Questions tagged [terminology]
Words, phrases, and acronyms specific to the study of linguistics.
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2answers
71 views
Grammatical category definition
Can anyone provide a good formal definition of the notion of grammatical category?
I am primarily referring to morphological categories, such as case, tense, gender etc., rather than to syntactical ...
-4
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1answer
27 views
what do we call a subject and a predicate? [closed]
When analyzing the constituent structure of a sentence what do we call the subject on one hand and the predicate on the other ?
3
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2answers
152 views
Is there a term for the way that 'th' is pronounced differently in 'thin' and 'this'?
The point of the example in the question in the title is that, to my knowledge, there are no minimal pairs that contrast [ð] and [θ] in English, yet, if someone pronounced a word with those sounds ...
0
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0answers
28 views
Word for naming complex phenomena
Is there a word or a (catch) phrase for naming more or less complex, mostly abstract phenomena?
An example for this is the naming of the phenomenon known as serendipity as "serendipity".
Reification ...
3
votes
1answer
235 views
Jargon request: “Canonical Form” of a word
I have zero experience with linguistics. Some friends told me that my question is one in linguistic, so I decided to give a shot here.
Question
While designing a dictionary, people collect words ...
1
vote
1answer
52 views
Grammatical case vs semantic case
I'm not sure what these terms mean. In my lecture notes I wrote that grammatical case is used to show the syntactic functions of a nominal syntagm, depending on its relation to the verb. Semantic case,...
2
votes
2answers
119 views
Words that signal future content
Some content words signal that future content will likely follow. The words seem to act as a typing system for instances of the content. For example:
"I have an idea." --> one expects the idea to ...
3
votes
3answers
124 views
On an apparent “ masstermization” phenomenon in contemporary informal French: “ il y a de la jolie nana par ici”
I have noticed a tendency to " masstermize" nouns in contemporary informal French, I mean to use nouns as mass terms ( uncountable), though they cannot be strictly used in this way.
What I call " ...
0
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2answers
74 views
What is it called to derive all the implied meanings from a sentence?
What would this process of gathering the meaning of a sentence be called? What would the segments derived from the sentence be called?
"John and Derrek both love cake"
-> John loves cake
-&...
8
votes
2answers
543 views
What is the best linguistic term for describing the kw > p / gw > b change, and its usual companion s > h
Celtic, Italic, Greek and several other IE languages have a P- and a Q-variety (from kw > p and gw > b). The P-variety usually also has h for ancient s.
What would be the best linguistic term for ...
0
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2answers
54 views
How to break down sentences into known grammatical categories
I'm trying to break down and analyse different sentence structures in English. Each group contains one present, past, and future sentence, but otherwise should be the same within a group.
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He ...
3
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3answers
137 views
Is there a specific linguistic term for the following practice of constructing new words/characters?
I have in mind examples such as the Scheingallizismus (lit. appearance of Gallicism) in German which are words/phrases constructed from French origins but are themselves unknown in French speaking ...
0
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1answer
40 views
Terms to Indicate Rules
In software languages, we have a small set of terms to indicate a rule: if, then, else, upon, while, otherwise, case, etc.
In specification writing, we use terms like: "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED",...
1
vote
1answer
73 views
Is there a way to refer to the semantic similarity-based counterpart to *eggcorn*?
Is there a way to refer to the only-semantic-similarity-based counterpart to eggcorn, which is phonetic similarity-based by definition? Not a hypercorrection, just that thing when you remember ...
3
votes
1answer
60 views
What is the name of this syntactic construct: “May [Subject] [Verb]”?
Sentences like "Let such and such be done" or "May this happen". What is the name of this construct?
More examples from Spanish:
Que ellos entren ahora (Let them in now).
Que se muerte les ...
25
votes
2answers
3k views
What do you call an IPA symbol that lacks a name (e.g. ɲ)?
Some IPA symbols such as ɲ lack any name, and when I tried searching for the symbol online, the pages I got only showed palatal nasal.
But I wonder what I should call it when I talk with others. Is ...
0
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0answers
54 views
Different languages following the same pattern to name the same object
A drawer is something one draws out of a piece of furniture. Likewise in French with tiroir coming from the verb tirer and in Japanese 引き出し from 引く. Is there a word for such a phenomenon: several ...
2
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0answers
39 views
Sememe and semanteme
I'm not sure I understand what is the relationship between sememes and semantemes.
I have the following definitions :
A sememe is a semantic content of a lexeme.
A semanteme is a unit ...
2
votes
3answers
92 views
What is the French equivalent of the English linguistic term “reflex” (the descendant sound of a sound in a proto-language)?
I looked it up in different dictionaries but could not find anything. Thank you in advance.
7
votes
1answer
83 views
Name for a verb form meaning “feign or pretend to do sth”
Is there an accepted name for a derivational process applied to a verb which conveys the meaning "feign or pretend to do sth".
As a corollary, is anyone aware of any languages (especially non-...
3
votes
2answers
66 views
Words that can belong to more than one category
Is there a term in (English) linguistics for a word that belongs to more than one word class?
For example fast, which can be either an adjective, or a noun.
I've been trying to find a term for this, ...
3
votes
0answers
28 views
What is the term for a specific type of collocation analysis
I am trying to write a text processing script in R. I am interested in finding a word (from a list of words I have selected) only if it is in the same sentence as another word.
Eventually I would ...
4
votes
1answer
77 views
What is the term for the pronunciation change that occurs with overuse of a phrase or noun phrase?
I've noticed that when a phrase (particularly, a multi-word name) is used often, the way it's said changes slightly. For example, when talking about the television show "The Good Place", the way the ...
12
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5answers
6k views
Rudeness by being polite
When talking to learners of my mother tongue, Swedish, I've sometimes had to explain how using too polite language can be taken as rude or insulting, as it creates a certain distance between the ...
3
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2answers
56 views
Statistic for root-efficiency in languages
In Esperanto you can construct many new words from a relatively low number of root-word. Example, with from arbo (tree) and aro (set) you can build arbaro (forest).
My question is three folded:
What ...
6
votes
1answer
85 views
Is there a term for ASL signs for related concepts that share the same motion and are distinguished by initialization?
As an ASL learner, I've noticed that there are groups of words with similar meanings, where the only difference is an initialized handshape. For example, the sign FAMILY has the two hands move outward ...
4
votes
3answers
173 views
Is an empty morph a lexeme?
In the French "A-t-il soif ?" there are several (inflected) lexemes ("A", "il", "soif"), and an empty morph "t".
The morph "t" has no meaning which is why it's an empty morph; it's there purely for ...
3
votes
1answer
102 views
A term for the process of building a form which has never been used before
One of my friends has started using the word 'vying' more and more these days. He did not know the word before a certain date and there was a clear event which caused him to "acquire" it into his ...
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1answer
207 views
Complementary distribution and defective distribution
I'm not sure if I understood what complementary distribution and defective distribution mean.
I have a definition that complementary distribution is an automatic, i.e. obligatory positional variation ...
0
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2answers
64 views
Do grammatically close languages tend to begin to use literal translations of some words in other senses in that other language?
Let's have an English phrase "let's have" and the Czech equivalent "mějme". Perhaps, at some point in the past, someone was translating a math textbook and didn't know how to translate "let's have" in ...
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0answers
46 views
Type of pronouns, bound/free
I'm confused by the terminology regarding bound/free pronouns.
Are free pronouns, those not bound to the verb, like 'we' in 'we like beer'?
Or does free mean they are not bound to previous elements?...
2
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1answer
73 views
What is the linguistic term for re-writing a dialect text to standard language?
What is the linguistic term for re-writing a written text from non-standard dialect to standard dialect of the same language?
Translation is the conversion of text from one language to another.
...
3
votes
3answers
79 views
Is there a word in which the concept and its complement is expressed?
Is there a word in which the concept and its complement is expressed, for example if I would like to express "the dichotomy of truth and falsehood" in one word. Obviously, the construction need not ...
3
votes
1answer
40 views
What is about-sentiment called?
I don't even know what my problem is called, so I can't research literature on it. I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction.
I have a little experience with sentiment analysis, but what ...
1
vote
1answer
87 views
How to call Turkish to Ascii character conversion?
When writing software in some cases we are not allowed to use Turkish characters so we use U, G, S, I, i, O, C characters instead of Ü, Ğ, Ş, İ, ı, Ö and Ç since some computer systems might not ...
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0answers
53 views
Name for the view that ambiguities in natural language are imperfections of it?
For instance, in natural language, "or" is slightly different from logical OR, "some" is slightly different from logical EXISTS, etc.
What is the name of the belief that these discrepancies are ...
0
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1answer
60 views
Classification of -s added to English words
I'm trying top work out what the correct terms are to use in the below scenarios. I've heard of clitics and affixes, but I'm not clear on the difference.
cat - cats (noun, plural -s)
cat - cat'...
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1answer
104 views
What is the difference between “domain” and “register”? [closed]
It seems like "domain" is a broad categorization of context (e.g. workplace, academia) and register is the specific set of rules which are expected by those speaking in a certain domain. Is this right?...
1
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1answer
93 views
What could be the antonym to the word “hyperonym”?
Is the "hyponym" an antonym to the word "hyperonym"? In the sense of the terms themselves, this is true, but does the difference in terms apply to antonyms?
The subset that defines the hyponym and ...
3
votes
2answers
135 views
How do you call a languages tendency to adopt foreign words rather than translate them to their language?
One difference between Mandarin Chinese and Japanese is that the former likes to translate foreign terms, while Japanese prefers to transcribe them to Japanese.
E.g. Basketball:
Mandarin Chinese: 篮球 (...
2
votes
1answer
67 views
'Interstitial' tones in Thai
You don't have to listen to authentic Thai for very long to realize that comparatively few words are pronounced with the dictionary tone.
All the learning material out there seems to be focused on ...
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0answers
60 views
Word with separate translations in another language
Is there a name for the linguistic phenomenon of a word in language or dialect X with two or multiple meanings that have individual translations in language or dialect Y? For example, escada in ...
0
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0answers
113 views
Do English passive verbs assign case? (Government and Binding Theory)
I'm trying to think things through regarding case and passive verbs, within the framework of Government and Binding Theory.
As starting point, I'll use this statement/principle (based on what I've ...
0
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2answers
51 views
Metalanguage to describe expressing an idea in many different ways
I am looking for a term to describe expressing an idea in many different forms yet the meaning remains the same in each rendition.
An example of this:
The Australians, Australians, the Australian ...
8
votes
1answer
84 views
Does (or should) the terms “spoken language” and “speech” include signed language?
And if not, is there a term, accepted by both the Deaf and linguistic communities, that includes both spoken and signed language, in contrast to written language?
Reputable linguistic sources, ...
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1answer
62 views
What do you call the revival of an obsolete word for a new meaning
Let's say carrot for a shade of orange.
Suppose carrot is not used for the color and I wanted one to describe the vegetable's color. So, I revive the displaced more for the color. What do you call ...
1
vote
2answers
62 views
What is the technical term for alternative spellings?
If two subcultures use the same realization (pronunciation) of the same word form (particular inflection of a word) but spell it differently, what is the technical term for the alternative spellings?
...
0
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1answer
30 views
Are alternative pronunciations (with or without alternative spellings) different word forms from each other?
On another question a linguist told me that linguists define word forms by their phoneme sequence rather than their grapheme sequence. This makes me wonder:
Are the spoken words going and goin' the ...
2
votes
0answers
101 views
Ontology of logogram, pictogram and ideogram
Is it fair to say that a pictograms are a subset of ideograms which are a subset of logograms?
What is an example of an ideogram that is not a logogram or pictogram?
1
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1answer
71 views
Is each definition of a word a separate lexeme?
I read the Wikipedia entry for 'Lexeme' but I wasn't able to make out a clear answer to this question.
I'm interested in knowing the answer for both related and unrelated senses of a word. I'm under ...
