more than a network of values or functions (French ‘valeurs’), in which individual units are constituted simply by the relations that they bear to other units. This was to be the germ, in particular, of Hjelmslev's theory of form and substance. A third idea, again less influential among English-speaking linguists, is Saussure's concept of the linguistic sign, formed by an indissoluble link between a ‘signifiant’, or phonetic ‘signifier’, and a ‘signifié’ or concept signified. Linguistics itself he then saw as one branch of a larger science (‘sémiologie’ or semiotics) concerned with systems of signs in general.

Back  -    New Search

‘S-bar’ (, S').

Symbol introduced by Chomsky in the late 1970s as an informal label for a clause including its complementizer. Opp. ‘S’ without bar, for a clause minus its complementizer: e.g. I said [that s[I would come]].
Later described more systematically as a complementizer phrase (CP).

Back  -    New Search

SC.

See transformation.

Back  -    New Search

scalar.

Forming, or forming one point on, a scale. E.g. many and few are ‘scalar expressions’ , intermediate on a scale from none to all. According to the theory of maxims of conversation, the use of an expression lower on such a scale carries the implicature that, if any higher expression were used, the proposition would be false: e.g. if one says Few people came, one implicates that both ‘Many people came’ and ‘All the people came’ are false. Such implicatures have accordingly been called ‘scalar implicatures’ .
Likewise a scalar feature is a variable feature with at least one intermediate value. E.g. if close, mid, and open vowels were terms in a gradual opposition, vowel height would be a scalar feature: say [close], with the values [1 close] (= open), [2 close] (= mid), [3 close] (= close).

Back  -    New Search

Scale and Category Grammar.

See Systemic Grammar.

Back  -    New Search

Scandinavian

= North Germanic; also of the languages of Scandinavia in general, including the Finno-Ugric languages Finnish and Sami.

Back  -    New Search

schema.

See rule schema.

Back  -    New Search

schizophasia.

Quasi-medical term covering rare disorders in the speech of some psychotic patients.

Back  -    New Search

Schleicher, August

(1821–68)
. Indo-Europeanist and theorist of language, whose Compendium der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen (1st edn. 1861–2) played a central role, in the decade before the Neogrammarians, in clarifying aspects of the comparative method: in particular, the technique of reconstruction based on the postulate of sound laws, and the model of a family tree in which ancestor languages are related to their descendants. As a general linguist, Schleicher identified the method of linguistics with that of the natural sciences, and developed a general view of language as part of the natural history of our species into a specific model in which individual languages were compared to specific organisms, in which they compete with one another, and in which they have a life-cycle of birth, growth, and subsequent decay. This was developed particularly in his reaction to Darwin's The Origin of Species (1859), which itself referred to comparative linguistics as a model, and was allied to an interpretation of the typology of languages in which the inflecting type represented a stage of perfection which resulted from a prehistoric period of growth, followed by a historical decay into the analytic (1) type that developed in Europe and elsewhere from the classical and other earlier Indo-European languages.
In assessing these ideas one should perhaps note that when Schleicher died he was still in his forties.

Back  -    New Search

scholasticism.

General term for the schools of philosophy in western Europe in the high Middle Ages. Important in the history of linguistics for the development of speculative grammar, especially by Petrus Helias in the early 12th century, leading to the work of the Modistae in the second half of the 13th.

Back  -    New Search

Schuchardt, Hugo

(1842–1927)
. In origin a Romance linguist, who also published extensively on Basque and on many other languages, including pidgins and creoles. In his general ideas, a radical critic of the Neogrammarians (also of Saussure), laying emphasis both on the individuality of speakers and on the continuity of usage, both within and across the boundaries of conventional dialects and languages; hence on the diversity of paths by which changes pass from one individual to another, and the existence, at all levels, of mixing of features from different historical sources. These ideas are most accessible in an anthology of his papers (Hugo Schuchardt-Brevier) edited in 1922 (by L. Spitzer) for his eightieth birthday.

Back  -    New Search

schwa.

The mid-central vowel of e.g. the second syllable of matter: in phonetic notation [] ([mat]). Also spelled ‘shwa’.

Back  -    New Search

scope.

The part of a sentence with which a quantifier (2), negative, etc. combines in meaning. E.g. in I didn't say he visited Mary the scope of -n't might be the main clause (‘I didn't say it’). But in I don't think he visited Mary it might, in one interpretation, be the subordinate clause (‘I think he didn't visit Mary’).
The term originates in logic, and its use by linguists variously reflects the extent to which they start from language, or start from translations in language of expressions in some logical system.

Back  -    New Search

‘scrambling’.

Syntactic process by which the order of words or phrases can optionally vary. Originally proposed in transformational grammar by linguists familiar with languages like English, in which their order is largely fixed, as a solution for ones in which it is predominantly free. Now more usual in treating alternative orders within a clause construction: e.g. within the basic ‘verb-second’ frame in Dutch or German.

Back  -    New Search

S-curve.

A graph which rises steeply in the middle, but is flatter at the beginning and end. Claimed to be standard when the progress of lexical diffusion is plotted vertically against a horizontal time scale. At first few words are affected; hence a flat beginning. Then it rises more and more steeply until, when roughly half the relevant words are affected, it again begins to flatten.

Back  -    New Search

SD.

See transformation.

Back  -    New Search

secondary

(in syntax) . See ranks (1).

Back  -    New Search

secondary articulation (1).

A subsidiary articulation of a speech sound accompanying its primary articulation elsewhere. The primary articulation is the one with a greater degree of stricture.
Thus the sh of English ship or shoe is a fricative whose primary articulation is as a palato-alveolar: in phonetic notation []. But for many speakers it is accompanied by a secondary articulation of labialization or lip rounding.

Back  -    New Search

secondary articulation (2).

See double articulation (1).

Back  -    New Search

secondary cardinal vowels.

See cardinal vowels.

Back  -    New Search

‘secondary response’.

Bloomfield's term for a statement, especially an ill-informed statement, about language: e.g. ‘Working-class children know only a few hundred words’. He then described as a ‘tertiary response’ the typical reaction of someone who has made such a statement and is told that it is wrong.

Back  -    New Search

‘secondary speech community’.

A community defined by common use of a second language (2): e.g. that of speakers of English as an international language.

Back  -    New Search

secondary stress (,).

A distinguishable level of stress on a syllable other than one which carries a primary stress. E.g. examination has a secondary stress on the second syllable ([g,zam'nen]), while characteristic, also with five syllables and primary stress on the fourth, has a secondary stress on the first ([,karkt'rstk]).

Back  -    New Search

second-instance sentence.

Any utterance whose intonation or wording reflects its relationship to a sentence uttered previously: e.g. ‘The `NEIGHbours left it’, in response to, say, ‘Someone has left a van in our entrance’.

Back  -    New Search

second language.

1 The second language that a person acquires. Thus especially of bilinguals: e.g. a speaker of Welsh may have learned or begun to learn it, as a first language, before learning English, as a second language.

2 A language which is not native to a community but has an established role, for certain purposes or at a certain social level, within it. Thus especially in collocations such as ‘Teaching English as a Second Language’ (TESL).
Top

Back  -    New Search

second-order nominal.

Lyons's term for a nominal expression which characteristically refers to events, processes, etc. as opposed to physical objects: e.g. his birth, his decision to leave. Cf. third-order nominal.

Back  -    New Search

second person (2ND).

See person.

Back  -    New Search

‘Second Sound Shift’.

See German.

Back  -    New Search

segment.

Any unit, at any level of representation, which is described as forming sequences with others. Thus phonemes are in general segments; also morphemes. Segmentation is likewise any process, in descriptive analysis or in speech processing, by which a form of representation at one level is divided into a succession of discrete units at another: e.g. one which splits a representation of continuous speech into successive phonemes.

Back  -    New Search

segmental tier.

A tier in phonological representation at which features are associated with single consonants and vowels. E.g. in the representation of end a feature of nasality might be associated only with a segment realized by n, and a feature ‘plosive’ only with one realized by d.

Back  -    New Search

selection.

Bloomfield's term for the feature of a construction by which certain individual words or morphemes enter into it. E.g. the construction of these apples ‘selects’ a determiner and a noun, and a plural morpheme in these is ‘selected’ in agreement with one in apples.
Thence of ‘selection’ by rule, etc. generally: cf. selectional restriction; also c-selection, s-selection.

Back  -    New Search

selectional restriction.

1 A restriction on the choice of individual lexical units in construction with other lexical units. E.g. breathe will typically ‘select’ an animate subject (The girl was still breathing, Fish breathe through gills), not an abstract or an inanimate (Theories must breathe, The table was breathing). Cf. collocation.

2 A restriction imposed on the potential referents of a phrase, etc. related to it: e.g. pregnant will typically ‘select’ a subject referring to someone or some animal that is female.
Sense 1 is that of Chomsky in the 1950s. In the earliest generative grammars such restrictions were seen as subject to rules, called ‘selectional rules’ .
Top

Back  -    New Search

selective listening.

Selective attention to an individual speaker, e.g. in a crowded room where many people are talking.

Back  -    New Search

self-embedding.

The inclusion of a syntactic unit in another which is of the same class: e.g. one that-clause is part of another in the news [that he had said [that he was coming]]. Also specifically of centre-embedding.

Back  -    New Search

self-initiated

(‘repair’) . See repair.

Back  -    New Search

‘self-repair’.

See repair.

Back  -    New Search

semanteme.

Adaptation to English of a French term (‘sémantème’) originally used of a linguistic sign with lexical meaning, as opposed to a morpheme (‘morphème’) with grammatical meaning.

Back  -    New Search

semantic.

Having to do with semantics, in whatever way that may be defined. E.g. a semantic feature is a feature by which the meaning of a word is distinguished from that of others; a semantic component of a generative grammar is a distinct set of semantic rules that assign representations of meaning to sentences; semantic criteria in linguistic analysis are criteria that make reference to meaning, seen as distinct from ‘formal criteria’, that do not; a semantic definition , e.g. of a word class, will refer to types of meaning that characterize it.

Back  -    New Search

semantic change.

Usually of change in the meanings of words. Types include extension or widening of meaning and restriction of meaning, ameliorative and pejorative changes; also figurative changes which involve a metaphor or some other of the traditional figures of speech.

Back  -    New Search

semantic determinative.

See determinative.

Back  -    New Search

semantic extension.

See extension; widening of meaning.

Back  -    New Search

semantic field.

A distinct part of the lexicon defined by some general term or concept. E.g. in English the semantic field of colour includes words such as black and red that distinguish colours, or are hyponyms of the more general term colour.
A distinction can usefully be drawn between a lexical field , as part of the vocabulary of a specific language at a specific stage in its history, and a conceptual field , postulated either as a linguistic universal or established across a range of languages or stages in the history of a language. E.g. a conceptual field of kinship was represented in Latin by a lexical field which is different from any of those representing the same conceptual field in French or the other modern Romance languages.

Back  -    New Search

semanticity.

The property of language by which words may be used to refer to specific entities in a speaker's physical environment. Distinguished as such in discussions of design features.

Back  -    New Search

semantic loan.

See loan.

Back  -    New Search

semantic marker.

Any semantic feature seen as systematic in a given language: e.g. in words like man vs. boy, woman vs. girl, horse vs. foal, a marker ‘Adult’ (or [+ Adult]) is systematically opposed to ‘Non-adult’ (or [- Adult]). In an account by J. J. Katz and J. A. Fodor in the early 1960s, features which were not seen as systematic were ‘distinguishers’ .

Back  -    New Search

semantic representation.

A representation of the meaning of a sentence; especially one claimed to be assignable by a generative grammar independently of any context in which the sentence might be uttered.

Back  -    New Search

semantic restriction.

See restriction of meaning.

Back  -    New Search

semantic role.

Usually of the roles of nouns, etc. in relation to a verb: e.g. in I can feel it in my chest the semantic roles of I, it, and in my chest might (in one account) be those of experiencer, theme (3), and locative. Cf. case role; theta role.

Back  -    New Search

semantics.

The study of meaning. Seen by Bréal, in the late 19th century, as an emerging science (French ‘sémantique’) opposed to phonetics (‘phonétique’) as a science of sounds: similarly, for Bloomfield in the 1930s, it was a field covering both grammar, as one account of meaningful forms, and the lexicon. Also seen more narrowly, in a tradition lasting into the 1960s, as the study of meaning in the lexicon alone, including changes in word meaning. Later, in accounts in which the study of forms was separated from that of meanings, opposed either to grammar in general or, within grammar and especially within a generative grammar, to syntax specifically. Of the uses current at the end of the 20th century, some are very wide: thus semantics will include, in particular, both word meaning (‘lexical semantics’) and the meaning of utterances as studied in pragmatics. But others are very narrow: thus one handbook of ‘contemporary semantic theory’ deals almost solely with problems in formal semantics, even lexical meaning being excluded.

Back  -    New Search

‘semantic triangle’.

Model of meaning in which a symbol and the thing it symbolizes are related indirectly via a thought or concept. Thus, in the illustration, the word horse is related, on one side of a triangle, to the concept ‘horse’; this in turn is related, on a second side, to the animal itself; the broken line which forms the third side shows the merely derivative relation between the animal and the word. The form of diagram was introduced by C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards in the 1920s.

A ‘semantic triangle’

Back  -    New Search

A ‘semantic valency.

The valency of verbs, or of verbs in particular, in terms of semantic roles or case roles. Thus eat and see both take a subject and an object; in that sense they have the same syntactic valency . But in I am eating it the subject of eat is an agent, while in I can see it that of see is an experiencer. Therefore these verbs have different semantic valencies.

Back  -    New Search

semasiology.

The study of vocabulary starting specifically from forms rather than meanings. Opp. onomasiology.

Back  -    New Search

seme.

See sememe.

Back  -    New Search

semelfactive.

(Verb, form of verb, etc.) used in reference to an event that happens just once: e.g. the past tense is semelfactive in He fell over yesterday, as compared with was falling in He was always falling over.

Back  -    New Search

sememe.

Term used by various scholars for a basic unit of meaning. Thus for Bloomfield a sememe was the meaning of a morpheme: e.g. in the fishes the plural morpheme -s has as its meaning a sememe ‘more than one’. Also in European versions of componential analysis, where the meaning of a lexical unit is a sememe (French ‘sémème’ or its equivalent) composed of semantic features or semes (French ‘sèmes’).

Back  -    New Search

semi-deponent.

Traditionally of a class of verbs in Latin whose forms were like those of passives in perfect tenses but like those of actives in others. Hence ‘partly deponent’.

Back  -    New Search

semiology.

See semiotics.

Back  -    New Search

semiotics.

A general science of ‘signs’, of which, according to many scholars in the 20th century, linguistics is part. Thus words and morphemes are ‘signs’, specifically linguistic signs. So are traffic lights, or gestures, or Christmas presents, or architectural features like a spire or pointed arch, or anything else that in the broadest sense ‘has meaning’.
The notion is due especially to Peirce and Saussure. ‘Semiotics’ (originally ‘semiotic’) is the term in the Peircean tradition for what Saussure and the tradition following him call semiology (French ‘sémiologie’).

Back  -    New Search

semi-productive.

(Process, formation) permitting new combinations of elements, but not with complete freedom. Used especially of processes of word-formation: e.g. it is possible, in principle, to form new nouns like authoress from author or deaconess from deacon, but many potential forms, such as writeress or minist(e)ress, are not used and may not be immediately clear or acceptable.

Back  -    New Search

Semitic.

Family of languages which includes Arabic and several others of the Near East and Ethiopia, among them Amharic, Tigrinya, and Hebrew. Others were important in antiquity, especially Akkadian, Aramaic, and Phoenician. Divided into three main branches: East Semitic (= Akkadian); West Semitic (including Arabic and Hebrew); South Semitic (including Amharic and others in Ethiopia and Eritrea; also ancient and some modern languages in south Arabia).
Seen as a branch of Afro-Asiatic (formerly ‘Hamito-Semitic’).

Back  -    New Search

Semitic alphabets.

Alphabets of a consonantal type originally developed for Semitic languages. Thus, among others, that of Arabic, subsequently adapted to non-Semitic languages, among them Persian and thence Urdu, with the spread of Islam.
The earliest alphabet for which we have evidence is that of Ugaritic, which used cuneiform characters. Others are divided into South Semitic forms, attested mainly in the Arabian peninsula from the early 1st millennium BC, and North Semitic , attested in Syria and Palestine from the later 2nd millennium BC. South Semitic is the source of the alphabets now used for Amharic and other languages of Ethiopia; North Semitic for the remainder, and, from early in the 1st millennium BC, for the Greek alphabet and its Roman and other offshoots. The earliest form attested is that of Phoenician; a related branch, called Canaanite, is found e.g. in early Hebrew inscriptions and survives in the liturgical script of the Samaritans; all other Semitic alphabets, including that of Arabic, derive from the form developed for Aramaic at the beginning of the 1st millennium BC.

Back  -    New Search

semivowel.

A unit of sound which is phonetically like a vowel but whose place in syllable structure is characteristically that of a consonant: e.g. [j] in [js] (yes), phonetically a close front vowel, or [w] in [wi:] (we), phonetically a close back vowel. Cf. glide.

Back  -    New Search

sense.

1 A meaning of a lexical unit distinguished, e.g. in a dictionary, from other meanings. Thus chair has one sense when it is used to refer to a piece of furniture and another when used to refer to someone chairing a meeting. Cf. use for distinct meanings in grammar.

2 The place of a lexical unit within the semantic system of a language: e.g. that of chair is defined by the relations that distinguish it from furniture, from armchair, from table, and so on.
Top

3 The meaning of an expression as distinct from its reference. Thus, in a famous example of the philosopher G. Frege, the morning star and the evening star have the same referent (the planet Venus) but differ in sense.
Top

Back  -    New Search

sense relation.

Any relation between lexical units within the semantic system of a language; cf. sense (2). For types of sense relation see antonymy; complementarity; converse terms; hyponymy; incompatibility; synonymy.

Back  -    New Search

sensorimotor.

(Activity, etc.) involving coordination of movement with input from the senses. Especially with reference to the lowest and earliest of Piaget's proposed stages of cognitive development.

Back  -    New Search

sentence.

Usually conceived, explicitly or implicitly, as the largest unit of grammar, or the largest unit over which a rule of grammar can operate. E.g. in the sentence Come here! the order of come and here is subject to rule; but no rule governs a similar relation between it as a whole and any other sentence that might precede or follow it in speech.
Seen by many as a unit of the language system. Thus Come here! is a sentence in English in the same sense that come is a word in English, and one aim of a grammar of English is to delimit a set of well-formed or grammatical (2) combinations of words that includes it. Hence, in particular, a widespread distinction between ‘sentences’ as abstract entities or constructs, whose status is as units of the language system, and utterances or parts of utterances that correspond to or are instances of them. E.g. in the utterance ‘Come here! I love you’, ‘Come here!’ and ‘I love you’ instantiate, in the speech of a specific person at a specific time, the sentences (conventionally represented in italics) Come here! and I love you.
Also in two extended senses.
1 Of any unit structured like a sentence. E.g. in He said he was coming the clause he was coming is a smaller sentence (German ‘Nebensatz’ or ‘subordinate sentence’) within a larger.
Top

2 Of analogous units in formal systems. Thus a formal ‘language’ is in mathematical terms any set of strings, and a ‘sentence’ is correspondingly any member of such a set. E.g. the ‘language’ {ab, abc} has as its members the ‘sentences’ ab and abc. Cf. generative grammar.
Top

Back  -    New Search

sentence adverb.

An adverb whose semantic relation is to a whole sentence or clause, not just to a verb or verb phrase within it: e.g. obviously in Obviously, he didn't do it. Also called a ‘sentential adverb’ .

Back  -    New Search

sentence fragment.

Usually of a sentence reduced by ellipsis to an incomplete form: e.g. My brother, uttered in answer to a question such as ‘Who sent it?’.

Back  -    New Search

sentence grammar.

A grammar that takes the sentence as its largest unit: i.e. one of the usual kind, as opposed e.g. to a ‘discourse grammar’ or a ‘text grammar’ in textlinguistics.

Back  -    New Search

sentence meaning.

Usually of meanings ascribed to sentences in the abstract, as opposed to those of utterances. Cf. semantic representation.

Back  -    New Search

sentence stress.

Any feature by which a syllable or sequence of syllables within a sentence is made more prominent than the rest. Thus there is a difference in sentence stress between I left HER out, with emphasis on her, and I left her OUT. Opp. word stress; cf. tonic.

Back  -    New Search

‘sentence topic’.

See topic.

Back  -    New Search

‘sentence type’.

Usually of statements, questions, etc. seen as distinguished by declarative, interrogative, and other constructions. Thus He has gone represents one sentence type, Has he gone? another.

Back  -    New Search

sentence word.

Bloomfield's term for a word which in itself completes a major sentence construction: e.g. Spanish salgo ‘I am going out’ completes the construction of a subject with a predicate.

Back  -    New Search

sentential.

Of, related to, or consisting of, sentences. Sentential coordination is coordination of, or reduced from that of, sentences: cf. phrasal coordination. A sentential relative clause is one in which a relative pronoun relates to a predication rather than a noun phrase: e.g. which was rather silly in I said yes, which was rather silly. A sentential complement is a complement consisting of a sentence or clause: e.g. I was pleased as the complement of said in I said I was pleased. A sentential adverb is a sentence adverb, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

sequence.

See order.

Back  -    New Search

sequence of tenses.

Pattern in which the tense of the verb in a subordinate clause reflects that of a verb to which it is subordinated. E.g. in He finished so he could be here tomorrow, the auxiliary could reflects the past tense of finished; cf. He is finishing so he can be here tomorrow.

Back  -    New Search

Serbo-Croat.

South Slavic, spoken throughout Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia and, as a native or second language, in other former Yugoslav republics. Written since the Middle Ages in precisely matching Roman and Cyrillic alphabets, reflecting a division between Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox religion.

Back  -    New Search

serial construction.

Used e.g. by Bloomfield as an alternative term for coordination.

Back  -    New Search

serial verb construction.

One in which two or more successive verbs are joined together with no connecting particle, clitic, etc.: e.g. in English, that of go and see in We'll go see. Also called verb serialization; common or systematic in many languages, e.g. in East Asia or West Africa, often with tense, etc. marked in the first or last of the series only.

Back  -    New Search

series.

Trubetzkoy's term for a set of consonants which have the same or a phonologically equivalent place of articulation. E.g. a labial series in English comprises the bilabials [p], [b], and [m] and the labiodentals [f] and [v].

Back  -    New Search

setting.

See articulatory setting. For setting of parameters see parameter (2).

Back  -    New Search

SG

= singular.

Back  -    New Search

shallow structure.

Used from the late 1970s of a level of representation in transformational grammars nearer to surface structure than to deep structure. Superseded in one of its forms by ‘S-structure’.

Back  -    New Search

‘shared knowledge’.

= background knowledge, mutual knowledge.

Back  -    New Search

sharp.

Distinctive feature in the scheme proposed by Jakobson. Palatalized consonants, e.g. in Russian, are sharp: those which are not are non-sharp or plain.

Back  -    New Search

shifter.

Jakobson's term for words like I, you, and others whose interpretation involves person deixis.

Back  -    New Search

Shona.

Bantu, spoken mainly in eastern Zimbabwe; promoted as a lingua franca in the region since the 1920s.

Back  -    New Search

short.

See length. For ‘short syllable’ see heavy syllable.

Back  -    New Search

short-term memory.

Effectively of the information that is kept in mind at any moment in ongoing psychological processes. Estimated, in the case of language, as a span of roughly seven words: hence, in particular, we have difficulty in understanding a stretch of speech whose structure is not clear within such a limit.

Back  -    New Search

Shoshonean.

See Uto-Aztecan.

Back  -    New Search

shwa

= schwa.

Back  -    New Search

Siamese

= Thai.

Back  -    New Search

Siberian languages.

Historically Uralic (Finno-Ugric, Samoyedic), Turkic, Tungusic (hypothetically grouped with Turkic under Altaic), plus other groups and languages not genetically related but described collectively as Palaeo-Siberian . These include Chukotko-Kamchatkan. Eskimo is also spoken, in a small area nearest Alaska; also Russian, which increasingly dominates the whole region.

Back  -    New Search

sibilant.

Fricative characterized by turbulence that produces noise at a high pitch: e.g. [s] and [z] in sin and zip, or [] and [z] in ship and rouge [ru:z].

Back  -    New Search

sigma ().

Usually the symbol for a syllable.

Back  -    New Search

sigmatic.

Formed with an s: e.g. in Ancient Greek a form such as élusa ‘I let loose’ is a ‘sigmatic aorist’ (é-lu-s-a). From the name for s in the Greek alphabet.

Back  -    New Search

sign.

See linguistic sign; semiotics.

Back  -    New Search

significant vs. signifié.

Saussure's terms, sometimes rendered into English as ‘signifier’ and ‘(the) signified’, for the two sides of a linguistic sign.

Back  -    New Search

sign language.

A system of human communication whose character is like that of a spoken language, except that it is through gestures instead of sound. Thus the systems used especially by the deaf, such as British Sign Language (BSL), or American Sign Language (ASL or Ameslan).
To be distinguished, as productive systems with their own rules and structures, from gestural transcriptions of spoken languages, e.g. in semaphore, or limited systems of hand signals, as used e.g. in directing traffic.

Back  -    New Search

‘silent pause’.

A pause in speaking in which the speaker is silent, as opposed to a pause ‘filled’ by a hesitation form.

Back  -    New Search

similative.

(Compound) of the form N[x] A[y], with the general meaning ‘y like/as (an) x’: e.g. snow-white, ice-cold.

Back  -    New Search

simple.

1 (Clause, sentence) which does not include another: e.g. I saw him. Cf. I saw he had left, which is complex; I saw him but he left, which is compound.

2 (Word) not derived from another or others by a process of word-formation: e.g. cook. Cf. complex cooker and compound cookhouse.
Top

Back  -    New Search

simple clitic.

A clitic whose position, before or after other syntactic elements, is the one that is normal for words with its syntactic role. E.g. in What's that?, the reduced form -'s is a simple clitic in the same position as the full form is in What is that? Opp. special clitic.

Back  -    New Search

simple future.

An inflected or unmarked future as opposed especially to a periphrastic or marked future perfect.

Back  -    New Search

simplicity metric.

See evaluation procedure.

Back  -    New Search

sincerity conditions.

One kind of felicity condition that a speech act has to meet if it is to be appropriate or successful. E.g. if A tells B that his lecture will be at 10.00 on Monday the sincerity condition is that A should believe that that is when the lecture will be. Distinguished especially from preparatory conditions.

Back  -    New Search

Sindhi.

Indo-Aryan language, spoken in the Sindh province of Pakistan and an adjoining part of India. Written, like Hindi-Urdu, in Devanagari by Hindus but by Muslims in an Arabic script derived through Persian.

Back  -    New Search

sine wave.

A simple wave form, whose shape is specified completely by its frequency and amplitude. Complex wave forms, as of vowels in speech, can be analysed, by the process of ‘Fourier analysis’, into combinations of two or more different sine waves.

Back  -    New Search

single-base

(transformation) = singulary transformation.

Back  -    New Search

‘single mother condition’.

Condition by which, in representations of constituency, a unit cannot belong to two larger units that overlap. E.g., for I saw him leave, this would exclude the possibility that, at a single level of representation, him can be both the object of saw within a larger constituent I saw him, and the subject of leave within a larger constituent him leave.

Back  -    New Search

singular (SG).

Term in the category of number, at least one of whose roles is in referring to one individual as opposed to more than one. E.g. cat is singular as opposed to plural cats.

Back  -    New Search

singularia tantum.

Latin ‘singulars only’: hence occasionally of nouns that only have a singular form.

Back  -    New Search

singularly transformation.

A transformation which operates on a single structure: e.g. one converting the structure of an active sentence into that of a passive. Distinguished in early transformational grammars from a ‘double-base’ or generalized transformation.

Back  -    New Search

Sinhalese.

Indo-Aryan, though influenced by neighbouring Dravidian languages. Spoken by the majority population in Sri Lanka and an official language with Tamil and English. Attested by inscriptions from the 3rd century BC and by literature from the 9th century AD; the script is primarily from a north Indian form used especially in Buddhist texts.

Back  -    New Search

Sinitic.

The Chinese branch of Sino-Tibetan.

Back  -    New Search

Sino-Tibetan.

Family of languages of which Chinese and Tibeto-Burman are two genetically and typologically distinct branches.

Back  -    New Search

Siouan.

Family of languages in North America, mainly spoken or formerly spoken in the central plains, from southern Canada southwards to the lower Mississippi. Dakotan (or Sioux) forms a dialect continuum in which e.g. Lakota is one member.

Back  -    New Search

‘sister’.

The relation in a tree diagram between two or more nodes that are connected directly to the same ‘parent’ node. Thus Dutch and German are sisters, or sister languages , within the ‘family tree’ of Germanic or Indo-European; noun phrase (NP) and verb phrase (VP) are sisters, in some accounts, in phrase structure trees.

Back  -    New Search

sister-adjunction.

Any operation on a phrase structure tree by which an added element becomes the sister of an existing unit. E.g. if horse has the structure N[horse], the addition of plural -s by sister-adjunction would yield the structure N[horse + s], where horse and -s are sisters within N. Cf. Chomsky-adjunction.

Back  -    New Search

situation.

See context of situation.

Back  -    New Search

Situation Semantics.

Account of meaning developed by J. Barwise and J. Perry in the early 1980s, in terms of the relation between utterances and ‘situations’ seen as relevant abstractions from states of the world obtaining when they are uttered. An early reaction to model-theoretic semantics as developed especially in Montague Grammar.

Back  -    New Search

size-levels

= ranks (2); see Tagmemics.

Back  -    New Search

skeletal tier.

A tier in Autosegmental Phonology at which is specified no more than a sequence of structural positions. These are usually the positions of consonants and vowels: hence also ‘CV tier’ .
Features specified on other tiers are linked by association lines to different parts of this ‘skeleton’. By analogy with music, the skeletal tier gives the ‘timing’; the segmental tier, in particular, the specific units that are ‘played’. Hence such specific units, again of the segmental tier in particular, are called ‘melody’ or ‘melodic’ units.

Back  -    New Search

slack voice.

Type of phonation in which the vocal cords vibrate more slowly, with a slightly higher flow of air, than in normal or modal voice. Cf. stiff voice.

Back  -    New Search

‘slang’.

Used especially of vocabulary specific e.g. to a particular generation of younger speakers; also, as in ordinary usage, specific to a group or profession (e.g. ‘army slang’), to colloquial style, etc.

Back  -    New Search

slant line (/).

See slash.

Back  -    New Search

slash (/).

Used: 1 To mark a condition under which a rule or operation applies. Thus a rule in phonology ‘s z / V—V’ means ‘s is changed to z when it is between vowels’.

2 Especially in the mid-20th century, to distinguish a representation of phonemes from a phonetic transcription: e.g. English [çu:] (hue or Hugh) seen as phonemically /hju:/ or /hjuw/.
Top

3 As in ordinary usage, in representing alternatives. E.g. He saw him/himself conflates the alternatives He saw him and He saw himself; I saw him/himself conflates I saw him (grammatical) and I saw himself (ungrammatical).
Top

Back  -    New Search

‘slash category’.

Category assigned in Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar to a unit seen as including a smaller unit that is null or empty. Named from the original notation: e.g. VP/NP was the category assigned to a verb phrase (VP), such as that of the interrogative Which will she choose?, seen as including an empty noun phrase: VP[ V[choose NP[ ]]].

Back  -    New Search

Slavic.

Branch of Indo-European spoken from across Central Europe eastwards. Divided into three branches: East Slavic, including Russian and Ukrainian; West Slavic, including Polish, Czech, Slovak, and Sorbian; South Slavic, including Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croat, and Slovenian. Closer within Indo-European to Baltic than to other branches: hence Balto-Slavic.

Back  -    New Search

Slavonic

= Slavic.

Back  -    New Search

slip of the tongue.

Any accidental error in speech: e.g. chapel harlot for apple charlotte, or Greek statue for Greek statute. Distinguished as accidental from errors attributable to a speech disorder, or to inadequate command of a language.

Back  -    New Search

slit fricative.

One in which air flows through a wide slit rather than a narrow channel: e.g. the non-sibilant [] in thin or [ç] in German [milç] milch ‘milk’ as opposed to the sibilants [s] in sin or [] in German [fi] fisch ‘fish’. Opp. rill fricative, groove fricative.

Back  -    New Search

sloppy identity.

Relation in which elements understood in an elliptical construction are not precisely the same, in form or in reference, as those from which they are recovered: e.g. in I grow my own vegetables and John does too, between an understood his own vegetables and preceding my own vegetables.

Back  -    New Search

slot.

A position or role within a construction or other similar structure. E.g. it fills the subject slot in It blossomed, the the determiner slot in the girls.

Back  -    New Search

Slovak.

West Slavic, closely related to Czech, though they are not mutually intelligible in all forms. Official in the Slovak Republic.

Back  -    New Search

Slovenian.

South Slavic, spoken mainly as the national language in Slovenia.

Back  -    New Search

‘sluicing’.

Term proposed for a syntactic process deleting all but a questioned element in a dependent interrogative: e.g. in I don't know who: i.e. who lt;she saw>, who <is meeting us>, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

small capitals.

Used especially for three purposes:1 To mark a tonic or nuclear syllable: or nuclear syllable: e.g. chea- in You CHEAted!

2 To distinguish lexemes from word-forms: e.g. SING is the lexical unit ‘(to) sing’ as distinct from the specific forms sing or sang.
Top

3 In abbreviations for specific grammatical categories: e.g. ABL for ablative.
Top

Back  -    New Search

small clause.

An object plus an object complement, if treated as a reduced clause: e.g. it excellent in I found it excellent. Also of other reduced clauses.

Back  -    New Search

social

(meaning, function of language). See interpersonal.

Back  -    New Search

‘social deixis’.

The use of forms which reflect the social status of a speaker in relation either to the addressee or to someone else referred to: cf. familiar form, polite form, honorific. Seen by some as falling under an extended concept of deixis.

Back  -    New Search

social dialect.

Form of speech associated with a social class or similar group within a society, as opposed to a dialect in the ordinary sense, associated with a geographical place or region.

Back  -    New Search

social marker.

Any feature of a person's speech seen as reflecting their status in a society: e.g. in British English, the use of Mummy or Granny as opposed to Mum or Gran, or an [:] in words such as grass as opposed to a vowel which is shorter and fronter. Called a marker because such features are seen as potentially indicating social status to an addressee.

Back  -    New Search

social network

A representation of the extent of contact among some set of individuals. Thus, in the illustration, A is shown by a thicker line as in extensive contact with both B and C; also, by a thinner line, as having a lesser degree of contact with D and E. A network network is dense to the extent that every individual is related to every other: thus, in the illustration, the part linking A, B, C, and D. Contact between individuals is uniplex if it is in only one kind of situation: e.g. they might talk to each other only at and in connection with their work. It is multiplex if the range of situations is wider: e.g. they also chat at work, they have a drink afterwards, they and their families see each other in the evenings and at weekends.

A social network

Back  -    New Search

Société de Linguistique de Paris.

The senior linguistic society in France, founded formally in 1866; usually referred to simply as the ‘Société de Linguistique’. Its annual Bulletin has been published since 1869.

Back  -    New Search

sociolect

= social dialect.

Back  -    New Search

sociolinguistics.

Any study of language in relation to society. Commonly, from the late 1960s, of studies of variation in language by Labov and his followers. In that sense, sociolinguistics might be defined as the study of correlations between linguistic variables (e.g. the precise phonetic quality of a vowel, or the presence or absence of a certain element in a construction) and non-linguistic variables such as the social class of speakers, their age, sex, etc. Increasingly, from the end of the 1970s, of a range of loosely connected investigations, including Conversation Analysis as conducted especially by sociologists, the study of relations in general between language and ideology or language and power, linguistic aspects of social psychology, etc.

Back  -    New Search

sociolinguistic variable.

Any variable investigated by sociolinguistics in the tradition of Labov. Thus, in studying [r] after vowels in speakers of English whose usage is not consistent, one might establish a variable, conventionally labelled (r), whose values are + r ([r] present) and - r (no [r]). The incidence of these may then be related to other variables, linguistic or social.

Back  -    New Search

‘soft’.

Used conventionally for voiced consonants in Welsh (hence ‘soft’ mutation), for palatalized reflexes of former velars e.g. in Italian (‘soft g’ [dz] vs. ‘hard g’ [g]), for phonologically palatalized consonants such as [tj] (Tb) in e.g. Russian, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

soft palate.

The back part of the roof of the mouth, which is soft or fleshy in comparison with the bony or hard palate to the front. Also called the velum .

Back  -    New Search

solecism.

Ancient term for an error in syntax arising from a mismatch between words. E.g. those page would be a solecism since plural those does not match, or is not ‘congruent’ with, singular page. Opposed in ancient accounts to barbarism.
The extension to errors other than of language is modern.

Back  -    New Search

solidarity.

Hjelmslev's term for a relation in which each term presupposes the other. Thus e.g. the levels of content and expression are ‘solidary’: there cannot be an expression without something that is expressed and there cannot be content that is not that of an expression.

Back  -    New Search

solidus (/).

See slash. ‘Solidus’ is the traditional term in printing.

Back  -    New Search

Somali.

Cushitic, spoken in Somalia, in Djibouti, and in neighbouring parts of Kenya and Ethiopia. The official language of Somalia, written in the Roman alphabet.

Back  -    New Search

Sonagraph.

Trade name of the earliest sound spectrograph. Hence ‘sonagram’ for the displays it produced.

Back  -    New Search

sonant.

Indo-Europeanists' term for a set of phonological elements, whose reflexes are predominantly resonants, seen as forming either the nucleus or the margin of a syllable. Thus in reconstructed nmn ‘name’ (> Latin nomen), a sonant n is marginal in the first syllable (n) but nuclear or syllabic in the second (in the conventional notation, mn).

Back  -    New Search

Sonoran.

See Uto-Aztecan.

Back  -    New Search

sonorant.

A speech sound in which air flows smoothly through the vocal tract, without audible turbulence. Cf. resonant: both terms are used variously, by different writers, either of vowels and of consonants which meet this definition, or of consonants only. See also approximant; opp. obstruent.
The feature [+ sonorant] is defined by Chomsky and Halle, SPE, as that of a sound ‘produced with a vocal tract configuration in which spontaneous voicing is possible’.

Back  -    New Search

sonority.

The inherent loudness of a sound. E.g. if pitch, stress, and length are equal, the vowel of barn is more sonorous than that of bean, and either is more sonorous than the n and the b. In phonetic accounts of the syllable, the nucleus (e.g. [:] in barn) is represented as a peak of sonority.

Back  -    New Search

Sorbian.

West Slavic language, spoken in Germany in the region of Cottbus and Bautzen, towards Poland and the Czech Republic. Also called Wendish .

Back  -    New Search

sortal.

Reflecting or indicating a sort or kind of entity. Thus a system of noun classes might be described as sortal if, e.g. words for animals are of one class, words for plants in another, words for hard inanimate objects in a third, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

Sotho.

Bantu; the name is usually applied both to Northern Sotho, in the south and centre of the Transvaal in South Africa, and to Southern Sotho, which has official status in Lesotho.

Back  -    New Search

sound law.

A phonological change claimed or assumed to have taken place in all forms that met the relevant conditions: Grimm's Law is an archetypal example. A term from the 19th century, linked to the programme of the Neogrammarians.

Back  -    New Search

sound symbolism.

The use of specific sounds or features of sounds in a partly systematic relation to meanings or categories of meaning. Generally taken to include:1 The use of forms traditionally called onomatopoeic: e.g. chiffchaff (warbler whose song alternates a higher and a lower note).

2 Partial resemblances in form among words whose meanings are similar: e.g. among slip, slide, or slither, all with initial [sl]. In the second case the correspondence may be partly explicable by the nature of the sounds and meanings involved: e.g. the least sonorous vowel, [i], is often associated, in the vocabulary and in the minds of speakers, with concepts of smallness. But in other cases it is a feature simply of a specific language.
Top

Back  -    New Search

sound system.

See phonological system.

Back  -    New Search

source.

Case role of e.g. the room in I left the room or from Sydney in I hitchhiked from Sydney to Canberra.

Back  -    New Search

‘source feature’.

Used by Chomsky and Halle, SPE, of phonetic features of voice, stridency, and heightened subglottal pressure. The classification of features into source features, major class features, etc. was said at the time to have ‘little theoretical basis’.

Back  -    New Search

source language.

One from which a translation is made. E.g. if a poem is translated from German into English, German is the source language and English the ‘target language’.

Back  -    New Search

South American languages.

The indigenous languages of effectively three main regions. Those surviving in the south of the continent (roughly present-day Chile and Argentina) belong to a few small families: Araucanian, in south-central Chile and a neighbouring part of Argentina, has the largest number of speakers. Those of the central Andes (roughly from southern Colombia to south of Bolivia) include Quechua(n), spread originally under the Incas, and Aymará. Those of the rest of the continent are genetically very diverse, some belonging to small families, others to larger ones distributed at intervals over wide areas. The most important south of the Amazon is Tupi-Guaraní, of which Guaraní is, with Spanish, an official language of Paraguay. Gê, or a hypothetical enlargement ‘Macro-Gê’, is another in the central area of Brazil. To the north and west the most important groupings are Panoan, in the headwaters of the Amazon, Arawakan, Cariban, and Chibchan; the last group extends into the neighbouring part of Central America.

Back  -    New Search

South Asian languages.

The languages of the Indian subcontinent: see Indian languages.

Back  -    New Search

South Caucasian.

See Kartvelian.

Back  -    New Search

South-east Asian languages.

Variously classed as Mon-Khmer, which includes Khmer (Cambodian) and Vietnamese; Tai, which includes Thai and Lao; Tibeto-Burman, which includes Burmese; also, among the many smaller languages, some belonging to Austronesian, Kadai (grouped with Tai as Tai-Kadai), and Miao-Yao (= Hmong-Mien). The geopolitical area is part of a wider Sprachbund, from the eastern Himalayas across to southern China, which includes other related languages.

Back  -    New Search

SOV language.

One in which a subject (3), object (3), and verb are at least basically or most commonly in that order. E.g., in the usual account, Latin: thus Caesar (S) bellum (O) gessit (V) ‘Caesar waged war’. Opp. SVO language, VSO language, etc.

Back  -    New Search

Spanish.

Romance, the official language of Spain and of several countries in Central and South America, from Mexico to Chile and Argentina, that were once part of the Spanish empire. There are also some millions of native speakers in the USA.
Originally the dialect of Castile in north Spain, and a literary language, in poetry and prose, from the Middle Ages; carried southwards as the Moors were progressively driven from the peninsula, and overseas, by missionaries and colonists, after the European discovery of America. The term ‘Castilian’ is now used of European Spanish, as opposed to Latin American; also, within Spain, to Catalan or Galician.

Back  -    New Search

spatial.

Indicating or involving location in space. Thus here and there are opposed in a system of spatial deixis; under is a spatial (= locative) preposition in under the table.

Back  -    New Search

SPE

= The Sound Pattern of English, by Chomsky and Halle (1968). The classic account of Generative Phonology; also the source for one widely used taxonomy of phonetic features.

Back  -    New Search

speaker recognition.

The recognition of the voice of an individual speaker, either by other people or automatically by a machine.

Back  -    New Search

Spec.

See X-bar syntax.

Back  -    New Search

special clitic.

One whose position in a sequence of elements is peculiar to it, or to it and to other clitics, and is not that which might be expected from its role in the construction. Thus especially one which appears in second position following Wackernagel's Law.
Opp. simple clitic. But the possibilities are more complex than this dichotomy implies.

Back  -    New Search

specialization.

1 Narrowing e.g. of word meaning; cf. restriction of meaning.

2 Proposed design feature of language: speech is ‘specialized’ in that there is no natural connection between its physical character and its consequences in the behaviour of speakers.
Top

Back  -    New Search

Specified Subject Condition.

A precursor, in the 1970s, of Chomsky's proposed constraints on bound (2) elements in Government and Binding Theory.

Back  -    New Search

Specifier (Spec).

See X-bar syntax.

Back  -    New Search

spectrogram.

A display of acoustic energy across a range of frequencies. In the form most helpful for the study of speech, changes in the distribution of energy over time are shown on the horizontal dimension; frequency (typically from 1 to 4,000 Hz or cycles per second) on the vertical; and levels of energy, above a set threshold, by a trace that intensifies as they increase.

Back  -    New Search

speculative grammar.

Style of philosophical grammar in the Middle Ages, in which the structure of language, seen as in essence universal, is explained as mirroring that of reality. ‘Speculative’ is from Latin speculum ‘mirror’.

Back  -    New Search

speech act.

An utterance conceived as an act by which the speaker does something. Originally of performatives: e.g. by saying ‘I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth’ a speaker will, in the appropriate circumstances, perform the act of naming it. Thence of utterances generally. E.g. in saying ‘I will be there tomorrow’ one makes a promise or a prediction: i.e. one performs an act of promising or predicting. If one says ‘Stephen is my brother’ the act is that of making a statement, if ‘Is Stephen your brother?’ that of asking a question, and so on.
A theory of speech acts was developed by J. R. Searle at the end of the 1960s, on the basis of work by Austin. It included, among other things, a division of such acts into representatives, directives, commissives, expressives, and declarations.

Back  -    New Search

speech community.

Any group of people whose language or use of language can be taken as a coherent object of study. Speakers of English in general might be treated as such a community; also, e.g. speakers of a distinct variety that one might call ‘Birmingham English’, spoken or usually spoken by part of the population of Birmingham. So might any other population that meets some test of coherence, whether large or small, bilingual or monolingual, in a single place or scattered.

Back  -    New Search

speech error.

An accidental error in speech: cf. slip of the tongue.

Back  -    New Search

speech island.

A small speech community occupying an area surrounded by speakers of another language.

Back  -    New Search

speech processing.

General term covering processes posited in the minds of both speakers (in speech production ) and hearers (in speech recognition ). Thence of superficially equivalent processing by computers.

Back  -    New Search

speech synthesis.

Any artificial simulation of speech, e.g. as a research tool in controlling stimuli for phonetic or psychological experiments, or in practical applications.

Back  -    New Search

spelling pronunciation.

A pronunciation of a word which is derived from or influenced by its spelling. E.g. earlier ['frd] forehead has been widely supplanted by the spelling pronunciation ['f:hd].

Back  -    New Search

‘spell out’.

To supply a realization: e.g. a specific rule for English might spell out a plural morpheme in its regular basic form (-(e)s).

Back  -    New Search

spirant.

An older term for a fricative. Spirantization is a historical process by which a stop consonant becomes a fricative.

Back  -    New Search

split.

Change by which two distinct units, constructions, etc. develop from what was formerly one. Especially in phonology: e.g. Italian [k] and [t] (in amico ‘friend’ vs. amici ‘friends’) are distinct phonemes which have derived by a split, in Late Latin, from what had been a single phoneme [k] (written c). Opp. merger.

Back  -    New Search

‘split antecedent’.

Two or more units which together supply the antecedent of a single anaphoric element: e.g. Roger and his wife as the antecedent(s) of they in Roger told his wife they (Roger and his wife) were broke.

Back  -    New Search

split ergative.

(Language) in which agents and patients are sometimes distinguished as in an ergative and sometimes as in an accusative language. E.g. the ‘ergative’ pattern is found only when the verb is past or perfect, or the ‘accusative’ only when the agent and patient are pronouns.

Back  -    New Search

split infinitive.

A form in English in which to and an uninflected verb, together seen as constituting an infinitive, are separated by e.g. an adverb. Thus to and rid are ‘split’ by systematically in to systematically rid this town of layabouts. Traditionally proscribed under this name.

Back  -    New Search

split intransitive.

The pattern exemplified in an active language, in which the single argument or valent of an intransitive construction is identified in some conditions with the agent in a transitive construction and in others with the patient.

Back  -    New Search

‘split morphology hypothesis’.

The view, held widely but challenged within Lexical Morphology, that inflectional and derivational morphology are in principle separate.

Back  -    New Search

‘spontaneous’.

(Sound-change) not explained by the phonetic context or the position in a word in which it takes place: e.g. the merger, in Southern British forms of English, of the vowel of moor and poor with that of more and pour. Also described as ‘unconditioned’ ; but there is no implication, at least in current theories, that such changes may not be explained, or seen as ‘conditioned’, by other factors.

Back  -    New Search

spoonerism.

Slip of the tongue in which parts of successive words are interchanged. Classic examples make sense in their turn: e.g. ‘our dear old queen’ transposed to ‘our queer old dean’.

Back  -    New Search

sporadic.

(Sound-change) attested in some forms but not in others: hence an exception, at first sight if no more, to the Neogrammarian ‘regularity principle’.

Back  -    New Search

Sprachbund.

A group of languages, often of different historical origin, which are spoken in the same part of the world and have developed similar structures. Classic examples include the Balkan languages and those of the Indian subcontinent; those of South-east Asia or of the Meso-American group of Central American languages are other striking instances involving members of several different families.
The area where such a group of languages is spoken is a linguistic area ; the historical process by which they develop similar structures is that of convergence.

Back  -    New Search

Sprachgefühl.

A linguist's intuitive feel for a language; cf. intuition.

Back  -    New Search

spread.

(Lips) distended as in a smile: e.g. in the articulation of [i] in Italian (dico or Dino). Opp. rounded.

Back  -    New Search

spreading.

The extension of a phonetic feature intrinsic to one element to other adjacent elements. Thus in a word like maim the feature ‘nasal’, intrinsic to the consonants, spreads to the intervening vowel.

Back  -    New Search

square brackets [].

Mainly used:1 To enclose phonetic transcriptions: e.g. fish is phonetically [f].

2 To enclose syntactic or other constituents: e.g. went into the garden can be analysed into the constituents [went [into [the garden]]]. Cf. labelled bracketing.
Top

3 In representing phonological or other features. Thus the vowel in scream has the feature [Front] or [+ Front], among others.
Top

Back  -    New Search

squish.

J. R. Ross's term for an instance of gradience.

Back  -    New Search

s-selection.

Introduced by Chomsky in the 1980s for valency or argument structure seen as determined by the meaning of an individual word. Opp. c-selection.

Back  -    New Search

S-structure.

The least abstract level of syntactic structure in Government and Binding Theory. Derived by successive modifications from the notion of surface structure in transformational grammars of the 1960s and 1970s; effectively jettisoned, with a similar relic of deep structure, in Chomsky's minimalist programme in the 1990s.

Back  -    New Search

stacking.

Any pattern in which two or more units of a kind are independently related to the same element. E.g. in the man you saw who kissed her who was here yesterday, three successive relative clauses are stacked in relation to the single noun man.
See also case stacking.

Back  -    New Search

Stammbaum model.

The model adopted especially by Schleicher in the mid-19th century, in which historical relations among languages are seen as like those between generations in a family tree (German ‘Stammbaum’). Thus Indo-European is represented as a parent language from which e.g. Italic developed as one independent daughter language. Latin in turn is one independent daughter of Italic, and the Romance languages independent daughters of Latin. Contrasted later in the century with the wave model.

Back  -    New Search

standard.

(Form, variety) which is learned and accepted as correct across a community or set of communities in which others are also used: e.g. Standard English, as used especially in writing, vs. regional dialects, creoles based on English, etc.
Standardization is the process, often in part at least deliberate, by which standard forms of a language are established. Forms and varieties which are not standard are simply ‘non-standard’.

Back  -    New Search

‘Standard Average European’.

B. L. Whorf's term for a group of European languages including English, German, and French, distinguished by a set of common categories of time, space, etc. from many others. An aspect, in effect, of a European Sprachbund.

Back  -    New Search

‘Standard Theory’.

The theory of transformational grammar proposed by Chomsky in the mid-1960s. The main feature distinguishing it from the proposal that immediately replaced it was that the semantic representation of a sentence was determined solely on the basis of its deep structure.
The term dates from the 1970s. Also called ‘Aspects-theory’ or ‘Aspects-model’ , from Chomsky's Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965).

Back  -    New Search

starred form.

See asterisk.

Back  -    New Search

statal

= stative. Thus (was) flattened is a ‘statal passive’ if it simply describes the flattened state an object is in, as opposed to a ‘dynamic passive’ which refers to the action of flattening.

Back  -    New Search

statement.

See declarative.

Back  -    New Search

static tone

= register tone: opp. dynamic or contour tone.

Back  -    New Search

‘statistical universal’

= relative universal, but with the added assumption or implication that languages form a population of individuals that can be studied by statistical methods.

Back  -    New Search

stative.

Referring to a persisting state or situation. E.g. stand and sleep are stative verbs; (is) destroyed is stative if it means ‘in the state of having been destroyed’. Opp. dynamic.

Back  -    New Search

stem.

A form from which a word or series of words is derived by the addition of one or more affixes. Especially one which is common to all the words that make up a definable part of a paradigm: e.g. French chanter- is a ‘future stem’ or ‘stem of’ the future, in that it is common to all the forms of the verb that are of this tense (chanter-ai ‘(I) will sing’, chanter-as ‘(you) will sing’, etc.).

Back  -    New Search

stem compound.

A compound formed from elements that are not complete word forms: e.g. Latin signifer ‘standard bearer’, from sign(i)-(nominative signum ‘sign, standard’) and fer-(cf. fer-t ‘carries’).

Back  -    New Search

stem vowel.

A vowel which is thematic (2).

Back  -    New Search

stereotype semantics.

Model of word meanings in which each includes a stereotype of whatever a word denotes. Cf. prototype theory.

Back  -    New Search

stiff voice.

Type of phonation in which the vocal cords are held more stiffly, with a slightly lower flow of air, than in normal or modal voice. Cf. slack voice.

Back  -    New Search

stigmatized.

(Form, etc.) seen as objectionable by some or all members of a speech community. E.g. ain't, though widely used, is stigmatized in American English.

Back  -    New Search

stimulus-response model.

Model of communication in which a stimulus (S) acting on a speaker gives rise to speech as a linguistic response (r); this in turn acts as a linguistic stimulus (s) which in turn gives rise to a response (R), e.g. a visible action, in a hearer. Thus, schematically, S r …s R.
Introduced into linguistics by Bloomfield in the 1920s, on the basis of current theories of behaviourism, and the foundation for his account of meaning.

Back  -    New Search

‘stock’.

Used by some historical linguists variously of a family or of a hypothetical grouping of two or more established families into a larger family. In the latter sense sometimes equivalent to and sometimes seen as smaller than a phylum.

Back  -    New Search

Stoics.

School of philosophers, founded in Athens c.300 BC. The early Stoics divided philosophy into three parts, of which a ‘logical’ part was in turn divided into the study of the meanings of expressions (what is ‘said’ or ‘signified’) and that of the expressions themselves (that which ‘signifies’). The work of Chrysippus (280–207 BC) and his pupil Diogenes of Babylon (c.240–152 BC) is particularly important in the development of the system of parts of speech; also of case, tense, and other semantic categories.
The writings of the early Stoics have not survived, but their ideas are known, in part fragmentarily, from later sources.

Back  -    New Search

stop.

Consonant in whose articulation a flow of air is temporarily blocked: e.g. [p] and [t] in pit. Usually of consonants, such as these, in which the flow is blocked through both the mouth and the nose; but some definitions include those in which it is blocked through the mouth only: thus nasals such as [m] and [n] in man.

Back  -    New Search

‘stranding’.

See preposition stranding.

Back  -    New Search

Stratal Uniqueness Law.

See term.

Back  -    New Search

‘strategy’.

Informally in various contexts of a broad way of achieving an end. To use an interrogative as a request (‘Can you help me?’, ‘Could they possibly be kept on the leash?’) might thus be said to be one strategy for influencing the actions of an addressee, or one strategy for politeness; a model of language processing will adopt a strategy for e.g. parsing; and so on.

Back  -    New Search

Stratificational Grammar.

Model of grammar developed by S. M. Lamb from the early 1960s. Forms were represented at each of a series of levels, called ‘strata’ , of which the lowest dealt with phonetics and the highest with meaning. Each stratum was characterized by one basic unit: e.g. at one level, the phoneme. This was composed of minimal elements labelled by a term in ‘-on’: e.g. ‘phonons’ were distinctive features of phonemes. Each stratum specified the ways in which its basic unit could be arranged: this constituted a ‘-tactics’, e.g. phonotactics. Finally, each was connected to the next higher or next lower stratum by a relation of realization: e.g. phonemes realized ‘morphons’, which were the minimal elements of a higher stratum whose basic unit was the morpheme.
Interest in the model had dwindled by the mid-1970s.

Back  -    New Search

stratum.

A level of representation, generally (as in Stratificational Grammar) or within a specific structure. Thus in Relational Grammar a sentence such as Mary was seen by Bill has a structure that distinguishes two strata, one in which Mary and Bill have the roles they have in the corresponding active, and another in which they have undergone respective promotion and demotion, to their roles in the passive.

Back  -    New Search

‘strength’.

Used in phonology of any scale or hierarchy in which units are distinguished as stronger or weaker with respect to some phonetic property or properties. Thus stop consonants may be seen as stronger, with respect to the degree of stricture, than fricatives; voiceless as stronger than voiced; and so on. Fortition (or strengthening) and lenition (or weakening) can be defined as processes by which units at one point on such a scale are replaced by others either higher or lower.

Back  -    New Search

stress.

Phonological feature by which a syllable is heard as more prominent than others. E.g. in below the second syllable is stressed [bl], in billow the first ['bl]. Also of sentence stress and prominence within larger units generally. Thus in He did stress might fall on either word: HE did ‘It was him who did’ (stress on he), or He DID.
The phonetic correlates vary: in auditory terms, a difference in length, in perceived loudness, in vowel quality, in pitch, or in a combination of any of these. As a feature of words, accents (1) are divided generally into stress accents , in which the differences reflect or are thought to reflect greater muscular energy in the production of an accented syllable, and pitch accents. The accent in English, as in below and billow, is a stress accent.

Back  -    New Search

stress accent.

See stress.

Back  -    New Search

stress group.

A sequence of syllables of which one bears a primary stress, seen as a rhythmical unit. Cf. foot: e.g. in one analysis, easy solution would be divided into the stress groups [EAsy so] and [LUtion].

Back  -    New Search

stress-timed.

(Language) in which the intervals between stressed syllables in speech are either equal or at least more nearly equal than the intervals between the nucleus of each successive syllable and the next. Thus English, to the extent that, e.g. in a phrase such as incrédible explanátions, the interval in time between the two stressed syllables, [kr] and [ne], will tend, despite the number of intervening unstressed syllables, to equal that in phrases such as absúrd théories, where stressed [s:d] and [] are adjacent. Opp. syllable-timed.

Back  -    New Search

‘strict subcategorization’.

Introduced by Chomsky in the 1960s for the assignment of a lexical unit to a syntactically defined subclass of its major word class: e.g. that of make to the subclass of verbs that can be followed by an object noun phrase.
Cf. c-selection; also valency. ‘Strict’ as opposed to subclassification by selectional restrictions (1).

Back  -    New Search

stricture.

Any constriction of part of the vocal tract in the articulation of a speech sound. Degrees of stricture range from closure, in stops such as [p] in pea, through close approximation, in fricatives such as [s] in sea, to open approximation, e.g. in vowels.

Back  -    New Search

strident

= sibilant. A distinctive feature in the schemes proposed by Jakobson and by Chomsky and Halle, SPE, where characterized acoustically by a higher intensity of noise. Thus [s] in sin is strident in opposition to [] in thin; also, in SPE, a labiodental [f] in opposition to a bilabial [].

Back  -    New Search

string.

Mathematical term for a linear array of elements. E.g. given the set A = {a, b, c}, a, baa, bcbac, … are strings ‘over’ (that is, composed of elements of) A. Hence used by linguists in a sense equivalent to ‘sequence’.

Back  -    New Search

stripping.

The reduction of a clause to a single unit by which it differs from an earlier clause to which it is related by coordination: e.g. in I sent a letter to her parents and <> some flowers <>: sc. ‘and I sent some flowers to her parents’. Cf. gapping.

Back  -    New Search

strong. (1)

Verb, formation, etc.) in Germanic languages distinguished by ablaut as opposed to suffixing. Thus in English sing is a strong verb (past tense sang, participle sung) while talk is a weak verb (past tense and participle talked).

Back  -    New Search

strong (2)

(syllable, etc.) . See Metrical Phonology.

Back  -    New Search

‘strong crossover’.

Sometimes invoked in excluding the possibility that, e.g. in Who did she visit?, both pronouns (who and she) might be taken as having the same referent. If seen in terms of wh-movement this would involve the second of two coreferential elements ‘crossing over’ the first.

Back  -    New Search

strong generative capacity.

The range of structures that a specific type of generative grammar can assign to the sentences of a language. Thus grammars of type A might be capable of generating the same sets of sentences as grammars of type B: in that sense they would have the same weak generative capacity. But those of type A might be able to assign alternative structures to sentences for which those of type B could assign one structure only. If so then, all else being equal, the strong generative capacity of grammars of type A would be greater.

Back  -    New Search

‘Strong Lexicalist Hypothesis’.

The view that, firstly, there is no distinction in principle between inflectional and derivational morphology and, secondly, they both belong, in a generative grammar, to the lexicon and not to syntax. Distinguished from the ‘Weak Lexicalist Hypothesis’ , by which derivation belongs to the lexicon but inflection does not.

Back  -    New Search

strongly equivalent.

(Grammars, types of grammar) having the same strong generative capacity.

Back  -    New Search

structural ambiguity

= grammatical ambiguity.

Back  -    New Search

structural dialectology.

Treatment developed in the 1950s by U. Weinreich and others, in which dialects were compared within the framework of a common diasystem. Thus, in their phonology, they could be seen as differing variously in the ‘inventory’ of units at some point in the system, in general patterns of distribution of such units, or in the ‘incidence’ of units in sets of cognate words.

Back  -    New Search

structural linguistics.

Any school or theory in which language is conceived as a self-regulating system, whose elements are defined by their relationship to other elements.
Structuralism originated above all in the posthumous work of Saussure, and by the mid-20th century was not only dominant in linguistics but was having an increasing influence on other disciplines, including anthropology and literary criticism. The term itself was in general use before the Second World War, with reference to a discipline in which the study of a language system was abstracted from the spoken and written use of languages and from their history: hence a growing divide between structuralism and the older branches of philology. But since 1960 usage has become in part confused. In particular, Chomsky and his followers identified structural linguistics with the local Post-Bloomfieldian school to which they were reacting in the USA; since they rejected Post-Bloomfieldian methods, they themselves were not ‘structuralists’. But in a wider conception, Chomsky's account of a generative grammar was clearly structuralist.
See European structuralism for leading scholars in that tradition.

Back  -    New Search

structural order.

See order.

Back  -    New Search

structure.

Used by Firth and others specifically of syntagmatic structures. Opp. system.

Back  -    New Search

structure-dependency.

Principle by which syntactic processes respect the organization of sentences into phrases. The stock illustration is that of inversion in interrogatives in English: e.g. in The man who was there is coming it is possible to invert the man who was there and is (Is the man who was there coming?), but not the man who and was (Was the man who there is coming?), since the man who does not form a subject phrase.

Back  -    New Search

‘Sturtevant's paradox’.

The paradox by which sound-change is regular but creates irregularity while analogical change is irregular but creates regularity. Thus a sound-change may give rise to an irregular inflection; an analogical change may replace it with the one that is usual.
Formulated as a paradox by E. H. Sturtevant in the 1940s.

Back  -    New Search

stylistics.

The study of style in language: traditionally, of variations in usage among literary and other texts; now, more generally, of any systematic variation, in either writing or speech, which relates to the type of discourse or its context rather than to differences of dialect. Thus there is a style appropriate to public lectures, different from that of casual conversation among friends; the style of prayers in church includes the intonation, etc. with which they are recited; and so on.
Hence ‘literary stylistics’ , as the study of relevant differences, other than in the dialect or language used, among individual writers, periods, or genres.

Back  -    New Search

sub-.

From the Latin word for ‘under’. Hence subordination ‘ordering or ranking under’, or subjacency, of a principle involving elements ‘lying under’ nodes in a tree structure. Also in the terminology for local cases: subessive , indicating position ‘under’, sublative, indicating movement to a position ‘under’, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

subapical.

(Consonant) articulated with the underside of the tongue tip in contact with the top of the mouth: one form of retroflex articulation, normal in Dravidian languages.

Back  -    New Search

subcategorization.

The assignment of a lexical item to a subclass of its part of speech, especially with respect to the syntactic elements with which it can combine. Cf. strict subcategorization.
In a notation introduced by Chomsky in the 1960s, verbs were assigned to subcategorization frames which identified their potential positions in phrase structure trees. Thus a transitive verb, such as make, was assigned a feature [+ -NP]: i.e. it can appear (+) in the frame ‘–-NP’, or before a noun phrase.

Back  -    New Search

subfamily.

See family.

Back  -    New Search

subglottal.

(Air, air pressure) below the vocal cords.

Back  -    New Search

Subj

= subject.

Back  -    New Search

subjacency.

Principle of syntax, as formulated by Chomsky in the late 1970s, by which the movement of a unit is blocked if it crosses the boundaries of two or more designated classes of constituent. Thus, in this account, the reason why one cannot say Who did you hear the news that he had killed? is that who would have to be moved, by wh-movement, across the boundary of both a subordinate sentence (he had killed <who>) and a noun phrase (the news that he had killed) in which it is included.
Movements were seen as following the cyclic(al) principle: hence the nodes in a phrase structure tree which dominated the constituents within which they could operate were cyclic nodes . Constructions in which, apparently contrary to the principle of subjacency, a unit moved across the boundaries defined by more than one such node were explained as cases of successive cyclicity.

Back  -    New Search

subject (S).

1 A syntactic element in e.g. English which is traditionally seen as representing someone or something of which something is said or predicated, and which, in addition, includes the agent in a basic transitive construction. E.g. John in John came, John helped me, John was freed, John is my friend, and so on; also, on the assumption that they have the same syntactic role, knowing him in Knowing him helped me, or that he is worried in That he is worried is obvious.
Thence extended to elements in other types of language that are similar in one or the other respect.

2 Sometimes, though less usually, of noun phrases, etc. serving as a topic (3) or pivot (2).
Top

3 Commonly, especially in studies across languages, of any syntactic element which characteristically includes the semantic role of agent. E.g. an ergative case will be said to mark the subject in one type of language, as the nominative does in another.
Top

Back  -    New Search

subject clause.

A clause which has the role of subject: e.g. when it happened in When it happened isn't known, or that it happened in That it happened isn't certain.

Back  -    New Search

subject complement.

An adjective or noun or noun phrase which is linked to a subject by a copula or copular verb: e.g. angry in She was angry (with copula was), or traitor in He turned traitor (with copular verb turned). Cf. predicative.

Back  -    New Search

subject control.

Relation of control in which the subject of a non-finite verb is supplied by the subject of a main clause: e.g. in I wanted to leave the subject of to leave is supplied by that of the main verb, I.

Back  -    New Search

subject honorific.

See honorific.

Back  -    New Search

subjective.

Case which is that of, among others, a subject: e.g. I is the subjective form of the pronoun, as in I did. Opp. objective: more usual, instead of nominative, in describing languages with no other distinction of cases.

Back  -    New Search

subjective genitive.

Construction in which a noun, etc. in the genitive case, or its equivalent, has a semantic relation to a head noun like that of a subject to a verb. E.g. John's in John's departure: compare John departed. Opp. objective genitive.

Back  -    New Search

subjectivity.

In the ordinary sense. Also, following Benveniste in the 1950s, of the property of language by which utterances reflect the standpoint of the speaker. Thus, in deixis, pronouns such as I are used by speakers to refer to themselves; a performative such as I promise to be there constitutes an act of promise by the speaker; and so on.

Back  -    New Search

subjectivization.

Process of change by which words develop a subjective in place of or alongside an objective sense: e.g. villein, in the objective sense of ‘feudal serf’, > villain, in the subjective (and in this case pejorative) sense of someone perceived as base or wicked.

Back  -    New Search

subject-prominent.

(Language) in which the basic syntactic elements of a sentence are a subject and a predicate. Opp. topic-prominent; but whether this division is either exhaustive or revealing depends on how ‘subject’, in particular, is defined.

Back  -    New Search

subject pronoun.

A pronoun with the syntactic role of subject. Thus, in I left, I is a subject pronoun in the appropriate subjective form.

Back  -    New Search

subject raising.

Raising (2) of a subject. Hence, in particular, of the postulated raising of the subject of a subordinate verb to the subject position of a main clause: e.g. Mary in Mary seems to be there (seen as from an underlying It seems [Mary is there] or [Mary is there] it seems).

Back  -    New Search

subjunct.

Used by Quirk et al., CGE, of a range of adverbials which would include e.g. morally in It is morally wrong, or pretty well in They pretty well wrecked it. Said to have ‘to a greater or lesser degree, a subordinate role…in comparison with other clause elements’. Cf. adjunct; conjunct (2); disjunct.

Back  -    New Search

subjunctive (SUBJ).

Mood, especially in European languages, whose central role is to mark a clause as expressing something other than a statement of what is certain. Thus, in Latin, faciat (do-SUBJ-3SG) ‘Let him/her do (it)’ as opposed to indicative facit ‘He/she is doing it’. Usually with a range of loosely related uses: in particular, the subjunctive is often required in some types of subordinate (= ‘subjoined’) clause, or in clauses introduced by specific subordinators or subordinating conjunctions.
Forms such as be in I ask that he be told, or were in If he were here he would help are traditionally called ‘subjunctive’ in English.

Back  -    New Search

subordinate clause.

A clause which is a syntactic element within or of a larger clause: e.g. I like as the modifier of people in the larger clause I want people I like, or what I like as the complement of know in I know what I like.
Opp. independent clause; main clause; superordinate clause: thus a subordinate (or ‘lower’) clause is an element within the structure of a superordinate (or ‘higher’) clause. Also called a ‘subordinate sentence’. The verb of a subordinate clause is a subordinate verb , its subject a subordinate subject , and so on.

Back  -    New Search

subordinating conjunction

= subordinator.

Back  -    New Search

subordination.

1 = dependency.

2 = modification (1). The first sense is usual and traditional: thus subordination or ‘hypotaxis’ (respectively the Latin and the Greek for ‘ordering under’) is opposed to coordination or ‘parataxis’ (‘ordering beside’). The second sense is that of, among others, Bloomfield.
Top

Back  -    New Search

subordinator.

A word, etc. which marks a clause as subordinate: e.g. after in He came [after we left], or that in He said [that we had left]. Traditionally a ‘subordinating conjunction’; cf. coordinator.
Sometimes restricted to subordinators in adverbial clauses. E.g. after is a subordinator; that, by contrast, is a complementizer.

Back  -    New Search

substance.

The projection of a set of abstract relations among units on to anything concrete corresponding to them. E.g. ‘p’ in English is opposed to ‘b’: that, in the theory of Hjelmslev in particular, is simply a statement about a difference within an abstract language system. But the difference may be realized, in a phonic medium, by the sound [p] as opposed to the sound [b] or, in the medium of writing, by the letter <p> as opposed to the letter . These are accordingly projections of a relation between units that are in themselves neither sounds nor letters on to units of, respectively, ‘phonic substance’ and ‘(ortho)graphic substance’. Similarly, ‘pin’ in English is distinct from ‘bin’; that, again in Hjelmslev's theory, is another abstract distinction in the language system. But it is seen as projected, on to a substance of ‘thought’, as a distinction between corresponding concepts.
The abstract relations are those of form (2); see also purport. The germ of this idea is in the work of Saussure, but Hjelmslev elaborated and clarified it.

Back  -    New Search

substandard.

(Form, variety) which is not standard. Usually of ones proscribed in relation to a standard: e.g. double negatives, as in I don't know nothing, are proscribed as ‘substandard’ in English.

Back  -    New Search

substantive [s'bstntv]

= noun. Originally ‘noun substantive’, from Latin nomen substantivum (roughly ‘independent noun’) as opposed to nomen adiectivum ‘noun adjective’ (roughly ‘dependent noun’). These were divisions within a class of ‘nouns’ which was seen in antiquity as including adjectives as well as nouns as they are defined nowadays.

Back  -    New Search

substantive universal

[sb'stantv]. Chomsky's term in the 1960s for any specific category, etc. established as part of a general linguistic theory: thus e.g. a phonetic feature such as voice, a semantic feature such as abstract vs. concrete, a syntactic category such as noun and verb. Also of specific rules: thus, in one such theory, of a syntactic rule by which a sentence in any language must have, as its basic elements, a subject and a predicate.
Opp. formal universal.

Back  -    New Search

substitute form

= pro-form.

Back  -    New Search

substitution.

The replacement, in the process of analysing a language, of one unit or sequence of units by another. Thus, in establishing its phonemes, one procedure is to interchange sounds to determine whether the substitution makes a difference of meaning. Cf. commutation test.
A substitution frame is the rest of a sequence in which substitutions are made. E.g. in the frame The — have left, a word such as men (The men have left) can be replaced by any of elephants, young people, workers next door, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

substratum.

1 A language formerly spoken by some population which has influenced their acquisition of a language spoken later. E.g., under the Roman empire, languages such as Gaulish or Iberian were replaced by Latin. But it has often been argued that, in learning Latin, speakers of these languages carried over certain phonetic and other features, and that these are reflected in modern Romance dialects.

2 A language spoken by some population which has influenced that of a group by which they were dominated. Thus English as a possible influence on the evolution of Anglo-French after the Norman conquest; also any of several West African languages as a factor in the formation of pidgins spoken in the West Indies.
Cf. adstratum; superstratum.
Top

Back  -    New Search

substraction.

Morphological process by which part of a form is deleted. Thus, in one account, French grand [grã] ‘big’ (masculine) is phonetically derived from grande [grãd] by the subtraction of the final consonant.
Implicitly distinguished, as a systematic process, from lexical abbreviation or clipping.

Back  -    New Search

‘subtractive bilingualism’.

The acquisition of a second language at the expense, or ultimately at the expense, of the first, e.g. that of English by many immigrant communities in North America or Britain. Contrasted, though the facts are hardly so clear-cut, with additive bilingualism.

Back  -    New Search

‘successive cyclicity’.

Term for cases where, according to Government and Binding Theory, a syntactic process applies to the same element in two or more cycles as defined under the principle of subjacency. E.g. in Who did you say you saw?, who is claimed to move, by wh-movement, in two stages: first to the head of the subordinate clause (who you saw), then to the head of the main clause.

Back  -    New Search

suction.

Defined by Chomsky and Halle, SPE, as a feature of both clicks and implosives, in both of which the airstream mechanism is ingressive.

Back  -    New Search

suffix.

An affix that comes after the form to which it is added: e.g. -ness in sadness. Hence suffixation , for the process of adding a suffix. Also suffixal : thus -ness is in suffixal position, and the formation of nouns in -ness a suffixal formation.

Back  -    New Search

sulcal.

Grooved: thus the tongue is in a ‘sulcal’ position if e.g. the sides are raised but there is a groove in the centre.

Back  -    New Search

Sumerian.

Ancient language of southern Mesopotamia, not securely related to any other. Written in cuneiform, which evolved from a set of pictograms used, in the late 4th millennium BC, for mnemonic labelling, to a full representation of sentences, with both logograms and syllabic characters, by the late 3rd millennium. Increasingly supplanted by Akkadian from the early 2nd millennium.

Back  -    New Search

summative.

Used by Quirk et al., CGE, of adverbs or adverbials that introduce a summing up of what precedes: e.g. all in all in So, all in all, it was a success.

Back  -    New Search

Summer Institute of Linguistics.

Scholarly organization whose work complements that of the Wycliffe Bible translators. Founded in the USA in 1934 to train missionaries in linguistic fieldwork; Pike is its most important member and his theories have informed much of its work.

Back  -    New Search

Sundanese.

Austronesian; a major language of Java, with several million speakers in the western third of the island.

Back  -    New Search

super-.

From the Latin word for ‘over’. Hence, in the terminology for local cases, superessive, indicating position above or over; superlative case [su:p'letv], indicating movement to a position above or over. Likewise superordinate, in opposition to subordinate; superfix, for a morphological element realized ‘over’ others; and so on.

Back  -    New Search

superfamily.

See family.

Back  -    New Search

superfix.

A morphological element, especially of accent or tone, whose realization is simultaneous with the whole or part of the form to which it is joined. E.g. in récord [rk:d] vs. recórd [r'k:d], the accentual patterns might be treated as contrasting superfixes ('—and—').

Back  -    New Search

superlative.

(Construction, inflection, etc.) by which persons, things, etc. are singled out as having some property to the greatest or to an extreme degree. Originally of inflected forms of adjectives or adverbs: e.g. lousiest in It's the lousiest film I've seen is the superlative form of lousy.
Positive, comparative, and superlative are traditionally three terms in the category of ‘grade’. Some languages distinguish a superlative, by which individuals are singled out from a specific set, from an elative (2), whose role is simply that of an intensifier.

Back  -    New Search

superordinate clause.

A clause seen in relation to a subordinate clause within it. E.g. I expect he will come is a superordinate or ‘higher’ clause in relation to the subordinate or ‘lower’ clause he will come, which is contained within it. Cf. main clause.

Back  -    New Search

superstock.

See family.

Back  -    New Search

superstratum.

A language spoken by a dominant group which has influenced that of a population subordinate to it. E.g. speakers of English were dominated after the Norman conquest by speakers whose native language was Anglo-French; hence Anglo-French became a superstratum that has influenced the history of English.
Cf. substratum; adstratum.

Back  -    New Search

supine.

Term in Latin grammar for a nominal form of a verb with the same stem as the passive participle. Hence available for forms in other languages which are like participles in some respects but different in others.

Back  -    New Search

supplementive.

Used by Quirk et al., CGE, of an adjectival or other unit whose construction is as a supplement to a clause rather than an element in it. E.g. too embarrassed for words is supplementive in Too embarrassed for words, I rose to my feet.

Back  -    New Search

suppletion.

Morphological process or alternation in which one form wholly replaces another. Thus in went either the whole form, or a stem wen-, is in a suppletive relationship to go.
In partial suppletion only a part of the form is replaced. E.g. in thought (or though-t), the th- of think is unchanged and only -ink is affected.

Back  -    New Search

suprafix

=superfix.

Back  -    New Search

supraglottal.

Above the vocal cords or glottis. E.g. a plosive such as [t] or [k] is articulated with a ‘supraglottal closure’.

Back  -    New Search

suprasegmental.

(Unit, feature, etc.) whose domain extends over more than one successive minimal element. Thus stress is a suprasegmental feature whose domain is a syllable, not an individual consonant or vowel within it.

Back  -    New Search

surd.

An older term for voiceless.

Back  -    New Search

‘surface’.

Usually in a sense derived from that of surface structure. Thus a surface filter is a filter that applies to representations of sentences at that level; likewise treatments may invoke surface (or ‘surface structure’) constraints, conditions, etc.

Back  -    New Search

surface structure.

A representation of the syntax of a sentence seen as deriving, by one or more transformations, from an underlying deep structure. Defined by Chomsky in the mid-1960s as the part of the syntactic description of a sentence that determines its phonetic representation; therefore a structure in which, in particular, all elements are in the order in which the corresponding phonetic forms are spoken. Later, by the mid-1970s, said to determine the semantic representation also, and subsequently replaced by a more abstract structure renamed, from the late 1970s, S-structure. As such the least abstract of three levels of syntax in Government and Binding Theory, until the early 1990s, when Chomsky's minimalist programme no longer took it for granted.
Cf. Phonetic Form; shallow structure.

Back  -    New Search

Survey of English Usage.

Founded by Quirk in 1960, at University College London; the repository of a major corpus of educated British English, written and spoken.

Back  -    New Search

svarabhakti.

Sanskrit term for anaptyxis.

Back  -    New Search

SVO language.

One in which a subject (3), verb, and object (3) are at least basically or most commonly in that order. E.g. English: They (S) helped (V) us (O). Opp. SOV language, VSO language, etc.

Back  -    New Search

‘Swadesh list’.

A list of concepts supposedly basic in the vocabulary of all languages, proposed by M. Swadesh in the 1950s for use in studies of glottochronology.

Back  -    New Search

Swahili.

Bantu, in origin native to a very small area, spread by migration along the coast of East Africa and much later, from the 19th century, as a lingua franca and in pidginized forms, into the interior. Standard Swahili is based on the dialect of Zanzibar, though not identical to it: widespread as a second language in Kenya and Tanzania, where it has official status, in Uganda and into eastern Zaire; also increasingly, in cities, as a first language.
Also called ‘Kiswahili’ , with the noun class prefix appropriate for names of languages.

Back  -    New Search

Swati.

Bantu, spoken in South Africa and in Swaziland; related to Xhosa/Zulu within a group called ‘Nguni’.

Back  -    New Search

Swedish.

North Germanic, spoken in Sweden and as a minority language in Finland, where it also has official status. The standard form dates from the translation of the Bible in the 16th century.

Back  -    New Search

Sweet, Henry

(1845–1912)
. British grammarian, phonetician, and Anglicist, whose contributions to phonetics and to our knowledge of the early history of English are both fundamental. Phonetics was for Sweet ‘the indispensable foundation of all language study, whether practical or scientific’: his description and classification of vowels, in particular, was brilliant, and his advocacy of transcriptions based on the Roman alphabet, as opposed to Visible Speech or other analphabetic systems, was decisive in the period leading to the foundation of the International Phonetic Association. He distinguished separate systems for broad and narrow transcription (‘Broad Romic’ and ‘Narrow Romic’), of which the former was in principle phonological: i.e. it made ‘only the practically necessary distinctions of sound in each language’, omitting ‘all that is superfluous’.

Back  -    New Search

switch-reference.

(Grammatical system) in which a marker indicates whether a subject or other argument of a following verb has or has not the same referent as that of the verb preceding. E.g. schematically, John entered-SAME sat down, where SAME indicates ‘same referent’, means ‘John came in and he (John) sat down’, while John entered-DIFFERENT sat down, where DIFFERENT indicates ‘different referent’, means ‘John came in and he (someone other than John) sat down’.

Back  -    New Search

syllabary.

Writing system in which each character represents a syllable, typically consisting either of a vowel or a consonant plus a vowel: e.g. the ‘katakana’ and ‘hiragana’ systems used in writing Japanese.
Syllabaries are less satisfactory than alphabets for many languages, especially those which have consonants at the end as well as the beginning of syllables. An intermediate alpha-syllabic type is exemplified by Indian systems such as Devanagari.

Back  -    New Search

syllabic.

Forming the nucleus of a syllable: e.g. vowels are typically syllabic, and are accordingly said to have the feature [+ syllabic]. Syllabic consonants include e.g. the nasal [n] in [nen] (nation), or a syllabic s in rapid pronunciations of words like Manchester .([mantt]).

Back  -    New Search

syllabic script

=syllabary.

Back  -    New Search

syllable.

A phonological unit consisting of a vowel or other unit that can be produced in isolation, either alone or accompanied by one or more less sonorous units. E.g. [bn] and [t] are successive syllables in bunting. The vowel or other central unit forms the nucleus: the illustration, for [bn], shows other terms used for other proposed divisions. For types of syllable see closed syllable and open syllable, heavy syllable (vs. light); also Metrical Phonology for strong vs. weak syllables.
Theories of the syllable have been variously based on distribution or on phonetics. In a distributional theory, syllables are established with the aim of simplifying an account of possible sequences of phonemes, patterns of accentuation, and so on. In a phonetic theory, divisions between syllables reflect the way in which the production of consonants and vowels is or is believed to be organized. These different approaches can lead to an effective distinction, with discrepancies in some cases, between ‘phonological syllables’ and ‘phonetic syllables’ .

An example of syllable structure

Back  -    New Search

syllable-timed.

(Language) in which the timing of syllables tends to be equal: e.g. Spanish. Opp. stress-timed.

Back  -    New Search

syllepsis. [s'lpss] [s'li:pss]

. Traditionally of constructions in which coordinated elements have different roles in syntax or in semantics. E.g. in He read me the letter and a warning afterwards, read has its literal sense in relation to the letter but a figurative sense in relation to a warning. The Greek term means ‘taking together’; often conflated with zeugma.

Back  -    New Search

symbol.

Restricted in Peirce's theory of signs to those whose relation to their object is wholly conventional: e.g. the majority of words in any language.

Back  -    New Search

synaeresis[s'nirss].

The contraction of two or more syllables into one: e.g. in English, of [] + [] (as in liar) into a monosyllable with a triphthong or a single long vowel. The opposite process is ‘diaeresis’.

Back  -    New Search

synaesthesia.

The stimulation of one sense by another: e.g. the association of different colours with the perception of different sounds. Hence one factor in patterns of phonaesthesis or sound symbolism.

Back  -    New Search

syncategorematic.

(Word) seen as meaningful only in relation to other elements. E.g., in boys and girls, the nouns have meanings that can be described independently of the construction; but and has meaning only as a coordinator that links them. Cf. grammatical meaning.

Back  -    New Search

synchronic.

At a single moment in time. A synchronic description of a language is accordingly an account of its structure either at present or at some specific moment in the past, considered in abstraction from its history. Opp. diachronic; see also panchronic.

Back  -    New Search

syncope

['skpi]. The loss of unstressed vowels in the middle of a word. E.g. in secretary, of the vowel in the next to last syllable: thus ['skrtri]. Cf. apocope; also aphaeresis, aphesis.

Back  -    New Search

syncretism.

The relation between words which have different morphosyntactic features but are identical in form. Thus the distinction in English between a past tense (such as spoke) and a ‘past participle’ (such as spoken) is syncretized in regular forms such as talked.
Used especially when the identity is regular across all paradigms. Thus in Latin the distinction between dative and ablative, which was made in the singular in forms such as puellae ‘girl-DATSG’ and puella ‘girl-ABLSG’, was syncretized throughout in the plural: e.g. puellis ‘girl-DATPL/ABLPL’. ‘Neutralization’ has often been used in the same sense; see also case syncretism.

Back  -    New Search

syndeton

['sndtn]. The opposite of asyndeton. Thus a style, construction, etc. is syndetic if clauses are joined by conjunctions.

Back  -    New Search

synecdoche

[s'nkdki]. Figure of speech in which an expression denoting a part is used to refer to a whole: also, in the traditional definition, vice versa. Hence a term in typologies of semantic change: e.g. flower has by synecdoche the sense ‘plant bearing flowers’. Often treated as a special case of metonymy.

Back  -    New Search

synesis.

An older term for notional agreement.

Back  -    New Search

synonymy.

The relation between two lexical units with a shared meaning. ‘Absolute’ synonyms , if they exist, have meanings identical in all respects and in all contexts, ‘Partial’ synonyms have meanings identical in some contexts, or identical only e.g. in that replacing one with the other does not change the truth conditions of a sentence. Thus paper is a partial though not an absolute synonym of article: compare I got my paper published, I got my article published.

Back  -    New Search

syntactic category.

Any class of units distinguished in the syntax of a language. Hence specifically those that label nodes in a phrase structure tree: sentence (S), noun phrase (NP), verb (V), and so on.

Back  -    New Search

syntactic function.

A role that a word or other unit fills in relation to other elements in its construction. Thus the construction of My brother saw her relates the syntactic roles of subject and predicate, or subject, predicator, and direct object. That of subject is filled by my brother, that of e.g. predicate by saw her.

Back  -    New Search

syntactic process.

Any process formulated in accounts of syntax by which one form, structure, or construction is changed into another. E.g. a representation of Something held me up might be derived by a syntactic process from that of Something held up me; as an active construction that might be changed to a passive (I was held up by something); that might in turn be changed, by a further process, to the structure of an interrogative (Was I held up by something?).
The usual formulation of syntactic processes is as transformations.

Back  -    New Search

syntactic valency.

See semantic valency.

Back  -    New Search

syntagm ['sntam]

= phrase (1).

Back  -    New Search

syntagmatic.

(Relation) between elements that form part of the same form, sequence, construction, etc.: e.g. between s, p, and r in a form such as spring, or between a subject and a verb in constructions such as Bill hunts.
Defined by Saussure as a relation ‘in praesentia’: i.e. between units present in the same sequence. Opp. associative; later, from the 1930s, opp. paradigmatic.

Back  -    New Search

syntagmeme.

See Tagmemics.

Back  -    New Search

syntax.

The study of grammatical relations between words and other units within the sentence.
Usually distinguished from morphology. E.g. in the phrase these books, the relations between the words belongs to syntax: thus these modifies or is a determiner of books; it comes before it, they agree in respect of number. The internal structure of the words belongs to morphology: thus books and these are each plural, books has the ending -s. Distinguished in many accounts from semantics: e.g. the order of these and books belongs to syntax, as does the rule which formally excludes this books or these book. But anything to do with the meaning of the phrase (that these is a deictic element, that it qualifies books, that the expression is used to refer to more than one book) belongs to semantics. Also distinguished, in itself or as part of grammar, from the lexicon: thus the role of these in relation to books belongs to syntax, but the properties of book as an individual unit belong to an individual lexical entry.
The term itself is univocal: where detailed definitions vary they reflect varying theories of the structure or nature of language generally.

Back  -    New Search

synthetic (1).

(Form, language) in which grammatical distinctions are realized by inflections. Opp. analytic (1): e.g. a possessive construction is realized analytically in Italian (la casa di Cesare, lit. ‘the house of Caesar’), but was realized synthetically, with a genitive inflection, in Latin domus Caesaris ‘house-NOMSG Caesar-GENSG’.

Back  -    New Search

synthetic (2).

(Proposition) whose truth depends on a specific state of affairs: e.g. ‘Jane has red hair’ is true if but only if Jane in fact has red hair. Opp. analytic (2).

Back  -    New Search

‘synthetic compound’.

One which parallels a verbal construction: e.g. earth-mover, parallel to moves earth. Cf. root compound: neither term reflects a usual sense of ‘root’ or ‘synthesis’.

Back  -    New Search

Syriac.

Aramaic language, first attested in the 1st century AD, and that of the Syrian church, with a rich literature, after the establishment of Christianity in the 4th century. Still in use as a liturgical language.

Back  -    New Search

system.

Often used, especially by Firth, Halliday, and their followers, to refer to sets of paradigmatic relations. Opp. structure: e.g. in a word in English with the ‘structure’ (C)V (zero or more consonants plus vowel), the ‘system’ that applies or ‘operates’ at the V position includes [:] (as in car), [i:] (as in See), and so on.
See Systemic Grammar; system network.

Back  -    New Search

‘systematic phonemic’.

Used by Chomsky and Halle, SPE, of the level of underlying forms in Generative Phonology; the corresponding level of phonetic representation was called ‘systematic phonetic’ .

Back  -    New Search

system congruity.

Conformity to the pattern general or usual in a specific language. Adduced as a factor in explaining directions of language change: see also pattern congruity as a criterion in phonology.

Back  -    New Search

Systemic Grammar.

Model of functional syntax developed by Halliday from the late 1950s. The basic idea is that any act of communication realizes a set of choices: thus e.g. the utterance of She went out realizes, among others, the choice of a declarative structure. Each choice is at a certain level in a hierarchy of ranks(2):: e.g. the choice of declarative is at clause level. It is also related to other choices on a scale of delicacy or detail: e.g. the choice of interrogative instead of declarative would entail a further choice between polar interrogative and wh-interrogative. Each individual set of choices forms a system: thus polar interrogative and wh-interrogative form one system, declarative and interrogative form or are part of another. A grammar will accordingly describe the systems of a language, the relations between them, and the ways in which they are realized, to a level of detail at which all remaining choices are between open sets of lexical units.
Originally called Scale and Category Grammar . The ‘scale’ was that of the successive ranks at which systems operate: e.g. morpheme, word, phrase, and upwards.

Back  -    New Search

system network.

A network of relations among different systems of oppositions, in which the applicability of one system depends on the choice of a particular term or terms within another or others. Thus, in the illustration, an opposition in verbs between subjunctive and indicative is shown as depending on the verb being finite, an opposition of tense as depending on it being either finite or a participle, and so on.
Devised in, and central to, Systemic Grammar.

A system network

Back  -    New Search

system sentence.

Lyons's term for a sentence postulated as a unit in the language system, as opposed to a ‘text sentence’ uttered or otherwise instantiated in a text or discourse.

Back  -    New Search

T

T.

Used as a cover term for familiar forms. From the t of French tu; opp. V from French vous.

Back  -    New Search

t.

See trace.

Back  -    New Search

taboo word.

A word known to speakers but avoided in some, most, or all forms or contexts of speech, for reasons of religion, decorum, politeness, etc. Thus in some societies the word for ‘death’ is taboo, and is accordingly replaced in most forms of speech by a metaphor, euphemism, or some other figurative or roundabout expression.

Back  -    New Search

‘tacit knowledge’.

Knowledge which people have but of which they are unable to give any account. Thus knowledge of a language (I-language) as conceived by Chomsky and others following him.

Back  -    New Search

(-)tactic.

Concerned with the arrangement of units. E.g. phonotactics is concerned with the possible arrangements of, or ‘tactics’ of, phonemes.

Back  -    New Search

tag.

A reduced form such as will you? in You will be there, will you? or hasn't she? in Jane has arrived, hasn't she? These are, more precisely, interrogative tags or tag questions .
Tags in English are usually linked to declaratives (You will be there, Jane has arrived), but may also follow e.g. an imperative (Put it on the table, will you?). Many show reversed polarity : i.e. their polarity is negative when what precedes is positive, and positive when it is negative. Thus Jane has arrived, hasn't she? (positive + negative); Jane hasn't arrived, has she? (negative + positive).

Back  -    New Search

Tagalog.

The official and main language of the Philippines. Austronesian, of a branch which includes the other indigenous languages of the Philippines: native to south Luzon, which includes Manila, but a second language, in the standard form called Pilipino , throughout the other islands.

Back  -    New Search

tagmeme.

1 Bloomfield's term for any unit of grammatical patterning: e.g. the ‘actor—action’ or subject—predicate construction is a tagmeme.

2 See Tagmemics.
Top

Back  -    New Search

Tagmemics.

Model of functional syntax developed by Pike, R. E. Longacre, and others from the 1950s. The central concept is the tagmeme , defined by the relation between a syntactic ‘slot’ or function, such as subject or object, and a class of units, such as noun phrase or pronoun, that can ‘fill’ it. Constructions, or syntagmemes , are accordingly characterized by sequences of obligatory and optional tagmemes: e.g. that of The people were leaving by one in which there is an obligatory subject slot, filled by the noun phrase, followed by an obligatory predicate slot, filled by a verb phrase. Each syntagmeme is of a specific ‘size-level’ : thus this example is of a clause-level syntagmeme, while those which would represent the constructions of the people and were leaving are at phrase level. Size-levels in turn are linked by potentially recursive relations among syntagmemes, functions, and classes. E.g. the structure of the people is that of a noun phrase; this can function as subject in a structure which is that of a certain class of clause; that in turn might function e.g. as the object in a larger clause (They said [[the people] were leaving]).
Pike was the first to develop clearly a model of this type. The earliest version of Systemic Grammar was to have much in common with it; so too the Functional Grammar of S. C. Dik and his colleagues.

Back  -    New Search

Tai.

Family of languages in South-east Asia, spoken extensively in Laos and Thailand (see Lao, Thai), in north Burma and Vietnam, and across the borders of these countries with China and India.
Tai-Kadai is a larger grouping, proposed but not securely established, in which Tai is linked with Kadai and Kam-Sui.

Back  -    New Search

tail.

The part of an intonation pattern that falls on syllables following the nuclear or tonic syllable: e.g. in THEY could do it, with tonic they, the tail is could do it. Cf. head (2).

Back  -    New Search

tailless arrow (>, <).

Used to represent a change in the history or postulated prehistory of a language: e.g. Old English hs ‘house’ > modern house; likewise , in this and other forms, > [a].

Back  -    New Search

Tajiki.

See Persian.

Back  -    New Search

Takelma.

See Penutian.

Back  -    New Search

Tamil.

Dravidian, spoken in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in northern Sri Lanka, and by historical migrations in many other places in the former British Empire. Attested by inscriptions in Brahmi c.200 BC and by literature from soon afterwards; the present South Indian script has been standard since the late medieval period.

Back  -    New Search

tap.

A consonant articulated with the shortest possible contact between articulators: e.g. the t in butter as pronounced by many speakers of American English. Cf. flap.

Back  -    New Search

target.

An ideal sound or articulation which a speaker hypothetically aims at in the production of a phoneme. Central to the account of (Daniel) Jones, and reflected in studies of coarticulation. Thus the articulatory target for [t] in English is an alveolar stop; that of [] is an interdental fricative: taken together, these lead to coarticulation in the production of [t] in eighth.

Back  -    New Search

target language.

That which one aims to teach, learn, translate into, etc. Opp. source language.

Back  -    New Search

Tatar.

See Turkic.

Back  -    New Search

tatpurusha.

Term from Sanskrit for a determinative compound. Named after a representative example: tatpurua ‘his-man’.

Back  -    New Search

tautology.

Term in logic for a proposition that cannot but be true: e.g. ‘If it is white it is white’. Cf. analytic (2).

Back  -    New Search

tautosyllabic.

Forming part of the same syllable. Thus a phonological diphthong is analysed into a sequence of two tautosyllabic (opp. ‘heterosyllabic’) vowels.

Back  -    New Search

‘taxonomic linguistics’.

Term of abuse used by Chomsky in the 1960s, to characterize schools of structural linguistics that, as he saw them, were interested only in procedures for the segmentation and classification of data.

Back  -    New Search

TEFL.

For ‘teaching English as a foreign language’.

Back  -    New Search

‘telegraphic speech’.

Used impressionistically e.g. of the speech of young children, at the stage when they first begin to join words together. Sometimes with the implication that such speech is elliptical: thus, if a child says ‘Mummy cup’, it might be claimed to stand for e.g. ‘Mummy is holding a cup’.

Back  -    New Search

teleological.

(Explanation) which appeals to a goal or a result. Thus a teleological explanation for a sound-change might be that it resulted in a greater auditory difference between phonemes, or that it led to a phonological system which was more symmetrical; for a change of syntax that it resulted in a more coherent pattern of word order.

Back  -    New Search

telic ['tlk] = purposive.

Formerly of clauses or conjunctions introducing them: cf. final. Now mainly in accounts of the meanings of verbs: e.g. make is inherently telic, since making something is behaviour with a specific end in view. From Greek telos ‘purpose, end’.

Back  -    New Search

Telugu.

Dravidian, spoken mainly in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Attested by literature from the 11th century AD; the script is very close to that of Kannada.

Back  -    New Search

template.

Any structural pattern which a set of forms fits or on the basis of which its members can be specified. Thus, in German, main clauses might be said to fit a template in which a finite verb takes second position, with other elements linked to it, e.g. a participle in ge- or a preverb such as auf, in a position at the end. Likewise in phonology: thus, in a given language, prepositions might have to fit a syllabic template heavy + light. E.g. there could be a preposition fentu (fen + tu) but not fetu. It might also be found that, in the history of the language, forms which have initially not fitted this template, e.g. a preposition borrowed from another language, tend to be adapted to it.
Cf. canonical.

Back  -    New Search

tempo.

An alternative term for the rate of speech.

Back  -    New Search

temporal.

Indicating or involving a time or times. Thus yesterday is a temporal adverb , and as a deictic element is involved in temporal deixis. On Tuesdays or in April is likewise a temporal adverbial ; when I get home is a temporal clause in I will ring when I get home; in the same clause when is a temporal conjunction .

Back  -    New Search

tendency.

A pattern, process, etc. which falls short of a law or rule. E.g. there is a tendency, exemplified to varying degrees in many languages, for a vowel before a nasal consonant to be itself nasalized; but there is no law by which it must be. There is a tendency, e.g. in English, for the longer of two coordinated phrases to come second: I saw Mary and your friends from New Zealand, not … your friends from New Zealand and Mary. But there is no rule of syntax by which the latter is excluded.

Back  -    New Search

tense (1).

Inflectional category whose basic role is to indicate the time of an event, etc. in relation to the moment of speaking. Divided notionally into present (at the moment of speaking), past (earlier than the moment of speaking), and future (later than the moment of speaking). Thence extended to any forms distinguishing these, whether or not they are inflectional: e.g. English has an inflectional distinction between past (loved) and present (love), but in addition the auxiliary will is often said to mark a future tense (will love).
The division between tense and aspect is partly fluid. E.g. in I have done it, have and the past participle (done) form a present perfect: the difference between this and the corresponding non-perfect (do) is accordingly one of aspect, or more specifically phase. But by the same token it identifies the event as prior to the moment of speaking: hence a common change by which a present perfect replaces, e.g. in modern spoken French, a simple past. The boundary with mood is also fluid. E.g. the past tense in English, though basically indicating time, is also used e.g. in remote conditionals (if I saw her as opposed to if I see her) with a role like that of a subjunctive. It is therefore not surprising that inflections marking aspect, tense, and mood are not always separate, or that the term ‘tense’ has traditionally been used for distinctions involving all three: thus the ‘tenses’ of, say, Spanish are the present indicative, present subjunctive, imperfect indicative, etc. Abbreviations such as ‘TMA’ (for tense—mood—aspect) or ‘TM’ are now used similarly.

Back  -    New Search

tense (2).

Articulated, or claimed to be articulated, with greater effort of the relevant muscles. Opp. lax.
‘Tense’ and ‘lax’ are applied both to overall articulatory settings and to specific consonants and vowels. E.g. vowels with a narrow posture of the tongue have often been described as ‘tense’; also those with an advanced tongue root.

Back  -    New Search

tensed.

(Verb, clause) with an inflectional or other indication of tense (1). Cf. finite clause, finite verb; but the terms are not equivalent since e.g. a language may have infinitives which are also inflected for tense.

Back  -    New Search

tension.

Phonetic feature opposing tense (2) and lax, or fortis and lenis.

Back  -    New Search

‘tenuis’.

Ancient term for a voiceless, or voiceless unaspirated, stop. From the Latin word for ‘slender’.

Back  -    New Search

‘term’.

Name given in Relational Grammar to elements within the nucleus (1) of a clause. Such elements bear ‘term relations’ (e.g. ‘subject of’, ‘direct object of’) to the verb. The ‘Stratal Uniqueness Law’ is a principle by which no term relation can be borne by more than one such element on any given stratum.

Back  -    New Search

terminal node.

A node in a tree diagram which is not connected to a lower node. A terminal string is, in early formulations of phrase structure grammar, a string to which no further rewrite rules apply; hence, in effect, the sequence that can be read off from the bottom of a tree diagram.

Back  -    New Search

termination.

The ending of a word inflected by suffixes, distinguished from either the root or a stem derived from the root. Thus in Italian -o is a first-person-singular termination, added e.g. in mandavo ‘I was sending’ to the stem (mandav(a)-) of the imperfect indicative.
Sometimes of a final suffix only. But also, informally, of an inflectional ending as a whole: thus, in this example, -vo or -avo.

Back  -    New Search

terraced-level.

(Tone language) in which successive stretches of speech are distinguished by progressive lowering of the pitch of high tones. Thus, in particular, one with downstep.

Back  -    New Search

tertiary

(in syntax) . See ranks (1).

Back  -    New Search

‘tertiary response’.

See secondary response.

Back  -    New Search

TESL.

For ‘teaching English as a second language’.

Back  -    New Search

TESOL.

For ‘teaching English to speakers of other languages’.

Back  -    New Search

tessitura.

The pitch range normal in the speech of some specific individual.

Back  -    New Search

tetra-.

From the Greek word for ‘four’. E.g. a tetrasyllable is a word with four syllables.

Back  -    New Search

‘Teutonic’.

An older term for Germanic.

Back  -    New Search

text.

Strictly, a written text in the usual sense. Extended by some linguists to cover a coherent stretch of speech, including a conversation or other interchange involving two or more participants, as well as stretches of writing. Hence often equivalent to discourse, itself extended from similar motives.

Back  -    New Search

textlinguistics.

The linguistic analysis and description of extended texts, either written or spoken. Originally in German (‘Textlinguistik’) and involving, in particular, the concept of a ‘text grammar’ , or generative grammar for texts, analogous to a grammar generating sentences. Cf. Discourse Analysis.

Back  -    New Search

text sentence.

Lyons's term for a sentence that may be uttered or written as part of a text, as opposed to a ‘system sentence’ established as a unit in the language system.

Back  -    New Search

text-to-speech processing.

Mechanical synthesis of speech from written input: e.g. in a projected ‘reading machine’ for blind people.

Back  -    New Search

‘textuality’.

The property by which successive sentences form a coherent text, as opposed to a random sequence. Cf. coherence; also cohesion (1).

Back  -    New Search

TG

= transformational grammar.

Back  -    New Search

Thai.

The official language of Thailand, native to Bangkok and the central third of the country. A member of the Tai family.
The writing system was developed in or by the late 13th century AD, directly or indirectly from a South Indian script. But several major sound-changes have intervened, and the relation between spoken and written units is now indirect, with tones, in particular, distinguished in a variety of different ways.

Back  -    New Search

that-clause.

A declarative clause introduced by that and serving as the subject, object, or complement of a verb or other element: e.g. that you will in Promise me that you will, or that she can, as complement of the adjective sure, in I am sure that she can. Distinguished from relative clauses also beginning with that (e.g. in the man that you saw).

Back  -    New Search

that-trace filter.

A rule which excludes e.g. Who did you say that came, expressed as a filter applying to the complementizer that followed by a trace (that t came). Also, since there are parallels in languages other than English, the ‘Comp(lementizer)-trace’ filter.

Back  -    New Search

thematic.

1 Having the role of theme (1).

2 (Vowel) which forms a stem to which inflections are added. Especially in accounts of Indo-European languages: e.g. in Ancient Greek the -e- and -o- of lú-e-te ‘you are untying’ and lú-o-men ‘we are untying’ derive from a thematic vowel e/o reconstructed as present in some verbs (called ‘thematic verbs’ and belonging to ‘thematic conjugations’) but not in others. Cf. theme (2): verbs, etc. that are not thematic are ‘athematic’.
Top

3 See theta roles.
Top

Back  -    New Search

theme.

1 A part of a sentence seen as corresponding to what the sentence as a whole, when uttered in a particular context, is about. E.g. on Sunday might be the theme (or be thematic) in On Sunday I have to visit my uncle: i.e. the sentence as uttered would be about what the speaker is doing on Sunday. Cf. topic (2): opp. rheme, e.g. in the theory of Functional Sentence Perspective.

2 = stem: the usual term e.g. in French (‘thème’), now less usual in English.
Top

3 Used by Chomsky and his followers from the 1970s for the case role e.g. of the rock in The rock rolled away or I lifted the rock. Introduced by J. S. Gruber in the 1960s and definable, in such examples, as that of a noun phrase referring to something ‘undergoing motion’. But also used, originally and later, of a variety of other roles as well.
Also, as in ordinary or literary usage, of the theme or topic (1) of a conversation, text, etc.
Top

Back  -    New Search

‘theta roles’.

Term in Government and Binding Theory for semantic roles such as agent or patient: Cf. case roles. Also written ‘-roles’ : the theta stands for earlier ‘thematic’, itself derived from theme (3) for no principled reason.

Back  -    New Search

‘Theta Theory’.

Part of Government and Binding Theory that deals with the assignment of theta roles. The main principle is the ‘theta criterion’ , which requires that every argument of a verb should be assigned one and only one such role.

Back  -    New Search

third-order nominal.

Lyons's term for a nominal expression seen as characteristically referring to an abstract proposition, property, etc.: e.g. her intelligence in I have always admired her intelligence. Cf. second-order nominal.

Back  -    New Search

third person (3RD).

See person.

Back  -    New Search

third-person imperative.

Construction, inflection, etc. used in giving orders or instructions but with the verb in the third person or a subject traditionally called third person: e.g. the construction, now marginal in English, of Let no one move.

Back  -    New Search

Thomas of Erfurt.

See Modistae.

Back  -    New Search

Tibetan.

Spoken mainly in Tibet; also in Nepal and other adjoining areas. Attested from the 7th century AD, when the writing system, based on an Indian script, was developed. Classed as Sino-Tibetan; related within the Tibeto-Burman branch to many smaller languages of the Himalayan region.

Back  -    New Search

Tibeto-Burman.

Branch of Sino-Tibetan distributed over an area from the Himalayas eastwards to north-west Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam. Burmese has by far the greatest number of speakers: see also Tibetan, Karen, Lolo-Burmese.

Back  -    New Search

tier.

Any of a series of associated levels over which, in models such as that of Autosegmental Phonology, the phonological representation of a form is distributed. Thus the general structure of words and syllables might be represented at one level: see skeletal tier. Specific consonantal and vocalic features might be represented at another, tones or other prosodic features at a third, and so on. Association lines relate each tier to the others.

Back  -    New Search

Tigrinya.

South Semitic language, spoken in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea. Written in a South Semitic alphabet also used for Amharic.

Back  -    New Search

tilde (˜).

Used in the International Phonetic Alphabet to represent nasalization: thus French [b] (bon). A similar symbol, written on the line, is used in logic as one way of representing negation: thus ˜ p ‘It is not the case that p’.

Back  -    New Search

timbre.

The auditory properties of sounds other than those of pitch and loudness: hence sometimes, in phonetics, in the sense of vowel quality.

Back  -    New Search

time.

(Adverb, deixis) = temporal.

Back  -    New Search

time depth.

The distance from the present at which, e.g. two languages that have a common ancestor became separate. Thus, within Indo-European, the time depth for the divergence of any two Romance languages is much less than for either of these and Modern Greek. Glottochronology is or was a method designed to establish time depths both relatively and absolutely.

Back  -    New Search

timeless.

(Proposition, etc.) which makes no reference to a specific time or times for which it holds: e.g. ‘Iron melts at 1539°C’, as opposed to ‘The iron melted (sc. at some specific time) in the heat’.

Back  -    New Search

tip.

The point of the tongue, distinguished as an articulator from the blade, defined as the upper surface immediately behind it. Hence apical or apico- (‘with the tip’) vs. laminal, lamino- (‘with the blade’).

Back  -    New Search

TMA.

Tense (T), mood (M), and aspect (A), especially when marked together. Likewise TM, TA .

Back  -    New Search

T-marker.

A representation, in early transformational grammar, of the transformational history of a sentence. For ‘transformation marker’ cf. phrase marker.

Back  -    New Search

tmesis ['tmi:ss].

Construction in which the members of what is elsewhere a compound are separated by other syntactic elements. Originally, in application to e.g. Ancient Greek, of forms involving a verb and a preposition or adverb.

Back  -    New Search

Tocharian.

Name given to two languages, forming a separate branch of Indo-European, attested by documents from Chinese Turkestan of the 6th to 8th centuries AD.

Back  -    New Search

token.

An instance of a unit, as distinct from the unit that is instanced. E.g. in fluffy there are three tokens of the letter ‘f’ and one each of ‘l’, ‘u’, and ‘y’. Opp. type: thus in the same word six successive letter tokens are instances of four types (‘f’, ‘l’, ‘u’, and ‘y’).

Back  -    New Search

Tok Pisin.

Language spoken widely in Papua New Guinea. In origin a pidgin based on English, and now the commonest medium of commerce with, in towns, a growing number of native speakers.

Back  -    New Search

tone.

A phonetic or phonological unit belonging to a set distinguished or primarily distinguished by levels of or by changes in pitch. E.g. in Ngbaka (spoken mainly in the Central African Republic), mà ‘magic’, m ‘I’, and má ‘to me’ are distinguished phonologically by a low tone (`), a mid tone (¯), and a high tone (´). Used:
1 As in this example, of units typically associated with a syllable in tone languages.
Top

2 Also of units distinguished by variations of pitch in systems of intonation. E.g. in English, He's ´DRUNK (surprised exclamation) is distinguished by a rising tone (´) from He's ´DRUNK (expressing disgust), with a falling tone (`).
Top

Back  -    New Search

tone group.

A stretch of speech identified as the domain of a unit of intonation. E.g. I'll do it, but I'll need some help would normally have two tone groups: I'll DO it / but I'll need some HELP. The division is shown by ‘/’ and might or might not be marked by a pause. Do is tonic (shown by small capitals) in the first group, help in the second.
Also called a breath group , intonation group , intonational phrase , etc.

Back  -    New Search

tone language.

One in which each syllable is characterized phonologically by a distinct tone or sequence of tones: e.g. Chinese. Thence, more generally, of ones in which most syllables are so characterized, or most units of the lexicon, or in which contrasts of pitch have some lexical or morphological role. Thus, at the limit, Norwegian is also conventionally called a ‘tone language’. Cf. pitch accent.

Back  -    New Search

toneme.

A unit of pitch, especially in tone languages, treated as or analogously to a phoneme.

Back  -    New Search

tone sandhi.

Phonetic modification of tones, e.g. in Chinese, in the context of those on preceding or following syllables.

Back  -    New Search

tongue-body.

(Features, etc.) distinguished by the position of the mass of the tongue within the mouth. E.g. front vs. back, close or high vs. open or low.

Back  -    New Search

tongue height.

See vowel height.

Back  -    New Search

tongue root.

The part of the tongue opposite the back wall of the throat. Sounds articulated with the tongue root are called ‘radical’: e.g. a pharyngeal fricative as opposed to a velar or a uvular, which are dorsal or articulated with the dorsum.

Back  -    New Search

tonic.

(Syllable) which is prominent in a pattern of intonation. E.g. in Peter will finish any of Pe-, will, or fi- might be tonic: thus, with a tone that falls and then rises in pitch (), PEter will finish (‘It's Peter who will do it’), Peter WILL finish (‘He's definitely going to’), Peter will Finish (‘He won't give up before it's done’). In each case the tonic syllable, distinguished by small capitals, carries the main movement of pitch, and may also be longer.
Also called the nucleus (or nuclear syllable ): opp. atonic, non-nuclear. A difference in the position of the tonic syllable, as in these examples, is one of tonicity .

Back  -    New Search

tonogenesis.

The historical process by which tone languages develop from languages without tones. Thus, in one form of tonogenesis, the pitch of a vowel might be lowered before a certain class of consonants; these consonants are later lost, and from then on the pitch distinguishes these syllables from others.

Back  -    New Search

top-down.

(Procedure) which determines the structure of sentences, etc. by working from larger units to smaller. Opp. bottom-up, e.g. as alternative strategies for parsing (2) systems, or as techniques for analysing an unfamiliar language.

Back  -    New Search

topic.

1 Whatever a conversation, text, etc. is about. This might be identified explicitly (e.g. one speaker says ‘I want to talk about x’) or it might not.

2 A part of a sentence seen as corresponding to what the sentence as a whole is about: e.g. the topic of You can't buy clothes at the supermarket might, in a specific context and with appropriate intonation, be at the supermarket (‘One thing you can't do at the supermarket is buy clothes’).
Top

3 A specific syntactic element whose role is characteristically that of a topic (2); thus, in English, the phrase which stands first in the construction of Cheap vodka you should never drink or At the supermarket it might be cheaper.
Topics (1) are sometimes distinguished as ‘discourse topics’ as opposed to ‘sentence topics’ . For topic (2) cf. theme (1). In a language like English, topics (3) and subjects are distinct syntactic elements: topic[cheap vodka] subject[you] should never drink. But in languages of another type, e.g. in Tagalog and others in the Philippines, the term ‘topic’ is used in preference to ‘subject’ of an element that has some but not all of the characteristics of a subject (1) in the traditional European sense. In such cases, in particular, the remainder of the sentence is called the comment.
Top

Back  -    New Search

topicalization.

The process of forming a derived construction in which one element is a topic (3): e.g. that of Beer I see as a necessity, with topic beer, from that of the ‘untopicalized’ I see beer as a necessity.

Back  -    New Search

‘topic-prominent’.

(Language) in which the basic syntactic elements of a sentence are a topic (3) and a comment. Opp. subject-prominent.

Back  -    New Search

toponym.

A place name: e.g. London.

Back  -    New Search

‘total accountability’.

Principle by which, in an ordered series of levels, all elements represented at a lower level must be related to elements at higher levels. E.g. each phoneme (at the level of phonology) must be a realization, or part of the realization, of at least one word or morpheme at the level of grammar.

Back  -    New Search

‘tough-movement’.

The postulated raising (2) of an object from an infinitive construction that depends on an adjective such as tough. E.g. that of these conditions in These conditions are tough to meet: compare, with the object unraised, It is tough to meet these conditions.

Back  -    New Search

trace.

A phonetically null element said by Chomsky and his followers to occupy the position from which a syntactic element has been moved. E.g. in Mary I really love t, t is the trace left by a movement of Mary from its position in I really love Mary. Cf. empty category.

Back  -    New Search

trachea.

Anatomical term for the windpipe.

Back  -    New Search

‘trade language’.

A pidgin, lingua franca, or other language, used in commerce among people whose native languages are different.

Back  -    New Search

‘trading relation’.

Used with reference to the balance between different levels of description or different components of a grammar. Thus there are trading relations by which e.g. if the rules of phonology cover less the rules of morphology may in compensation have to cover more, or, by extending the scope of semantics, one may reduce that of syntax.

Back  -    New Search

‘traditional grammar’.

Usually of grammar as it was before the advent of structural linguistics, conceived as standing in a unified tradition going back to ancient times, with grammar in the 20th century conceived as breaking away from it. Both conceptions are at best qualifiable.

Back  -    New Search

transcription.

Often in the sense of representation. E.g. a ‘phonemic transcription’ is a representation of a form as a sequence of phonemes.

Back  -    New Search

transderivational constraint.

A restriction on a class of syntactic derivations which refers to some factor outside those derivations: e.g. to the possible role of a sentence in speech acts. Proposed in the context of Generative Semantics in the early 1970s.

Back  -    New Search

transferred meaning.

A sense of a word or other unit which is derived by a shift from its basic field of reference to another. E.g. cold basically refers to physical temperature; but it has a transferred meaning in My reception was rather cold or She gave me a cold look. Cf. figurative.

Back  -    New Search

transfix.

A pattern of vowels or consonants seen as a non-continuous affix interleaved with a root or stem that is in turn not continuous: e.g. the patterns or pattern morphemes in Semitic languages.

Back  -    New Search

transform.

A sentence, structure, etc. derived by a transformation: e.g. a passive sentence represented as a ‘transform of’ an active.

Back  -    New Search

transformation.

An operation relating one set of structures, especially syntactic structures, to another. Thus, in many accounts, the structures assigned to declaratives such as She is here or You can help me are related by a transformation to those of the corresponding interrogatives (Is she here?, Can you help me?).
Transformations were developed by (Zellig) Harris in the 1950s as operations relating one set of forms (e.g. phrases or sentences) to another. Also in parallel by Chomsky as operations on phrase structure trees deriving other phrase structure trees. In a standard account a transformational rule (or T-rule ) had two parts: a structural description or SD , which analysed the structures that could undergo the operation into two or more successive elements, and a structural change or SC , which specified a derived structure resulting from it. Thus the structure assigned to You can help me would be divided into three parts: an initial noun phrase (you), an auxiliary verb (can), and the remainder (help me). In the derived structure of the corresponding interrogative the position of the first two would then be reversed: you can … can you … In other cases transformations might or might also involve the deletion of elements, or the addition of new ones, or restructuring.

Back  -    New Search

transformational grammar (TG).

Any grammar in which different syntactic structures are related by transformations. Thence commonly, from the 1960s, of the theories of Chomsky, or of Chomsky's school, in general.
In a transformational grammar as Chomsky first proposed it, the main role of transformations was to relate the sentences of a language as a whole to a small set of kernel sentences. Its classic form dates from a reformulation by Chomsky in the mid-1960s. In this, a base component of a grammar generated a deep structure for each sentence. These structures were the input to a transformational component, which was an ordered series of transformational rules; its output in turn was a set of surface structures. The deep and surface structures of a sentence formed its ‘syntactic description’, which was ‘interpreted’ by further rules that supplied its semantic representation and phonetic representation.
For varying forms of such a grammar see Standard Theory, Extended Standard Theory, Generative Semantics; cf. Government and Binding Theory.

Back  -    New Search

transformational history.

The sequence of transformations by which a sentence is derived in a transformational grammar. Represented in the 1950s by a ‘transformation marker’ or T-marker.

Back  -    New Search

transition.

1 Usually of transitions between successive speech sounds. Thus ‘transitional formants’ are found e.g. in transitions between stops and vowels; ‘transitional probabilities’ concern the probability of one sound, or of one letter, following another. Sometimes in a specific sense like that of juncture: thus ‘close transition’, ‘open transition’.

2 See rheme.
Top

Back  -    New Search

‘transition relevance place’.

Term in Conversation Analysis for any point in a speaker's turn, e.g. the end of a sentence, seen as a natural point at which another participant in a conversation might start speaking, or ‘take the floor’, instead.

Back  -    New Search

transitive.

(Construction) in which a verb is related to at least two nouns or their equivalent, whose semantic roles are characteristically those of an agent and a patient: e.g. that of She (agent) carried him (patient). A transitive verb is one which takes or can take such a construction: thus carry, or carry in its basic sense.
From Latin transitivus ‘going across’. The original sense was that of a ‘transition’ from a noun referring to one ‘person’ or participant (Latin persona) to another. Opp. intransitive.

Back  -    New Search

transitive preposition.

A preposition in the traditional sense: i.e. one such as in which is followed by a complement (in Melbourne). Cf. intransitive preposition.

Back  -    New Search

transitivizer.

An affix, etc. by which a transitive verb is derived from an intransitive. E.g., schematically, cup fell ‘The cup fell over’; I fell-TRANS cup ‘I knocked over the cup’.

Back  -    New Search

‘translation’.

Introduced into French linguistics by L. Tesniére for the process by which a unit that is basically of one syntactic class is transferred to a role that is basically that of another. Thus cool is basically an adjective, and in and out are basically prepositions. But in the cool of the night or the ins and outs they are ‘translated’ to the role of nouns. A grammatical element is ‘translative’ if it is seen as marking a ‘translation’: e.g. the is translative in both these examples.
Cf. transposition (2).

Back  -    New Search

transparency.

The degree to which a more abstract representation corresponds to one that is less abstract. Opp. opacity.
A Transparency Principle was proposed by D. W. Lightfoot in the late 1970s, as a factor explaining rapid change in syntax. In each generation, speakers were seen as internalizing a grammar which, according to Chomsky's Extended Standard Theory, included rules for both deep (more abstract) and surface (less abstract) structures of sentences. Over several generations, surface structures might change gradually, through stylistic shifts, contacts with other languages, etc., while deep structures remained constant. But at some stage a required degree of transparency would be violated, and, to restore it, the next generation would restructure them.

Back  -    New Search

transposition.

1 Change of sequence: Cf. metathesis.

2 Sometimes of processes that change the class of a unit: e.g. the formation of happiness is one in which an adjective (happy) is ‘transposed’ to a noun. Cf. translation.
Top

Back  -    New Search

tree diagram.

Any branching diagram in which different branches are connected only at a point of origin, and all are connected, directly or indirectly, to one node which is the origin of the whole: e.g. a ‘family tree’ which displays the genetic classification of languages, a phrase structure tree, a dependency tree.
A ‘tree’ is technically one type of ‘graph’ defined in the branch of mathematics called ‘graph theory’.

Back  -    New Search

tri-.

Prefix derived from the Greek word for ‘three’. Thus a trisyllabic word, or trisyllable , is one which has three syllables; a trigraph , such as German ‘sch’ for [], is a sequence of three letters representing a single phoneme. Opp. mono-, di- or bi-, tetra-, etc.

Back  -    New Search

trial.

Inflection, etc. used in referring to precisely three individuals: cf. dual, paucal.

Back  -    New Search

triangular.

(Vowel system) in which a single open vowel is opposed to closer vowels both front and back. Conventionally displayed on the sides of a triangle, as illustrated e.g. for Spanish.

A triangular vowel system

Back  -    New Search

trigger.

Any feature, etc. whose presence at some stage in a derivation ensures that a given rule will apply. E.g. in the classic account of Generative Phonology the rule by which sing is changed to sang was triggered by a diacritic feature attached to it, for that purpose, by a rule applying earlier.

Back  -    New Search

trigraph.

See tri-.

Back  -    New Search

trill.

A consonant produced with one articulator held close to another so that a flow of air sets up a regular vibration. E.g. the ‘rr’ of Spanish burro ‘donkey’ is a lingual trill, with vibration of the tip of the tongue, or specifically a dental trill, articulated in the dental position of articulation. Uvular trills, with vibration of the uvula against the back of the tongue, are possible, though not usual, for the ‘r’ in French.

Back  -    New Search

triphthong.

A vowel whose quality changes in two successive directions within a single syllable: e.g. [] in many pronunciations of English tire, where the quality changes from relatively open to relatively close and front, and then from relatively front to central. Cf. diphthong, monophthong.

Back  -    New Search

trivalent.

(Verb) whose valency includes three arguments or valents: e.g. send, in I sent her a present, whose valency includes a subject (I) and two objects (her, a present).

Back  -    New Search

trochaic.

(Foot) consisting of a heavy syllable followed by a light syllable. Borrowed into Metrical Phonology from the definition of a trochee in verse.

Back  -    New Search

trope.

A figure of speech, especially one involving a figurative extension of the meaning of a word or other expression.

Back  -    New Search

TRP

= transition relevance place.

Back  -    New Search

Trubetzkoy, Nikolai Sergevitsch

(1890–1938)
. Russian linguist, from 1922 Professor of Slavic Philology in Vienna and usually referred to by the Germanized form of his name. A pioneer in structuralist phonology and morphophonology and, with Jakobson, a leading figure in the pre-war Prague School. His great work, Grundzüge der Phonologie, published in 1939 after his death, sets out the foundation for the structuralist theory of the phoneme, of phonological systems and distinctive features, and of phonology generally (English translation, Principles of Phonology, 1969).

Back  -    New Search

T-rule.

See transformation.

Back  -    New Search

truth conditions.

The conditions under which a sentence, or a proposition expressed by it, is true: e.g. I have red hair is true under the condition that the speaker has, in fact, red hair. Truth-conditional semantics is an account of the truth conditions of sentences, often one in which the meaning of a sentence is equated with them.

Back  -    New Search

Tsonga.

Bantu language, spoken in an area divided between southern Mozambique and the Transvaal in South Africa.

Back  -    New Search

Tswana.

Bantu language spoken mainly in South Africa and Botswana.

Back  -    New Search

tune

= contour.

Back  -    New Search

Tungusic.

Family of languages in east Siberia, including Evenki or Tungus, spoken mainly on Sakhalin Island. A proposed branch of Altaic.

Back  -    New Search

Tupi-Guaraní.

Family of languages in South America. Tupinambá , now extinct, was spoken along a large part of the coast of Brazil and documented after the Portuguese conquest. Of the other members Guaraní, centred on Paraguay, is by far the most important; the remainder are scattered across the area to the south of the Amazon, with others classed more generally as Tupian .

Back  -    New Search

Turing machine.

A device, conceived in the abstract by the mathematician A. Turing in the 1930s, capable of performing any finite computation; hence e.g. of producing or processing sentences in any formal language.

Back  -    New Search

Turkic.

Family of languages, in part forming what is in effect a dialect continuum, which extends from the Balkans, across much of Central Asia, into Siberia. Turkish is the largest; others, roughly in declining order of size, include Uzbek, Azerbaijani, Uighur (mainly in the north of Xinjiang in China), Kazakh (mainly in Kazakhstan), Tatar (in the Tatar region of Russia), Turkmen (east of the Caspian mainly in Turkmenistan), Kirghiz (mainly again in Kirghizia); also Yakut, detached from other members in the region of the River Lena in north Siberia.
A proposed branch of Altaic.

Back  -    New Search

Turkish.

Turkic, the official language of Turkey, where it is native to the vast majority; also spoken by minorities in Cyprus and the Balkans, and elsewhere in Europe through immigration. Closely related within Turkic to Azerbaijani, from which it is geographically separated by Armenian, and Turkmen.
Attested from the 13th century AD, and written in Arabic script until the Roman alphabet, supplemented by diacritics, was adopted at the end of the 1920s. As a literary and administrative language Turkish was heavily influenced, especially from the late Middle Ages, by both Arabic and Persian.

Back  -    New Search

Turkmen.

See Turkic.

Back  -    New Search

‘turn’.

A proposed unit of conversation, seen as something said by one speaker and preceded, followed, or both by a ‘turn’ of some other speaker. Speakers ‘take turns’, according to the theory of Conversation Analysis, in a way that is regulated by a specific ‘turn-taking’ system.

Back  -    New Search

two-place.

(Predicate (2)) taking two arguments: e.g. See in I saw Bill (with arguments I and Bill), or angry in I was angry with Bill. Cf. bivalent.

Back  -    New Search

type.

1 Any set of languages seen as sharing, to a greater or lesser degree, some structural characteristic or set of characteristics. A language which entirely meets the definition of a type is said to be ‘consistent’ : thus, in particular, of VO vs. OV languages.

2 See token.
Top

Back  -    New Search

typological classification.

The classification of languages into types (1), especially by sets of similarities seen as logically or otherwise connected. For examples see ergative language vs. accusative language; agglutinating, inflecting, isolating; VO vs. OV languages.
Opp. genetic classification.

Back  -    New Search

Tzotzil.

Mayan language spoken in an area in the west of the state of Chiapas in Mexico.

Back  -    New Search

U

Ubangi.

A group of languages spoken across the Central African Republic and in adjacent parts of Cameroon, Zaire, and Sudan. Sango is an Ubangi language based on Ngbandi (from northern Zaire), with official status and used increasingly as a second language in the Central African Republic.

Back  -    New Search

UG

= universal grammar (2).

Back  -    New Search

Ugaritic.

Alphabet, with cuneiform symbols, used for the Semitic language of ancient Ugarit (at a site now in north Syria) between the 15th and 14th centuries BC. Three different vowels were distinguished as well as consonants. The order of letters is known and corresponds to that of the North Semitic alphabets.

Back  -    New Search

Ugric.

Branch of Finno-Ugric which includes Hungarian.

Back  -    New Search

Uighur.

See Turkic.

Back  -    New Search

Ukrainian.

East Slavic, becoming distinct from Russian by the late 14th century. Written in Cyrillic; spoken by a majority of the population of the Ukraine and in the neighbouring part of Poland, and by emigration elsewhere.

Back  -    New Search

ultimate constituents.

The smallest units in an analysis of the constituency of a sentence. Often taken to be morphemes: thus the ultimate constituents of The children like eating might be the, child, -ren, like, eat, and -ing.

Back  -    New Search

Umbrian.

See Italic.

Back  -    New Search

Umgangssprache.

German for ‘colloquial language’.

Back  -    New Search

umlaut.

Used of various sound changes, especially in Germanic languages, in which a back vowel becomes front in the context of another front vowel. E.g. the front vowel of feet (Old English ft) is explained by the fronting of (Old English ft) before a reconstructed plural suffix -i (ft-i). Similar changes in other languages are also called metaphony.
The umlaut in writing (¨) is used in some phonetic transcriptions for rounded front vowels: thus [ü], as German ü, = [y].

Back  -    New Search

unaccusative.

Used of a verb in an intransitive construction which is seen as taking an underlying object rather than a subject. E.g. die or arrive: thus, according to what is called the ‘unaccusative hypothesis’ , she is initially an object in She died and She arrived. Other intransitives are ‘unergative’ : thus sleep is an unergative verb, and she is not at an underlying level an object, in She slept.
First proposed in Relational Grammar, and claimed to be the basis for a variety of formal distinctions in various languages. E.g., in Italian, verbs that take the auxiliary ‘to be’ are claimed to be unaccusative: È arrivata Maria (lit. ‘is arrived-FEM Mary’) ‘Mary has arrived’. Those said to be unergative take ‘to have’: Ha dormito Maria (lit. ‘has slept Mary’) ‘Mary has slept’.

Back  -    New Search

unaspirated.

(Voiceless Plosive) in which there is no audible delay between the release of the closure and the onset of voice in a sound that follows: e.g. the [t] and [p] of Italian tempo ‘time’, in contrast to the aspirated [th] and [ph] in many pronunciations of tempo in English.

Back  -    New Search

unbounded.

(Relation, etc.) between syntactic elements that is not subject to a restriction on the complexity of intervening structures. Thus in sentences like Who has he seen? the relation between who and seen is not restricted by the depth at which the verb can be subordinated: Who does he say he has seen?, Who do you think he says he has seen?, and so on. Opp. bounded; cf. local.

Back  -    New Search

unconditioned.

Not conditioned; see also spontaneous.

Back  -    New Search

uncountable.

(Noun) whose syntax is characteristic of a class whose members do not denote individuals that can be counted. Thus, in English, one that has a singular form with expressions like less or a lot of (less poultry, a lot of architecture), that does not take a numeral or the indefinite article, and so on.
Opp. countable; alternatively ‘mass nouns’ (such as poultry or architecture) are opposed to ‘count nouns’ .

Back  -    New Search

underdifferentiation.

Failure, in acquiring a second or foreign language, to distinguish units that are not matched by corresponding distinctions in the first or native language. E.g. [t] and [th] are separate consonants in Hindi; in English they are not; therefore an English speaker trying to learn Hindi might perceive them as the same unit and fail to distinguish words that contain them.

Back  -    New Search

underextension.

Use of a word, etc. with less than its usual range of denotation. E.g. a young child might at one stage call the family's own cat ‘pussy’, but not use the word of cats in general.

Back  -    New Search

undergoer

= patient.

Back  -    New Search

underlying form.

Form of a word or other unit as posited at a more abstract level of representation. E.g. in the classic account of Generative Phonology, both [dvn] (divine) and [dvn] (in divinity) are assigned an underlying form ‘divn’. At a less abstract level ‘i’ is realized by either [] or [].
Likewise a deep structure underlies a surface structure. Thus, in the classic account of transformational grammar, the surface structure of a passive is derived from an underlying structure like that of the corresponding active.

Back  -    New Search

underspecified.

(Representation) in which elements that can be predicted are not specified. Especially of representations in phonology that specify no more than the minimum of features: e.g. only those that have a marked (2) value. Hence ‘Underspecification Theory’ , of a model of phonology that postulates such representations.

Back  -    New Search

‘understood’.

(Words, etc.) recoverable in cases of ellipsis. E.g. in I won't be going tonight, the construction might be said to include an understood adverbial of place: I won't be going <sc. to the party>, <sc. to the meeting>, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

unergative.

See unaccusative.

Back  -    New Search

‘unfilled pause’.

An interval of silence in speech: i.e. a pause not ‘filled’ by a hesitation form.

Back  -    New Search

ungrammatical.

Not grammatical (2).

Back  -    New Search

unification.

Process in formal models of syntax by which the set of features that characterize a larger unit is derived from those of its separate constituents. E.g. these is a determiner and is plural: thus it has the features [Det, PL]. Books is a noun, is plural, and, as a head of a noun phrase, can take a determiner: [N, PL, + Det]. By virtue of these features these can combine with books to form a larger unit: these books. By the process of unification this will in turn have the features [N, PL]: i.e. it is in turn a plural noun phrase.
Cf. percolation. Unification-based models, such as Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, are those in which such a process is central.

Back  -    New Search

uniformitarian principle.

The assumption that the general properties of language and of processes of change in language have been the same throughout human history and prehistory. Invoked e.g. to exclude reconstructions positing forms or systems contrary to principles, etc. thought to constrain existing languages.
Modelled, tendentiously in one view, on the uniformitarian principle in 19th-century geology.

Back  -    New Search

unilateral.

One-sided: e.g. in a unilateral dependency a depends on b but b does not depend on a. Opp. bilateral.

Back  -    New Search

union.

1 Technically of an operation on sets by which the union (or sum ) of sets A and B is the set of all elements which are members of at least one of them. Cf. intersection.

2 See clause union.
Top

Back  -    New Search

uniplex.

See social network.

Back  -    New Search

unit.

Anything that is treated as a whole at some level of analysis or description. Thus in phonology the initial [f] of fiendish is a unit; likewise the first syllable [fi:n], seen as a whole in relation to the second syllable [d]. In grammar both the root fiend and the suffix -ish are units; also fiendish itself, seen as a whole in potential relation e.g. to a following noun. With such a noun it may in turn form a larger unit, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

universal.

Traditionally of a general term or concept, e.g. man or ‘man’, and, in one view, of an aspect of reality corresponding to it. Cf. nominalism; realism. More usual in linguistics in the sense of linguistic universal.

Back  -    New Search

universal base hypothesis.

The notion, common in theories of transformational grammar from the mid-1960s, that the grammar of every language had a base component which included the same, or essentially the same, set of syntactic rules. Hence the differences between languages lay in their surface, not in their underlying or deep structures.

Back  -    New Search

universal grammar.

1 Any system of grammar, or set of statements about grammar, which by hypothesis holds for all languages.

2 A set of principles and parameters of grammar which, according to Chomsky, is inherited genetically by all human beings. In Chomsky's account, universal grammar is represented as an idealized initial stage in language acquisition, at which a child is conceived as having no knowledge of a particular language. Such knowledge is then conceived as developing from universal grammar, partly by the ‘setting’ of parameters and partly by the addition of specific rules, individual features of the lexicon, and so on.
Top

Back  -    New Search

Universal Language Movement.

Movement aiming to establish a single written language for scientific or philosophical purposes, important in England in the 17th century, especially in the first decade (1660– ) of the Royal Society, and in France and Europe generally from the 17th to the end of the 18th. The motives were different from those which inspired the later development of Esperanto and other international auxiliary languages.

Back  -    New Search

universal of language.

See linguistic universal.

Back  -    New Search

universal quantifier (?).

Operator in logic used in expressions interpretable as asserting universality. E.g. (? x) (human, x dance, x) ‘For all x, if x is human then x dances’: i.e. ‘All people dance’.

Back  -    New Search

univocal.

Interpretable in only one way. Opp. ambiguous and, in the philosophical tradition, ‘equivocal’.

Back  -    New Search

unmarked.

Not marked. E.g. voiceless [t] in German is unmarked ([- voice]) in opposition to voiced [d] ([+ voice]); singular book is unmarked ([- plural]) in opposition to plural books ([+ plural]); the order of words in I never did it is unmarked in opposition to the marked order of I did it NEver.

Back  -    New Search

unordered.

1 (Rules) that are not ordered rules.

2 (Form of representation) that does not indicate any sequencing of units.
Top

Back  -    New Search

unproductive.

(Formation) restricted to a closed set of forms. E.g. the formation of awake or asleep, with prefix a-, cannot be extended to form adoze, aslumber, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

unreal

(conditional) . See remote.

Back  -    New Search

‘unreleased’

See release.

Back  -    New Search

unrestricted rewrite system.

A system of rewrite rules, each of the form X Y, where both X and Y are strings of whatever length. A phrase structure grammar formulated as a rewrite system is by contrast restricted in that (a) each rule rewrites one element only, (b) the string by which it is rewritten cannot be null.

Back  -    New Search

unrounded.

(Vowel, consonant) produced either without rounding of the lips or specifically with the lips spread: e.g. the [b] and [] of bin, as opposed to both the [b] and the [] of book.

Back  -    New Search

untensed.

(Verb, clause) without an inflectional or other indication of tense (1). Opp. tensed.

Back  -    New Search

unvoiced

= voiceless, especially as the result of devoicing.

Back  -    New Search

‘upstairs clause’

= superordinate clause. Likewise ‘upstairs subject’, etc. = subject, etc. of a superordinate clause.

Back  -    New Search

upstep.

Raising of the pitch of a high tone preceded by another high tone. Cf. downstep.

Back  -    New Search

ur-.

German prefix meaning ‘original’ or ‘primitive’. E.g. an ‘Ursprache’ is a protolanguage; the ‘Urheimat’ of the peoples speaking Indo-European is the home territory from which, hypothetically, they migrated across Europe and Asia.

Back  -    New Search

‘Ural-Altaic’.

Conjectural family of languages, of which Uralic and Altaic are the proposed branches.

Back  -    New Search

Uralic.

Family of languages subsuming Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic.

Back  -    New Search

‘urban dialectology’.

Usually of sociolinguistic investigations in cities in the broad tradition of Labov and his followers.

Back  -    New Search

Urdu.

See Hindi-Urdu.

Back  -    New Search

usage.

Traditionally of the way a language is customarily spoken or written, as opposed to the rules laid down by grammarians. Thus, in particular, forms or constructions may be ‘justified by usage’ even though a rule apparently proscribes them. A grammar which is descriptive rather than prescriptive will therefore purport to describe usage consistently.

Back  -    New Search

use.

A specific meaning of a grammatical word, inflection, etc. distinguished in a grammar from other meanings. E.g. an -ing form in English has one use in the men standing up and another in Standing up is painful; the basic use of a past tense is in reference to past time (He came yesterday), but its use in a remote condition is often in reference to the future (It would be nice if he came tomorrow).
Compare a ‘sense’ (1) of a lexical unit.

Back  -    New Search

use vs. mention.

See mention.

Back  -    New Search

Uto-Aztecan.

Family of languages either spoken or formerly spoken in various parts of Central America and the western USA. An Aztecan branch includes Nahuatl with others scattered eastwards to El Salvador and Honduras. Another group (Sonoran) are spoken mainly in north-east Mexico; the northernmost (Shoshonean) includes Comanche and Hopi among others.

Back  -    New Search

utterance.

Anything spoken on a specific occasion. Often opposed to ‘sentence’: e.g. the words ‘Come here!’, spoken by a specific speaker at a specific time, form an utterance which is one instance of a sentence Come here!
Hence utterance meaning , as the meaning of something as spoken on a specific occasion, vs. sentence meaning , as the meaning that a sentence is said to have independently of any such occasion.

Back  -    New Search

uvular.

Articulated with the back of the tongue against the fleshy appendage (or uvula ) at the back of the soft palate. E.g. the ‘r’ in French is variously a uvular trill or, more usually, a uvular fricative.

Back  -    New Search

Uzbek.

Turkic language, spoken in Central Asia in an area centred on Tashkent, and with official status in Uzbekistan. Another Turkic language, also called ‘Uzbek’ , is spoken mainly in Afghanistan.

Back  -    New Search

V

V.

1 = verb.

2 = vowel.
Top

3 As a cover term for forms such as French vous, Dutch U, or Spanish usted(es), all polite forms for ‘you’, as opposed to the corresponding familiar, or ‘T’, forms.
Top

Back  -    New Search

V2 order

= verb-second order.

Back  -    New Search

valency.

The range of syntactic elements either required or specifically permitted by a verb or other lexical unit. Thus the valency of eat includes a subject (I in I am eating) and an object (cheese in I am eating cheese). An element which is required is an obligatory valent ; one which is specifically permitted but is not required is an optional valent . Thus eat must be explicitly associated with an object, since there are other verbs with which an object is not possible; but it is an optional valent since, in e.g. I am eating, it can be omitted.
Cf. argument for ‘argument structure’. ‘Valency’ and ‘valence’ are alternative translations of the term in French or German (‘valence’, ‘Valenz’), introduced by L. Tesnière by analogy with the chemistry of atoms. A valency dictionary is a dictionary whose purpose is to describe the valency of units; valency grammar is a partial model of grammar, developed especially in Germany in the early 1970s, in which the syntactic and semantic roles of valents are described within a framework of dependency relations, again developed by Tesnière, in which, in I am eating cheese, both I and cheese are governed by the verb whose valents they represent. Cf. semantic valency vs. syntactic valency.

Back  -    New Search

value.

1 Of a variable: e.g. a feature such as [Animate] is a variable with the values [+ Animate] (animate) and [— Animate] (inanimate).

2 = French ‘valeur’, used by Saussure of the place or function of an element within a network of relations.
Top

Back  -    New Search

variable.

In the ordinary sense: thus variable feature, sociolinguistic variable. For ‘variable rules’ see rule.

Back  -    New Search

variant.

Usually of the alternative realizations of a unit: e.g. an aspirated [th] in stop and unaspirated [t] in stop are conditioned variants of this phoneme.

Back  -    New Search

variety.

Any form of a language seen as systematically distinct from others: thus the dialect of a specific region (e.g. Cornwall), any more general form distinguished as a whole by speakers (e.g. American English or British English), a social dialect, one of the forms distinguished in diglossia, a dialect used in a specific genre of literature, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

variphone.

Used by (Daniel) Jones for a sound whose pronunciation varies perceptibly in ways independent of phonetic or other context. Cf. free variation.

Back  -    New Search

Varro, Marcus Terentius

(116–27 BC).
Roman polymath, whose work De lingua latina (‘On the Latin language’) is partly extant. Of the books wholly or largely surviving, three are the last of a series on the origins of words, and the remainder the first of a series on what would now be called morphology. A third series, on syntax, is lost. Varro's treatment has flashes of insight, whether his own or from a Greek original, not found in the later grammatical tradition, and his account of the grammatical controversies in his time (see analogists vs. anomalists) is widely reflected in histories of linguistics.

Back  -    New Search

Vedic.

Ancient language of the north-west of the Indian subcontinent, the earliest form of what is later called Sanskrit. Attested by collections of religious formulae and hymns transmitted orally (the ‘Vedas’) of which the most archaic linguistically is the gveda or ‘Rigveda’, datable to the second millennium BC.

Back  -    New Search

‘vehicular language’

= langue véhiculaire.

Back  -    New Search

velar.

Articulated with the back of the tongue against the soft palate (or velum). E.g. [k] in [kat] (cat) is a velar stop; [x] in some pronunciations of loch ([lDX]) a velar fricative.

Back  -    New Search

‘velaric’

(Airstream mechanism) involving suction of the tongue against the roof of the mouth; hence with the closure of part of the tongue against the velum or soft palate. Used in the production of clicks. ‘Lingual’, suggested by J. Laver, would be a more appropriate term.

Back  -    New Search

velarization.

Secondary articulation (1) in which the back of the tongue is raised towards the soft palate (velum). E.g. an ‘l’ at the end of a word is velarized ([l]) in many forms of English.

Back  -    New Search

velic closure.

Raising of the soft palate (velum) so that air cannot pass in or out through the nose. Velic release of a stop consonant is release by lowering the velum: e.g. of [t] in [btn] (button).

Back  -    New Search

velum.

The soft or fleshy part of the roof of the mouth; = soft palate.

Back  -    New Search

verb (V).

One of a class of lexical units whose characteristic syntactic role is as a predicate (2) or predicator and which is characteristically that of words denoting actions or processes: e.g. run, make, melt. Verbs and nouns were distinguished in antiquity as two ‘principal’ parts of speech without which a complete sentence could not be formed; often taken, for similar reasons, to be substantive universals.

Back  -    New Search

verbal.

1 Pertaining to or involving verbs or a verb. Thus sing- in sings or singer is a verbal root or stem; -s in sings is a verbal ending or suffix; He sings it is a verbal, as opposed to a nominal, sentence.

2 Consisting of words: e.g. he, sings, and it form the verbal component , as distinct e.g. from an intonational component, of a sentence or utterance ‘He SINGS it’.
Top

Back  -    New Search

verbal noun.

Typically of forms which derive systematically from verbs but whose syntax is like that of nouns: e.g. building in the reckless building of freeways. Cf. deverbal.

Back  -    New Search

verb phrase (VP).

A phrase whose head (1) is a verb. In some analyses equivalent to predicate (1): thus e.g. I VP[will see him tomorrow]. In others consisting of a verb plus its complements or arguments: I will VP[see him] tomorrow, or, if the auxiliary is treated differently, I VP[will see him] tomorrow. In others consisting of a verb with any auxiliaries: I VP[will see] him tomorrow. Also, in some versions of X-bar syntax, the predicate (1) plus a subject: VP[I will see him tomorrow].
In all cases the verb is seen as the head of the unit. The variation, therefore, is not in the definition, but in its application to different accounts of constituency and of the categories that constituents are assigned to.

Back  -    New Search

verb raising.

Clause union, seen as a process of raising (2) by which a verb is moved from a subordinate clause.

Back  -    New Search

verb-second order.

The order of elements e.g. in main clauses in German, in which a verb, either lexical or auxiliary, is in second position: Vielleicht weisst du das nicht (lit. ‘Perhaps know you that not’), Das habe ich nicht gesagt (‘That have I not said’), and so on.

Back  -    New Search

verb serialization.

See serial verb construction.

Back  -    New Search

vernacular.

(Language) native to a given community, as opposed to a learned or other second language: e.g. the native languages of Catholic Europe in the Middle Ages and later, in opposition to Latin. Thence generally of languages that are not standardized, of non-standard varieties of those that are, of forms used locally or characteristic of non-dominant groups or classes.
A ‘vernacular form’ is similarly, in the strict sense, a form which belongs to the speech that is native to a community.

Back  -    New Search

Verner's Law.

The explanation by K. Verner of a set of exceptions to Grimm's Law in which the Germanic reflex of a Proto-Indo-European voiceless stop was not, as predicted, a voiceless fricative. In words where it was, the accent in Proto-Indo-European, as attested by other languages such as Vedic, had fallen on the preceding syllable: Gothic brþar (-[]-), Vedic bhrtar- ‘brother’. Where it was not, the accent had fallen elsewhere: Old English fæder, Vedic pitár ‘father’.
The explanation was published in 1876, and played an important role in confirming the Neogrammarian ‘Regularity Principle’.

Back  -    New Search

vertical line (' ,).

Used to mark primary (') and secondary (,) stress on the syllable following: e.g. ['bt] (butter) has stress on the first syllable, [r'bt] (rebut) has stress on the second. ‘'’ is also used to represent downstep in tone languages; also ‘,’, under a letter, to mark a syllabic consonant.

Back  -    New Search

Vietnamese.

Mon-Khmer, ntive in the lowland areas of Vietnam: sometimes cited as a paradigm instance of an isolating language. Formerly written in Chinese characters or in characters derived from Chinese; now in a Roman script developed by European missionaries in the 17th century, in which, in particular, tones and associated voice qualities are represented by diacritics.

Back  -    New Search

vigesimal.

(Numeral system) based on twenty, as opposed to a decimal system based on ten.

Back  -    New Search

Visible Speech.

System of phonetic notation published by A. M. Bell in the 1860s, in which letter-like characters represent specific positions, etc. of the vocal organs.

Back  -    New Search

vocal cords.

Parallel folds of mucous membrane in the larynx, running from front to back and capable of being closed or opened, from the back, to varying degrees. In normal breathing they are open; likewise in producing speech sounds that are voiceless. In the production of voice they are close together and vibrate as air passes periodically between them. In the production of ejectives, for example, they are closed completely.
Also called ‘vocal folds’ . The space between the vocal cords is the glottis .

Back  -    New Search

‘vocal fry’

= creak.

Back  -    New Search

vocal gesture

= articulatory gesture.

Back  -    New Search

vocalic.

1 Consisting of or pertaining to a vowel or vowels.

2 Distinctive feature in the schemes of Jakobson and of Chomsky and Halle, SPE. Voiced vowels and liquids are [+ vocalic], all others [- vocalic]. Cf. consonantal.
Top

Back  -    New Search

vocalized.

(Text) written in a consonantal alphabet, to which indications of vowels have been added.

Back  -    New Search

vocal organs.

Any of the organs involved in the production of speech, from the chest muscles, by which air is expelled or drawn into the lungs, upwards.

Back  -    New Search

vocal tract.

The passages above the larynx through which air passes in the production of speech: thus, more particularly, the throat, the mouth (or oral tract ), and the passages in the nose (or nasal tract ). Also of the oral tract alone.

Back  -    New Search

vocative.

Form traditionally characterized by use in calling someone or in getting their attention. Thus the archaic O of We beseech thee, O Lord is a vocative particle; Bill has a vocative role in Bill, where are you?; in e.g. Latin, nouns with a similar role were in the vocative case.

Back  -    New Search

vocoid.

A vowel defined phonetically, by the way it is produced, as distinguished from a vowel in a phonological sense, defined by its role in the structure of words and syllables. Thus, in English, the semivowels [j] (as in yes) and [w] (as in wed) are vocoids, though phonologically consonants.
Cf. contoid: both terms were introduced by Pike in the 1940s.

Back  -    New Search

voice (1).

Vibration of the vocal cords in the production of speech. Voiced sounds are those produced with voice or distinguished by a greater element of voice from those classed as voiceless . E.g. in the production of [bl] (bill) the vowel and final consonant are voiced throughout; the initial consonant is distinguished by an earlier voice onset time from the voiceless [p] of [pl] (pill).
Normal or modal voice is distinguished, in accounts of phonation or voice quality, from creak or creaky voice, or falsetto. For ‘whispery voice’ see whisper.

Back  -    New Search

voice (2).

Used conventionally from the late Middle Ages for a grammatical category by which forms of verbs are opposed as active or passive, or as active, passive, or middle. Thus in Everyone admired Margaret the verb admired is in the active voice; in Margaret was admired by everyone, was admired or the participle admired is in the passive voice.
Thence of any grammatical opposition in which different verb forms are associated with changes in the syntactic roles of units related to them. Thus in Everyone admired Margaret, Margaret is the object; in Margaret was admired or Margaret was admired by everyone it is instead the subject. Similarly, in an antipassive, what would otherwise have the syntactic role marked by the ergative has instead that of the absolutive. Therefore antipassive is a voice just as passive is a voice.

Back  -    New Search

voiced aspirate.

Used of murmured consonants in various Indo-Aryan languages. Thus, in the phonology of Sanskrit, voiceless and voiced stops without aspiration (e.g. t, d) were opposed to voiceless aspirates (th) and voiced aspirates (dh).
Thence of a set of reconstructed consonants in Proto-Indo-European, which, in an account disputed but still widely accepted, opposed voiceless stops (t) to, on the one hand, voiced (d) and, on the other hand, ‘voiced aspirate’ = murmured (dh).

Back  -    New Search

voice dynamics.

Features of the production of speech which do not distinguish individual phonological units and which are not those of voice quality. Thus variation in the rate of speech, in pitch, in loudness, rhythm, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

voiceless.

Produced without vibration of the vocal cords: e.g. in ['f] (fisher) the [f] and [] are voiceless while the vowels are voiced, or produced with voice (1).

Back  -    New Search

voice onset time (VOT).

The timing of an onset of voice (1) in relation to the release of a plosive consonant. Thus in pea there tends to be a lag or delay between the release of the initial [p] and the onset of voice in the following [i:]; in bee there is either no delay or a lead in which the onset of voice precedes the release of [b]. The difference in voice onset time is the main factor distinguishing such consonants.

Back  -    New Search

‘voiceprint’.

A spectrogram of a stretch of speech, in a form claimed by its inventors to enable an individual speaker to be identified.

Back  -    New Search

voice quality.

The features that habitually or permanently characterize an individual speaker's voice. Thus, in particular, those involving a fixed articulatory setting: a nasalized quality, with incomplete raising of the soft palate, a falsetto quality, and so on.

Back  -    New Search

volitive.

(Modality) of forms expressing wishes. E.g. that of an explicit wish like I wish you were here; also of an optative inflection. Also called ‘volitional’ .

Back  -    New Search

Voltaic

= Gur.

Back  -    New Search

VOS language.

One in which a verb, object (3), and subject (3) are at least basically or most commonly in that order. Opp. VSO language, SVO language, etc.

Back  -    New Search

VOT

= voice onset time.

Back  -    New Search

VO vs. OV languages.

Ones in which a verb (V) precedes, or basically or usually precedes, an object (O), opposed to ones in which it follows: e.g. English (VO), Japanese (OV).
Thence of a distinction between types (1) of languages defined by this and by a number of other structural characteristics seen, especially in work of the late 1970s, as linked to it. E.g. a consistent language of the VO type will also have prepositions in the sense of adpositions that precede their complements; a consistent OV language will instead have postpositions that follow them.

Back  -    New Search

vowel.

Originally, in ancient accounts of Greek and Latin, of a minimal unit of speech that could be produced on its own and could, on its own, form a syllable: e.g. [i:] in Latin could form the one-syllable word i ‘go!’. Now, more generally or more precisely, of one that is produced with open approximation and that characteristically forms the nucleus (2) of a syllable: e.g. [a] in bat [bat], [i:] in bee [bi:], [:] in are [:]. Distinguished as such from syllabic consonants: e.g. [1] as, uncharacteristically, a nucleus in battle ['batl]. Also from semivowels, e.g. [w] as the onset of a syllable in we [wi:], or approximants.
See vocoid for a proposed distinction between a unit defined in purely phonetic terms and one defined phonologically. Cf. vocalic (2) as a distinctive feature [± vocalic] combining with [± consonantal]; also, in some accounts, with [± syllabic].

Back  -    New Search

vowel gradation.

Differences between vowels which carry morphological contrasts: specifically the system of ablaut in Indo-European languages.

Back  -    New Search

vowel harmony.

Agreement among vowels in successive syllables in respect of one or more features. E.g., in Turkish, köy ‘village’ has a front vowel (ö) while son ‘end’ has a back vowel; in harmony with these the plural suffix has a front vowel (e) in köyler (köy-ler) ‘villages’, but a back vowel (a) in sonlar (son-lar) ‘ends’.

Back  -    New Search

vowel height.

One of the main parameters in the classification of vowels. In the system of cardinal vowels a close vowel is described as one produced with the highest point of the tongue as close as possible to the roof of the mouth. An open vowel is one produced with the highest point of the tongue as far away as possible from the roof of the mouth; close-mid (or half-close ) and open-mid (or half-open ) represent intermediate points, perceived as auditorily equidistant, between these. Alternatively, close vowels are ‘high’ , open vowels are ‘low’, and a vowel at an intermediate point is ‘mid’ .

Back  -    New Search

vowel quadrilateral.

See cardinal vowels.

Back  -    New Search

vowel quality.

The auditory character of a vowel as determined by the posture of the vocal organs above the larynx. Thus the quality of [a] remains the same, whether it is produced loudly or softly, or with a high pitch or a low pitch. But its quality is different from that of [i], which is produced with the lower jaw and tongue much closer to the roof of the mouth, or that of nasal [ã], in which the passages through the nose are open. See formant for acoustic correlates.

Back  -    New Search

VP

= verb phrase.

Back  -    New Search

vddhi.

Term in Sanskrit grammar for a unit analysed as the combination of a simple vowel or resonant with a preceding double a. One of three degrees of ‘strengthening’: e.g. i is simple or unstrengthened; e (? a + i) is the gua form in which it is strengthened by a single a; ai (? + i) is the vddhi form resulting from a further strengthening.

Back  -    New Search

VSO language.

One in which a verb, subject (3), and object (3) are at least basically or most commonly in that order. Opp. SVO language, etc.

Back  -    New Search

Vulgar Latin.

The spoken language of the western Roman empire, from which the Romance languages developed, as opposed to Latin as written in its standardized form. ‘Vulgar’ simply means ‘of the people’ (Latin ‘vulgus’).

Back  -    New Search

W

Wackernagel's Law.

Rule of Indo-European syntax, identified by J. Wackernagel in the 1890s, by which a series of particles and other clitic elements occupied a position in the clause after the first accented element. Cf., in Ancient Greek, the position of one word for ‘but’ in e.g. nûn dè pôs légeis ‘But how do you say now?’ (lit. ‘now but how you-say?’).
Claimed now to be an instance of a more general principle; hence the second position in a clause or sentence is often called the ‘Wackernagel position’ .

Back  -    New Search

Wakashan.

Family of languages spoken or formerly spoken on the Pacific coast of North America, in British Columbia and south of the Canadian border. Nootka and Kwakiutl (also ‘Kwakwala’, etc.) have been cited extensively by American scholars from Boas and Sapir onwards.

Back  -    New Search

‘wanna-contraction’.

The reduction in American English of forms like want to or going to in I want to (wanna) do it or I'm going to (gonna) do it.

Back  -    New Search

Warlpiri.

Australian language spoken in an area around Yuendumu in the Northern Territory.

Back  -    New Search

wave model.

Model proposed by J. Schmidt in the 1870s in which the historical relations within Indo-European and other families of languages are seen in terms of the intersection of individual changes, each originating in a specific group of speakers and spreading to others with progressively weaker effect. The image is that of the waves caused by stones dropped into different places in a pool.
German Wellentheorie , proposed in opposition to the Stammbaumtheorie or Stammbaum model.

Back  -    New Search

weak.

1 (Verb, formation, etc.) in Germanic languages distinguished by the addition of suffixes as opposed to ablaut. Thus, in English, talk is a weak verb (past tense and participle talk-ed) while sing is a strong verb (sang, sung).

2 (Syllable, etc.) See Metrical Phonology.
Top

3 Also of reduced forms e.g. of auxiliaries: thus -'ve in I've finished or -'d in I'd love one are weak forms of have and would.
Top

Back  -    New Search

weak generative capacity.

The range of languages, in the sense of sets of strings of units, that can be generated by a specific type of generative grammar. Thus any ‘language’ in this sense that can be generated by a finite state grammar can also be generated by a context-free grammar, but not vice versa. Accordingly, the weak generative capacity of context-free grammars is greater than that of finite state grammars. Cf. power; also strong generative capacity.

Back  -    New Search

‘Weak Lexicalist Hypothesis’.

See Strong Lexicalist Hypothesis.

Back  -    New Search

weakly equivalent.

(Grammars, types of grammar) that generate the same set of sentences or have the same weak generative capacity.

Back  -    New Search

‘weather verb’.

A verb such as English rain or snow which in its basic sense takes, according to many accounts, no more than a dummy subject. Thus it is a dummy in It is raining; in e.g. Italian Piove (lit. ‘rain-3SG’) the equivalent verb has no subject. Cf. zero-valent.

Back  -    New Search

weight.

The property by which heavy or ‘long’ syllables are distinguished from light or ‘short’ syllables, or syllables counting e.g. as two morae from those counting as one mora.

Back  -    New Search

Wellentheorie.

See wave model.

Back  -    New Search

well-formed.

In accordance with a given system of rules; hence often = grammatical (2). Opp. ill-formed.

Back  -    New Search

Welsh.

Celtic, related within the Brythonic branch to Breton and Cornish. Spoken by a minority of the population of Wales, mainly in the north-western counties of Gwynedd and Dyfed; attested by literary texts from the 6th century AD.

Back  -    New Search

Wendish

= Sorbian.

Back  -    New Search

‘Wernicke's aphasia’.

A form of aphasia characterized by fluent but meaningless speech: ‘Wernicke's area’ is a part of the brain where lesions have been diagnosed as giving rise to it.

Back  -    New Search

West African languages.

Historically fragmented: larger genetic relationships have been and are still in dispute. For specific groupings see Benue-Congo; Chadic; Gur; Kru; Kwa; Mande; West Atlantic languages.
The administrative and other use of English or French largely coincides with boundaries between former colonies. The distribution of indigenous languages, even when one is dominant in a political unit, for the most part does not.

Back  -    New Search

West Atlantic languages.

A group of languages spoken mainly along the Atlantic coast of Africa, from Senegal to west Liberia, but also including Fula. Wolof, spoken in Senegal and Gambia, is another important member. Also called ‘Atlantic’ .

Back  -    New Search

West Germanic.

Conventional division of Germanic which includes German (both High German and Low German), Dutch, and English. Traditionally distinguished from East Germanic (Gothic) and North Germanic.

Back  -    New Search

WFR.

A rule (R) of word-formation (WF): e.g. that by which happiness or sadness are formed from happy and sad.

Back  -    New Search

wh-cleft.

See pseudo-cleft.

Back  -    New Search

wh-form.

Any of a class of words in English that typically begin with wh-: e.g. who, which, why. Also of phrases that begin with such words: e.g. which book, what people.
Thence extended, by linguists whose native language is English, to forms that play similar syntactic roles in other languages.

Back  -    New Search

‘whimperative’.

An interrogative with the force of an order or instruction: e.g. Why don't you shut up?, meaning ‘Shut up!’.

Back  -    New Search

wh-interrogative.

An interrogative formed with a wh-form: e.g. Who is coming?, What will she do? Also called a ‘wh-question’ ; alternatively, since the category is not peculiar to English, ‘focused interrogative’ , ‘x-interrogative’ , or ‘x-question’ .

Back  -    New Search

wh-island constraint.

Proposed principle by which an element in a clause introduced by a wh-form cannot bear a direct syntactic relation to an element outside it. E.g. one does not say Whose book did he say where he stole?: the reason, according to this principle, is that whose book would be directly related as the object of a verb (stole) which is within a clause (where he stole) introduced by the wh-word where. Cf., on the assumption that how is not a wh-word, Whose book did he say how he stole?
Cf. island. Formulated in the late 1960s as a constraint on movement: thus in an underlying he said [where he stole whose book], whose book could not be moved from the bracketed clause by wh-movement.

Back  -    New Search

whisper.

Technically of a type of phonation in which air passes with turbulence through a small opening at the back of the glottis. In whispering, in the ordinary sense, sounds that are normally voiced are produced with whisper instead.
In whispery voice the vocal cords are close enough to vibrate but air also passes continuously through them.

Back  -    New Search

wh-movement.

Proposed movement of wh-forms to the beginning of a clause or sentence: e.g. in Who can you see?, the movement of who from an underlying position as the object of see (you can see who). Hence of this type of construction in general, even when a process of movement from an underlying position is rejected.

Back  -    New Search

wh-question.

See wh-interrogative.

Back  -    New Search

‘wh-raising’.

Process peculiar to Government and Binding Theory by which in e.g. Who does what? the second wh-form (what) is moved at the level of Logical Form to a position in which, like the first, it is an element in a larger structure.

Back  -    New Search

‘wh-trace’.

A trace hypothetically left by wh-movement: thus the trace t in Who can you see t?, seen as derived from you can see who. Distinguished in Government and Binding Theory from an NP-trace.

Back  -    New Search

widening of meaning.

Enlargement of the class of entities that a word denotes: e.g. the meaning of bird, formerly ‘young bird’, was extended, in the early history of English, to mean ‘bird’ in general. Also called ‘extension of meaning’ : but extensions that involve the simple loss of a restriction (like the restriction to birds that are young) might usefully be distinguished from those where the extension adds a new sense.

Back  -    New Search

wide vowel.

One in whose production the tongue is relaxed and flattened in cross-section. A possible factor in distinguishing e.g. [] from [u:] in English, or in similar distinctions in other Germanic languages. Opp. narrow vowel.

Back  -    New Search

wish.

See optative; volitive.

Back  -    New Search

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

(1889–1951).
Austrian philosopher whose career lay mainly in England. Influential in linguistics especially through his posthumous Philosophische Untersuchungen (English translation Philosophical Investigations (1953)), which, in sharp contrast to his earlier Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), sought to replace conventional theories of meaning with a theory based simply on the ways in which words are, in specific situations, used. Often cited, in particular, for a passage illustrated with the uses of the word game, in which he shows that a definition of its meaning, in the strict sense of a set of precise conditions which something must meet to be a game, is not possible. Cf. family resemblance; ordinary language philosophy.

Back  -    New Search

Wolof.

See West Atlantic languages.

Back  -    New Search

word.

Traditionally the smallest of the units that make up a sentence, and marked as such in writing. In practice, words are established by various criteria. They are generally the smallest units that can form an utterance on their own: in Bloomfield's terminology, they are minimal free forms. There are often restrictions on their phonetic make-up: e.g. words in English cannot begin with [] (-ng-) or [z]. The position of a stress or other accent is often fixed (1): i.e. it is determined by the boundaries of words or their syllabic structure. Elements within them show greater cohesion (2) than larger units: thus stems and affixes cannot be separated except by other affixes. Nor does the order of their elements tend to vary. These criteria sometimes conflict, but no other unit shows such near agreement in such different respects.
Distinctions are often drawn:
1 Between a phonological word or word as seen from the viewpoint of phonology, and a grammatical word (2), established by grammatical criteria only;
2 Between lexemes as words distinguished in the lexicon (e.g. the verb ‘to sing’) and the individual word forms that they subsume (past tense sang, present participle singing, etc.).

Back  -    New Search

Word and Paradigm.

One of three models of morphology first distinguished by C. F. Hockett in the 1950s. Usually conceived as any account in which the primary focus is on the oppositions between words as wholes within a paradigm, rather than their internal structure. E.g., in Italian, cantavo ‘I was singing’ is characterized as a whole by its oppositions, as first person, to the second and third persons cantavi, cantava; as singular, to the plural cantavamo ‘we were singing’; as imperfect, to the present canto ‘I am singing’; as indicative, to the subjunctive cantassi. Any division of the word into smaller elements (say, cant-a-v-o) is secondary.
Distinguished by Hockett from Item and Arrangement, Item and Process.

Back  -    New Search

word class.

Any class of word established by similarities in syntax or in grammar generally. Often specifically of major word classes, such as the parts of speech.

Back  -    New Search

word form.

The form of a specific word, either phonetic or orthographic. Distinguished as such from the word as a lexical unit or lexeme: e.g. ran or [ran] is one of a set of word forms (run, runs, ran, running) each of which is a ‘form of’ the lexeme ‘(to) run’. Also distinguished from a morphosyntactic word or word as characterized by grammatical categories: e.g. ran or [ran] realizes a unit that is morphosyntactically the past tense of ‘(to) run’; run or [rn] either one that is morphosyntactically its past participle (in It has run out) or one that is present or infinitive (in They run fast or Make them run).

Back  -    New Search

word-formation.

1 The formation of words in general.

2 Specifically of the formation of words as lexical units, subsuming compounding and derivational morphology.
Top

3 = derivational morphology.
Top

Back  -    New Search

Word Grammar.

Model of grammar developed in the 1980s by R. A. Hudson. Basically an integrated account of syntax and the lexicon, in which all syntactic relations other than coordination are reduced to ordered dependencies of one word on another. E.g., in Sensible people ride bicycles, sensible depends on and precedes people, people depends on and precedes ride, bicycles depends on and follows ride. Dependencies are determined by the interaction of the lexical properties of individual words (e.g. ride is a finite or ‘tensed’ verb, people a plural noun) with general rules that state e.g. that finite verbs take a subject, that a subject precedes and depends on a verb, and so on. Similarly ride, as an individual word, can take an object, which, by a general rule, will depend on and typically follow it.
One of various models whose origins lie in a reaction against transformational grammars in the late 1970s. With others, such as Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, it proposes a single level of syntactic structure; but no other treatment has rejected the concept of constituency, or developed those of dependency and of a syntax grounded in the lexicon, with such thoroughness.

Back  -    New Search

word-group

= phrase (2).

Back  -    New Search

‘word order’.

Used widely of the order of elements within the sentence, whether words or, more commonly, phrases. E.g. the ‘basic word order’ in English is ‘SVO’: i.e. a subject phrase S, whether one word or many, precedes the verb (V), and an object phrase O, again whether one word or many, follows it. Hence ‘free word order’ often means, more strictly, free order of phrases: see free (4), as opposed to fixed (2).

Back  -    New Search

word stress.

Stress that is intrinsic to a word, as opposed to sentence stress. The term ‘lexical stress’ may be used of stress associated with a unit of the lexicon, as opposed to ‘morphological stress’ determined e.g. by a specific affix. E.g. in Italian, an infinitive such as indicare ‘to point out’ has a morphological stress on the syllable before the infinitive suffix: indic-á-re. But this overrides a lexical stress on the first syllable of the root: cf. índic-o (with stress on in-) ‘I indicate’.

Back  -    New Search

Wörter und Sachen.

German ‘words and things’: name given to a movement in the early 20th century (and to the journal founded by it) which insisted that the etymology of words and their distribution across dialects should be studied in close association with that of the artefacts, etc. that they denoted.

Back  -    New Search

WP

= Word and Paradigm.

Back  -    New Search

X

X.

Variable, in X-bar syntax, ranging over N, V, and other syntactic categories.

Back  -    New Search

X-bar syntax.

Model of phrase structure grammar developed largely by R. S. Jackendoff in the 1970s and incorporated into Government and Binding Theory in the 1980s.
Essentially a theory of syntactic categories, according to which, for any category X, there is a fixed hierarchy of units. In the original notation these were distinguished by successive levels of barring: thus, in the illustration, X =N (for noun); the noun itself is labelled as an ‘N’ with no bar, and the units labelled with one bar () and with two bars () are successive phrases of which it is the head (1). Comp (for ‘Complement’) is a cover term for anything that combines with an X to form an ; Spec (for ‘Specifier’ ) a similar term for anything that combines with an to form an .
In later usage is increasingly written X? or XP; in terms of Government and Binding Theory this is the maximal projection of the category. is correspondingly written X'. In a standard account the values of X include the major syntactic categories N (noun), V (verb), A (adjective), and P (preposition), with the maximal projection of a verb (V? or VP) often seen as including a subject noun phrase as its specifier. The system was extended in Government and Binding Theory to include non-lexical categories such as C (COMP) or I (INFL); it was also abstracted, as a theory of categories hypothetically forming part of universal grammar (2), from parameters (e.g. a proposed Head Parameter) distinguishing the orders in which they are realized in particular languages.

A structure in X-bar syntax

Back  -    New Search

Xhosa.

Bantu language, spoken in Cape Province and Transkei (South Africa) and distinguished by political divisions, within a group called Nguni, from Zulu. The name is pronounced in English with initial [k].

Back  -    New Search

x-question.

Proposed as an alternative to wh-question or wh-interrogative. Cf. focused interrogative.

Back  -    New Search

Y

Yana.

See Hokan.

Back  -    New Search

‘yes—no question’.

See polar interrogative.

Back  -    New Search

Yi.

See Lolo-Burmese.

Back  -    New Search

Yiddish.

West Germanic, historically a variety of German influenced heavily by Hebrew and spoken by Jewish communities over a wide area of central and eastern Europe; also described for that reason as ‘Judaeo-German’ . Since the massacre of Jews in the Second World War the largest body of speakers has been in the USA.

Back  -    New Search

yod.

The sound [j], written as y e.g. in English yet [jt]. Hence yodization (also ‘yoticization’, etc.) is a sound-change or other process resulting in [j].

Back  -    New Search

Yoruba.

The official language in south-west Nigeria; spoken over a large area which inludes Lagos; also across the border in parts of Benin. Yoruba and others closely related to it are among a large group of languages variously classified either as within Kwa or as within Benue-Congo.

Back  -    New Search

Young Grammarians.

See Neogrammarians.

Back  -    New Search

Yucatec.

See Mayan.

Back  -    New Search

Z

zero (Ø).

Usually of an element which is posited at some level of representation but whose realization is null. Thus a noun phrase such as women, in which there is no overt determiner, is often said to have a zero determiner (Ø women) in opposition to those of the women or a woman. Relative clauses such as I saw in the men I saw are similarly said to have a zero relative pronoun : the men [Ø I saw], like the men [who I saw].

Back  -    New Search

zero anaphora.

Relation in which a phonetically null element is seen as linked by anaphora to an antecedent.
Thus, in English, an element such as he may be linked by anaphora to a preceding noun phrase: John says he (i.e. John) is coming. In a similar construction in Spanish there is usually no corresponding element: Dice Juan que viene (lit. ‘says John that comes’). But in many accounts the subject of viene ‘comes’ would be described as a null element: e.g. in Government and Binding Theory, a phonetically null pro. Like he in English, this could then be anaphoric to Juan: thus, with the relation shown by subscript indices, Juani dice que proi viene.

Back  -    New Search

zero derivation.

A process of word-formation in which there is no change to the form that undergoes it: e.g. that by which the verb fish, seen as one lexical unit, is derived from the noun fish, seen as another lexical unit. Cf. conversion.

Back  -    New Search

zero morph.

A null element hypostatized as an allomorph of a morpheme when no allomorph is in fact present. E.g. in (three) sheep the noun is plural, but, unlike cats or horses, it has no plural ending. The plural morpheme is accordingly said to be realized by a zero morph: sheep-Ø.

Back  -    New Search

zero-valent.

(Verb, etc.) whose valency or set of arguments is null. Thus verbs in Italian generally take a subject and e.g. an object, but piovere ‘to rain’ is a zero-valent verb that takes neither: Piove (lit. ‘rains’) ‘It is raining’. ‘To rain’ in English has also been described as zero- valent, on the assumption that the it of It is raining is a dummy.

Back  -    New Search

zeugma.

Traditionally of cases of coordination in which one element would not form a construction on its own. E.g. one cannot say They said that so what; therefore there is a zeugma in They said that [[they were coming] and [so what]]. Often extended to include syllepsis.

Back  -    New Search

Zipf's Law.

Statistical law proposed by G. K. Zipf in the 1940s which relates the frequency (f) with which a word occurs in a text to its rank (r) in an order of frequency. According to the law, the product f × r is, or is within limits, constant.

Back  -    New Search

zoonym.

A word for a kind of animal, e.g. fox.

Back  -    New Search

zoosemiotics.

Term coined in the 1960s for the study of systems of communication in species other than man. The implication is that, with linguistics, this is a branch of semiotics.

Back  -    New Search

Zulu.

Bantu, spoken mainly in northern Natal (South Africa) and distinguished from Xhosa, by political divisions, within a closely related group called Nguni. Fanagalo is a pidginized form of Zulu/Xhosa, used especially in mining regions in South Africa and beyond.

Back  -    New Search

Zuni.

A genetically unclassified language of New Mexico in the USA.

Back  -    New Search

Zyryan

= Komi.

Back  -    New Search

OXFORD

UNIVERSITY PRESS
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics

P. H. Matthews
Over 3,000 entries
This invaluable work is the most authoritative and up-to-date dictionary of linguistics available. It provides concise, informative entries across the whole field of linguistics. With entries ranging from epiglottal and morpheme to Austronesian and Navajo, the dictionary is an ideal reference work for students and anyone with an interest in language and its study.
Peter Matthews is Professor of Linguistics at Cambridge University, and author of many books on linguistics, including Morphology, and Grammatical Theory in the United States from Bloomfield to Chomsky.

ISBN 0198608381

© Oxford University Press 1997, 2002

First published 1997

E-book copyright © 2003.