Unit 7 Vocabulary

Graphology

The writing system of a language, as well as other visual elements on the page.

Grammar

The rules for organizing meaning in a language.

Orthology

The part of language concerned with letters and spelling.

Pragmatics

How the context in which words and phrases are used affect their meaning.

Phonology

The pronunciation and sound patterns which affect understanding of words.

Morphology

The structure of words with their meaning.

Semantics

The meaning of words.

Syntax

The order of words in a sentence.

Early Modern English

English used in the period between approximately 1500 and 1800 marked by a relatively sudden and distinct change in pronunciation and the inclusion of European lexis and the classical lexis of Latin and Greek.

Great Vowel Shift

A series of changes which lasted approximately 200 years from 1350 onwards and the pronunciation of English affecting the vowels.

Late Modern English

The English used in the time period after 1800 until the present day, the change was initiated by scientific and social developments and a desire to establish rules of language.

Colonialism

When a country claims ownership and takes control of another land.

Archaic

Belonging to the past.

Obsolete

No longer in use, often the meaning is no longer understood.

Coinage

The creation of a new word that people start to use.

Neologism

A newly invented word.

Eponyms

A word which takes the name of its inventor or discoverer.

Prefix

A group of letters added at the beginning of the word to make a new word.

Suffix

A group of letters added at the end of the word to make a new word.

Root

The part of a word that cannot be changed.

Stem

A word that can be added to for a change in meaning.

Conversion

Creating a new word or a new word class from an existing class or from a different word class (Ex: green as noun derived from golf from the adjective)

Telescoping

The contraction of a phrase, word, or part of a word on the analogy of a telescope being closed. (Ex: biodegradable \= biolgocialy + degradeable)

Compounding

Forming a word from two or more units that are themselves words.(Ex: blackboard = black + board)

Blending

Forming a new word by joining the beginning of one word to the end of another. (Ex: smog \= smoke + fog)

Borrowing

The introduction of specific words, constructions, or morphological elements from one language to another. (Ex. “table” into English from old French)

Inflection

Any form or change of form which distinguishes grammatical forms of the same lexical unit. (Ex. “books” is distuingued from singular “book” by the inflection “s”)

Archaisms

In English Language, words which are no longer in everyday use or have lost a particular meaning in current usage.

Coalescence

When sounds are clipped from endings of words or between two words where the articulation merges or coalesces.

Backformation

A form of clipping where a long word or phrase is shortened and gives a new word in a different form

Reduplication

Processes which replicate the sounds of a word as well as duplicate sounds, often making the resulting words sound lively and informal

Neuter

In language terms, neither male nor female.

Amelioration

The process by which the meaning of a word changes to become more positive.

Pejoration

The reverse process by which the meaning of a word becomes more negative than its meaning in earlier times.

Broadening

The process by which a word expands from its original meaning and becomes more general.

Narrowing

The process by which a word takes on a more restricted meaning.

Prescriptivism

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

Descriptivism

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

Discourse Genres

Styles of written and spoken communication

Computer-mediated Discourse

The specialized form of language between online users.

Transmission

The learning and passing on of information between people in a group.

Received Pronunciation

A distinct accent based on the way one is influenced by the speakers around them.

Protolanguage

A common ancestor of modern languages.

Language Family

A group of languages that are related in structure and have evolved from a common protolanguage.

Pidgin

A simplified mix of languages used to communicate between people who do not share the same language.

Creole

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

Corpus

A large and structured set of texts usually stored electronically.

Corpus data

The information stored in a corpus comprising written texts and/or transcriptions of spoken language.

Acronym

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

Diachrony

The study of the changes in language over time.

Synchronic linguistics

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

Word Sketch

A page summary of word information derived from the corpus.

Concordancer

A software program which analyzes patterns from the corpus.

N-gram

A sequence of items from a sample of text which can be different in length according to the phrase being studied.