Questions tagged [terminology]

Words, phrases, and acronyms specific to the study of linguistics.

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Is there a word for "mouth transitions" which describes the movement of a mouth which is saying one word, but preparing for the next?

I think I can produce every individual phoneme in standard-ish spoken Mandarin. However, if I want to speak fluently I have to watch videos of people speaking and closely watch their mouths, because ...
Marvin Irwin's user avatar
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Term for non-homograph homophone synonyms?

In Japanese, 熱い and 暑い are both read atsui and both mean 'hot'. The former pertains to an object (e.g. hot coffee) and the latter to weather. In French 'cuissot' and 'cuisseau' have the same ...
Mathieu Bouville's user avatar
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What currency does the term "flip sense verb" have in linguistics?

In a recent comment on the question Ergative Verbs and some discussion about them, jlawler introduced a term I had not previously encountered: The rose smells good is completely different; this ...
hippietrail's user avatar
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Is there a term for a mental prototype changing?

Years ago, if I heard the word bird I thought about a sparrow since I live in western Pennsylvania and there are sparrows everywhere. But now, if I hear the word bird I picture a blue, two-dimensional ...
Nick Anderegg's user avatar
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What kind of syntax diagrams are these, found in a book on legal writing?

These don't look like syntax trees in undergrad linguistics syntax textbooks. Do linguists use these diagrams? What are they called? Page 343.     Diagrams for grammatical analysis are visual aids to ...
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Do puns necessarily involve referring to two (or more) extant words?

What exactly constitutes a pun? Do the words in the pun have to both be extant, or can one be a nonce/nonsense word? — Over the years, I've heard numerous usages of "puns" where one word in the ...
errantlinguist's user avatar
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Did Chomsky originate the term "rewrite rule"?

The earliest mention of the term "rewrite rule" that I am able to find - in the context of phrase structure grammars - is in Chomsky's "Syntactic Structures" (1957). Did he originate the term?
player.mdl's user avatar
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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 ...
Joe C's user avatar
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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 ...
Snack_Food_Termite's user avatar
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Extension of "synesis"

In traditional grammar, synesis refers to inflection being determined by underlying semantics instead of morphological agreement; the most familiar instance in English is expressions like The ...
Nick Nicholas's user avatar
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Second and third language "search"

In my third or fourth language, when I don't know a word or phrase, I substitute a word from my other non-native language rather than the one I obviously know in my native language. Or if I'm looking ...
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Term for universally-used quote with additional, non-compositional meaning

There exist certain fixed expressions which people use to convey quite specific meanings and (at least to me) always invoke a famous saying which is assumed to be common knowledge, such as I am not a ...
errantlinguist's user avatar
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L1 memories being recalled in my L2

The situation is as follows: I have been studying my L2 for approximately 4 years. I have spent a total of 10 months immersed in the L2 environment. My current stint has been for 5 months and counting....
user3221's user avatar
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Ungrammatical or Grammatically Incorrect

When I asked which of "ungrammatical" or "grammatically incorrect" is prefered and why? at an English language forum I got the following "linguistic perspective": Both ...
user 85795's user avatar
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Is there count/mass distinction in European Portuguese as it is in English?

It is said that European Portuguese has count/mass distinction as many Indo-European languages. However I noticed out that all products/items at stores in Portugal are labeled in singular form. In ...
LingX's user avatar
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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 ...
tryst with freedom's user avatar
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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 ...
Niek's user avatar
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Object of certain constructions

I am sure you have all come across constructions such as these: She slept a long sleep He lived a productive life. These verbs are traditionally intransitive verbs, and yet here are transitive. ...
Eric's user avatar
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Definiteness and indefiniteness

Is there a term that encompasses both terms at once? Suppose I am writing a paper titled [Single-word-here] in Language X, where the required word will refer to both definiteness and indefiniteness. ...
blackened's user avatar
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Does the stem of a word carry the sense information of its inflections?

From what I understand the lexeme or lemma of a word carries the sense information of the word, and hence for an inflected form like tablets, it can have a different lemma, each one for each sense of ...
Amrith Krishna's user avatar
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Accurate English terminology for "complément du nom" and for "complément/complemento" as a general term

I am looking at this kind of French sentences: Le directeur de la banque Un directeur de banque Le livre de l'élève Le livre de français Having done some research about English grammar terminology ...
Grammiferous's user avatar
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Is there a term that describes a sentence from which you can infer the meaning of a word?

When learning new Chinese words, I write down an example sentence from which I can infer its meaning. This way, when I've forgotten the word, I can simply read the sentence and deduce (or remember) ...
Rebecca J. Stones's user avatar
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vocabulary and notation for syntactic changes

As a layman I have picked up the terminology and notation for changes in phonology. But I know very little about diachronic changes in syntax other than that they happen: things like shift from SOV ...
Anton Sherwood's user avatar
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What is the difference between the term "actor" and "agent"?

I've worked quite a lot on agency so far. Today i've read the paper "Two routes to actorhood: lexicalized potencx to act and identification of the actor role" (Franzel et al. 2015) and i'm wondering ...
Jay's user avatar
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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 ...
Lucas's user avatar
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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 ...
Sebastian Zeki's user avatar
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How can be these two types of adjective distinguished terminologically?

In adjectives there are two main groups: First Group: adjectives that their 3 grades (base, comparative and superlative) are changed whether regularly (nice > nicer > nicest) or irregularly (good > ...
Ubiquitous Student's user avatar
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Subregularities and irregularities

It seems that some syntacticians sometimes use the word subregularity instead of irregularity. Is there any difference between these two terms or they cover same concept?
Houman's user avatar
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Any name for this proposition? : Sounds reflects P.O.S. of the word

I am using natural language processing/speech recognition techniques so that I can provide better tools to learn English pronounciation. While research on relevant topics, I found this fact: ...
Beverlie's user avatar
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Can "lexical development" and "vocabulary development" be used interchangeably?

I haven't quite been able to find the answer to this question online. I'm writing a paper for my first linguistics class and I realized one of the sources that I've been using refers to vocabulary ...
Toby W. Hughes's user avatar
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What is the term for when a word can not be translated directly?

I was wondering if there's any term in linguistics when the word cannot be translated in just one/two words. I mean when it's really hard to explain the meaning, because there's no such thing in your ...
user14237's user avatar
3 votes
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387 views

Does an abugida without inherent vowels qualify as an alphabet or an alphasyllabary?

Alphabets and alphasyllabaries seem functionally equivalent, but I am confused about the terminology. The coining of "abugida" including inherent vowels as part of the definition, but some ...
Anonymous's user avatar
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'modal' vs 'mode' vs 'modality' vs 'mood'

TL;DR (Actual Question:) I'm wildered; so please explain as though I were 10 years old. What are the similarities and differences? This doesn`t compare all 4 nouns simultaneously. A Student's ...
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3 votes
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Which grammar framework the terms "predicate/ complement/ adjunct" belong to?

From wiki, there're a number of grammar frameworks. Which framework the terms "predicate/ complement/ adjunct" belong to?
developer.cyrus's user avatar
3 votes
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423 views

What is the consensus regarding the term "gliding vowel"?

I write educational resources about Japanese. In my explanations, I try to avoid using overly technical terms so as to avoid scaring my readers, who tend to be people without a linguistic background. ...
Brian Rak's user avatar
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Common name for speech errors like Phoneme Deletion and Phoneme Substitution

I would like to know the common name for speech errors like phoneme deletion and phoneme substitution, just like there is word called "prosodic error" for stress error and intonation error. I have ...
boreas's user avatar
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What is the formula for Usage Rate?

I read about a concept called the "usage rate" (proposed by Juliand and Chang-Rodriguez). It's a method for calculating the frequency of a word in a corpus. What exactly is the "usage rate" and what ...
stevendaniels's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
89 views

Is there a name for an instance when someone misleads themself on the meaning of a word?

Suppose someone has encountered the word "transfixed" on several occasions, never looked up the word in a dictionary, and concluded from the encounters that the word means "engrossed&...
peanutjelly's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
434 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 which together ...
lmc's user avatar
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Is “actual” both a false friend and a cognate?

English definition of “actual”: existing in fact; typically as contrasted with what was intended, expected, or believed. Spanish definition of “actual”: current, present, contemporary These are ...
Felix's user avatar
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To what extent can Jakobson's communicative functions be applied to an analysis of written texts?

As a tutor of teachers in Spain taking the state entrance exam for English I am often confronted with the typical exam question 'identify the communciative fuctions' for text analysis. The teachers ...
Daniel Watts's user avatar
2 votes
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128 views

Help sought with understanding an aspect of genitive/possessive

In English, we can use the possessive in such a way that the noun being described is omitted, chiefly in cases where it has already been introduced. For example; "This chair is mine, and that is ...
zaritapucexot's user avatar
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0 answers
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What does information-status mean in linguistics?

The phrase information-status is used repdeatly in the article "Definiteness and Information-status in Hindi", Baldridge, 1996, but what does it mean? Could someone explain it simply/ say ...
tryst with freedom's user avatar
2 votes
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80 views

Is there a term for mixed gender in plural pronouns (as opposed to masculine, feminine, or neuter)?

In English, there is only one third person plural pronoun to refer to groups of any gender or genders. Multiple "he"s becomes they, multiple "she"s becomes they, multiple "it&...
ThornShadow's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
72 views

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 ...
G. Moore's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
79 views

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 ...
tangentstorm's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
66 views

what is the difference between reference time and event time

what is the difference between reference time and event time , also i am native Arabic speaker , i tried to translate by google translate two examples the reference time before and after event time ...
Abdelrahman Yehia's user avatar
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0 answers
42 views

Is there a term for common constructions like "X in general, and Y in particular?"

I have seen a syntactic meme that isn't common where I grew up. It is "X in general, and Y in particular" where Y has a meronym/part-to-whole relation with X. Here are some examples I found ...
Brandon Arnold's user avatar
2 votes
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451 views

Diphthongoids and diphthongs

In Russian linguistics, there's a term дифтонгоид (diphthongoid). For example, in textbook Современный русский литературный язык (Modern Standard Russian) by S.V. Knjazev and S.K. Pozharitskaya, it is ...
Aer's user avatar
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2 votes
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What do you call (the fact that languages are not always one-to-one in their labellings)?

Based on this question. There is no reason that there should be a ["Good" + "morning"] in Spanish any more than there is a ["Good" + "days"] in English. I ...
JohnnyApplesauce's user avatar