Questions tagged [terminology]
Words, phrases, and acronyms specific to the study of linguistics.
654
questions
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1answer
436 views
What is the meaning of the Latin names of grammatical cases (in general, not in Latin)?
I cannot find any source explaining the Latin names of grammatical cases. I am especially curious in the names of the less common cases, like in Finnish:
nominative
genitive
accusative
partitive
...
1
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0answers
22 views
Is there a term for syntactically and semantically linked modifying phrases?
What I'm talking about is when a string of prepositional phrases take the object of the previous one as their antecedent, and where the entire string is linked back to the original antecedent, a noun ...
21
votes
1answer
2k views
What is the name for a placename that contains what the thing is in a different language?
For example Mount Maunganui. In Māori maunganui means "large mountain" and thus when literally translated into English it means "Mount Large Mountain". Another example would be the river Avon. In ...
0
votes
1answer
93 views
Linguistic term “Word final” in Spanish
The SIL Fieldworks Language Explorer program allows you to specify multiple phonological environments for different allomorphs of a lexical item. Each environment is given a title and a description.
...
0
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1answer
76 views
Context-Free grammars and Language
As someone trained in neither, how could you explain the analogies between context free grammars / languages and certain programming languages in computer science? Have I misunderstood whether there ...
1
vote
1answer
67 views
What's the difference between a light noun and a nominalizer?
I've been studying Japanese, and sometimes I see some words, like の and こと, get classified as "nominalizers," and other times as "light nouns." Plus, I've read somewhere that light nouns sometimes ...
1
vote
1answer
57 views
“Indifferent” reference of specific indefinites?
There is a class of indefinites sometimes called "specific indefinites" that refer to one individual. For example:
A man walked into a bar followed by two others. He ordered a drink.
With this ...
2
votes
0answers
71 views
What is a similect?
I'm looking for attested examples of similects in action. The term is relatively new for me. Could someone point me in the right direction?
Etymology
Coined by Anna Mauranen in a 2012 paper, from ...
1
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0answers
22 views
What is 'Category Affiliation' in sociolinguistics?
I came across this term in a paper talking about the first wave and second wave studies. Anyone know what it means?
1
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2answers
113 views
Is there a word like father-tongue?
If a Telugu speaking woman married an English man and the children speak the two languages equally well and that is possible in the global context.
What will be the mother-...
0
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1answer
68 views
ELI5 — phone v. phoneme v. allophone
Please ELI5? I read the websites beneath but I still feel befuddled. Are there simple real-life analogies?
Can someone explain to me the difference between a phone, phoneme, and allophone? (reposted ...
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0answers
32 views
does a general term exist for antecedents or postcedents?
· endophora is a general term that refers to either anaphora or cataphora
? does a general term exist that refers to either antecedents or postcedents
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1answer
112 views
What are External and Internal language?
I would like to know about External and Internal language.
Suppose I was talking about a person who was not either good or great. I was praising him in my speech as he was my superior though I felt ...
2
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0answers
29 views
Terminology/resources for descriptions like “…the other one…”
Suppose, e.g., that there are two brothers, Bob and Bill, that must do two things but it doesn't much matter which brother does which task. I am interested in constructions like the following:
One ...
6
votes
3answers
132 views
Is the `n` in Russian 3rd person pronouns “epenthetic”?
The 3rd person pronouns of Russian – ego him/it.ACC, eё her.ACC, ix them.ACC – gain an initial n when they are governed by most prepositions: nego/neё/nix. There are, of course, historical reasons for ...
0
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0answers
44 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
42 views
Word for synonyms with different degree
How call words expressing same thing but varying degree?
hot - warm - cold - frozen
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0answers
56 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
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0answers
60 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 ...
4
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0answers
75 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
60 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
152 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
22 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
85 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
79 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
723 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
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0answers
77 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
76 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
96 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
192 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
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
261 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
81 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
124 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
183 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
85 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
630 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
61 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
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3answers
157 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
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
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1answer
126 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
65 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
57 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
61 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
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3answers
103 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
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1answer
88 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
80 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
81 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 ...
