Glossary of Linguistic Terms

  AAVE: African American Vernacular English

accent: aspects of pronunciation that identify where a speaker is from, in contrast to dialect

acoustic phonetics: the study of the physical properties of speech as sound waves 

acquisition: the gradual development of ability in a first or second language by using it naturally in communicative situations

acronym: a new word formed from the initial letters of other words (e.g. NASA)

active voice: the form of the verb used to say what the subject does (e.g. He stole it)

address term: a word or phrase for the person being talked or written to

adjacency pair: in conversation, an automatic sequence of a first part from one speaker and a second part from another speaker (How are you? Fine, thanks.)

adjective (Adj): a word such as happy or strange used with a noun to provide more information

adjunct: a part of a sentence, typically an adverb or a prepositional phrase, that provides additional information about where, when or how

Glossary of Linguistic Terms

adverb (Adv): a word such as slowly or really used with a verb or adjective to provide a more information

affective factors: emotional reactions such as self-consciousness or negative feelings that may influence learning

affix: a bound morpheme such as un- or -ed added to a word (e.g. undressed)

affricate: a consonant produced by stopping and then releasing the airflow through a narrow opening (e.g. the first and last sounds in church)

African American English (AAE): a social dialect used by many African Americans in different regions of the USA

African American Vernacular English (AAVE): the casual speech style used by many African Americans as a vernacular

agent: the semantic role of the noun phrase identifying the one who performs the action of the verb in an event (The boy kicked the ball)

agrammatic speech: the type of speech without grammatical markers, often associated with Broca's aphasia

agreement: the grammatical connection between two parts of a sentence, as in the connection between a subject (Cathy) and the form of a verb (Loves chocolate)

allomorph: one of a closely related set of morphs

Glossary of Linguistic Terms

allophone: one of a closely related set of speech sounds or phones

alphabet (alphabetic writing): a way of writing in which one symbol represents one sound segment

alternate sign language: a system of hand signals used in a specific context where speech cannot be used (by people who can speak), in contrast to a primary sign language

alveolar ridge: the rough bony ridge immediately behind the upper front teeth

alveolar: a consonant produced with the front part of the tongue on the alveolar ridge (e.g. the first and last sounds in dot)

Ameslan (or ASL): American Sign Language

analogy: a process of forming a new word that is similar in some way to an existing word

anaphora (anaphoric expressions): use of pronouns (it) and noun phrases with the (the puppy) to refer back to something already mentioned

anomia: a language disorder in which it is difficult to find words, often associated with Wernicke's aphasia

antecedent: the first mention of someone or something later referred to via anaphora

Glossary of Linguistic Terms

anticipation: a type of slip of the tongue in which a sound is used in a word in anticipation of that sound in a following word, as in a tup of tea ("cup of tea")

antonymy: the lexical relation in which words have opposite meanings ("Shallow" is an antonym of "deep")

aphasia: an impairment of language function due to localized brain damage that leads to difficulty in understanding and/or producing language

applied linguistics: the study of a large range of practical issues involving language in general and second language learning in particular 

arbitrariness: a property of language describing the fact that there is no natural connection between a linguistic form and its meaning

arcuate fasciculus: a bundle of nerve fibers connecting Broca's area and Wernicke's area in the left hemisphere of the brain

article (Art): a word such as a, an or the used with a noun

articulatory parameters: the four key aspects of visual information used in the description of signs (shape, orientation, location and movement)

articulatory phonetics: the study of how speech sounds are produced

ASL (or Ameslan): American Sign Language 

Glossary of Linguistic Terms

aspiration: a puff of air that sometimes accompanies the pronunciation of a stop

assimilation: the process whereby a feature of one sound becomes part of another during speech production

associative meaning: the type of meaning that people might connect with the use of words (e.g. needle - "painful") that is not part of referential meaning

audiolingual method: a mid-twentieth-century approach to language teaching, with repetitive drills used to develop fluent spoken language as a set of habits

auditory phonetics: the study of the perception of speech sounds by the ear, also called “perceptual phonetics"

auxiliary verb (Aux): a verb such as will used with another verb

Aux-movement: in sentence structure, the movement of an auxiliary verb to a position before the subject, often at the front of the sentence

babbling: the use of syllable sequences (ba-ba) and combinations (ma-ga) by young children in their first year

back-channels: the use of words (yeah) and sounds (hmm) by listeners while someone else is speaking

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 babysitter)

Glossary of Linguistic Terms

background knowledge: information that is not in a text, but is used from memory by a reader to understand the text

beats: gestures involving short quick movements of the hands or fingers that go along with the rhythm of talk

bidialectal: being capable of speaking two dialects

bilabial: a consonant produced by using both lips (e.g. the first and last sounds in pub)

bilingual: a term used to describe a native speaker of two languages or a country with two official languages, in contrast to monolingual

bilingualism: the state of having two languages

blending: the process of combining the beginning of one word and the end of another word to form a new word (eg. brunch from breakfast and lunch)

borrowing: the process of taking words from other languages

bound morpheme: a morpheme such as un- or -ed that cannot stand alone and must be attached to another form (e.g. undressed)

bow-wow theory: the idea that early human speech developed from imitations of natural sounds in the environment

Glossary of Linguistic Terms

broadening: a semantic change in which a word is used with a more general meaning (e.g. foda (animal fodder) - food (any kind)), in contrast to narrowing

Broca's aphasia: a language disorder in which speech production is typically reduced, distorted, slow and missing grammatical markers

Broca's area: a part of the brain in the left hemisphere involved in speech production

calque: a type of borrowing in which each element of a word is translated into the borrowing language (e.g. gratte-ciel "scrape sky" for skyscraper)

caregiver speech: speech addressed to young children by the adults or older children who are looking after them

cataphora: similar to anaphora, but reversing the antecedent-anaphora relationship, often beginning with a pronoun and a descriptive noun phrase later

category: a group with certain features in common

characters: forms used in Chinese writing

classifiers: grammatical markers that indicate the type or "class" of a noun

clipping: the process of reducing a word of more than one syllable to a shorter form (e.g. ad from advertisement)

Glossary of Linguistic Terms

syllable: a syllable that ends with a consonant

coarticulation: the process of making one sound virtually at the same time as the next sound

coda: the part of a syllable after the vowel

cognates: words in different languages that have a similar form and meaning (e.g. English friend and German Freund)

cognitive category: a category used in the organization of how we think

coherence: the connections that readers and listeners create in their minds to arrive at a meaningful interpretation of texts 

cohesion: the ties and connections between words that exist within texts

cohesive ties: the individual connections

between words and phrases in a text

co-hyponyms: words in hyponymy that share the same superordinate ("daffodil" and "Tose" are co-hyponyms of "flower")

coinage: the invention of new words (e.g. xerox)

Glossary of Linguistic Terms

collocation: a relationship between words that frequently occur together (e.g. salt and pepper)

communication strategy: a way of overcoming a gap between communicative intent and a limited ability to express that intent, as part of strategic competence

communicative approaches: approaches to language teaching that are based on learning through using language rather than learning about language

communicative competence: the general ability to use language accurately, appropriately and flexibly

communicative signals: behavior used intentionally to provide information

comparative reconstruction: the creation of the original form of an ancestor language on the basis of comparable forms in languages that are descendants

complementary distribution: in phonology, two different pronunciations of a phoneme always used in different places in words

complementizer (C): word such as that introducing a complement phrase

complement phrase (CP): a structure such as - that Mary helped George used to complete a construction beginning with a structure on such as Cathy knew

completion point: in conversation, the end of a turn, usually marked by a pause at the end of a phrase or sentence

Glossary of Linguistic Terms

compounding: the process of combining two (or more) words to form a new word (e.g. waterbed) who

conduction aphasia: a language disorder associated with damage to the arcuate fasciculus in which repeating words or phrases is difficult

conjunction: a word such as and or because used to make connections between words, phrases and sentences

consonant: a speech sound produced by restricting the airflow in some way

consonantal alphabet: a way of writing in which each symbol represents a consonant sound

consonant cluster: two or more consonants in sequence

constituent analysis: a grammatical analysis of how small constituents (or components) go together to form larger constituents in sentences

context: either the physical context or the linguistic context (co-text) in which words are used

convergence: adopting a speech style that attempts to reduce social distance by using forms that are similar to those used by the person being talked to, as a type of speech accommodation, in contrast to divergence

conversation analysis: the study of turn-taking in conversation

Glossary of Linguistic Terms

conversion: the process of changing the function of a word, such as a noun to a verb, as a way of forming new words, also known as "category change" or "functional shift" (e.g. vacation in They're vacationing in Florida)

cooing: the earliest use of speech-like sounds by an infant in the first few months

Co-operative Principle: an underlying assumption of conversation that you will "make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged

corpus linguistics: the study of language in use by analyzing the occurrence and frequency of forms in a large collection of texts typically stored in a computer

co-text: the set of other words used in the same phrase or sentence, also called the linguistic context

countable: type of noun that can be used in English with a/an and the plural (e.g a cup, two cups), in contrast to uncountable.


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