Linguistic Terms and Concepts Glossary

A collection of vocabulary flashcards covering linguistic definitions for grammar, morphology, syntax, phonology, and pragmatics as found in the notes.

Additive Relation

An interpropositional relation in which the propositions are judged either to be closely related or built one on another.

Addressee Honorific

An honorific in a system in which a level of status of the addressee relative to the speaker is expressed through a choice made among linguistic alternants, irrespective of whether the alternants refer to the addressee.

Adpositional Phrase

A phrase that has an adposition as its head, categorized into postpositional or prepositional phrases.

Adverb (Grammar)

A lexical category whose members have the same syntactic distribution and typically modify adjectives, other adverbs, verbs, or whole clauses or sentences.

Adverbial Clause

A clause that has an adverb-like function in modifying another clause.

Adverbializer

A subordinating conjunction that links a subordinate clause to a main clause and indicates purpose, condition, time, or location.

Affixation

The morphological process whereby an affix is attached to a root or stem.

Agent (Semantic Role)

The semantic role of a person or thing who is the doer of an event.

Agreement

A formal relationship between elements whereby a form of one word requires a corresponding form of another.

Alethic Modality

Modality that connotes the speaker’s estimation of the logical necessity or possibility of the proposition expressed by his utterance.

Alienable Noun

A noun that refers to something viewed as not permanently or necessarily possessed.

Allative Case

A case that expresses motion to or toward the referent of the noun it marks; also known as additive case in Basque studies.

Allegory

An extended metaphor, especially a story in which fictional characters and actions are used to express concepts relating to human existence.

Alternative Question

A question that presents two or more possible answers and presupposes that only one is true.

Alternative Relation

An interpropositional relation in which at least one of the connected propositions is held to be true, but not necessarily all of them.

Ambiguous Consonant Sequence

A phonetic string that may be interpreted as either a single consonant or two successive consonants.

Ambiguous Phonetic Transition

A phonetic segment found between two distinct segments that may serve only a connective function and may not be a phonologically distinct segment.

Americanist System

A phonetic alphabet designed by Kenneth L. Pike and Eunice Pike after the model of Edward Sapir and Morris Swadesh; also known as the SIL phonetic alphabet or Pike system.

Amplification Relation

An elaboration relation in which a proposition substantially repeats the content of an earlier one and adds further information.

Analytic Definition

A description of the range of reference of a lexical unit made up of a generic term and a modifying word or phrase specifying obligatory components of meaning.

Anchored Entity

A brand-new entity linked to another referent that is not brand new via a referring expression in the noun phrase.

Anticipatory Illocution

An illocutionary act that has the direct force of a question about necessary conditions for another act, and the indirect force of that latter act (e.g., "Would you like some more coffee?" functioning as an offer).

Antithesis Relation

A contrast relation where propositions express incompatible events or states and the speaker communicates positive regard for one over the other.

Articulation Process

The modification of sound waves produced by the airstream, phonation, and oral-nasal processes.

Ascertainment Relation

An internal alternative relation where a following proposition presents an alternative circumstance because a preparatory condition was not met.

Attribution Relation

An elaboration relation in which a proposition describes an attribute of a referent of another proposition.

Authorized Recipient

An addressee with a unique status or belonging to a socially defined group for whom distinctive linguistic forms are reserved, expressing absolute social deixis.

Auxesis

An exaggeration of the importance of a referent by using a referring expression disproportionate to it.

Background Relation

An interpropositional relation in which one or more propositions provide information necessary for understanding other propositions.

Balance Schema

A force schema providing an understanding of physical or metaphorical counteracting forces based on prototypical target schemas like a point, line, or plane.

Beneficiary (Semantic Role)

The semantic role of a referent which is advantaged or disadvantaged by an event.

Blocking Circumstance

A factor that thwarts an expected event or state, resulting in an unexpected outcome.

Bound Root

A root which cannot occur as a separate word apart from another morpheme.

Boundedness

The presence or absence of a component of meaning indicative of a border at a location in expressions of place deixis.

Bystander Honorific

An honorific expressing the social status of a person present who is not necessarily the addressee or person referred to.

Causal Relation

An interpropositional relation where the situation in one proposition is communicated as bringing about the situation or reasoning in another.

Causer (Semantic Role)

The semantic role of the referent which instigates an event rather than actually doing it.

Chain Of Illocutionary Commitments

A set of illocutionary acts ordered by the relationship of commitment (e.g., swearing commits one to asserting).

Clause Chain

A group of clauses where medial clauses often differ in verb morphology from the final clause and mark whether the subject is the same as a reference clause.

Close Future Tense

A tense referring to a time shortly after the moment of utterance, typically within the span culturally defined as "tomorrow."

Coding Time

The time of an utterance or the writing of a message, often used as the deictic center for time deixis.

Commissive Modality

A deontic modality connoting the speaker's expressed commitment, such as a promise or threat.

Complement Clause

A notional sentence or predication that is an argument of a predicate, selected by a verb, noun, or adjective.

Complementizer

A conjunction which marks a complement clause (e.g., "that" in "I know that he is here").

Compound Discourse

A discourse containing sections belonging to two or more different genres, such as the Bible's epistle to the Ephesians containing expository and hortatory discourse.

Compulsion Schema

A force schema involving an external force physically or metaphorically pushing an object.

Conceptual Extendedness

The semantic relationship between senses of a lexeme divided into primary, secondary, and figurative stages based on figurative derivation from a literal sense.

Conjunctive Illocutionary Act

A complex illocutionary act consisting of the performance of two or more acts in one utterance.

Container Metaphor

An ontological metaphor representing a concept as having an inside and outside capable of holding something else.

Containment Schema

An image schema involving a physical or metaphorical boundary and an enclosed or excluded area/volume.

Context Of An Expression

The social situation in which something is said, including information on the speaker, addressee, circumstances, and purpose.

Continuer

A move that returns speakership to another participant, showing recognition of their talk (e.g., "uh huh").

Contraction Relation

An interpropositional relation where information previously expressed is partially restated, such as a summary relation.

Contrast Relation

An interpropositional relation expressing that a difference between propositions is relevant.

Contrastive Analysis

An inductive investigative approach based on the distinctive elements in a language, which can be intralingual or cross-linguistic.

Conventional Implicature

An implicature that is part of a lexical item's agreed meaning but not part of its truth conditions.

Conventional Metaphor

A metaphor commonly used in everyday language to structure a portion of a culture's conceptual system.

Conversation Analysis

An approach to natural conversation study determining turn-taking, sequence construction, and problem repair.

Conversational Maxim

One of four rules (Quantity, Quality, Relation/Relevance, Manner) proposed by Grice in 1975 to explain how speakers contribute to conversation.

Correction Relation

An antithesis relation where expression of positive regard reinforces, redefines, or corrects one of the contrasted propositions.

Counterfactual Conditional Relation

A conditional relation in which the antecedent and consequent are marked as imagined, nonfactual states or events.

Cycle Schema

An image schema involving repetitious events starting from a point, progressing, and returning to the initial state.

Declarative Mood

An epistemic mood signaling that a proposition is offered as an unqualified statement of fact.

Defective Illocutionary Act

An illocutionary act where one or more preparatory or sincerity conditions are not met, such as an insincere promise.

Definite Identifiability

A kind of definiteness indicating the referent is identifiable to both speaker and addressee through shared knowledge or previous mention.

Deictic Expression

An expression whose basic usage is deictic, though it may also have nondeictic usages.

Deliberative Mood

A directive mood signaling a speaker's request for instruction from the addressee on whether to perform an action.

Derivational Affix

An affix by which one word is derived from another, often changing the word class.

Descriptive Text

A text that lists the characteristics of a thing, usually using third-person pronouns and focusing on attributes.

Development Lexical Relation

An association between lexical units referring to stages or steps in a growth or expansion process.

Different Subject Marker

A marker in verb morphology indicating the clause subject is different from the subject of a following or main clause.

Direct Illocution

An act in which only the force and content literally expressed by lexical items and syntactic form are communicated.

Directive Illocutionary Point

A purpose where a speaker attempts to get someone to bring about the state of affairs described in the proposition.

Discontinuous Morpheme

A morpheme interrupted by the insertion of another morphological unit.

Discourse Deixis

Deictic reference to a portion of a discourse relative to the speaker's current location within that discourse.

Discourse Schema

A sequenced group of text elements categorized by genre, such as narrative, hortatory, or expository.

Dismissive Relation

An interpropositional relation communicating the irrelevancy of one proposition to another without communicating contraexpectation.

Distributive Numeral

A numeral expressing a group of the number specified (e.g., "in pairs").

Double Stop

Simultaneous labial and velar articulation, commonly found in African languages (e.g., /kp/, /gb/ ).

Downgrade

A move that weakens or mitigates a previous utterance to make it more acceptable.

Elaboration Relation

An interpropositional relation where a proposition provides detail relating to an aspect of another proposition.

Elicitation

The act of obtaining language data from another person.

Embedded Repair

An other-initiated repair performed by substituting the repairing item in the addressee's own following utterance.

Emphasis Marker

A word or affix expressing a speaker's stress upon the predicate of a sentence.

Emphatic Additive Relation

An additive relation in which the cumulative nature of propositions is emphasized (e.g., "furthermore").

Enablement Relation

An interpropositional relation where a proposition supports a directive by improving the addressee's ability to fulfill it.

End-of-Path Schema

An image schema where a location is understood as the termination of a prescribed path.

Environment

All the parts of an utterance that directly surround a given sound.

Epistemic Qualification

A signal of the degree of certainty a speaker has for the proposition expressed.

Equative Clause

A clause describing a feature of its subject, containing a subject complement and typically a copula.

Equilibrium Schema

A balance schema involving external and internal pressure on container-like objects.

Evaluation Information

A movable non-event in discourse consisting of a speaker's feeling toward an event or state of affairs.

Event

Information in discourse that actually occurs overtly at the 'now' point on the time line.

Evidence Relation

A logical relation where propositions are intended to increase the addressee's assurance of another proposition's truth.

Evidentiality

A linguistic category denoting the source of information conveyed by the speaker through grammatical means.

Evoked Entity

A referent that is given information due to previous mention or prominence in the extralinguistic context.

Exclamation

Either an utterance made with strong emotion or a specific sentence type used to express a strong emotional state.

Exclusive First Person Deixis

Deixis referring to a group that includes the speaker but excludes the addressee.

Existential Clause

A clause with a distinctive structure expressing the real or imagined existence of an entity.

Existential Marker

A word found in a distinct clause type that marks a referent's existence.