 | Term | Definition |
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Linguistic Competence |
The knowledge one has of his language: different from linguistic perfomance |
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Linguistic Performance |
The competence a speaker displays when speaking his language: opposed to linguistic competence |
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Descriptive Grammar |
A grammar that describes a language as it is spoken |
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Prescriptive Grammar |
A grammar that describes how a language ought to be spoken |
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Mental Grammar |
The grammar speakers have in their brains |
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Dialect |
A variety of speech within a given language |
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Prestige Dialect |
A variety of a language that has more prestige |
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Standard Dialect |
The dialect of a language that is good to know and speak for practical reasons |
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Universal Grammar (UG) |
The rules that govern all language |
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Linguistic Theory |
The quest for a universal grammar |
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Lexicon |
A person's vocabulary |
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Language |
A mode of communication unique to human beings: it is discrete and creative |
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Sapir-Whorf hypothesis |
The idea that one's language moulds the way he thinks and sees the world |
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Linguistic Determinism |
The strongest aspect of the Sapir-Whorf Theory |
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Neurolinguistics |
The study of the biological and neural basis for language |
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Corpus Callosum |
The fibrous bridge that connects the two spheres of the brain |
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Contralateral Brain Function |
The concept that the right brain controls the left side of the body and vice versa |
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Localization |
The idea that cranial functions are localized in the brain |
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Phrenology |
The pseudoscience that states that bumps on the skull indicate personality traits and flaws in a person |
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Broca's Aphasia |
Damage to the Broca area |
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Broca's Area |
An area in the left brain that controls much of what speech is |
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Wernick's Aphasia |
Damage to Wernick's area |
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Wernick's Area |
An area in the left brain that controls grammar functions |
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Jargon Aphasia |
A term referring to extreme Wernick's Aphasia |
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Anomia |
A phenomenon in which one can never find the word he's looking for |
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Hemispherectomy |
An impressive operation whereby a hemisphere is surgically removed |
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Dichotic Listening |
A way of experimenting so as to determine what cranial functions are controlled by what cranial hemisphere |
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Specific Language Impairment |
An impairment whereby a person's language capacity is damaged |
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Critical Period |
There period of age in which a child must learn a language or be linguistically impaired forever |
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Critical-age Hypothesis |
The theory that children must acquire a language by a certain age or be impaired for life |
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Monogenetic Theory of Language Origin |
The theory that all languages have one origin |
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Cortex |
The surface of the brain |
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Cerebral Hemispheres |
The hemispheres of the brain |
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Orthography |
A fancy word meaning "Spelling" |
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Lexicography |
A fancy word for "Dictionary" |
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Content Words |
Words that denote objects, things, stuff: as opposed to function words |
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Function Words |
Words that are utilitarian, such as prepositions: as opposed to content words |
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Morpheme |
The fundamental unit of meaning in words |
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Free Morphemes |
Morphemes that can stand alone |
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Bound Morphemes |
Morphemes that cannot stand alone |
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Affix |
A morpheme tacked somewhere onto a word |
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Prefix |
An affix tacked onto the beginning of a word |
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Suffix |
An affix tacked onto the end of a word |
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Infix |
An affix tacked into the middle of a word |
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Circumfix |
An affix tacked onto the beginning and end of a word |
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Discontinuous Morpheme |
A morpheme split up |
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Root |
The basic unit in a word that has many components and affixes |
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Stem |
A root with one or more affixes |
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Derivational Morphemes |
Morphemes that morph a word into a different syntactical catagory |
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Derived Word |
A word that has been derived in syntactical category by means of morphemes |
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Lexical Gap |
A word that makes sense, yet isn't a word (e.g. exobvious) |
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Rule Productivity |
Some rules are productive in producing words, while others aren't; this is called: |
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Antonym |
A word that means the opposite of another word |
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Eponym |
A word based upon a proper name |
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Back-formations |
A word formed through a mistake, formed from a morpheme that actually is not free, but appears to be |
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Compound Words |
Words formed from two other free-morphemes |
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Compound Head |
The word in a compound that is closest to the right and that dominates the word |
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Blend |
A word in which two words are blended together, rather than compounded |
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Clipping |
The phenomenon whereby words are clipped to be shorter |
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Acronym |
Initials of a word of several parts |
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Alphabetic Abbreviation |
Acronyms that cannot be spoken easily as a word |
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Inflectional Morphemes |
Morphemes that never change the syntactical category of the word, but only change its tense |
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Suppletive Forms |
Verb forms that cannot be formed from the usual inflectional morphemes |
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Structural Ambiguity |
A situation in which the sentence's tree structure is not apparent |
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Tree Diagram |
A mode of showing the two-dimensional structure of a sentence |
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Syntactical Category |
Types of words that can be interchanged without a compromise of grammaticality |
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Noun Phrase: NP |
A noun, with or without a complement |
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Verb Phrase: VP |
A verb, with or without a complement |
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Prepositional Phrase: PP |
A preposition, with or without a complement |
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Determiner |
A sort of article or definite article, such as "the" |
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Demonstratives |
Words such as this, that, and every |
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Auxiliaries |
Words that cannot stand alone, but must go along with verbs |
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Node |
A point in a constituent structure tree |
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Sisters |
Two nodes on a phrase structure tree that are of the same level |
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Embedded Sentence |
A sentence embedded in a larger phrase structure tree |
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Complementizer |
A word such as "that," allowing embedded sentences and recursivity |
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Recursivity |
That phenomenon whereby sentences can be infinitely long |
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Head |
The "verb" in every VP, the "noun" in every NP |
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Distransitive Verb |
A verb that requires both an object an an indirect object |
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X-Bar Theory |
A theory that gives a basic, fundamental, abstract scheme for sentence structure |
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Coordinate Structure |
Structure in which two words of same syntactical type are connected with words such as "and" or "or" |
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Adjunction |
An operation that allows for aux and transformations in sentence structure |
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Deep Structure (d-structure) |
The basic structure of a sentence, before transformation rules are applied |
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Surface Structure (s-structure) |
The derived structure from a sentence's d-structure |
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Syntax |
The rules for sentence structure |
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Constituent |
The component parts of a sentence (can be interchanged if they are the same type) |
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Constituent Structure |
The structure of the component parts of a sentence |
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Modals |
words such as may, might, and can |
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Functional Categories |
Aux and Det are... |
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Tense Phrase (TP) |
An alternative to S-bar theory and X-bar theory that some linguists use |
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Semantics |
The study of linquistic meaning |
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Lexical semantics |
The study of linguistic meaning in words |
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Phrasal semantics |
The study of linguistic meaning in units larger than the word |
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Sentential semantics |
The study of linguistic meaning in units larger than the word |
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Pragmatics |
The study of how a word or phrase's situation determines and affects its meaning |
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Truth-conditional semantics |
The study of semantics with regards to the truth |
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Truth value |
How much truth (some, none, absolute) a sentence has |
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Truth conditions |
Those conditions in which a sentence is true |
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Tautologies |
Sentences that are always true |
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Contradictions |
Sentences that are always false |
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Paradoxes |
Sentences whose truth value is undefined and/or undeterminable |
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Entailment |
The phenomenon whereby one sentence entails another |
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Synonymous |
A condition in which two sentences are either true or false in the same contexts |
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Paraphrase |
A synonymous sentence |
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Contradictory sentence |
A sentence which is always true when another is false, and always false when the other is true |
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Reference |
A word in a sentence that refers to a specific object in the world |
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Semantic anomaly |
A situation in which a sentence doesn't make sense, even if it is grammatical (metaphor and idiom are types of this) |
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Metaphor |
An expression in which the speaker does not mean the listener to take his words literally |
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Idiom |
A semantic anomaly with a fixed meaning that would be otherwise uninterpretable |
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Idiomatic phrase |
Another way of saying "idiom" |
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Referent |
That which a word refers to, a component of the referential theory of semantics |
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Sense |
A meaning that a word has, whether or not it exists in the real world |
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Synonym |
A word that means the same thing as another word |
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Relational opposites |
A type of antonym where two words are opposite in their relationship to eachother in their essence (i.e. teacher to student) |
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Homonyms |
Two words with the same sound but different meaning and spelling |
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Homophone |
Another word for homonym |
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Polysemous |
An adjective designating words that have several meanings |
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Hyponym |
A word in the same semantic family as another |
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Metonym |
A word that may substitute for another |
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Classifier |
A morpheme designating a noun subject, object, etc. |
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Count noun |
A noun that can be counted (one car, two cars, three cars...) |
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Mass noun |
A noun that cannot be counted (one milk, two milks, three milks...) |
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Negative polarity items |
Expressions that require a negative element in the sentence to allow them to appear |
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Argument |
An NP with a VP |
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Argument structure |
The semantics and conjugation of a verb |
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Agent |
He who is doing an action |
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Thematic roles |
The roles played by subject and object in the context of a theme |
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Instrument |
The instrument by which an agent carries out a theme toward a goal |
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Experiencer |
A person receiving input through the eyes, ears, or other senses |
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Discourse analysis |
The analysis of the broad structure of a speech, comprising multiple sentences |
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Reflexive pronouns |
Pronouns that refer the verb back to the agent |
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Deixis |
The phenomenon whereby the meaning of certain words (such as "he") are determined entirely by context |
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Maxims of conversation |
The maxims that govern real semantics in conversation |
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Maxim of quantity |
A speaker must not give more or less information than required |
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Maxim of relevance |
The speaker must speak on the relevant topic |
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Maxim of manner |
The speaker must be concise and neat in his speech, not opaque or ambiguous |
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Maxim of quality |
Do not speak false things |
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Implicatures |
Inferences with respect to pragmatics |
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Speech acts |
Acts done in a word (e.g. I hereby proclaim you sentenced to death) |
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Performative sentence |
A sentence containing a speech act |
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Illocutionary force |
The intent of a speech act |
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Performative verbs |
The type of verbs that are involved in speech acts |
| Add or remove terms from this set |
