Lang List 2

Acronym

A word formed from the initial letters of two or more successive words

Clipping

The shortening of longer words

Collocation

A relation in text where words appear frequently together (money = make and spend)

Computer-Mediated Discourse

The specialized form of language betwen online users

Concordance

A list of unconnected lines of text identified by a concordancer program with the search word or phrase in the middle of each line. A program analyses patterns in a text (~cntrl F)

Conversion

Creating a new rod, or word class, from an existing one, or from a different word class. (Green in golf vs color)

Corpus

A large and strcutured set of texts, usually stored electronically

Creole

A natural language, spoken by native speakers, which has developed from a mixture of languages

Descriptivism

The view that no use of language is incorrect and that variation should be acknowledged and recorded rather than corrected

Diachronic Linguistics

Changes to a language that occur over time

Grammar

Generally understood as the rules for hte appropriate use of a language

Graphology

The study of writing forms such as the alphabet

Hypothesis

A statement of what the researcher is trying to inveestigate from carrying out the study

Inflection

Any form or change of from which distinguishes grammatical forms of the same lexical unit (Book vs books)

Langauge Family

A group of languages that are related in structure and which have evolved from a common proto language

Lemma

Base of stem word

Lexis

All words in a language

Morphology

The study of the internal structure of the words and their meaning

N-Gram Graph

A line graph, based on data from a particular corpus, whic hdisplays the change in the frequency of use for particular words or phrases over a period of time

Neuter

In language terms, neither male nor female

Orthography

Part of language concerned with letters and spelling

Phonology

Pronunciation and sound pattern

Pidgin

A simplified mix of languages, used to communicate between people who don’t share the same language

Pragmatics

The study of the ways English is used in its social context

Prescriptivism

The view that language should have a strict set of rules that must be obeyed in speech and writing

Protolanguage

A common ancestor of modern languages

Semantics

The study of meaning of words

Synchronic Linguistics

The study of language of a particular time, usually the present

Syntax

The sentence construction and order of words

Word Sketch

A page summary of word information derived from a corpus