Questions tagged [terminology]
Words, phrases, and acronyms specific to the study of linguistics.
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Isn't it misleading to call written representations of spoken languages as written languages?
In the following sentences I would refer to anything that can be used to denote something as a symbol.
Any language uses some kind of symbol to denote different things. I presume that any language ...
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is there a name for a language with very few roots?
It appears to me that German is a language whose vocabulary is strongly based on combining a few lexemes with a variety of prefixes, or just yuxtaposing. By contrast, romance languages seem to use far ...
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What are the normalized entries called on the table of contents of thefreedictionary?
For example, these multi-word expressions or lexical units can be listed in their very basic forms on thefreedictionary.com:
leave one's mark
leave mark on
develop from
develop from someone
develop
...
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What's the difference between nominative and absolutive case?
Why do both these cases need to exist?
They are both subjects
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Are inflectional morphemes considered affixes in English?
From what I remember to have learned in SPANISH, which is my mother tongue, affixes just refer to derivational morphemes such as suffixes and prefixes which can change the meaning of words when added ...
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What is the name for this phenomenon, and what are some other examples of it?
Sorry if this is a duplicate, but I couldn't figure out how to search for this, especially since my only example involves two function words.
In English, we can say "I have not eaten." "...
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Tone vs Intonation in English -- does English use tones in any situation to convey meaning?
I took some Mandarin in college and I believe (IIRC) the concept of tones was introduced to us English speakers by showing how we use "rising tone" for questions.
But a comment to a recent ...
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What is the term for the duration ratio between the vowel and the coda?
A syllable consists of three parts: The onset, the nucleus (which is usually a vowel), and the coda. The onset and the coda are optional, or may come in consonant clusters, but for the purpose of this ...
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What is this type of ambiguity called?
There are a number of sentences that create a paradoxical-seeming ambiguity. I'm not sure what the name for this phenomenon is, and it'd be great if someone could help me out.
Examples include:
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Technical word for cross-lingual pronunciation that causes bad meaning
In Arabic, کونی is the imperative second person feminine of "be". But the same word in Persian means a faggot (slang).
The one who found the heleocentrism is called Copernicus, bet the last ...
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Shouldn’t “person” be called “self”, “direct” and “indirect” “orientation”? [closed]
The widely used conventional terms “first”, “second” and “third” “person” are highly arbitrary names. They imply that these three ways a person can refer to a person have an ordering; well, they do ...
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Ways a word can be used
Does anyone know if there is a name to refer to the way a word is used in a sentence to either stand for its meaning or to refer to the word itself in some manner. For example:
Orange
I ate an orange....
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Is there a term for "if" statements not intended as conditions, like "if you want"
I might say, "There is food in the fridge, if you want, Fred."
I do not mean that food in the fridge will only exist if Fred wants it to exist.
I mean, "There is food in the fridge, [...
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Connections between how unrelated words derived from the same root meaning
From re: constructions
The word "martyr" comes originally from the ancient Greek legal term
for "witness", for someone who gives testimony or evidence in a court
of law.
In ...
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Conditional followed by imperative
In English, we have often sentences like so:
If you are interested, send me a message
WHEN you are ready to do it, start with the laundry
To my understanding these are a conditional followed by an ...
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What do you call a transliteration that has gone native?
I'm looking for a word for transliterations that have gone on to become native words apart from their origins. For example, zombie, sarong, besuboru, Kalikimaka. The meanings may differ from the ...
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What do you call it when you write the next word in a sequence twice instead of the current and next word?
I'm not sure how to phrase it, but I'll give an example.
Let's say I want to type "Think this will be the last instruction?"
While typing this out, I recite the phrase in my head, but I type ...
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What is the most commonly accepted synonym or synonymous phrase in linguistics for "wh-question"?
The term "wh-question" seems transparent enough for English speakers, but reeks of English language chauvinism. I have heard such questions referred to as "information questions,"...
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What is the difference between 'denotation' and 'reference' in linguistics?
I am trying to determine why in mathematical expressions we can have a variable x which does not ‘refer’ to a specific number but can still 'denote' an unspecified object. In linguistic theory, is it ...
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What is the term for this derivation: "Cheeseburger comes from Hamburger" but... the word hamburger didn't refer to ham
So the title says it all really. The term hamburger doesn't refer to ham but instead the origin of the food Hamburg, but when the presence of cheese was added the new invention is referred to as a ...
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Is there a term for when you use grammar from one language in another?
I am reviewing a report as part of a university course, and the author of said report, a native Swedish speaker, has chosen to write the report in English rather than Swedish. Frequently, he uses ...
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What is a word that assimilates loanwords called?
In Kazakh, there is this verb ету etw. It appears after Russian infinitives so that they can be conjugated in Kazakh.
For example:
EN: invest
RU: инвестировать investirovat'
KZ: инвестировать ету ...
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How are inflection variance and invariance classified in linguistics?
I was trying to understand how variance and invariance in inflection is classified in linguistics. (Curiously I found this redirect page on wikipedia but no dedicated article.)
What I mean is you can ...
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Is there a name for a situation where a word can be described by prepositive and postpositive modifier at the same time?
With the current culture of quiet quitting in English, lying flat, or letting it rot in Chinese, I was curious if there is such a phrase in my own Mong language. The adverbs laam and dlogdlig will ...
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Term for a pair of words with opposite meanings, such that everything can have one or the other as a quality
Term for a pair of words with opposite meanings, which together encompass everything, so that in all cases one or the other (but not both) must apply. For example:
concrete vs. abstract; animate vs. ...
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How does 'acceptability' differ from 'felicity'?
I know that grammaticality differs from acceptability, but what about acceptability versus felicity? All emboldenings are mine.
Besides grammaticality, notions such as felicity (first used in Austin ...
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What's the official term for when the verb inverts or flips its Thematic Roles?
Luke Sawczak referred to "the other way around", as switching places.
Interestingly, in English, like and please appear to have switched places at some point in the past.
"This ...
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How do we generalize words like 'a couple', 'a few', 'a pair', 'a pile of'?
I recall that there's a word for words like abovementioned, it probably derives from 'count', but I can't quite remember how do we call words that work with countables. Could anybody help me with that?...
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Difference between polysemes and senses
As far as I understand, saying that two words are polysemes is saying they're synonymous homonyms, but not synonymous enough to be the same word. Senses on the other hand, are synonymous enough to be ...
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Accepted term for "noun of action"
Is there an accepted English term for a noun that
is formed from a verb, and
means the act or process of doing that verb?
For example, attraction, completion, confusion, establishment, encouragement ...
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Is there really any difference between the words Pictography, Ideography, Symbols and Picture-symbols?
I am currently absorbed in Megg's history for Graphic design and I came across certain terms that seem to have incredibly ambiguous meaning (Pictography, Ideography, Symbols & Signs) and one that ...
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What is the term for words pronounced like their meaning?
Example:
"A giraffe has a loooong (pronounced in an exaggerated, drawn-out manner) neck."
"I have a short (pronounced very quickly) neck."
What is the technical term for ...
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Is there a name for "noun-verbing" adjectives?
Is there a name for adjectives that take the form of "noun-verbing", like "rabbit-hunting" or "self-driving"? Do this form only occurs in English?
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What is the term for a phrase that connects two objects with some relation?
In mathematics, we usually see symbols that join two objects: numbers, sets, etc. The more familiar one is the equality symbol "=" which in a formal standpoint means "is logically ...
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Is a gesture a movement of a single articulator or of all articulators of a segment?
In researching the term '(articulatory) gesture', it seems to me that the meaning is something like 'movement of a single articulator for a single segment'. Ergo, e.g. a sound with secondary ...
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What's the term for changing a word's part of speech while maintaining the root?
I'm looking for a term that describes changing a word's part of speech while maintaining the root word. For example changing the verb "remember" into the noun "remembrance" or the ...
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What is the term for the phenomenon where certain languages cannot describe certain concepts?
I am super-fascinated by the fact that English speakers cannot accurately describe how something smells and there are languages that can differentiate different shades of color that English speakers ...
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What is the name of the category for the vibrations that the tongue does in linguistics?
There are guttural sounds such as the French R so I'm guessing that there is name for the category of speech sound in which the tongue vibrates! For example, in the words pater, et rubente http://www....
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What's the opposite of semantic parsing?
Semantic parsing is the task of translating natural language into a formal meaning representation on which a machine can act.
What's the opposite called? I.e. "translating a logical formalism ...
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Term referring to the idea that words are contrastive
I recall hearing a lecture, I can't recall the exact context, in which the lecturer made the case that words are fundamentally contrastive - the only way that I can understand what the word "...
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Is there a linguistic term for 'defensive' phrases, such as "with all due respect" and "no offense"?
Apologies if this is not a linguistics question.
I often notice how phrases such as "with all due respect, [...]" and "no offense, but [...]" are used defensively or to 'soften' a ...
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Is there a word for a pair of verbs that mean the same thing but with subject and object swapped?
In logic, you can say:
(A and B) --> A / 'A and B' implies 'A' (as the 'B' is just discarded)
Computer programmers working from a specification to an implementation, sometimes talk about ...
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Is there a name for
Is there a name for a section of text which is delimited by final punctuation, regardless of whether it is a sentence, clause, phrase or single word? In other words, a term that generalizes all of ...
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Aren't all spoken languages tonal?
From my understanding, a tonal language is when a difference intonation of the word changes its meaning. Now: Italian for example (which I was told is not tonal) differentiates questions from ...
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what's this linguistic phenomenon?
I am currently working on coding and standardizing the language of my community.
There is something we do when we speak, that so far I haven't encountered in the other languages that I've delved into, ...
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Is there a term for a word taken from another language, but then completely changing the meaning (such as peperoni, latte, chai)
In Italian, il peperone is what the English would call bell pepper, but the English word peperoni has come to mean a type of sausage, in particular when on a pizza.
In Italian, latte is milk, but in ...
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Is there a word/concept for a word that denotes a place but is not a proper name?
Is there a word/concept for a word that denotes a place but is not a proper name? As far as I understand toponyms are always proper nouns, so words such as "area", "playground", &...
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What do you call the adjective phrase attached to some historical persons? E.g. Erik the Red
Many historical persons have full names but also a popular adjective phrase attached to them, such as Eric the Red (Erik den Røde in Danish), Gorm the Old (Gorm den Gamle in Danish), Alexander the ...
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Portuguese — Why use definite articles in front of possessive nouns? Why the extensive use of proposition contraction?
I can speak Spanish and French, and I am currently learning Portuguese. During my learning, I realized that there are some unique features in Portuguese — I don't speak Italian, so I don't know if ...
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What do "titles" and "Beijing" stand for?
I am looking at metonyms and I have two examples I am interested in, but I am not sure what they stand for.
The bookshop holds over 1 million titles.
Since Beijing, the Olympics have got even more ...
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