Glossary Linguistics 3
- Onomatopoeia: words containing sounds similar to the noises they describe (e.g. bang,
cuckoo)
- Larynx: the part of the throat that contains the vocal folds, also called the voice box
- Pharynx: the area inside the throat above the larynx
- Lateralization: divided into a lef side and a right side, with control of functons on one side
or the other (used in describing the human brain)
- Innateness hypothesis: the idea that humans are genetcally equipped to acquire language
- Communicative signals: behaviour used intentonally to provide informaton
- Informative signals: behaviour that provides informaton, usually unintentonally
- Glossolalia: also known as ‘speaking in tongues’, the producton of sounds and syllables in a
stream of speech that seems to have no communicatve purpose
- Reflexivity: a special property of human language that allows language to be used to think
and talk about language itself
- Displacement: a property of language that allows users to talk about things and events not
present in the immediate environment
- Arbitrariness: a property of language describing the fact that there is no natural connecton
between a linguistc form and its meaning
- Cultural transmission: the process whereby knowledge of a language is passed from one
generaton to the next
- Productivity: a property of language that allows users to create new expressions, also called
‘creatvity’ or ‘open-endedness’
- Fixed reference: a property of a communicaton system whereby each signal is fxed as
relatng to one partcular object or occasion
- Duality: a property of language whereby linguistc forms have two simultaneous levels of
sound producton and meaning, also called ‘double artculaton’
- Etymology: the study of the origin and history of words
- Borrowing: the process of taking words from other languages
- Loan-translation: a type of borrowing in which each element of a word is translated into the
borrowing language, also called calque
- Compounding: the process of combining two (or more) words to form a new word (e.g.
waterbed)
- Blending: the process of combining the beginning of one word and the end of another word
to form a new word (e.g. brunch)
- Clipping: the process of reducing a word of more than one syllable to a shorter form (e.g. ad)
- Hypocorism: a word-formaton process in which a longer word is reduced to a shorter form
with –y or –ie at the end (e.g. telly, movie)
- Backformation: the process of reducing a word such as a noun to a shorter version and using
it as a new word such as a verb (e.g. babysit from babysiter)
- Conversion: the process of changing the functon of a word, such as a noun to a verb, as a wy
of forming new words, also known as ‘category change’ or ‘functonal shif’ (e.g. vacaton in
They’re vacatoning in Florida)
- Coinage: the inventon of new words (e.g. xerox)
- Eponym: a word derived from the name of a person or place (e.g. sandwich)
- Derivation: the process of forming new words by adding afxes
- Affix: a bound morpheme such as un- or –ed addes to a word
- Prefx: a bound morpheme added to the beginning of a word
, - Suffix: a bound morpheme added to the end of a word
- Infx: a morpheme that is inserted in the middle of a word
- Analogy: a process of forming a new word that is similar in some way to an existng word
- Morphology: the analysis of the structure of words
- Morpheme: a minimal unit of meaning or grammatcal functon
- Free morpheme: a morpheme that can stand by itself as a single word
- Bound morpheme: a morpheme such as un- or –ed that cannot stand alone and must be
atached to another form
- Lexical morpheme: a free morpheme that is a content word such as a noun or verb
- Functional morpheme: a free morpheme that is used as a functon word, such as a
conjuncton or a prepositon
- Derivational morpheme: a bound morpheme such as –ish used to make new words or words
of a diferent grammatcal category, in contrast to an infectonal morpheme
- Inflectional morpheme: a bound morpheme used to indicate the grammatcal functon of a
word, also called an infecton (e.g. dogs, walked)
- Morph: an actual form used as part of a word, representng one version of a morpheme
- Allomorph: one of a closely related set of speech sounds or phones
- Reduplication: the process of repeatng all or part of a form
- Grammar: the analysis of the structure of phrases and sentences
- Noun: a word used to describe a person, thing or idea
- Proper noun: a noun with an inital capital leter, used as the name of someone/something
- Article: a word such as a, an, the used with a noun
- Adjective: a word used with a noun to provide more informaton
- Adverb: a word used with a verb or adjectve to provide more informaton
- Verb: a word used to describe an acton, event or state
- Preposition: a word used with a noun phrase
- Pronoun: a word used in place of a noun phrase
- Conjunction: a word used to make connectons between words, phrases and sentences
- Agreement: the grammatcal connecton between two parts of a sentence, as in the
connecton between a subject and the form of a verb
- Number: the grammatcal category of nouns as singular or plural
- Person: the grammatcal category distnguishing frst person, second person and third person
- Tense: the grammatcal category distnguishing forms of the verb as present tense and past
tense
- Active voice: the form of the verb used to say what the subject does
- Passive voice: the form of the verb used to say what happens to the subject
- Gender: a term used in three ways:
1. a biological distncton between male and female, also called natural gender;
2. a distncton between classes of nouns as masculine, feminine, also called grammatcal
gender;
3. a distncton between the social roles of men and women, also called social gender
- Prescriptive approach: an approach to grammar that has rules for the proper use of the
language, traditonally based on Latn grammar
- Descriptive approach: an approach to grammar that is based on a descripton of the
structures actually used in a language, not what should be used
- Structural analysis: the investgaton of the distributon of grammatcal forms in a language
- Constituent analysis: a grammatcal analysis of how small consttuents go together to form
larger consttuents in sentences
- Onomatopoeia: words containing sounds similar to the noises they describe (e.g. bang,
cuckoo)
- Larynx: the part of the throat that contains the vocal folds, also called the voice box
- Pharynx: the area inside the throat above the larynx
- Lateralization: divided into a lef side and a right side, with control of functons on one side
or the other (used in describing the human brain)
- Innateness hypothesis: the idea that humans are genetcally equipped to acquire language
- Communicative signals: behaviour used intentonally to provide informaton
- Informative signals: behaviour that provides informaton, usually unintentonally
- Glossolalia: also known as ‘speaking in tongues’, the producton of sounds and syllables in a
stream of speech that seems to have no communicatve purpose
- Reflexivity: a special property of human language that allows language to be used to think
and talk about language itself
- Displacement: a property of language that allows users to talk about things and events not
present in the immediate environment
- Arbitrariness: a property of language describing the fact that there is no natural connecton
between a linguistc form and its meaning
- Cultural transmission: the process whereby knowledge of a language is passed from one
generaton to the next
- Productivity: a property of language that allows users to create new expressions, also called
‘creatvity’ or ‘open-endedness’
- Fixed reference: a property of a communicaton system whereby each signal is fxed as
relatng to one partcular object or occasion
- Duality: a property of language whereby linguistc forms have two simultaneous levels of
sound producton and meaning, also called ‘double artculaton’
- Etymology: the study of the origin and history of words
- Borrowing: the process of taking words from other languages
- Loan-translation: a type of borrowing in which each element of a word is translated into the
borrowing language, also called calque
- Compounding: the process of combining two (or more) words to form a new word (e.g.
waterbed)
- Blending: the process of combining the beginning of one word and the end of another word
to form a new word (e.g. brunch)
- Clipping: the process of reducing a word of more than one syllable to a shorter form (e.g. ad)
- Hypocorism: a word-formaton process in which a longer word is reduced to a shorter form
with –y or –ie at the end (e.g. telly, movie)
- Backformation: the process of reducing a word such as a noun to a shorter version and using
it as a new word such as a verb (e.g. babysit from babysiter)
- Conversion: the process of changing the functon of a word, such as a noun to a verb, as a wy
of forming new words, also known as ‘category change’ or ‘functonal shif’ (e.g. vacaton in
They’re vacatoning in Florida)
- Coinage: the inventon of new words (e.g. xerox)
- Eponym: a word derived from the name of a person or place (e.g. sandwich)
- Derivation: the process of forming new words by adding afxes
- Affix: a bound morpheme such as un- or –ed addes to a word
- Prefx: a bound morpheme added to the beginning of a word
, - Suffix: a bound morpheme added to the end of a word
- Infx: a morpheme that is inserted in the middle of a word
- Analogy: a process of forming a new word that is similar in some way to an existng word
- Morphology: the analysis of the structure of words
- Morpheme: a minimal unit of meaning or grammatcal functon
- Free morpheme: a morpheme that can stand by itself as a single word
- Bound morpheme: a morpheme such as un- or –ed that cannot stand alone and must be
atached to another form
- Lexical morpheme: a free morpheme that is a content word such as a noun or verb
- Functional morpheme: a free morpheme that is used as a functon word, such as a
conjuncton or a prepositon
- Derivational morpheme: a bound morpheme such as –ish used to make new words or words
of a diferent grammatcal category, in contrast to an infectonal morpheme
- Inflectional morpheme: a bound morpheme used to indicate the grammatcal functon of a
word, also called an infecton (e.g. dogs, walked)
- Morph: an actual form used as part of a word, representng one version of a morpheme
- Allomorph: one of a closely related set of speech sounds or phones
- Reduplication: the process of repeatng all or part of a form
- Grammar: the analysis of the structure of phrases and sentences
- Noun: a word used to describe a person, thing or idea
- Proper noun: a noun with an inital capital leter, used as the name of someone/something
- Article: a word such as a, an, the used with a noun
- Adjective: a word used with a noun to provide more informaton
- Adverb: a word used with a verb or adjectve to provide more informaton
- Verb: a word used to describe an acton, event or state
- Preposition: a word used with a noun phrase
- Pronoun: a word used in place of a noun phrase
- Conjunction: a word used to make connectons between words, phrases and sentences
- Agreement: the grammatcal connecton between two parts of a sentence, as in the
connecton between a subject and the form of a verb
- Number: the grammatcal category of nouns as singular or plural
- Person: the grammatcal category distnguishing frst person, second person and third person
- Tense: the grammatcal category distnguishing forms of the verb as present tense and past
tense
- Active voice: the form of the verb used to say what the subject does
- Passive voice: the form of the verb used to say what happens to the subject
- Gender: a term used in three ways:
1. a biological distncton between male and female, also called natural gender;
2. a distncton between classes of nouns as masculine, feminine, also called grammatcal
gender;
3. a distncton between the social roles of men and women, also called social gender
- Prescriptive approach: an approach to grammar that has rules for the proper use of the
language, traditonally based on Latn grammar
- Descriptive approach: an approach to grammar that is based on a descripton of the
structures actually used in a language, not what should be used
- Structural analysis: the investgaton of the distributon of grammatcal forms in a language
- Constituent analysis: a grammatcal analysis of how small consttuents go together to form
larger consttuents in sentences
