Questions tagged [terminology]
Words, phrases, and acronyms specific to the study of linguistics.
639
questions
-2
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0answers
42 views
Why 'differential argument marking', not 'different argument marking'? [closed]
Why was 'differential' used to term Argument marking, not 'different'?
0
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0answers
40 views
Zeugma with particles?
If a zeugma is based on two particles rather than two objects, is it still called a zeugma? Example:
Her violent husband knocked her both down and up.
1
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0answers
41 views
Word for synonyms with different degree
How call words expressing same thing but varying degree?
hot - warm - cold - frozen
1
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0answers
52 views
Agentive vs Intentional vs Volitional
What are the differences between these three terms?
Agentivity
Intentionality
Volitionality
If they have different definitions, could you provide examples where their values do not match? (For ...
1
vote
0answers
40 views
What's the difference between lexeme and lexical item?
While studying An Introduction to English Morphology by Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy, came across this fragment.
Section 2.1 pointed out that we tend to think of words as possessing two ...
3
votes
0answers
69 views
What's the name for using a letter to represent its name's sound?
It's often whimsical to substitute a single letter for a group of letters phonetically identical to the letter's name.
Such as rewriting "barbecue" as "bar-b-q", or the entirety of William Steig's ...
3
votes
1answer
57 views
What is the classification of semantics into literal and figurative meanings called?
I read a Wikipedia article a while ago about semantics. It explained that each meaning of a word fits into one of five categories. For example, the word head has a literal meaning as a piece of ...
1
vote
2answers
109 views
Loanwords with different meanings from original language?
First, let me say this questions is asking only about fairly recent loanwords (as in, the word (or something similar to it) exists in both languages). I'm not asking about very old loanwords that may ...
1
vote
1answer
20 views
Single term for words that maintain dialogue cohesion
I'm trying to find a single term for words that help maintain cohesion in a dialogue, such as:
A : How was the Lion King remake?
B : It was good.
A : And the Aladdin remake?
B : It ...
1
vote
1answer
78 views
relationship between writing systems, scripts, and font. Terminology clarification required
I want a clarification on terminology. A language is written in a particular script . but there are various styles for writing a script. For e.g. arabic is written in arabic script, and it can be ...
2
votes
2answers
74 views
Is sonority phonological or phonetic?
I've seen several mentions of "sonority" in different works, most of which define it as something like "how loud a particular sound is in relation to other speech sounds".
This seems like something ...
5
votes
1answer
710 views
Replacements for swear words
Is there a term for the following phenomenon or the words that are used in this way: One starts to utter a swear word, but continues to form an innocent sounding word. Examples from German are Sack ...
4
votes
0answers
73 views
Is there a name for this type of language divergence and isolation?
In South Australia there is a region called the Barossa Valley. At some point [after WW2? not sure] it was settled by a lot of German farmers who bought land and started dairy farms. They applied ...
2
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0answers
73 views
Is there a standard way to refer to an example language?
What is the John Doe or John Smith of language names for when a linguist is making an example?
We’ve all seen
Suppose that in language 𝑥 . . .
and
Imagine a language . . .
and in another ...
4
votes
2answers
84 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 ...
3
votes
2answers
181 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
votes
0answers
29 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 ...
4
votes
1answer
249 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
58 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
122 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
170 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
votes
2answers
79 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
571 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
votes
2answers
60 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.
1
He ...
4
votes
3answers
150 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
votes
1answer
41 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
106 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
62 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
votes
0answers
55 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
votes
0answers
46 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
95 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
85 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
70 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
78 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
votes
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
votes
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
90 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
178 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
103 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 ...
1
vote
1answer
298 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 ...
1
vote
2answers
90 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 ...
1
vote
0answers
75 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
votes
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
85 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
99 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 ...
0
votes
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
votes
1answer
63 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'...
