ENG 200 Glossary

8/3/2019 ENG 200 Glossary

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Ablative The case form characteristicallyused to mark a noun indicating the pointaway from which there is movement.

Ablaut A vowel alternation that marks agrammatical contrast (e.g., mouse/mice).

Absolute universals Patterns or traitsthat occur in all languages.

Absolutive In some languages, the caseassociated with both the direct object of a

transitive verb and the subject of an intransi-tive verb.

Abstract Hypothetical, not phoneticallyrealized. See Underlying.

Abstract Case Case that need not beexpressed as inflection.

Abstract clause A type of narrative utter-ance that sometimes appears at the begin-ning of a narrative to provide a general

summary of the story to be told.Abstract representation A phonologicaldescription that is to a greater or lesserdegree distinct from its phonetic realization.

Accent Phonetic qualities of a languagevariety that identify it to speakers of othervarieties as different from their own.

Accidental gaps Nonoccurring but possi-ble forms of a language (e.g., in English, blork).

Accommodation The modification ofspeech patterns according to the speech ofother participants in a discourse.

Accuracy Second language production inwhich the structures are nativelike.

Accusative The case form characteristi-cally used to mark a direct object.

Acoustic phonetics An approach to pho-netics that is concerned with measuring andanalyzing the physical properties of sound

waves produced when we speak.Acquired dysgraphia The impairment ofwriting ability in patients who previouslypossessed normal writing ability (also calledacquired agraphia).

Acquired dyslexia The impairment ofreading ability in patients who previouslypossessed normal reading ability (also calledacquired alexia).

Acrolect A creole variety that is relativelysimilar to the standard language from whichit arose. (See also Basilect andMesolect.)

Acronym A word that is formed by takingthe initial letters of (some or all) of thewords in a phrase or title and pronouncingthem as a word (e.g., NATO for North AtlanticTreaty Organization).

Acrophonic principle The representa-tion of sounds by pictures of objects whosepronunciation begins with the sound to berepresented (e.g., the sound [b] might be rep-

resented by a picture of a bird).Active (sentence) A sentence in whichthe NP in the subject position is the agent(the doer) of the action (e.g.,Helen paintedthe room).

Address terms The various forms that areused to address people, indicating somethingof ones relationship to the individualaddressed (e.g., in English,Ms. Callaghan,

Professor Van Haar, Jake).

Adjacency pair An ordered pair of utter-ances spoken by two different participants ina conversation.

Adjective (A) A lexical category thatdesignates a property that is applicable to theentities named by nouns, can often takecomparative and superlative endings inEnglish, and functions as the head of anadjective phrase (e.g., red, obese, hearty).

Adjunct See Modifier.Adjunct Island Condition Prohibitionagainst moving an element such as a wh-word out of a modifier.

Adstratum influence The mutual influ-ence of two equally dominant languages oneach other (e.g., the influence of English andFrench on each other in Montreal).

Adverb (Adv) A lexical category that

typically names properties that can beapplied to the actions designated by verbs(e.g., quickly, fearfully). May also occur inthe specifier position for verbs (e.g., neversurrender).

Affective factors Feelings or attitudesthat can affect the success of second lan-guage acquisition (e.g., motivation).

Affix (Af) A bound morpheme that modi-fies the meaning and/or syntactic (sub)cate-gory of the stem in some way (e.g., un- and-able in unreadable).

GLOSSARY


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Affixation The process that attaches anaffix to a base.

Affricates Noncontinuant consonantsthat show a slow release of the closure (e.g.,[t, d]).

Affrication A process in which stopsbecome affricates.

African American Vernacular English(AAVE) A cover term describing distinctivevarieties of English spoken by Americans ofAfrican descent.

Age-grading The correlation of a particu-lar linguistic variant with social situationsthat are closely associated with a particularage group.

Agent The thematic role of the doer ofan action (e.g.,Marilyn inMarilyn fed thedolphin).

Agent-patient pattern Sentence patternin which the agent role is assigned to thesubject of an intransitive verb and the

agent of a transitive verb; the patientrole is assigned to the object of a transitiveverb or the subject of a state.

Agglutinating languages Languages inwhich words typically contain several mor-phemes, of which usually only one is a lexi-cal category. The others are clearlyidentifiable affixes, each of which typicallyencodes a single grammatical contrast.

Agrammatism An aphasic disturbance

characterized by the omission of functionwords and inflectional affixes and by syntac-tic comprehension deficits.

Agraphia See Acquired dysgraphia.

Agreement The result of one categorybeing inflected to mark properties of another(e.g., the verb marked for the person and/orthe number of the subject).

Alexia See Acquired dyslexia.

Allomorphs Variants of a morpheme(e.g., [-s], [-z], and [-z] are allomorphs of theEnglish plural morpheme).

Allophones Variants of a phoneme, usu-ally in complementary distribution andphonetically similar (e.g., voiced and voice-less l in English).

Allophonic distribution The set of dis-tinct phonetic environments in which vari-ants of a phoneme occur.

Alpha notation In stating phonologicalrules, the use of a conventional formula in

which variables (, , etc.) are introduced torepresent the value of distinctive features.

Alpha rules Phonological rules stated in aconventional formula in which variables (,, etc.) are introduced for the value of dis-tinctive features.

Alphabetic writing A type of writing inwhich symbols represent consonant and/orvowel segments.

Alveolar ridge The small ridge justbehind the upper front teeth.

Alveopalatal (area) The area just behindthe alveolar ridge where the roof of the mouthrises sharply (also called palatoalveolar).

Ambisyllabicity The simultaneous pres-ence of a segment in two adjoining syllables.

Amelioration The process in which themeaning of a word becomes more favorable(e.g.,prettyused to mean tricky, sly,cunning).

Amerind The group into which all the

Native American languages (except for Na-Den and Eskimo-Aleut stocks) have beenplaced, according to one controversial classi-fication system.

Amerindian languages Languages spo-ken by the aboriginal peoples of North, South,and Central America.

Analogy A source of language change thatinvolves the generalization of a regularity

based on the inference that if elements arealike in some respects, they should be alikein others as well (e.g., bringbecoming brungby analogy with ring/rung).

Analytic languages See Isolatinglanguages.

Anaphoric reference The use of a pro-noun that refers to an NP earlier in the dis-course (e.g., herinHilary ate her dinner).

Angular gyrus An area of the brain that

plays an important role in reading.

Animacy See Animate.

Animate In some languages, a class con-sisting of nouns, most of which have livingreferents.

Antecedent The element that determinesthe interpretation of a pronoun (e.g.,JeremyinJeremy looked at himself in the mirror).

Anterior A place feature that characterizes

sounds articulated in front of the alveopala-tal region.


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Antonyms Words or phrases that areopposites with respect to some componentof their meaning (e.g., bigand small).

Aphasia A language deficit caused bydamage to the brain.

Apocope The deletion of a word-finalvowel (e.g., name used to be pronouncedwith a word-final schwa).

Application The use to which a computerprogram is put.

A-prefixing A relic form in AppalachianEnglish in which a- may be attached to the

front of verbs in the progressive aspect (Shesa-coming) or the front of adverbial comple-ments to the verb (He sat there a-thinking).

Arbitrariness A property of communica-tion whereby there is no natural or inherentconnection between a sign and its referent.

Areal classification An approach to lan-guage classification that identifies character-istics shared by languages that are in thesame geographical area.

Arguments Grammatical dependentsrequired by a verb (e.g., the verb hitrequirestwo arguments, namely a hitter as subjectand a person or thing being hit as object).

Articulatory phonetics An approach tophonetics that studies the physiologicalmechanisms of speech production.

Articulatory processes Adjustments inarticulation that can occur during the pro-

duction of speech (e.g., deletion, epenthe-sis, assimilation).

Articulatory simplification A processthat facilitates acquisition (e.g., by deleting aconsonant in a complex cluster or inserting avowel to break up a cluster).

Arytenoids Two small cartilages in thelarynx that are attached to the vocalfolds, enabling the vocal folds to be drawntogether or apart.

Aspect In syntax and morphology, an in-flectional category indicating the manner inwhich an action or event takes place, in par-ticular its duration in time (punctual, repeti-tive, etc.).

Aspiration The lag in the onset of vocalicvoicingaccompanied by the release of airthat is heard after the release of certain stops inEnglish (e.g., the first sound oftop is aspirated).

Assimilation The influence of one seg-ment on another, resulting in a soundbecoming more like a nearby sound in terms

of one or more of its phonetic characteristics(e.g., in English, vowels become nasal if fol-lowed by a nasal consonant).

Association line A line linking a symbolthat represents a sound segment with a sym-bol that represents a tone or feature.

Atlas survey A linguistic survey that sam-ples speakers according to regional speechcommunities.

Automatic summarization An appli-cation ofcomputational linguistics inwhich a computer uses key ideas to create an

abstract of an article or set of articles.Autopsy studies Studies based on a post-mortem examination.

Autosegmental notation The type ofnotation in phonology that links segmentswith tones or individual features by associa-tion lines.

Autosegmental principles Rules thataccount for phonological processes, includingrules that associate features to segmentsand segments to features, and rules that pro-hibit the crossing ofassociation lines.

Autosegmental representation A meansof illustrating how phonological features areorganized and how they change as a result ofphonological processes. (See also Autoseg-mental (notation) and Autosegments.)

Autosegments Phonological features (suchas manner features and place features)

that operate more or less autonomously.Auxiliary verb (Aux) A verb that mustoccur with a main verb and that can undergoinversion (e.g., was in was walking; will inwill win).

Babbling Speech-like sounds produced asbabies acquire and exercise articulatory skills.

Back A feature of sounds articulatedbehind the palatal region in the oral cavity.

Back (of the tongue) The part of thetongue that is hindmost but still lies in themouth.

Back vowel A vowel that is made withthe tongue positioned in the back of themouth (e.g., the vowel sounds in hootandboard).

Backformation A word-formationprocess that creates a new word by removinga real or supposed affix from another wordin the language (e.g., editcame from editorthrough the removal of-or).


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Base The form to which an affix is added(e.g., book is the base for the affix -s in books,modernize is the base for the affix -edinmodernized).

Basilect A creole variety that shows theleast influence from the standard languagefrom which it arose. (See also Acrolect and

Mesolect.)

Bilabial Involving both lips (e.g.,p, b, andm are all bilabial consonants).

Bilingual education An educational pro-gram that involves the use of two languages

in instruction in content areas such as math,science, reading.

Bilingualism The state of possessingknowledge of two languages; the disciplinedevoted to the study of the simultaneousacquisition of two languages by children.

Binary feature A phonetic or phonologi-cal feature that can have one of only twovalues (e.g., + or voice).

(Bird) call See Call.

(Bird)song See Song.

Blade (of the tongue) The area of thetongue just behind the tip.

Blend A word that is created from parts oftwo already existing items (e.g., brunch frombreakfastand lunch).

Blissymbolics A contemporary develop-ment of pictographic writing that uses anumber of recombinable symbols represent-

ing basic units of meaning; primarily usedfor nonspeaking individuals.

Body (of the tongue) The main mass ofthe tongue.

Borrowing A source of language changethat involves adopting aspects of one lan-guage into another.

Bottom-up parsing A method of speechanalysis that starts with individual words and

builds structures upward in successivelylarger units.

Bottom-up processing A type of mentalprocessing in which more complex represen-tations (e.g., words) are accessed throughsimpler constituent representations (e.g.,phonemes).

Bound morpheme A morpheme thatmust be attached to another element (e.g.,the past tense marker -ed).

Boustrophedon The practice of reversingthe direction of writing at the end of each

line, which was typical of many old writingsystems.

Breathy voice See murmur.Broad transcription Phonetic transcrip-tion that uses a relatively simple set of symbolsto represent contrasting segments. (Comparenarrow transcription.)

Brocas aphasia A nonfluent aphasiain which speech is very halting, there arenumerous phonemic errors, and there is alack of intonation.

Brocas area The area in the lower rearportion of the left frontal lobe of the brainthat plays an important role in languageproduction.

Bundles of isoglosses See Isoglossbundle.

Call In avian communication, a short burstof sound or simple patterns of notes, typicallyused as warnings or other group-related signals.

Canadian raising Allophonic variation insome dialects of English in which the [a] in thesounds [aj] and [aw] is raised to [] before avoiceless consonant (e.g., house [haws] becomes[hws] in this dialect).

Canonical Sentence Strategy A process-ing strategy that leads children to expect thefirst NP in a sentence to bear the agent roleand the second NP to bear the theme role.

Caregiver speech See Motherese.

Case A morphological category that en-codes information about an elements gram-matical role (subject, direct object, and soon) (e.g., the contrast between he and him).See also (Abstract) Case.

Case Filter, The The requirement thatevery NP in a grammatical sentence beassigned a case feature.

Cataphoric reference The use of a pro-

noun that refers to an NP later in the dis-course (e.g., she in When she heard the news,Ann smiled).

Categorical (rules) Rules that always apply.

Categorical perception Ability to per-ceive the distinctions between phonemes inhuman language and to ignore phonetic dif-ferences that are not phonemic.

Category change A change in the part ofspeech of a word as a result ofaffixation

(e.g., adding -ize to modern, an adjective,makes it into a verb, modernize).


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C-command A syntactic notion that isinvolved in pronoun interpretation and isformulated as: NP

a

c-commands NPb

if thefirst category above NPa contains NPb.

Central sulcus The fold that extends fromthe top of the cerebral cortex to the lateralfissure (also called the fissure of Rolando).

Cerebral cortex The gray wrinkled massthat sits like a cap over the rest of the brainand is the seat of cognitive functioning.

Cerebral hemispheres The left and righthalves of the brain, separated by the longitu-

dinal fissure.Cerebrovascular accident See Stroke.

Chain Connection between a moved wh-element and its trace that allows assignmentofcase.

Characters The units of the contempo-rary Chinese writing system, many of whichconsist of two partsa phonetic determi-native and a radical.

Chart parser A computer program thatanalyzes phrase structure by charting all pos-sible parses of a sentence and choosing theanalysis that best fits the whole sentence.

Class 1 affixes A group of affixes that (inEnglish) often trigger changes in the conso-nant or vowel segments of the base and mayaffect the assignment of stress.

Class 2 affixes A group of affixes thattend to be phonologically neutral in English,having no effect on the segmental makeup ofthe base or on stress assignment.

Class node A label that represents eachphonological feature grouping in the featurehierarchy (also called simply a node).

Class (sound) A group of sounds thatshares certain phonetic properties (e.g., allvoiced sounds).

Classificatory verbs In Athabaskan lan-

guages of North America, verb stems that arematched with noun classes on the basis ofthe type of movement or handling involvedin the verb meaning.

Classifier constructions In sign lan-guages, the combination of hand shapes fordifferent types of nouns with different man-ners of movement and location in space.Similar to classificatory verbs inAthabaskan languages.

Clever Hans A horse that seemed to havea humanlike capacity to think.

Clipping A word-formation process thatshortens a polysyllabic word by deleting oneor more syllables (e.g.,proffromprofessor).

Clitic A word that is unable to stand aloneas an independent form for phonologicalreasons.

Cliticization The process by which aclitic is attached to a word.

Closed syllable A syllable with a coda(e.g., both syllables in camping).

Closing A discourse unit conventionallyused to end a conversation.

Coarticulation An articulation in whichphonemes overlap to a certain extent.

Cocktail party effect The ability to filterout background noise and pick out a particu-lar sound.

Coda (Co) The elements that follow thenucleus in the same syllable (e.g., [f] insurf).

Coda clause A type of narrative utterancesometimes found at the end of a narrativethat shifts the time of the narrative into thepresent.

Code-switching The systematic alterna-tion between language systems in discourse.

Cognates Words of different languages thathave descended from a common source, asshown by systematic phonetic correspondences(e.g., English fatherand German Vater).

Cognitive development The emergenceof the various mental abilities (such as lan-guage) that make up the human intellect.

Cognitive style The way in which we arepredisposed to process information in ourenvironment.

Cohesive device A device that establishesa connection among two or more elementsin the discourse (e.g., anaphoric reference,cataphoric reference, lexical cohesion, and

ellipsis).

Cohort In a psycholinguistic model ofspoken-word recognition, a set of possiblewords. (See also Cohort model.)

Cohort model A model of spoken-wordrecognition according to which word recogni-tion proceeds by isolating a target word froma set of words that share initial segments.

Coinage See Word manufacture.

Communication strategies Strategiesused by L2 learners when they are lacking


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the necessary linguistic knowledge to saywhat they want to say (e.g., paraphrasing).

Communicative competence Aspeakers underlying knowledge of the lin-guistic and social rules or principles for lan-guage production and comprehension inparticular speech situations.

Comparative method In historical lin-guistics, the reconstruction of properties of aparent language through systematic compari-son of its descendant languages.

Comparative reconstruction The

reconstruction of properties of a parent lan-guage through comparison of its descendantlanguages.

Competence The mental system thatunderlies a persons ability to speak andunderstand a given language; distinguishedfrom performance.

Complement A syntactic constituent thatprovides information about entities and loca-tions implied by the meaning of the head.

Complement clause A sentence-like con-struction that is embedded within a largerstructure (e.g., that his car had been totaledin

Jerry told Mary that his car had been totaled).

Complementary distribution The dis-tribution of allophones in their respectivephonetic environments such that one neverappears in the same phonetic context as theother (e.g., the distribution of long and shortvowels in English).

Complementizer (C) A functional cat-egory that takes an IP complement, forminga CP (complementizer phrase) (e.g., whetherinI wonder whether Lorna has left).

Complex NP Constraint Prohibitionagainst moving an element out of a CP thatis embedded inside an NP.

Complex word A word that containstwo or more morphemes (e.g., theorize,

unemployment).Complicating action clause A type ofnarrative utterance that describes the eventsin a story.

Componential analysis The representa-tion of a words intension in terms ofsmaller semantic components called features.

Compound word A word made up of twoor more words (e.g.,greenhouse, pickpocket).

Compounding Creating a new word bycombining two or more existing words (e.g.,fire + engine).

Comprehensible input The linguisticinput to which the L2 learner is exposed thatis slightly beyond his or her competence inthe target language (i+ 1).

Computational lexicography The sub-field ofcomputational linguistics thatdeals with words in the lexicon (e.g., theirparts of speech, subcategorization, seman-tic properties).

Computational linguistics The area ofcommon interest between linguistics andcomputer science.

Computational system The syntacticcomponent of grammar that can combineand arrange words in particular ways.

Computerized axial tomography Atechnique for observing the living brain thatuses a narrow beam of X-rays to create brainimages that take the form of a series of brainslices (also called CT scanning).

Concatenative A term used for the mor-phological process that builds word structureby assembling morphemes in an additive,linear fashion.

Concord A kind of agreement in whichdeterminers and adjectives agree with theirnoun (e.g., in number or case).

Concordance An index of words showingevery occurrence of each word in its context.

Conflation pattern A class of meaningscreated by combining semantic elements

such as manner and motion or direction andmotion.

Conjugation The set of inflected formsassociated with a verb (also called a verbalparadigm).

Conjunction (Con) A functional cate-gory that joins two or more categories of thesame type, forming a coordinate structure(e.g., andin a man and his dog).

Connectionist model A psycholinguistictheory built around the claim that the mindcan be best modeled by reference to complexassociations of simple units that approximateneurons.

Connotation The set of associations thata words use can evoke (e.g., in Wisconsin,winterevokes ice, snow, bare trees, etc.). (Seealso Denotation.)

Consonant deletion A phonetic processthat deletes a consonant (e.g., the deletion of[] in fifths).


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Consonant weakening A lessening inthe time or degree of a consonants closure.

Consonantal A major class feature thatcharacterizes sounds produced with a majorobstruction in the vocal tract.

Consonantal strength Increasing timeor degree of a consonants closure.

Consonants Sounds that are producedwith a narrow or complete closure in thevocal tract.

Constituent One or more words thatmake up a syntactic unit (e.g., the apple inthe apple fell onto the floor). (See alsoCoordination test, Substitution test,andMovement test.)

Constricted glottis (CG) A laryngeal fea-ture that characterizes sounds made with theglottis closed (in English, only []).

Constructional meaning The meaningassociated with a structural pattern above andbeyond the meaning of its component words.

Continuant A manner feature that char-acterizes sounds made with free or nearlyfree airflow through the oral cavity: vowels,fricatives, glides, and liquids.

Continuants Sounds that are producedwith a continuous airflow through the mouth.

Contour tones Tones that change pitchon a single syllable.

Contradiction A relationship between

sentences wherein the truth of one sentencerequires the falsity of another sentence (e.g.,Raymond is marriedcontradictsRaymond is abachelor).

Contralateral The control of the rightside of the body by the left side of the brainand vice versa.

Contrast Segments are said to contrastwhen their presence alone may distinguishforms with different meanings from each

other (e.g., [s] and [z] in the words sip and zip).Converge See Convergence.

Convergence The modification of lan-guage so that it becomes more similar to thatof another speaker or group of speakers.

Conversation analysis SeeEthnomethodology.

Conversational implicature Informa-tion that is understood through inference

but is not actually said.Conversational maxims See Maxims.

Conversion A word-formation processthat assigns an already existing word to anew syntactic category (also called zero der-ivation) (e.g., nurse [V] from nurse [N]).

Cooperative overlaps Overlapping ofturns in a high-involvement-style conver-sation according to mutually held conven-tions of the participants.

Cooperative Principle, The The generaloverarching guideline thought to underlieconversational interactions: Make your con-tribution appropriate to the conversation.

Coordinate structure A phrase that isformed by joining two (or more) categoriesof the same type with a conjunction such asandor or(e.g., those men and that woman).

Coordinate Structure Constraint Theprohibition against extracting material out ofa structure joined with a conjunction such asandor or(e.g., The exam will cover phoneticsand phonology *What will the exam cover

phonetics and?).

Coordination The process of groupingtogether two or more categories of the sametype with the help of a conjunction (e.g.,

Mary and the white horse).

Coordination schema A blueprint forconjoining two categories of the same typewith a conjunction (e.g., [extremelypoor]AP but [very honest]AP).

Coordination test A test used to deter-mine if a group of words is a constituent

by joining it to another group of words witha conjunction such as andor or.

CORONAL A place feature that characterizessounds made with the tongue tip or bladeraised (e.g., [t, d, s, ]).

Corpus A collection of texts that providesa database, e.g., for a computer grammar.

Corpus analysis A technique for buildinglexicons by means of automated analysis of a

body of texts.Corpus callosum The bundle of nerve fibersthat serves as the main connection between thecerebral hemispheres, allowing the two hemi-spheres to communicate with one another.

Creativity The characteristic of humanlanguage that allows novelty and innovationin response to new thoughts, experiences,and situations.

Creole A language that originated as a

pidgin and has become established as a firstlanguage in a speech community.


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Cricoid cartilage The ring-shaped carti-lage in the larynx on which the thyroid car-tilage rests.

Critical period A particular time frameduring which children have to be exposed tolanguage if the acquisition process is to besuccessful.

Critical Period Hypothesis The hypoth-esis that achievement of nativelike profi-ciency in a second language depends on ageof acquisition and is rarely attainable unlessthe learner begins second language acquisi-tion during the critical period.

Cross-sectional (research) Research thatinvestigates and compares subjects selectedfrom different developmental stages.

CT scanning See Computerized axialtomography.

Cuneiform Writing invented in thefourth millennium B.C. in Mesopotamia andproduced by pressing a wedge-shaped stylusinto soft clay tablets.

Cyrillic alphabet An alphabet that com-bined adaptations ofGlagolitic script withGreek and Hebrew characters, evolving intothe alphabets that are currently used to rep-resent some of the languages spoken in theformer Soviet Union and in the Balkans.

Dative The case form characteristicallyused to mark a recipient.

Deaffrication A type of segmental simpli-

fication that turns affricates into fricatives byeliminating the stop portion of the affricate(e.g., [d] becoming []).

Declension See Nominal paradigm.

Deep dyslexia A type ofacquireddyslexia in which the patient produces aword that is semantically related to the wordhe or she is asked to read (e.g., producingfatherwhen asked to read mother).

Deep structure The structure generated bythe phrase structure rules in accordance withthe subcategorization properties of the heads.

Degemination The weakening of a gemi-nate consonant (double consonant) to a non-geminate consonant (e.g., [tt] becoming [t]).

Degree word (Deg) A functional cate-gory that serves as the specifier of a preposi-tion or an adjective (e.g., quite in quite tired,veryin very near the house).

Deictics Forms whose use and interpreta-tion depend on the location of the speaker

and/or addressee within a particular setting(e.g., this/that, here/there).

Delayed release (DR) A manner featurethat refers to the release of the stop inaffricate consonants.

Deletion A process that removes a seg-ment from certain phonetic contexts (e.g.,the pronunciation offifths as [ffs]).

Denasalization A common substitutionprocess in child language acquisition that in-volves the replacement of a nasal stop by anonnasal counterpart (e.g., come is pro-

nounced [kb]).Denotation Entities that a word or expres-sion refers to (also called its referents orextension).

Dense social networks Social networksin which almost everyone in the networkknows everyone else in the network.

Dentals Sounds made with the tongueplaced against or near the teeth.

Dependent variable In an experiment,the behavior or event that is measured.

Derivation (1) In morphology, a word-formation process by which a new word isbuilt from a stemusually through the addi-tion of an affixthat changes the word classand/or basic meaning of the word. (2) Theset of steps or rule applications that results inthe formation of a sentence in syntax or of aphonetic representation from an underlyingform in phonology.

Derived (phonology) Resulting from theapplication of phonological rules to underly-ing representations.

Descriptive (grammar) A grammar thatseeks to describe human linguistic ability andknowledge, not to prescribe one system inpreference to another. (See also Prescriptive[grammar].)

Design features Essential characteristics of

communication systems that have been estab-lished with reference to human language.

Determinative A symbol used in non-alphabetic writing systems to assist thereader in knowing the intended meaning orpronunciation of a word.

Determiner (Det) A functional cate-gory that serves as the specifier of a noun(e.g., a, the, these).

Deterministic parsers Sentence proces-

sors that pursue no more than one analysisat a time.


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Devanagari script Writing system thatdeveloped in India and was used for Sanskrit.

Developmental bilingual education Aneducational program for language minoritystudents usually lasting throughout elemen-tary school in which language proficiencyand literacy in both the minority languageand the majority language are promoted.

Developmental sequences The stages oflinguistic development that are relativelyinvariant across language learners.

Devoicing Voicing assimilation in which

a sound becomes voiceless because of anearby voiceless sound (e.g., the l inplace isdevoiced because of the voiceless stop pre-ceding it).

Diacritics Marks added to a phonetic sym-bol to alter its value in some way (e.g., a cir-cle under a symbol to indicate voicelessness).

Dialect A regional or social variety of alanguage characterized by its own phonologi-cal, syntactic, or lexical properties.

Dialectology A branch of linguistics con-cerned with the analysis and description ofregional varieties of a language.

Diaphragm The large sheet of musclethat separates the chest cavity from theabdomen and helps to maintain the air pres-sure necessary for speech production.

Diary study A type of naturalistic investi-gation in which a researcher (often a parent)

keeps daily notes on a childs linguisticprogress.

Dichotic listening studies Research basedon an experimental technique in which thesubject listens to different sounds in each ear.

Diglossia The relationship between multi-ple varieties spoken by one speech commu-nity but with sharply distinct domains ofuse.

Diphthongization A process in which amonophthong becomes a diphthong (e.g.,[i:] became [aj] during the Great EnglishVowel Shift).

Diphthongs Vowels that show a notice-able change in quality within a single sylla-ble (e.g., the vowel sounds in house and ride).

Direct negative evidence Languageinstruction involving correction or focus onform.

Direct object The NP complement of averb (e.g., a fish inJudy caught a fish).

Discourse A set of utterances that consti-tute a speech event.

Discourse analysis The field that dealswith the organization of texts, including waysin which parts of texts are connected and thedevices used for achieving textual structure.

Discourse markers Words or expressionsthat bracket utterances in discourse andorganize the sequence and/or the relation-ship between them (e.g., well, yknow).

Discrete sign A sign that is distinguishedfrom other signs by stepwise differences (e.g.,

voiced and voiceless sounds, the numbers ofa digital clock).

Displacement A property by which theusers of the communication system are ableto refer to events that are remote in spaceand time.

Dissimilation A process whereby one seg-ment becomes less like another segment inits environment (e.g., anma soul in a formof Latin became alma in Spanish).

Distinctive feature A feature that servesto distinguish contrastive forms (e.g., the fea-ture [voice] is distinctive in English because itunderlies the contrast between /p/ and /b/,/t/ and /d/, etc.).

Distribution The set of elements withwhich an item can co-occur.

Diverge See Divergence.

Divergence The modification of language

so that it becomes more different from thatof another speaker or group of speakers.

Do insertion The syntactic rule thatplaces do into an empty I position, makinginversion possible in English questions.

Domain The smallest IP or NP containing areflexive pronoun and a separate NP specifier.

Domains of use Speech situations inwhich a particular variety is commonly used.

DORSAL A place feature that representssounds produced when the body of thetongue is involved (e.g., vowels and [k, g]).

Dorsum (of the tongue) The body andback of the tongue.

Double-blind test A test in which a sub-jects responses are interpreted independentlyby someone other than the administrator ofthe test.

Downdrift The maintenance of a distinc-

tion among the pitch registers of an utteranceeven as the overall pitch of the utterance falls.


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Dressage Interaction between trainer andanimal in which the animal responds to sub-tle cues given by the trainer.

D-structure See Deep structure.

Dual-language programs See Two-wayimmersion (TWI) programs.

Dual-route model A psycholinguistictheory built around the claim that a particu-lar type of language processing can beaccomplished in more than one manner.

Duality of patterning A property ofcommunication systems in which meaning-

less units are combined to form arbitrarysigns that, in turn, are recombined to formnew larger signs.

Duetting The interchange of calls in apatterned manner between two members ofa species.

Dysprosody The lack of sentence intona-tion, a common characteristic of the speechof Brocas aphasics.

Ebonics See African AmericanVernacular English (AAVE).

Economy constraint A grammatical con-straint whose effect is to reduce the compu-tational cost of derivations.

Ejectives Stops or affricates that are madewith simultaneous closure of the glottis andconstriction of the throat, producing a dis-tinctive popping sound.

Enclitic A clitic that attaches to the endof a word.

Endocentric compound A compoundword in which one member identifies thegeneral class to which the meaning of theentire word belongs (e.g., dog foodis a typeof food in English). (See also Exocentriccompound.)

English language learners (ELLs)Nonnative speakers of English, particularly

used for those in U.S. schools (previouslyknown as Limited English Proficient [LEP]students).

Entailment A relation between sentencesin which the truth of one sentence necessar-ily implies the truth of another (e.g., Gary is

Bernices husbandentails the sentenceBerniceis married).

Environment The phonetic context inwhich a sound occurs.

Epenthesis A process that inserts a seg-ment into a particular environment (e.g., the

insertion of a schwa in the pronunciation ofathlete as [lit]).

Ergative The case associated with the sub-ject of a transitive verb (but not that of anintransitive verb).

Ergative-absolutive pattern Sentencepattern in which ergative case is assignedto the agent of a transitive verb, butabsolutive case is assigned to the subject ofan intransitive verb or the object of atransitive verb.

Ethnic dialect A dialect spoken by a par-

ticular ethnic group.Ethnography of communication Atype of discourse analysis that concentrateson how language is used to achieve commu-nicative goals in particular social situations.

Ethnolinguistic vitality The strength ofan ethnic group identity and the variety oflanguage associated with it as measured bythe number of people in the group relative tothe majority, the degree of institutional sup-port they receive, and their relative pride intheir identity.

Ethnomethodology A type of discourseanalysis that focuses on the structural relation-ship between utterances in conversations.

Euphemism A word or phrase that is lessdirect than the taboo word it replaces and isconsidered to be more socially acceptable(e.g.,passed awayfor died).

Evaluation clause A type of narrativeutterance that gives comments or evaluationsregarding the events being narrated.

Event-related potentials (ERPs) A mea-surement of electrical activity in the brainthat is correlated with the presentation ofparticular stimulus events.

Evidentiality A system of morphologicalcontrasts indicating the type of evidence forthe truth of a statement.

Evidentials Morphological or syntacticelements (frequently enclitic morphemes)that indicate the speakers source of informa-tion for the statement he or she is making.

Exclusive A type of first person plural pro-noun whose referents do not include theaddressee. (See also Inclusive.)

Exocentric compound A compoundwhose meaning does not follow from the

meaning of its parts (e.g., redneck, since itsreferent is not a type of neck).


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Experimental paradigm A method ofinvestigation that involves a particular wayof presenting stimuli and a particular way of

measuring responses.

Experimental studies Studies in childlanguage in which researchers make use ofspecially designed tasks to elicit linguisticactivity relevant to a particular phenomenon.

Extension The set of entities to which aword or expression refers (also called itsdenotation or referents).

Face-threatening acts Speech acts such asrequests, diagreement, or complaints that candisrupt social solidarity or impose on the free-dom of action of participants.

Feature (phonological) The smallestunit of analysis of phonological structure,combinations of which make up segments(e.g., [nasal], [continuant]).

Feature hierarchy A hierarchical represen-tation of how features are related to each other.

Features (semantic) The semantic com-ponents that make up a words intension.

Field dependence A learning style inwhich the learner operates holistically, per-ceiving the field as a whole rather than interms of its component parts.

Field independence A learning style inwhich the learner operates analytically, per-ceiving the field in terms of its component

parts rather than as a whole.Field technique A method of study thatdoes not involve manipulation and controlof factors in a laboratory, but rather involvesobserving phenomena as they occur.

Fissure A relatively deep sulcus of thecerebral cortex.

Fixed stress Stress whose position in aword is predictable.

Fixed stress languages Languages inwhich the position of stress in words is pre-dictable. (See also Fixed stress.)

Flap A sound commonly identified with rand produced when the tongue tip strikes thealveolar ridge as it passes across it (e.g., inNorth American English, the medial conso-nant in bitterand bidder).

Flapping A phonetic process in which analveolar stop is pronounced as a voiced flap

between vowels, the first of which is gener-ally stressed (e.g., [bt ] [b ]).

Fluency Second language speech that isproduced automatically and without notice-able hesitation.

Fluent aphasia The aphasia that occursdue to damage to parts of the left cortexbehind the central sulcus, resulting in fluentspeech but great difficulty selecting, organiz-ing, and monitoring language production(also called sensory aphasia).

Focus on form In second language teach-ing, the practice of giving explicit instructionabout the second language and overtly cor-

recting errors.Folk etymology Reanalysis of a word thatis based on an incorrect historical analysis(e.g., hamburgerbeing reanalyzed into twomorphemes, ham and burger).

Foreigner talk The type of speech that istypically addressed to second language learn-ers, characterized by such properties as sim-ple word order and more commonvocabulary items (also called teacher talk).

Forest-based generation In computa-tional linguistics, a method of creating textby programming a computer with a simple,underconstrained grammar and allowing thecomputer to select the best sentence that isgenerated.

Formants The main frequencies of aspeech wave.

Fossilized Characteristic of an interlan-

guage grammar that has reached a plateau,i.e., ceased to improve.

Free form An element that can occur inisolation and/or whose position with respectto neighboring elements is not entirely fixed.

Free morpheme A morpheme that canbe a word by itself (e.g., fear).

Free stress Stress whose position in aword is not predictable and must be learnedon a case-by-case basis.

Free stress languages Languages inwhich the position of stress in words is notpredictable. (See also Free stress.)

Free variation The free alternation of allo-phones and/or phonemes in a given environ-ment (e.g., sto[p], sto[p]; //conomics,/i/conomics).

Frequency effect The common experi-mental finding that words that occur more

frequently in a language are processed morequickly and more accurately.


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Frication The weakening of a stop to africative (e.g., [d] becoming []).

Fricatives Consonants produced with acontinuous airflow through the mouth,accompanied by a continuous audible noise(e.g., [f], []).

Front See Front vowel.

Front vowel A vowel that is made with thetongue positioned in the front of the oral cav-ity (e.g., the vowel sounds in seal and bat).

Frontal lobe The lobe of the brain thatlies in front of the central sulcus and in

which Brocas area is located.Fronting A common substitution processin child language acquisition that involvesthe moving forward of a sounds place ofarticulation (e.g., cheese pronounced as [tsiz]).

Full reduplication A morphologicalprocess that duplicates the entire word (e.g.,in Turkish, tabuk quickly/tabuk tabukvery quickly).

Function words Words such as determinersand conjunctions that specify grammaticalrelations rather than carry semantic content.

Functional analysis An approach to syn-tactic analysis that attempts to understandsyntactic phenomena in terms of their com-municative function.

Functional category A word-level syn-tactic category whose members specify gram-matical relations rather than carry semantic

content (e.g., auxiliary verbs, conjunctions,determiners, and degree words) (also callednonlexical category).

Functional magnetic resonance imag-ing (fMRI) A brain imaging techniquethat yields information on areas of highbrain activity during the performance of cog-nitive tasks.

Fusion A morphological change in whicha word becomes an affix (e.g., English affixes

such as -hood, -dom, and -lyused to be words).Fusional languages Languages in whichwords typically consist of several mor-phemes, and the morphemes that are affixesoften mark several grammatical categoriessimultaneously (e.g., Russian).

Fuzzy concepts Concepts that do not haveclear-cut boundaries that distinguish themfrom other concepts (e.g., the concept POOR).

Garden path sentence A sentence that isdifficult to process and interpret because its

structure biases sentence parsing toward anincorrect analysis.

Gender See Noun class.Gender-exclusive (differentiation) Atype of social differentiation in which theuse of some linguistic forms depends on thegender of the speakers.

Gender-variable (differentiation) Therelative frequency with which men andwomen use certain features of language.

Genetic classification The categoriza-tion of languages according to the ancestorlanguages from which they developed.

Genetic relationships Relationshipsamong languages that have descended froma common ancestor language. (See alsoGenetic classification and Geneticallyrelated languages.)

Genetically related languages Lan-guages that have descended from a commonparent (e.g., German and Italian have both

descended from Indo-European).Genitive The case form characteristicallyused to mark a possessor.

Given information Knowledge that thespeaker assumes is available to the addresseeat the time of the utterance, either because itis shared by both or because it has alreadybeen introduced into the discourse (alsocalled old information).

Glagolitic script A script that was intro-duced in Slavic-speaking areas in the ninthcentury A.D. for the translation of the Bible.

Glide strengthening The strengtheningof a glide to an affricate (e.g., [j] becoming[d]).

Glides Sounds that are produced with anarticulation like that of a vowel, but movequickly to another articulation (e.g., [j], [w]).

Gliding A common substitution process inchild language acquisition that involves thereplacement of a liquid by a glide (e.g.,playis pronounced [pwej]).

Global aphasia The most severe form ofnonfluent aphasia, in which the patient iscompletely mute.

Glottalization A consonant that is madewith simultaneous closure of the glottis andconstriction of the throat. Glottalized stops

and affricates (ejectives) are the most com-mon glottalized consonants.


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Glottals Sounds produced by using thevocal folds as the primary articulators (e.g.,[h], []).

Glottis The space between the vocalfolds.

Glyphs The symbols used in Mayan writing.

Goal A thematic role that describes theend point for a movement (e.g.,Maryin Terry

gave the skis to Mary).

Graded (concept) A concept whose mem-bers display varying degrees of the character-istics that are considered typical of the concept.

Graded sign A sign that conveys itsmeaning by changes in degree (e.g., voicevolume, a blush).

Grammar The mental system of rules andcategories that allows humans to form andinterpret the words and sentences of theirlanguage.

Grammar-based generation In compu-tational linguistics, a method of creating text

by programming the computer with anextensive grammar.

Grammatical (sentence) A sentencethat speakers judge to be a possible sentencein their language.

Grammatical competence Competencein the structural aspects at or below the sen-tence level.

Grammatical knowledge Knowledge ofthe meaning and use of words in sentences.(Compare real-world knowledge.)

Grammaticalization The change of alexical form into a grammatical form (e.g., anaffix or member of a functional category).

Grammaticalized See grammaticaliza-tion.

Grammaticized concepts Concepts thatare expressed as affixes or nonlexical cate-gories (e.g., the concept of obligation as

expressed by the auxiliary verb must).Great English Vowel Shift A series ofnonphonetically conditioned modificationsto long vowels that occurred from the Mid-dle English period to the eighteenth century.

Grimms Law A set of consonant shiftsthat took place between Proto-Indo-Europeanand Proto-Germanic.

Gyri Plural ofgyrus.

Gyrus An area where the cerebral cortex isfolded out.

Habitual (invariant) be Uninflected beused to indicate a habitual state or action inAfrican American Vernacular English

(e.g., The coffee be coldmeans the coffee isusually cold).

Hangul The alphabetic script used to rep-resent Korean, the symbols of which aregrouped to represent the syllables of individ-ual morphemes.

Hanja The Korean word for the Chinesecharacters used in Korean writing.

Head (of a phrase) The category around

which a phrase is built (e.g., V is head of VP,N is head of NP, A of AP, P of PP).

Head (of a word) The morpheme thatdetermines the category of the entire word ina compound (e.g., birdin blackbird).

Head-final (language) Language inwhich the head of a phrase follows its com-plement (e.g., the verb comes after thedirect object in the VP).

Head-initial (language) Language inwhich the head comes before its comple-ment (e.g., the verb comes before the directobject in the VP).

Head position parameter A parameterthat offers two versions of the X' schemaone in which the head precedes its comple-ment and one in which the head follows itscomplement.

Heavy syllable Syllable that has either a

coda or two elements in the nucleus (e.g., adiphthong or a long vowel).

Heritage language programs Educa-tional programs designed to preserve, main-tain, or revive the ancestral languages ofindigenous peoples, immigrants, or refugeesin the United States.

Hierarchies In the classification of lan-guages, the degrees ofmarkedness of par-ticular structures in the worlds languages,

going from least marked (i.e., most common)to most marked (i.e., least common).

Hieroglyphs An ancient Egyptian writingsystem that used pictures as pictograms,logograms, and consonant phonemes.

High A DORSAL feature that characterizessounds produced with the tongue bodyraised.

High involvement style A style of turn-

taking in a conversation in which speakerturns overlap.


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High vowel A vowel that is made withthe tongue raised (e.g., the vowel sounds inbeatand lose).

Hiragana The Japanese syllabary that isused in conjunction with katakana andkanji to write Japanese.

Historical linguistics The linguistic dis-cipline that is concerned with the descrip-tion and the explanation of language changeover time.

Holophrases Utterances produced by chil-dren in which one word expresses the type

of meaning that would be associated with anentire sentence in adult speech (e.g., up usedto mean Pick me up).

Homophony The situation in which asingle form has two or more entirely distinctmeanings (e.g., club a social organization,club a blunt weapon).

Host The element to which a clitic isattached.

Hypercorrection Overgeneralization of

particular rules in a language in an attemptto speak (or write) correctly.

Iconic sign A sign that bears some resem-blance to its referent (e.g., a picture of awoman on a washroom door).

Icon See Iconic sign.

Illocutionary competence The abilityto understand a speakers intent and to pro-duce a variety of forms to convey intent.

Illocutionary force The intended mean-ing of an utterance.

Immersion A method of teaching a sec-ond language to children in which studentsare given most of their content courses andschool activities in the target language.

Impaired Representation HypothesisThe hypothesis that states that second lan-guage learners who produce errors lack an

underlying representation of the structure inwhich they have produced errors.

Implementation A practical applicationof a formal system.

Implicational universals A universal oflanguage that specifies that the presence ofone trait implies the presence of another (butnot vice versa).

Inalienably possessed nouns Nounsthat must always have a pronominal posses-

sor indicated; usually parts of the body orkinship terms.

Inanimate A noun class category in somelanguages generally assigned to nonlivingreferents. (See also Animate.)

Inclusive A contrast in some languages thatindicates that the addressee is to be includedin the interpretation of the first person pluralmorpheme. (See also Exclusive.)

Incorporation The combination of aword (usually a noun) with a verb to form acompound verb.

Index See Indexical sign.

Indexical sign A sign that fulfills its func-

tion by pointing out its referent, typically bybeing a partial sample of it (e.g., the track ofan animal).

Indexing Finding, identifying, and count-ing all occurrences of a word in large texts.

Indexing analysis A means of analyzingsociolinguistic variation by putting eachinstance of a variable on a continuum; usedespecially to evaluate degree and direction of

vowel movement.Indirect negative evidence The assump-tion that nonoccurring structures in the lin-guistic environment are ungrammatical.

Indo-European family The languagefamily that includes most of the languagesin a broad curve from northern Indiathrough western Asia (Iran and Armenia)to Europe.

Infix An affix that occurs within a base.

Inflection The modification of a wordsform to indicate the grammatical subclass towhich it belongs (e.g., the -s in books marksthe plural subclass).

Inflectional language See Fusionallanguages.

Insertion rule An operation that adds anelement to a tree structure.

Instrumental motivation The desire to

achieve proficiency in a new language forutilitarian reasons, such as a job promotion.

Integrative motivation The desire toachieve proficiency in a new language inorder to participate in the social life of thecommunity that speaks the language.

Intension An expressions inherent sense;the concepts that it evokes.

Intercostals The muscles between the ribs

that help to maintain the air pressure neces-sary for speech production.


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Interdentals Sounds made with thetongue placed between the teeth (e.g., [], []).

Interlanguage (IL) The changing gram-matical system that an L2 learner is using ata particular period in his or her acquisitionof a second language as he or she movestoward proficiency in the target language.

Interlocutors Participants in aconversation.

Internal change A process that substi-tutes one nonmorphemic segment foranother to mark a grammatical contrast (e.g.,

sing, sang, sung).Internal reconstruction The recon-struction of a protolanguage that relies onthe analysis of morphophonemic variationwithin a single language.

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)A system for transcribing the sounds ofspeech that attempts to represent each soundof human speech with a single symbol.

Internet survey A linguistic survey com-

pleted by subjects who happen to access agiven Web site, Internet bulletin board, orspecial interest list on the Internet.

Intonation Pitch movement in spokenutterances that is not related to differences inword meaning.

Intransitive verb A verb that does nottake a direct object (e.g., sleep).

Inversion A transformation that moves

the element in the I position to a position infront of the subject, formulated as: Move Ito C.

Island A constituent that does not permita component part to be moved from it (e.g.,a coordinated phrase such asJerry andGretchen).

Island constraints Prohibitions againstmoving elements out of particular kinds ofconstituents such as subject NPs and com-

plex NPs.Isogloss bundle Convergence of severallines drawn on a dialect map to representboundaries between dialects.

Isoglosses Lines drawn on a dialect mapto represent boundaries between dialects.

Isolate A language that is not known to berelated to any other living language (e.g.,Basque, Kutenai).

Isolating languages Languages whosewords typically consist of only one mor-

pheme (e.g., Mandarin). (Also called ana-lytic languages.)

Jargon (1) Vocabulary peculiar to a partic-ular field; (2) a simple pidgin used in verylimited circumstances.

Jargonaphasia A symptom of severe casesofWernickes aphasia in which speechcontains very few real words of the language.

Kanji The Japanese word for the Chinesecharacters used to write Japanese.

Katakana The Japanese syllabary that is

used in conjunction with hiragana andkanji to write Japanese.

LABIAL A place feature that characterizessounds articulated with one or both lips.

Labials Sounds made with closure or nearclosure of the lips (e.g., the initial sounds ofwin and forget).

Labiodentals Sounds involving the lowerlip and upper teeth (e.g., the initial sounds offreedom and vintage).

Labiovelars Sounds made with the tongueraised near the velum and the lips rounded atthe same time (e.g., the initial sound ofwound).

Language Bioprogram Hypothesis Thehypothesis that similarities among creolesreflect linguistic universals both in terms offirst language acquisition and with respect toprocesses and structures that are innate.

Language contact Interaction betweenspeakers of one language and speakers ofanother language or dialect.

Language family In language classifica-tion, a group of languages with a historicalorigin in the same protolanguage.

Language nest An educational programfor preschoolers in which a (usually endan-gered) minority language is used exclusively.

Language planning Official policy withthe goal of increasing or limiting the domainof use of a particular language or languages.

Laryngeal features Phonological featuresthat represent laryngeal states (e.g., [voice],[spread glottis], and [constricted glottis]).

Laryngeal node A node in the featuregeometry in autosegmental phonology thatdominates laryngeal features such as voicing,spread glottis, and constricted glottis.

Larynx The box-like structure located inthe throat through which air passes during


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speech production; commonly known as thevoice box.

Late closure A parsing principle thatclaims that in sentence comprehension,humans prefer to attach new words to theclause currently being processed.

Lateral (feature) A manner feature thatcharacterizes a sound made with the sides ofthe tongue lowered (e.g., varieties ofl).

Lateral (sound) A sound made with thesides of the tongue lowered (e.g., varietiesof [l]).

Lateral fissure The fissure that separatesthe temporal lobe from the frontal and pari-etal lobes in the brain.

Lateral fricative A lateral sound madewith a narrow enough closure to be classifiedas a fricative.

Lateralization The unilateral control ofcognitive functions by either the left or theright side of the brain (e.g., language is later-alized to the left hemisphere in most people).

Lateralized See Lateralization.

Laterals Sounds made with the sides ofthe tongue lowered (e.g., varieties ofl).

Lax vowels Vowels that are made with aplacement of the tongue that results in rela-tively less vocal tract constriction (e.g., thevowel sounds in hitand but).

Learning strategies The activities in

which language learners engage to help themdevelop linguistic knowledge.

Length The subjective impression of timeoccupied by the duration of a phone.

Lesion Severe damage to the brain.

Lexical ambiguity A situation in whicha single form has two or more meanings(e.g., a trunk is a piece of luggage or an ele-phant nose).

Lexical category The word-level syntac-tic categories noun (N), verb (V), adjective(A), and preposition (P).

Lexical decision An experimental para-digm in which a person sees or hears a stim-ulus and must judge as quickly as possiblewhether or not that stimulus is a word of hisor her language.

Lexical diffusion Linguistic change thatfirst manifests itself in a few words and then

gradually spreads through the vocabulary ofthe language.

Lexical gaps Gaps in the lexicon thatresult from technological innovation or con-tact with another culture.

Lexicalization The process whereby con-cepts are encoded in the words of a language(e.g., the concepts of motion and mannerare both encoded by the word roll).

Lexicon A speakers mental dictionary,which contains information about the syn-tactic properties, meaning, and phonologicalrepresentation of a languages words.

Lexifier language The language that

provides most of the lexical items to a con-tact variety.

Lingua franca A language that is usedwhen speakers of two or more different lan-guages come into contact and do not knoweach others languages.

Linguistic competence Speakers knowl-edge of their language, which allows them toproduce and understand an unlimited num-ber of utterances, including many that are

novel.Linguistic insecurity The degree towhich speakers believe that their own varietyis not standard.

Linguistic typology An approach tolanguage classification that classifies lan-guages according to their common structuralcharacteristics without regard for geneticrelationships.

Linguistic universals Structural charac-teristics that occur across the languages ofthe world.

Linguistics The discipline that studies thenature and use of language.

Liquids A class of consonants containing land rsounds and their variants.

Lobes Substructures of the hemispheres ofthe brain that appear to have distinct responsi-bilities (e.g., frontal lobe, temporal lobe).

Location A thematic role that specifiesthe place where an action occurs (e.g., theSkyDome in The athletes practiced in theSkyDome).

Locative The case form characteristicallyused for the noun that is in, to, or ata location.

Logogram A written symbol representinga morpheme or word.

Logographic writing A type of writing

in which symbols represent morphemes oreven entire words.


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Longitudinal fissure The fissure thatextends from the front of the brain to theback and separates the left and right cerebral

hemispheres.

Longitudinal studies Studies that exam-ine language development over an extendedperiod of time.

Loudness The subjective impression of aspeech sounds volume relative to the soundsaround it.

Low (feature) A DORSAL feature that char-acterizes sounds made with the tongue body

lowered.Low (sound) A sound made with thetongue lowered (e.g., [a], [], []).

Low vowel A vowel that is made with thetongue lowered (e.g., the vowel sounds madein the words catand top).

Machine-readable dictionary (MRD) Adictionary that can be read by a computer.

Machine translation The process bywhich a machine (e.g., a computer) takestext spoken or written in one language andtranslates it into another language.

Macrofamilies See Phyla.

Magnetoencephalography (MEG) Atechnique that provides detailed informationon which parts of the brain are involved inlanguage-processing activity by recording

changes in magnetic fields generated withinthe brain.

Major class features Phonological fea-tures that represent the classes consonant,obstruent, nasal, liquid, glide, and vowel.

Majority rules strategy A secondarystrategy used to reconstruct protoforms,which stipulates that the segment found inthe majority of cognates should be assumedto be part of the protoform. (See also

Phonetic plausibility strategy.)Manner features Phonological featuresthat represent manner of articulation.

Manners of articulation The variousconfigurations produced by positioning thelips, tongue, velum, and glottis in differentways (e.g., nasal, fricative, liquid).

Marginal analysis Analysis of sociolin-guistic data in which overall percentages of

occurrences in relevant linguistic and socialcontexts are reported for each variant.

Marked Occurring less commonly inworld languages. (See also Marked traitsandMarkedness theory.)

Marked traits Complex or less commonfeatures or characteristics of languages.

Markedness The quality of being rela-tively complex or rare in world languages.(See also Marked traits andMarkednesstheory.)

Markedness Differential HypothesisThe hypothesis that L2 elements that are dif-ferent and more marked than the L1 ele-

ments will cause difficulty in learning L2.Markedness theory A theory that classi-fies traits or patterns of languages as marked(those that are considered to be more com-plex and/or universally rarer) and unmarked(those that are considered to be less complexand/or universally more common).

Matched guise test A test of languageattitudes that asks subjects to evaluaterecordings of the same person speaking dif-ferent language varieties.

Matrix A representation of sounds inwhich all the relevant distinctive featuresand their values are placed in an array.

Matrix clause The larger IP in which acomplement clause occurs.

Maxim of Manner A principle that isthought to underlie the efficient use of lan-guage and is formulated as: Avoid ambiguityand obscurity; be brief and orderly.

Maxim of Quality A principle that isthought to underlie the efficient use of lan-guage and is formulated as: Try to make yourcontribution one that is true. (Do not saythings that are false or for which you lackadequate evidence.)

Maxim of Quantity A principle that isthought to underlie the efficient use of lan-

guage and is formulated as: Do not makeyour contribution more or less informativethan required.

Maxim of Relevance A principle that isthought to underlie the efficient use of lan-guage and is formulated as: Be relevant.

Maxims The specific principles that ensurethat conversational interactions satisfy TheCooperative Principle.

Meaning The message or content that asign or utterance conveys.


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Mental lexicon See Lexicon.

Merge A syntactic operation that combineselements to create phrases and sentences.

Merger A change in a phonological sys-tem in which two or more phonemes col-lapse into one, thereby reducing the numberof phonemes in that language.

Mesolect A creole variety that fallsbetween an acrolect and a basilect interms of the amount of influence from thestandard language.

Metaphor The understanding of one con-cept in terms of another, sometimes respon-sible for language change (e.g., argumentunderstood in terms of war: She annihilatedhim in the debate).

Metaphorical code-switching The useof code-switching to express solidarity withor distance from the speech communitiesassociated with the languages being switched.

Metathesis A process that reorders a

sequence of segments (e.g., in child lan-guage, pronouncing spaghetti as [pski]).

Mid vowels Vowels that are made withthe tongue neither raised nor lowered (e.g.,the vowel sounds in setand Coke).

Minimal attachment A proposed pars-ing principle that claims that in sentencecomprehension, humans tend to attachincoming material into phrase structureusing the fewest nodes possible.

Minimal pair Two forms with distinctmeanings that differ by only one segmentfound in the same position in each form(e.g., [p] and [ip]).

Missing Surface Inflection HypothesisThe hypothesis that states that second lan-guage learners who produce errors may actu-ally have correct underlying representationsfor the structure in which they have made

errors but have difficulty mapping theseunderlying representations to their surfaceforms.

Modal auxiliary An English auxiliaryverb in the I position that is not inflectedfor agreement with the subject (e.g., may,can, will, must, could) but may show tense(e.g., could, wouldmay be past).

Modifier An optional element thatdescribes a property of a head (e.g., blue in

that blue car, or that Gloria likes in the car thatGloria likes).

Module A unit of processing that is rela-tively autonomous from other processingunits.

Morpheme The smallest unit of languagethat carries information about meaning orfunction (e.g., books consists of the two mor-phemes book + s).

Morphological parsing The computa-tional process in the brain that analyzes con-stituent morphemes of a word.

Morphology The system of categoriesand rules involved in word formation and

interpretation.Morphophonemics Rules that accountfor alternations among allomorphs.

Morphophonology SeeMorphophonemics.

Motherese The type of speech that is typi-cally addressed to young children (also calledcaregiver speech).

Motion verbs Words that can describe

motion through space (e.g., come, go, andmove in English).

Motor aphasia See Nonfluent aphasia.

Move A syntactic operation that transportsan element to a new position within a partic-ular sentence.

Movement test A test used to determineif a group of words is a constituent bymoving it as a single unit to a different posi-

tion within the sentence.MRD See Machine-readable dictionary.

Multiplex networks Social networks inwhich the connections are based on severalkinds of relationships.

Murmur The glottal state that producesvoiced sounds with the vocal folds relaxedenough to allow enough air to escape to pro-duce a simultaneous breathy effect (alsocalled breathy voice).

Mutual intelligibility The criterion thatis sometimes used to distinguish between alanguage and a dialect: Mutually intelligiblevarieties of a language can be understood byspeakers of each variety and are thereforedialects of the same language.

Narrative A type of discourse unit thattells a story.

Narrow transcription Phonetic tran-scription that uses a fairly elaborate set of


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symbols and diacritics to show phoneticdetail.

Nasal A manner feature that characterizesany sound made with the velum lowered.

Nasal phones Sounds produced by lower-ing the velum, allowing air to pass throughthe nasal passages.

Nasal vowels Vowels produced with alowered velum so that air passes throughthe oral and nasal cavities at the same time.

Nasalization The nasalizing effect that anasal consonant can have on an adjacent

vowel.Native speakers Those who haveacquired a language as a child in a naturalsetting.

Nativism The view that certain grammati-cal knowledge is inborn.

Natural class A class of sounds that sharesa feature or features (e.g., voiced stops).

Natural language generation All the

processes that transform an intention tocommunicate into written or spokencommunication.

Natural language processing systemsComputer systems that can process humanlanguage.

Naturalistic approach An approach toinvestigating child language in whichresearchers observe and record childrensspontaneous verbal behavior.

Naturalness A criterion that guides lan-guage reconstruction by determiningwhether or not changes are natural.

Near-minimal pair Two forms with dis-tinct meanings that contrast segments innearly identical environments.

Negative evidence Information as to theungrammatical nature of utterances.

Negative face The need of every person to

remain autonomous and free from imposition.

Negative politeness Strategies used bythe speaker to lessen the imposition on thehearer (e.g., expressing tentativeness byphrasing a request in the form of a question).

Network density The degree to whichspeakers in a social network are intercon-nected to each other.

Neurolinguistics The study of how lan-

guage is represented and processed in thebrain.

Neurons The basic information-processingunits of the nervous system, also called nervecells.

Neuroscience The scientific study of thebrain.

New information Knowledge that is intro-duced into the discourse for the first time.

Newcomer programs Programs designedto provide intensive language instruction, lit-eracy development, and cultural orientationfor English language learners who arrive inU.S. schools with very low-level skills in

English and/or little previous experience inschool.

Node (1) Large association of simple unitsin the mind; (2) See class node.

Nominal paradigm The set of relatedforms associated with a noun (also called adeclension).

Nominative The case form characteristi-cally used to mark a subject.

Nominative-accusative pattern Sen-tence pattern in which the subject of the sen-tence is identified by nominative case, andthe direct object is marked by accusative case.

No-naming The practice of avoidingaddress terms when participants are unsurewhich term to use.

Nondeterministic parsers Sentenceprocessors that can pursue more than one

analysis at a time.Nonfluent aphasia Aphasia that resultsfrom damage to parts of the brain in front ofthe central sulcus and that is characterizedby slow, effortful speech production (alsocalled motor aphasia).

Nonlexical category See Functionalcategory.

Nonmanual grammatical markers Insign languages, facial expression or body pos-ture used to indicate a particular grammaticalstructure, such as a subordinate clause.

Nonmodal auxiliaries Auxiliary verbsthat show agreement with the subject, origi-nate in VP, and raise to I when there is nomodal auxiliary; in English, the auxiliaryverbs be and have when they occur with amain verb (e.g., was writing; have seen).

Nonstandard (dialect) A variety of lan-

guage that differs from the standard dialectin systematic ways.


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Nonstridents Coronal fricatives andaffricates that have less acoustic noise thanstridents ([, ] are nonstridents).

Nonsyllabic (sounds) Sounds that donot act as syllable peaks, as distinguishedfrom syllabic sounds.

Nonterminal (intonation) contourRising or level intonation at the end of anutterance, often signaling that the utteranceis incomplete.

Nonterminals Parts of a structure that arenot lexical items, for example VP, NP, Det,

N'. Compare with terminals.Northern Cities Shift The systematicchange in vowel sounds taking place in citiesaround the Great Lakes. (See also Shift.)

Noun (N) A lexical category that typi-cally names entities, can usually be inflectedfor number and possession (in English), andfunctions as the head of a noun phrase (e.g.,key,Bob,perception).

Noun class A grammatical category divid-

ing nouns into classes often based on sharedsemantic properties (also called gender).

Noun incorporation See Incorporation.

NP Movement A transformation thatmoves a noun phrase into the subject position.

Nucleus (N) A vocalic element that formsthe core of a syllable (e.g., the vowel [] isthe nucleus of the first syllable ofPatrick).

Null Subject Parameter A cross-linguistic

variation that allows some languages to dropsubject pronouns, while other languagesrequire an overt grammatical subject.

Number The morphological category thatexpresses contrasts involving countablequantities (e.g., in English, the two-way dis-tinction between singular and plural).

Object permanence A developmentalmilestone characterized by the childs ability

to recognize that objects have an existenceindependent of ones interaction with them.

Oblique NP A noun phrase that combineswith a preposition.

Obstruent Any nonsonorant consonant:fricatives, affricates, oral stops.

Occipital lobe The area of the brain tothe rear of the angular gyrus in which thevisual cortex is located.

Official language A language that hasbeen designated by political or other official

authorities as the working language of aregion, nation, or other group.

Old information See Giveninformation.

One-way bilingual education An edu-cational program in which language minor-ity students are offered instruction in theirfirst language and the majority language.

One-word stage A stage of first languageacquisition at which children characteristi-cally produce one-word utterances.

Onomatopoeic words Words that sound

like the thing that they name (e.g.,plop, hiss).

Onset The portion of a syllable that pre-cedes the nucleus (e.g., /spl/ in spleen).

Open syllable A syllable that is not closedby a consonant.

Opening A discourse unit conventionallyused to begin a conversation.

Oral phones Sounds produced with thevelum raised and the airflow through the

nasal passage cut off.

Ordered rule application In a phono-logical derivation, an application of rulesin which the rules must be applied in a cer-tain order to derive the surface form fromthe underlying representation.

Ordered rules Rules that must be appliedin a particular order. See ordered ruleapplication.

Orderly heterogeneity Variation in useof language among groups (e.g., socialgroups) such that members from one groupcan be distinguished from members of othergroups on the basis of linguistic variants.

Orientation clause A type of narrativeutterance that gives background informationto the story; e.g., the time and place where itoccurred.

Orthography A set of conventions forrepresenting language in written form.

Overextension A developmental phe-nomenon in which the meaning of a childsword overlaps with that of the equivalentadult word but also extends beyond it (e.g.,dogis used to refer to other animals as wellas dogs).

Overgeneralization A developmentalphenomenon that results from the overly

broad application of a rule (e.g., falledinstead offell).


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Overregularization SeeOvergeneralization.

Palatalization The effect that front vow-els and the palatal guide [j] typically have onvelar, alveolar, and dental stops, makingtheir place of articulation more palatal (e.g.,the first sound ofkeep is palatalized).

Palatals Sounds produced with thetongue on or near the palate (e.g., [j]).

Palate The highest part of the roof of themouth.

Palatoalveolar See Alveopalatal (area).Paragraphia Writing errors made byBrocas aphasics that have characteristics cor-responding to their speech.

Parallel processing model A psycholin-guistic theory built around the claim thatphonological, lexical, and syntactic processesare carried out simultaneously.

Parameter The set of alternatives for a par-ticular phenomenon made available by Uni-

versal Grammar to individual languages.

Parameter setting The determination ofwhich option permitted by a particularparameter is appropriate for the languagebeing learned.

Paraphrases Two sentences that have thesame basic meaning (e.g.,A Canadian wrotethat book is a paraphrase ofThat book waswritten by a Canadian).

Parietal lobe The lobe of the brain thatlies behind the central sulcus and above thetemporal lobe.

Parser A program or mental process fordoing grammatical analysis.

Parsing The procedure through whichspeech or text is analyzed by assigning cate-gories to words and assigning structure tostrings of words.

Partial reduplication A morphologicalprocess in which part of a stem is repeated toform a new word (e.g., in Tagalog, takbuhrun and tatakbuh will run).

Partial suppletion A morphologicalprocess that marks a grammatical contrast byreplacing part of a morpheme (e.g.,think/thought).

Passive sentence A sentence whose gram-matical subject is the theme (the entity

affected by the action of the verb) (e.g., Thereport was prepared by the committee members).

Patient The recipient of an action (e.g.,dolphin inMarilyn fed the dolphin).

Pejoration A semantic change in whichthe meaning of a word becomes more nega-tive or unfavorable (e.g., the meaning ofwench used to be girl).

Performance Actual language use in par-ticular situations.

Person A morphological category that typ-ically distinguishes among the first person(the speaker), the second person (theaddressee), and the third person (anyone

else) (e.g., in English, the difference betweenI,you, and she/he/it).

Pharyngeals Sounds made through themodification of airflow in the pharynx byretracting the tongue or constricting thepharynx.

Pharynx The area of the throat betweenthe uvula and the larynx.

Pheromone Chemical used by an animalspecifically for communicative purposes.

Phoenician script An early writing sys-tem that had twenty-two consonantal signs,devised by the Semitic peoples of ancientPhoenicia as early as 1000 B.C.

Phonemes Distinctive sounds in a languagethat contrast with other sounds in that lan-guage (e.g., the sounds [] and [i] as in rich andreach contrast with each other as separatephonemes in English but not in Spanish).

Phonemic level See Phonemicrepresentation.

Phonemic paraphasias Speech errors thatresult from phonemic substitutions and omis-sions (e.g., spoon may be pronounced aspoon).

Phonemic representation The represen-tation that consists of the phonemes towhich allophones belong; predictable pho-netic information is not represented.

Phonemic transcription A type of tran-

scription of sounds where phonetic detailsare ignored and only phonemic contrast isrecorded.

Phones Any sounds used in human lan-guage (also called speech sounds).

Phonetic determinative The part of aChinese character that provides informationabout the pronunciation of the correspond-ing morpheme.

Phonetic level See Phoneticrepresentation.


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Phonetic plausibility strategy The pri-mary strategy used to reconstruct protoformsthat requires any sound changes posited to

be phonetically plausible. (See also Majorityrules strategy.)

Phonetic representation What is actu-ally produced in speech after rules have beenapplied to the underlying representation(i.e., predictable variants, or allophones).

Phonetic sound change A sound changethat results in a new allophone of an alreadyexisting phoneme.

Phonetic transcription A type of tran-scription of sounds in which not onlyphonemic differences but also phoneticdetails are recorded.

Phonetically conditioned changeSound change that begins as subtle alter-ations in the sound pattern of a language inparticular phonetic environments.

Phonetics The study of the inventory andstructure of the sounds of language.

Phonographic writing A type of writ-ing in which symbols represent syllables orsegments.

Phonological dyslexia A type ofacquired dyslexia in which the patient seemsto have lost the ability to use spelling-to-sound rules and can only read words thatthey have seen before.

Phonological processes See Processes.

Phonological representation SeePhonemic representation.

Phonological rules Rules that relate theunderlying forms of words to their phoneticforms.

Phonological (sound) change A soundchange that results in the addition, elimina-tion, or rearrangement of phonemes (e.g.,splits, mergers).

Phonology The component of a grammar

made up of the elements and principles thatdetermine how sounds pattern in a language.

Phonotactics The set of constraints onhow sequences of segments pattern.

Phrase A unit of syntactic structure that isbuilt by combining words together so thatthe phrase consists of a head and anoptional specifier and/or complement(e.g., the apple, Bob, hurried to class).

Phrase structure rule A rule that speci-fies how a syntactic constituent is formed

out of other smaller syntactic constituents(e.g., IP NP I').

Phrase structure schema The blueprintfor the internal structure of phrases (see alsoX' schema).

Phyla The groups into which purportedlyrelated language stocks are placed (alsocalled superstocks).

Pictograms Pictorial representations ofobjects or events.

Pidgin A lingua franca with a highlysimplified grammatical structure that has

emerged as a mixture of two or more lan-guages and has no native speakers.

Pinyin The system of writing Mandarinwith a modified Latin alphabet, used forsuch things as street signs and brand names.

Pitch The auditory property of a soundthat enables us to place it on a scale thatranges from low to high.

Place features Phonological features that

represent place of articulation.Place node A node in the feature geome-try in autosegmental phonology, which dom-inates major place features.

Place or manner assimilation Theprocess by which one segment becomes morelike another in either the place at which it isarticulated or the manner by which it isarticulated.

Places of articulation The points at

which the airstream is modified in the vocaltract to produce phones (also calledpoints ofarticulation).

Plural An inflectional category associatedwith nouns with more than one referent.

Points of articulation See Places ofarticulation.

Polysemy The situation in which a wordhas two or more related meanings (e.g.,

brightintelligent, brightshining).Polysynthetic languages Languages inwhich single words can consist of longstrings of lexical categories and affixes, oftenexpressing the meaning of an entire sentencein English (e.g., Inuktitut).

Positive evidence Grammatical utter-ances in the learners linguistic environment.

Positive face The need of every person to

belong to a group and to maintain solidaritywith a group.


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Positive politeness The use of politenessconventions to express regard and solidaritywith other participants in discourse.

Positron emission tomography (PET)A brain imaging technique that uses radioac-tive isotopes to measure changes in brainmetabolism associated with particular cogni-tive and behavioral tasks.

Postal survey A linguistic survey given inthe form of a written questionnaire and dis-tributed by mailing batches of questionnairesto selected intermediaries in the communitywho then pass them on to subjects.

Postlexical decomposition The processby which the constituents of a multimor-phemic word are activated in the brainthrough the representation of the whole lexi-cal item.

Postposition A P that occurs after itscomplement. (See Preposition.)

Postvocalic r An rthat occurs after avowel in the same syllable (e.g., the rin coreor darling).

Power The degree of control that onegroup or individual may hold over another.

P

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