null-subject language

null-subject language (plural null-subject languages)

A pro-drop language that may frequently leave out subject pronouns that are implied by verbal conjugations, such as Persian, Hebrew, and many Slavic and Romance languages.


pro-drop language

en-noun

pro-drop language (plural pro-drop languages)

A language that leaves out certain pronouns in situations usually specific to the language or language family, such as Spanish and Persian which frequently drop subject-form pronouns.


free morpheme

Book is a free morpheme, but the -s on books is not, because -s carries no meaning until joined to a free morpheme.

(linguistic morphology) A morpheme that can carry meaning on its own, and does not require a prefix, suffix, or infix to give it meaning.


cognation

cognation (countable and uncountable, plural cognations)

/kɒɡˈneɪʃən/

/kəɡˈneɪʃən/

From Middle English cognacion, cognacioun, from Latin cognātiō; equivalent to cognate + -ion.

[…] these stones, I say, gratifie our sight, as having a nearer cognation with the Soul of Man, that is Rational and Intellectual, and therefore is well pleased when it meets with any outward Object that fits and agrees with those congenite Ideas her own nature is furnished with.

1662, Henry More, An Antidote Against Atheism, Book II, A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings of Dr. Henry More, p. 54

Cowan (1957a, 1957b) has established the following CVC cognation percentages using for his 'Tami Group' only the languages classed by the present writer as constituting the Upper Tami Families.

1971, Stephen A. Wurm, “The Papuan Linguistic Situation”, in J. D. Bowen, editor, Linguistics in Oceania (Current Trends In Linguistics; 5), Mouton, →LCCN, page 603:

This being the case, proof of cognation remains elusive even in the case of conspicuous lexical lookalikes.

2014 October 18, Ante Aikio, “The Uralic-Yukaghir lexical correspondences: genetic inheritance, language contact or chance resemblance?”, in Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungen, volume 14, →DOI, page 41:

(now chiefly linguistics) A cognate relationship.


isolect

Coined by Alfred Hudson in his published work on the languages of Borneo: iso- + -lect.

Dohoi is distinctive among all the Barito isolects[…].

1967, Alfred B. Hudson, The Barito Isolects of Borneo: a Classification Based on Comparative Reconstruction and Lexicostatistics, page 53:

At the same time, the ordering of isolects that is finally chosen must give the right results for (virtually) all the environments.

2003, Ralph W. Fasold, The Sociolinguistics Of Language, page 200:

2008, Keith Brown, Sarah Ogilvie, Malay, entry in Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World, page 677,
While Middle Malay, Minangkabau, and Kerinci have inland and west coast variants as their origin, Malay itself developed from isolects spoken on the east coast.

(linguistics) A language or dialect; coined as a neutral term between ‘language’ and ‘dialect.’


palato-

palatoplegia, palatodental

(anatomy, phonetics) Of or pertaining to the palate.


declensional

/dɪˈklɛnʃənəɫ/

M. Arnold
declensional and syntactical forms


familiarizer

(linguistics) A term that conveys familiarity.


ignorative

Introduced by linguist Anna Wierzbicka (born 1938). See ignorant, -ative.

(linguistics) Applied to certain linguistic constructs that express indefiniteness or indicate that something is unknown.


inelative

The Lezgi language has an inelative case.

(grammar) Expressing the notion "from inside" or "out of".


subessive

From Latin subesse (“to be under or below”).

Northeast Caucasian languages like Tsez and Bezhta have a subessive case.

(grammar) Indicating position under or below something.


evitative

From Latin ēvītāre (“to avoid”), from ē- (“out”) + vītāre (“to shun”).

The non-past non-evitative potential corresponds both to the English indicative future and to all imperatives (including jussive and hortatory imperatives); the evitative is used to mark future events that are feared or to be avoided , and corresponds to English "lest..." constructions, except that it is not limited to subordinate clauses.

1986, Language, Linguistic Society of America:

(grammar) grammatically expressing the notion that something is avoided or feared: a grammatical mood found in some Australian Aboriginal languages.


postessive

Northeast Caucasian languages like Lezgian and Agul have a postessive case.

(grammar) Indicating position behind something.


T-unit

(linguistics) The shortest grammatically allowable sentence into which a piece of writing can be split.


antessive

An antessive case is found in some Dravidian languages.

(grammar) Indicating the spatial relation of preceding or being before something.


Omotic

en-adj

Omotic (comparative more Omotic, superlative most Omotic)

more Omotic (comparative)
most Omotic (superlative)

Named after the Omo River in Ethiopia, + -ic. The river's name could ultimately be from Ganza wá-ma, ó-má (“river”).

(linguistics) Of or pertaining to a language family, often grouped into the Afroasiatic language family, spoken in southwestern Ethiopia, some of which use the Ge'ez alphabet, and which are fairly agglutinative, with complex tonal systems.


fientive

Neologism created from Latin fierī (“to happen, become”) on the pattern of words like stative, durative, iterative, causative.

This underlines again that a contrast of nominality versus verbality conveys a stative versus fientive purport.

1977, Haiim B. Rosén, Contemporary Hebrew, page 182:

(grammar, Semitic linguistics) designating a durative and dynamic action performed by the subject

The basic idea is that what previous scholarship categorised as a stative, viz. the various forms going back to a derivation with a long ē, is in fact a fientive, i.e. it designates the becoming and not the being.

2007, George Hinge, “The Proto-Indo-European essive and fientive in Greek”, in glossa.dk, archived from the original on 2023-07-29:

(grammar, Indo-European linguistics) designating entering into a state as opposed to being in a state


autosegmental

(phonology) Of or pertaining to autosegments.

autosegmental phonology
autosegmental phonology

(phonology) Of or pertaining to autosegmental phonology, a framework of phonological analysis that views phonological representations as consisting of parallel tiers of segments, rather than just one linear sequence of segments.


grammaticalization

en-noun

grammaticalization (countable and uncountable, plural grammaticalizations)

From French grammaticalisation, coined in 1912 by the French linguist Antoine Meillet, corresponding to grammatical + -ization.

(linguistics) The process of making grammatical.

(linguistics) The process of language change by which a word or morpheme is reduced to more of a grammeme than a lexeme, for example the reduction of a content word representing an object or action (a noun or verb) to a clitic.


mesostatic

(linguistics, of a noun) Having a fixed accent on the suffix


teleutostatic

From Ancient Greek τελευτή (teleutḗ, “end”) + στατικός (statikós, “made stand”).

(linguistics, of a noun) Having a fixed accent on the ending


proterokinetic

The Proto-Indo-European word for ‘thought’ was proterokinetic: nominative singular *mén-ti-s, genitive *mn̥-téy-s.

(linguistics, of a noun) Having an accent that tends to shift rightward when weakened.


amphikinetic

The Proto-Indo-European word for ‘lake’ was amphikinetic: nominative singular *léy-mon-s, genitive *li-mn-és, locative *li-mén-(i).

(linguistics, of a noun) Having an accent that tends to shift in the weak cases.


univerbation

univerbation (countable and uncountable, plural univerbations)

Probably from French univerbation, from uni- (“uni-”) + Latin verbum (“word”) + French -ation (“-ation”).

Lexicalization and grammaticization compared In Section 3, it was pointed out that there are two kinds of lexicalization which can be usefully compared with grammaticization, i.e. fossilization and univerbation. The discussion and examples in this section will be confined to the more general and widespread of these two types, i.e. univerbation (the emergence of new lexical entries from collocations), primarily in order to keep the presentation simple and straightforward.

2004, Walter Bisang, Nikolaus P. Himmelmann, Björn Wiemer, What makes Grammaticalization?: A Look from its Fringes and its Components, Walter de Gruyter, →ISBN, page 34:

Standard examples of univerbation are cupboard, brainstorming, or necklace.

2004, Walter Bisang, Nikolaus P. Himmelmann, Björn Wiemer, What makes Grammaticalization?: A Look from its Fringes and its Components, Walter de Gruyter, →ISBN:

This process is referred to as univerbation. An example from English is the word notwithstanding, which derives historically from the word not and the participle withstanding. In modern English it counts as a single word, namely, as a preposition, as in the prepositional phrase notwithstanding his request (compare the ungrammatical withstanding his request). Further examples are the conjunction because from Middle-English bi + cause 'by cause of', parallel to French par cause […]

2015, John R. Taylor, The Oxford Handbook of the Word, OUP Oxford, →ISBN, page 173:

(linguistics) The diachronic process of forming a new single word from a fixed expression of several words.

univerbizace

(linguistics) the diachronic process of forming a new single word from a fixed expression of several words

(linguistics) A new word formed by this process.


tone sandhi

The most frequent occurrence of tone sandhi in Mandarin Chinese occurs in the third tone.

(phonology) The change of tone that occurs in some tonal languages when certain tones are pronounced successively.


tonetics

(linguistics) The use or study of intonation.


cap.

demo n. (usu. cap.) a Democrat.

2004, The Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang, New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 90:

(lexicography) Abbreviation of capitalized.


coindex

en-verb

coindex (third-person singular simple present coindexes, present participle coindexing, simple past and past participle coindexed)

coindexes (present singular third-person)
coindexing (participle present)
coindexed (participle past)
coindexed (past)

In other words, if a coindexed pronoun is outside of the c-command domain of a QNP, coindexing between the two will be semantically vacuous.

2005, Daniel Büring, Binding theory, page 91:

(transitive, linguistics) To index together; to mark (words in a phrase) as referring to the same thing.


transf.

transferred sense
transferred sense#English

(lexicography) Abbreviation of transferred sense.


derival

en-noun

derival (countable and uncountable, plural derivals)

Of derive + -al. Attested from the 1870s.

As to the origin of all the forms in the above list, it clearly cannot belong to English philology to do much more than indicate the source from which we received them. Their derival into French from Latin has therefore been only slightly touched upon.

1871, John Earle, The Philology of the English Tongue, page 295:

3.4 Derival morphology
[…] However, in the Turfan dialect as well in the speech of some of the younger generation in Urumchi, -ŋza seems to function as a nominal derivative suffix, deriving nouns from some kin terms and adding a clear, haughty, arrogant hue, see the lexicon.

2005, Abdurishid Yakup, The Turfan Dialect of Uyghur, page 152:

(rare, linguistics, grammar) The derivation of a word.


upskip

Someone reading the following aloud, The normal course will have one to three hour-examinations per term and a three-hour examination at the end of each term. will feel a need to put a pause after the first three and resume on hour with an abrupt upskip and also possibly a glottal stop plus head and hand gestures , to avoid the suggestion of three-hour as a constituent at that point.

1989, Dwight Le Merton Bolinger, Intonation and Its Uses: Melody in Grammar and Discourse, page 84:

Three tests are administered, in which aspects of pitch trajectories analysed as allphonic in the phonemic system turn out to have more importance than the supposedly phonemic distinctions; the second of these tests finds that upglides and upskips in a sequence that Trager & Smith (1951) would presumably transcribe /32||/ are categorically distinguished.

1976, Dafydd Gibbon, Perspectives of Intonation Analysis, page 222:

Pitch-squeeze tone modifier (sign :) is manifested by a pitch range narrowing over the whole tone cadence; hence no pitch upskip or downskip or evenskip is noticeable.

1997, Ashok Ramchandra Kelkar, Language in a Semiotic Perspective:

(phonetics) A raise in pitch with no perceptible glide connecting the tone to the previous sound


usitative

the usitative aorist

1873, Henry Alford, The Greek Testament: With a Critically Revised Text:

(grammar) Denoting usual or customary action.


ascensive

en-adj

ascensive (comparative more ascensive, superlative most ascensive)

more ascensive (comparative)
most ascensive (superlative)

[…] it seems, however, highly probable that this is due rather to non-observance of the true ascensive force of the particle than to any real absence in the original MSS.

1887, Charles John Ellicott, St Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians: With a Critical and Grammatical Commentary:


reparandum

(linguistics) An error in speech that is subsequently corrected ("repaired") by the speaker.


a-schwa

Fact is that non-low vowels before /R/ are lowered or form falling diphthongs with an a-schwa, which apparently calls for a spreading analysis.

2003, John R. Rennison, Friedrich Neubarth, An x-bar theory of Government Phonology: Living on the Edge, 28 Papers in Honour of Johnathan Kaye, Mouton de Gruyter, →ISBN, page 128:

Similar to German, the a'''-schwa plural suffix may combine with Umlaut, and Umlaut can also be the only plural marker (i.e. "combine with zero").

a. 2008, Dorit Ravid, Wolfgang U. Dressler, Bracha Nir-Sagiv, Katharina Korecky-Kröll, Agnita Souman, Katja Rehfeldt, Sabine Laaha, Johannes Bertl, Hans Basbøll and Steven Gillis, "Core morphology in child directed speech: Crosslinguistic corpus analyses of noun plurals", in: Corpora in Language Acquisition Research: History, methods, perspectives (Trends in Language Acquisition Research 6), edited by Heike Behrens, 2008, John Benjamins, Amsterdam & Philadelphia, page 35

The vowel [ɐ], which lies between [a] and [ə] (true schwa).


ʹ

(lexicography) Alternative form of ′ (stress mark).


ambifix

(linguistics) A bound morpheme that can be used either as a prefix or suffix.


possessival

It looks as if the possessival termination had detached itself in the form of es or is

1871, John Earle, The Philology of the English Tongue:

(grammar) Of or pertaining to the possessive case.


cheshirization

/ˌt͡ʃɛʃəɹaɪˈzeɪʃən/

From Cheshire (cat) (“fictional cat which disappeared leaving only its smile, from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) by the English author Lewis Carroll (1832–1898)”) + -ization (suffix forming nouns denoting the act, process, or result of doing or making something), coined by the American linguist James Matisoff (born 1937) in a 1991 book chapter entitled “Areal and Universal Dimensions of Grammatization in Lahu”.

coinage

For example, Mandarin uses the suffix ɚ < ér 兒 'son' while Cantonese employs tone sandhi, changing the citation tone to high rising tone, the cheshirization of an earlier segmental morpheme meaning 'son'.

2006, Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, Robert M. W. Dixon, Areal Diffusion and Genetic Inheritance, →ISBN, page 344:

transphonologization

(phonology, rare) Synonym of transphonologization (“a type of sound change whereby a phonemic contrast that used to involve a certain feature evolves in such a way that the contrast is preserved, yet becomes associated with a different feature”)

Bernd Heine
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Lewis Carroll
Typological Studies in Language


versual

versual division

(archaic, especially prosody) Of or pertaining to a verse.


Iranic

(linguistics) Pertaining to the Iranic languages or their speakers.


gerundively

(grammar) In the manner of a gerund; as, or in place of, a gerund.


p. p.

Alternative forms: p.p., pp.

(grammar) Initialism of past participle.


chunker

From chunk (“divide into chunks”) + -er.

computational linguistics
computational linguistics

(computational linguistics) A software tool for dividing text into chunks.


substituendum

Borrowed from Latin substituendum; compare substituend.

For a given substituendum, there is usually only one clearcut choice for substitute.

1975, James Stanton Bare, “Methodological Considerations: The Pāṇinian Devices of Homogeneous Represenation and Āntaratamya”, in Phonetics and phonology in Pāṇini: the system of features implicit in the Aṣṭādhyāyī, page 103:

The sixth (ṣaṣthī́) sUP triplet is used to indicate that the expression after which it is introduced is the substituendum (sthāné-yogā).

1989 [c. 450 BCE], Pāṇini, translated by Sumitra M. Katre, Aṣṭādhyāyī, page 19:

In (6.16) and (6.17), the difference between substituens and substituendum is very pronounced[…]

2014 July 15, Sylvia Jaki, Phraseological Substitutions in Newspaper Headlines: “More Than Meats the Eye”, John Benjamins, →ISBN, page 188:

(linguistics) Something to be substituted or replaced.


asseverative

en-adj

asseverative (comparative more asseverative, superlative most asseverative)

more asseverative (comparative)
most asseverative (superlative)

Further, it is strongly possible that the emphatic or asseverative lamed is etymologically distinct from the preposition, though the Masoretes do not distinguish the two.

1990, Bruce K. Waltke, Michael Patrick O'Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax, page 211:

A prosthetic 'aleph was added in Hebrew […] and this gave a graphemic distinction between the negative and the asseverative, but the asseverative nevertheless eventually disappeared in Hebrew and other Canaanite dialects.

2013, William M. Schniedewind, A Social History of Hebrew:, page 152:

Delimiting the forms which belong to the asseverative paradigm can be achieved only for some of the forms based on morphological criteria alone.

2018, Eran Cohen, The Modal System of Old Babylonian:

(linguistics) Serving to emphasize the certainty or truth of a statement.


asseverative

(linguistics) A linguistic structure that serves to emphasize the certainty or truth of a statement.


ostentive

ostentive (comparative more ostentive, superlative most ostentive)

more ostentive (comparative)
most ostentive (superlative)

(linguistics) Used to indicate or draw attention to something specific.


appealer

Complex expletives in turn-final position were also used as a kind of deprecatory appealers, e.g. in God's name, for God's sake and for heaven's sake.

2014, Karin Aijmer, Bengt Altenberg, English Corpus Linguistics, page 251:

(linguistics) A speech act intended as an appeal.


heteroglossia

A superficial impression of Asia may be of disorder, whereas this condition is in fact the immediate historicity that speaks for an undertheorised heteroglossia.

2017, Francis Chia-Hui Lin, Architectural Theorisations and Phenomena in Asia, page 194:

(sociology, linguistics) The coexistence of distinct linguistic varieties, styles of discourse, or points of view within a single language, as in a literary work.

heitribhéascna

coexistence of distinct language varieties


Taglish

(Philippines, linguistics) an informal bilingual variety of the Tagalog language that incorporates English lexis


tetraptote

From Latin tetraptōtum, from Ancient Greek τετράπτωτος (tetráptōtos).

A noun which is found in one case only, is called a Monoptote; if found in two cases, a Diptote; if in three, a Triptote; if in four, a Tetraptote; and if in five, a Pentaptote.

1836, Ethan Allen Andrews, A Grammar of the Latin Language for Use of Schools and Colleges:


individualizer

(grammar) A construction that conveys the idea of an individual thing.


agrammatical

(grammar) Not grammatical; ungrammatical.


Turanian

From Turan + -ian. Use picked up in the mid 1800s, peaking in the late 1800s before dropping off in the mid 1900s.

(linguistics, racial theories, obsolete) A member of any of the Asian peoples who speak Uralic or Altaic (or Turan) languages.


dentalism

(phonetics) The formation of a sound using the teeth.


proportional analogy

en-noun

proportional analogy (plural proportional analogies)

(linguistics) formation of a new word based on morphological parallelism of three existing words, rather than direct derivation. Examples:


postverbally

The word "never" rarely occurs postverbally.


phonaesthesia

Apparently coined by British linguist John Rupert Firth. From phon- + -aesthesia.

For this latter term, phonaesthesia is doubtless at work, since kring is also ‘the sound of a small bell’.

1984, Laurence Picken, Musica Asiatica, volume 4, page 214:

In contrast, writers of bucolic dialogues, like George Meriton, for instance, and lively song-writers like Robert Anderson in Cumberland, seem drawn to expressive lexis, marked by sound patterns of reduplication, alliteration and phonaesthesia.

2010, Katie Wales, “Northern English in Writing”, in Raymond Hickey, editor, Varieties of English in Writing: The written word as linguistic evidence, page 74:

Phonaesthesia refers to the vaguer phenomenon whereby families of words with shared phonemes sometimes evoke related meanings in a not-quite-echoic manner.

2011, Prue Goodwin, The Literate Classroom, page 41:

Those in (1.15) illustrate a weaker type of iconicity, generally known as phonaesthesia: the consonant cluster ‘fl’ seems to suggest quick movement, but it is not a direct representation of movement, or speed.

2011, Jean Boase-Beier, A Critical Introduction to Translation Studies, page 11:

(linguistics) Any correspondence between the sound of a word and its meaning; examples include onomatopoeia and the use of phonesthemes.


pronominally

nouns used pronominally

(linguistics) In a pronominal manner; as a pronoun.


preterpluperfect

preterpluperfect (countable and uncountable, plural preterpluperfects)

A carpet is the soul of an apartment. [...] As regards texture the Saxony is alone admissible. Brussels is the preterpluperfect tense of fashion, and Turkey is taste in its dying agencies.

1840, E.A.Poe, The Philosophy of Furniture:


hyperbatic

en-adj

hyperbatic (comparative more hyperbatic, superlative most hyperbatic)

more hyperbatic (comparative)
most hyperbatic (superlative)

hyperbatic word order

(grammar) Of or pertaining to a hyperbaton; transposed; inverted.


misrelate

en-verb

misrelate (third-person singular simple present misrelates, present participle misrelating, simple past and past participle misrelated)

misrelates (present singular third-person)
misrelating (participle present)
misrelated (participle past)
misrelated (past)

(grammar) To form a spurious connection between two words or concepts.


asyndetically

From asyndetic + -ally. Equivalent to a- + syndetically or to asyndesis or asyndeton + -ical + -ly.

When the temporal clause precedes the main clause, the main clause can be connected asyndetically or by ወ- wa-.

2021, Joseph Tropper, Rebecca Hasselbach-Andee, Classical Ethiopic: A Grammar of Gəˁəz § 6.5.5

(grammar, rhetoric) Expressed without conjunctions or with conjunctions purposefully omitted.


deglutination

en-noun

deglutination (usually uncountable, plural deglutinations)

The original meaning of πρύτανις was 'chief magistrate' which metonymically could also be used of the ‘ruler, lord’ (e.g. Zeus). It is no doubt rightly connected with the Etruscan magistrate's name purθne, eprθni. Because of this, and because Aeolic has πρότανις, Phocian and Cretan βρυτ-, it cannot be a native word but must be a borrowing. Hittite hupurtanuri- is an official's title, known from Ugarit. Laroche has interpreted it and the words tuppalanuri-, tuppanuri- as containing the adjective uri- ‘great’, so that tuppalan-uri = ‘grand des scribes’, tuppan-uri = ‘grand des tablettes’; this would leave us with a basic *huburtan- which seems to have been taken over as οπορταν-/οπροταν- or οπυρταν-/οπρυταν-, and by deglutination of the ‘article’ gave πρότανις/πρύτανις.

1974, Oswald Szemerényi, “The origins of the Greek lexicon: Ex Oriente Lux”, in The Journal of Hellenic Studies, volume 94, →DOI, page 154:

(linguistics) A process by which a formerly significant part of a combined term is clipped.


explicature

explicature (countable and uncountable, plural explicatures)

From explicate + -ure, after implicature.

In relevance theory terms, he must construct a hypothesis about the explicit content of Ally's utterance;that is, he mustrely upon both the words she uses in this utterance and an inferencing process to construct an explicature.

2012, Jodie Clark, Language, Sex and Social Structure:

If the speaker was your flat-mate and you had a habit of borrowing her property without permission, she might be asking you if you'd 'borrowed' the book she owned (explicature) and the utterance might be taken as a demand for its return.

2013, Peter Grundy, Doing Pragmatics, page 136:

(linguistics) Something explicitly expressed in an utterance, as opposed to what is implicit.


dehortative

en-adj

dehortative (comparative more dehortative, superlative most dehortative)

more dehortative (comparative)
most dehortative (superlative)

The dehortative verb typically occurs preceding a subordinate verb, as Samoan ? aua ne ?i galo, Maori kaua e wareware 'don't forget!'.

1970, R. C.. Green, Marion Kelly, Studies in Oceanic Culture History, page 124:

The few adjectives that can be marked for dehortative or apprehensive mood are all physical property or human propensity adjectives.

2004, R. M. W. Dixon, Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, Adjective Classes: A Cross-Linguistic Typology, page 273:

For the sake of simplicity, the dehortative subject markers are treated as unanalyzed wholes;

2008, Frantisek Lichtenberk, A Grammar of Toqabaqita, page 854:

(grammar) Indicating a negative imperative or cautionary sense.


dehortative

The dehortative is essentially a negative imperative in most cases, but can be used with all persons in the sense of 'should not', 'must not' or 'let not'.

1996, Malcolm Ross, Studies in Languages of New Britain and New Ireland, page 270:

An example of a context where a dehortative may be acceptable with an adjective is with mate 'die, be dead'.

The only spontaneous instance of a dehortative recorded is the one in (20-47) below.

Mbi is also used as a dehortative instead of the negative re: ko mbi tegi ― don't cry ( for ko tegi re); ko mbi la — don't do it.

2014, Sidney Herbert Ray, A Comparative Study of the Melanesian Island Languages, page 252:

As indicated in example (10), the renown ^([sic]) young environmentalist, Greta Thunberg, uses the dehortative don't want you to for the apparent purpose of seeking to discourage the US political representatives from accepting her environmental discourse of climate change. The real function of the dehortative is, however, to strengthen the exhortative want you to, which is meant to attract the listeners' attention in order to urge them to manifestly support the scientific discourse of climate change and, thereby, take immediate action.

2020, Anna Franca Plastina, Social-Ecological Resilience to Climate Change, page 22:

(grammar) A syntactic marker, word, or phrase that indicates a dehortative sense.


linguadental

(phonetics) An utterance pronounced by the aid or use of the tongue and teeth.


linguadental

(phonetics) Formed or uttered by the use of both the tongue and teeth.


postpositionally

en-adv

postpositionally (comparative more postpositionally, superlative most postpositionally)

more postpositionally (comparative)
most postpositionally (superlative)


postpositional

(grammar) Of, pertaining to, or of the nature of a postposition.

of, pertaining to, or of the nature of a postposition


nasal consonant

en-noun

nasal consonant (plural nasal consonants)

A consonant sound produced by air moving though the nose with the mouth passage occluded.


o.s.

(chiefly grammar and lexicography) Initialism of oneself.


syllabism

syllabism (countable and uncountable, plural syllabisms)

This latent syllabism, which underlies the alphabetism of the hieroglyphic writing, indicates with sufficient clearness the origin of the Egyptian alphabet.

1995, Isaac Taylor, The Alphabet: An Account of the Origin and Development of Letters:

(linguistics) The expression of the sounds of a language by syllables, rather than by an alphabet or by signs for words.


surnominal

Blend of surname + nominal. Equivalent to sur- + nominal.


expective

en-adj

expective (comparative more expective, superlative most expective)

more expective (comparative)
most expective (superlative)

(linguistics) A verb form in some native American languages that implies expectation of an action, as opposed to the report of an action or a general statement about the type of action.


aphetize

en-verb

aphetize (third-person singular simple present aphetizes, present participle aphetizing, simple past and past participle aphetized)

aphetizes (present singular third-person)
aphetizing (participle present)
aphetized (participle past)
aphetized (past)

(transitive, linguistics) To shorten by aphesis.


sexisyllabic

If you hum or whistle the rhythm of the common English metres,— of the decasyllabic quatrain, or the octosyllabic with alternate sexisyllabic, or other rhythms, […]

1872, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Poetry and Imagination:


indiscriminative

en-adj

indiscriminative (comparative more indiscriminative, superlative most indiscriminative)

more indiscriminative (comparative)
most indiscriminative (superlative)

Indiscriminative uses of FCIs are common across languages and they have a pejorative flavor.

1998, Anastasia Giannakidou, Polarity Sensitivity as (non) Veridical Dependency, page 83:

We discuss free choice phenomena in detail in Section 6.7, but here it is important to note that the Greek D-universal, but not káthe, has the so-called indiscriminative reading (Horn 2000) that appears in English with just any.

2012, Edward Keenan, Denis Paperno, Handbook of Quantifiers in Natural Language, page 316:

It is thus possible to assume that the indiscriminative interpretation and the evaluative interpretation (Eval) are related.

2021, Determiners and Quantifiers: Functions, Variation, and Change, page 255:

(grammar) Specifying any one from among several equivalent possibilities.


Whorfian

Whorfian (comparative more Whorfian, superlative most Whorfian)

more Whorfian (comparative)
most Whorfian (superlative)

(cognitive linguistics) Relating to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which proposes a form of linguistic relativity, i.e. that the structure of a language affects the ways in which its speakers conceptualize their world.


consonant gradation

en-noun

consonant gradation (countable and uncountable, plural consonant gradations)

(phonology) A type of apophony or mutation of consonants found in Finnic and Sami languages.

輔音層次變化

type of apophony found in Finnic and Sami languages


ambulative

ambulative suffix

(linguistics) Indicating that the subject is walking.


compellative

(grammar) The name by which a person is addressed; an appellative.


killer language

killer language (plural killer languages)

The phrase was first used by Anne Pakir in 1991 in reference to English.

It is only when the state adopts a trade language as official and, in a fit of linguistic nationalism, foists it upon its citizens, that trade languages become "killer languages."

2012, Danny Hieber, Mises Daily, Why Do Languages Die?:

(linguistics) A dominant and prestigious language which gradually causes extinction of other, especially minor languages.


appellatively

Hercules is sometimes used appellatively, that is, as a common name, to signify a strong man.

(grammar) After the manner of appellative nouns; so as to express whole classes or species.


consummative

en-adj

consummative (comparative more consummative, superlative most consummative)

more consummative (comparative)
most consummative (superlative)

(grammar) a verb aspect that indicates the completion of an action.; perfect.


metagraphy

en-noun

metagraphy (countable and uncountable, plural metagraphies)

Pilico and Aztec's presence in Spanish ritual, through metagraphy, novelistic speech, and heteroglossia, marks their presence in a dialogue.

1987, Alfred Arteaga, Language, Discourse, Sign: Reading Dialogisms in the Texts of Shakespeare and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz:

Metagraphy: symbols understood even though they have no conventional counterpart in speech. For example, footprints to illustrate walking or sawing wood for snoring.

2002, Katherine Koppenhaver, Attorney's Guide to Document Examination, page 253:

Also frequent is the use of a 'key letter' which occurs in both the mathal and mamthūl (metagraphy).

2014, Farhad Daftary, editor, The Study of Shi‘i Islam: History, Theology and Law:

(linguistics, uncountable) Symbolism that has no counterpart in speech.


analogist

en-adj

analogist (comparative more analogist, superlative most analogist)

more analogist (comparative)
most analogist (superlative)

(linguistics) Pertaining to analogism, as opposed to anomalism.


pluriliteral

pluriliteral (comparative more pluriliteral, superlative most pluriliteral)

more pluriliteral (comparative)
most pluriliteral (superlative)

pluriliteral Hebrew words

(archaic, linguistics) Consisting of more than three letters.


pluriliteral

(archaic, linguistics) A word of more than three letters.


antilanguage

en-noun

antilanguage (countable and uncountable, plural antilanguages)

(linguistics) A language used by a social group to prevent outsiders from understanding what is being said.

antilíngua

a language used by a social group to prevent outsiders from understanding what is being said


hamzated

Conjugating hamzated verbs is a little harder than conjugating sound verbs, but much easier than weak ones.

(Arabic linguistics, of a verb or root) Having a hamza (ء (ʔ)) as one of its radicals, which may be realised as ء (ʔ) (stand-alone hamza), أ (ʔ), آ (ʔā), إ (ʔ), ؤ (ʔ) or ئ (ʔ) in writing, depending on the surrounding vowels and consonants. The exact orthography is determined by the rules of the seat of hamza.

مَهْمُوز

(of Arabic roots) containing a hamza as one of the root letters


monoseme

The foot pattern for the baby caprine song is: diseme/monoseme/diseme/diseme.

2001, John William Johnson, “Computer Technology and the Study of Music and Prosody: The Case of Somali Oral Performance”, in Russell H. Kaschula, editor, African Oral Literature: Functions in Contemporary Contexts, →ISBN, page 7:

In a given poem, a monoseme contains a short vowel of one mora, and a diseme contains two moras.

2008, John William Johnson, “Music and Poetry in Somalia”, in edited by Douglas Puchowski, The Concise Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, volume 1, →ISBN, page 58:

But its primary meaning must be rhythmic, since it is not used to group notes longer than a monoseme […]

2011, Charles H. Cosgrove, An Ancient Christian Hymn with Musical Notation. Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1786: Text and Commentary, →ISBN, page 116:

Moreover, a word that is a monoseme in general language can be used equivocally in a special language.

1982, FID/CR Report Series, number 20, International Federation for Documentation, Committee on Classification Research, page 3:

As a dictionary search makes clear, preciously few ordinary words are monosemes, but they do exist: hippopotamus may be an example.

1993, Fred Riggs, “Social Science Terminology: Basic Problems and proposed Solutions”, in Helmi B. Sonneveld, Kurt L. Loening, editors, Terminology: Applications in Interdisciplinary Communication, →ISBN, page 207:

The simplest kind of word is a monoseme […] So many words develop additional meanings over time that it’s quite difficult to think of examples, but three possibilities are telephone, word-processor, giraffe – all fairly recent additions to the English vocabulary.

2015, Christian Kay, Kathryn Allan, English Historical Semantics, →ISBN, page 41:

(semantics) A monosemous term; a term with one meaning.

A monoseme in the semantic respect is less than a word but in the syntactical configuration — more.

1972, Linguistics: An International Review, number 77, page 71:

Our observations made it clear that the new meanings, which emerged in the inner forms of the lexical units, had taken root under direct “pressure” of the monosemes of the confronted and identified counterpart in the source-language.

1977, Proceedings of the Twelfth International Congress of Linguists, page 229:

Thus, we suggest that in semantic structures of standard words there emerge nonstandard monosemes which are stylistically marked or socially determined and dependent on contexts and extra-linguistic situations.

1980, Vladimir A. Khomiakov, “Two typological features of nonstandard English and Russian vocabularies”, in New Zealand Slavonic Journal, number 2, →JSTOR, page 62:

In many modern studies the underlying meaning of a preposition such as over is seen as a group of related meanings, a sort of molecule. Others see it as a single meaning, a monoseme, or ideal meaning, Jakobson’s Gesamtbedeutung […]

2006, John Hewson, Vit Bubenik, From Case to Adposition: The development of configurational syntax in Indo-European languages, →ISBN, page ix:

(semantics) An underlying meaning of a word, more general than a sememe.


Grimm's law

Named for Jacob Grimm (1785–1863), German author, linguist and folklorist.

Indo-European studies
Indo-European studies

(Indo-European studies) A sound change that affected the Proto-Indo-European stop consonants in the development of Proto-Germanic, causing devoicing or change into a fricative.

eerste Germaanse klankverschuiving

(Indo-European studies) The description of this sound change (as originally formulated by Jacob Grimm), which establishes a set of regular correspondences between early Germanic stops and fricatives, and the consonants of Proto-Indo-European and most other Indo-European languages.


architranseme

/ˌɑːkɪˈtɹænziːm/

/ˌɑːkɪˈtɹɑːnziːm/

/ˌɑːɹkɪˈtɹænziːm/

(translation studies) A theoretical common denominator used in the comparison of a source text and its target text.

元譯素

theoretical common denominator used in the comparison of source text and translation


devocalize

en-verb

devocalize (third-person singular simple present devocalizes, present participle devocalizing, simple past and past participle devocalized)

devocalizes (present singular third-person)
devocalizing (participle present)
devocalized (participle past)
devocalized (past)

If we take a high vowel […] and devocalise it, we obtain a hiss […]

1877, Henry Sweet, A Handbook of Phonetics:

(transitive, phonetics) To make toneless; to deprive of vowel quality.


gravo-acute accent

en-noun

gravo-acute accent (plural not attested)

/ˌɡɹɑːvəʊəˈkjuːt ˈæksənt/

Mr. Walker does triumphantly claim the discovery of the inverted circumflex accent, or the downward and upward continued movement. Yet, if it is correctly inferred from the dates of publication, and from Mr. Walker’s rather derisive allusion to Mr. Steele’s essay, that the latter author preceded him, he might have found, in Mr. Steele’s gravo-acute accent, proof of the real existence of his newly found function of the voice.

1827, James Rush, The Philosophy of the Human Voice, pages ix–x:

( ˘ ) Gravo-acute accent, or gravo-acute circumflex.

1841, Andrew Comstock, “Explanation of the characters used in the exercises in reading and declamation”, in A System of Elocution, page 200:

(phonology and typography, obsolete, rare) A dipping tone, or the diacritic that denotes it, similar in form to the breve (˘) and the háček (ˇ).


inverted circumflex

inverted circumflex (plural inverted circumflexes)

From its earliest attested use as an idiomatic phrase in 1810, inverted circumflex was first used to denote a dipping tone — an inversion of the peaking tone denoted by ⟨῀⟩, the Ancient Greek περισπωμένη (perispōménē), commonly translated as “circumflex” — thence the name was applied to diacritics which marked such a dipping tone and, by extension, other tones to which it was suited; finally, due to such a diacritic’s resemblance to the háček, the name came to be applied to it as well.

The inflection, which begins upward and ends downward on the same syllable, called the circumflexed slide, is exemplified by the proper utterance of the word they in the succeeding instance:
Not he, but they are in fault.
And the inflection, which is just the reverse of this, namely, which begins downward and ends upward, called the inverted circumflex, may be instanced by the same word in Italic, as follows:
They tell us to be moderate; — but they, they are to wallow in profusion.

1810, Benjamin Humphrey Smart, A Practical Grammar of English Pronunciation, page 335:

Mr. Walker does triumphantly claim the discovery of the inverted circumflex accent, or the downward and upward continued movement.
[…]
Greek and Roman writers tell us, indefinitely, of the acute, grave, and circumflex movements; and these, with the newly described inverted circumflex, have, at a recent date, first been formally regarded, in the art of speaking the English language.

1827, James Rush, The Philosophy of the Human Voice, pages ix and x

(phonology, now disused) A dipping tone.


subgrammar

The 'original' subgrammars can be seen as a concatenation' or composition of some of these parts with the requirement that the export category of a preceding subgrammar in the concatenation must be the head category of a subsequent subgrammar.

2013, M.T. Rosetta, Compositional Translation, page 263:

A grammar that makes up part of a larger grammar; a subdivision of a grammar.


pentaptote

From Latin pentaptōtum, from Ancient Greek πεντάπτωτος (pentáptōtos).

(grammar, rare, obsolete) A noun having five cases.


pentapody

From penta- + -pody, from Ancient Greek πέντε (pénte, “five”) and πούς, ποδός (poús, podós, “foot”).

(poetry) A measure or series consisting of five feet.


phonotypist

(historical, phonetics) An expert in phonotypy.


syllaba anceps

syllaba anceps (plural syllabae ancipites)

sĭʹləbə ănʹsĕps

Latin: syllaba (“syllable”) + anceps (“double-headed, uncertain”)

Syllabae ancipites at the ends of lines are […]

1908, Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt [eds.], The Oxyrhynchus Papyri (Egypt Exploration Fund), volume 5, issues 840–844, page 17

The name of L constitutes one syllable, but its position at the end of the (dactylic-hexameter) line makes it a syllaba anceps, either long or short, and any one of three interpretations seems possible: el (with the preceding word, geminat, having a long final syllable, the A retaining its original length, as we find in even later poets), or le (with Strzelecki, the E being long or short), or ll (with Marx), i.e., sonant/syllabic l (as others put it).

ante''' 1971, Arthur E. Gordon, The Letter Names of the Latin Alphabet (1973, University of California Press; volume 9 of University of California Publications: Classical Studies), part VI: “Conclusions”, § 1: ‘The Ancient Evidence’, page 51

(prosody) A syllable of unfixed or undecided weight.


constructio ad sensum

constructio ad sensum (plural constructiones ad sensum)

From modern Latin cōnstrūctiō (“[grammatical] construction”) + ad (“toward, [according] to”) + sēnsum (accusative singular of sēnsus, abstractly “sense”, “notion”, “signification”): "grammatical construction according to [the] sense".

uder

St. John ſpeaks of her children, as if they were all of them ſons, and ſays nothing of daughters. For, though he uſes both ver. 1. and ver. 4. the neuter τεκνα, which when uſed by itſelf may include daughters as well as ſons, yet, ſince he adds in the former inſtance ȣ῾ς εγω αγαπω, and in the latter inſtance ϖεριπατȣντας εν αληθειᾳ, the maſculine relative and participle reſtrict the ſenſe to ſons aloneʰ.

1802, John David Michaelis (author) and Herbert Marsh (translator), Introduction to the New Teſtament, second edition (London: printed by Luke Hansard, for E. and C. Rivington, № 62, St. Paul’s Church-Yard), volume 4, chapter XXXII: “Of the two laſt Epiſtles of St. John”, § III: ‘Whether the ſecond Epiſtle was ſent to a particular perſon, or to a whole church’, page 450

ʰ St. John here uſes, what is called conſtructio ad ſenſum.

Peculiarities in the order of words, occasional omissions of a word or words, constructiones ad sensum, carelessnesses, or roughness of style, and even positively bad writing, are faithfully reproduced.

1888, Hermathena (University of Dublin), issue 6, page 332

The violation of the rules of agreement is due chiefly to one of two causes; either the natural relation is preferred to the artificial (cōnstrūctiō ad sēnsum, per synesin, according to the sense), or the nearer is preferred to the more remote.

1895, Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve (revised with Gonzalez B. Lodge), Latin Grammar (third edition, 2003 reprint; →ISBN, 0865163537), part 1: “Etymology”, § 8: ‘Inflection of the Verb’, page 148

(grammar) A grammatical construction in which a word’s inflexion is determined by the semantics of the word or words with which it associates, in contravention of what is required by grammar.


contour tone

(phonetics) A tone whose pitch changes during the syllable.


Mistralian

en-adj

Mistralian (comparative more Mistralian, superlative most Mistralian)

more Mistralian (comparative)
most Mistralian (superlative)

After Frédéric Mistral; likely calqued from French mistralien or from Mistral + -ian. First used by Joseph Roumanille in 1853.

(linguistics) Of or relating to the Mistralian norm

mistralenc

of or relating to the Mistralian norm or Frédéric Mistral


orthotone

From Ancient Greek ὀρθότονος (orthótonos, “with unmodified accent”). By surface analysis, ortho- + tone.

der

(grammar) Retaining the accent; not enclitic; said of certain indefinite pronouns and adverbs when used interrogatively, which are enclitic in other situations.


bimembral

From Latin bis (“twice”) + membrum (“member”).

This will be more easily apprehended, if we consider that all combination is bimembral; i. e. consists of two members, one of which is subordinated to the other by the intonation, and thus becomes compacted with it […]

1858, Josiah Willard Gibbs, A Latin Analyst on Modern Philological Principles:


indeclinably

c. In the older language, the numerals for 5 and upward are sometimes used in the nom.-acc. form (or as if indeclinably) with other cases also: thus, páñca kṛṣṭíṣu among the five races; saptá rṣīṇām of seven bards; sahásram ṛ́ṣibhiḥ with a thousand bards; çatám pūrbhíḥ with a hundred strongholds. Sporadic instances of a like kind are also met with later.

1889, William Dwight Whitney, Sanskrit Grammar:

(grammar) Without declination (variation of termination in a word).


rebracketing

en-noun

rebracketing (countable and uncountable, plural rebracketings)

(linguistics) The process by which a word originally derived from one source is broken down or bracketed into a different set of factors.


maturative

From Middle English maturatif, from Middle French maturatif, from Medieval Latin mātūrātīvus. By surface analysis, mature + -ative or maturate + -ive.

What is characteristic of the maturatives as a kind of special case of the conformatives is the factor of growth, of alteration in time, but also something more, as we shall presently see.

1971, Foundations of Language: Supplementary series, page 367:

(linguistics, rare) A verb that implies the process of growth, progress or maturation


imperfectively

(grammar) In an imperfective manner or context.


holokinetic

(linguistics, of a polysyllabic stem) Amphikinetic.


Anglic

This sense was rare and restricted to discourse about Scots until the 2000s. Probably influenced by Anglican, or directly derived from Latin Anglicus (“English”).

(linguistics) Pertaining to the family of languages descended from Old English, including English, Scots, and the extinct Yola and Fingallian languages.


amphibolous

en-adj

amphibolous (comparative more amphibolous, superlative most amphibolous)

more amphibolous (comparative)
most amphibolous (superlative)

From Latin amphibolus, Ancient Greek ἀμφίβολος (amphíbolos, “thrown about, doubtful”). See amphibole.

uder

Never was there such an amphibolous quarrel — both parties declaring themselves for the king.

1640, I. H. [i.e., James Howell], ΔΕΝΔΡΟΛΟΓΊΑ [DENDROLOGIA]. Dodona’s Grove, or, The Vocall Forrest, London: […] T[homas] B[adger] for H. Mosley [i.e., Humphrey Moseley] […], →OCLC:

(obsolete outside philosophy, linguistics) Ambiguous; doubtful or unclear.


diminutivize

en-verb

diminutivize (third-person singular simple present diminutivizes, present participle diminutivizing, simple past and past participle diminutivized)

diminutivizes (present singular third-person)
diminutivizing (participle present)
diminutivized (participle past)
diminutivized (past)

(linguistics, transitive) to turn into a diminutive


diminutivization

(linguistics) the process of turning a word into its diminutive form

(linguistics) an instance of such a process


metaplast

(grammar) A word having more than one form of the root.


redditive

(grammar) Answering to an interrogative or inquiry; conveying a reply.


redditive

AN Interrogative and its Redditive (i. e. the Word which answers it) shall be of the same Case and Tense[.]

Shorter Examples; Or, Second Book of English Examples, to be Rendered Into Latin – Adapted to the Use of the Lower Class, Eton, printed by E. Williams, 1826, p.30

(grammar) A word which answers an interrogative.


portentive

en-adj

portentive (comparative more portentive, superlative most portentive)

more portentive (comparative)
most portentive (superlative)

The potential portentive forms, consisting of the potential stem plus the post-clitic -noko, occur with a further post-cliticised contracted form of ylvk 'having said', the perfect participle of 'say', in a clause of negative purpose.

1981, H. Myron Bromley, A Grammar of Lower Grand Valley Dani, page 246:

(grammar) Indicating that something is likely to happen in the future.


inelative case

(grammar) The grammatical case that is inelative.


postessive case

(grammar) The grammatical case that is postessive.


antessive case

(grammar) The grammatical case that indicates the spatial relation of preceding or being before something.


subessive case

(grammar) The grammatical case that is subessive.


evitative case

(grammar) The grammatical case that is evitative.


associative case

en-noun

associative case (countable and uncountable, plural associative cases)

(grammar) The grammatical case that is associative.


lative case

(grammar) A case of verbs, found in the Uralic and Northern Caucasian languages, used to indicate motion to a location; in the Northern Caucasian languages, the lative also takes up functions of the dative case


distributive case

distributive case (plural distributive cases)

(grammar) The grammatical case that is distributive, indicating “per” or “each”.


glossology

glossology (countable and uncountable, plural glossologies)

/ɡlɔˈsɑləd͡ʒi/

From Ancient Greek γλῶσσα (glôssa, “tongue; language”) + -ology.

der

Erudition has been divided by a German professor into glossology, bibliology and historiology; or a knowledge of languages, a knowlege^([sic – meaning knowledge]) of languages, a knowlege of books, and a knowlege of facts.

1813 March, “Art. VII. The Lives of John Selden, Esq. and Archbishop Usher, with Notes of the Principal English Men of Letters with whom They were Connected. By John Aikin, M.D. 8vo. pp. 450. 10s. 6d. Boards. Mathews and Leigh. 1812.”, in The Monthly Review; or Literary Journal, Enlarged, volume LXX, London: Sold by Becket and Porter, booksellers, in Pall Mall, →OCLC, page 285:

If all nations spoke one and the same language, much of the time now spent in the study of Glossology, would be saved.

1841, Roswell Park, “I. Department: Glossology”, in Pantology: Or, A Systematic Survey of Human Knowledge; …, Philadelphia, Pa.: Hogan & Thompson, 30 North Fourth Street, →OCLC, page 42:

[O]n all these questions, both those treated of in the present volume and those bearing on the ethnology and glossology of the Himalayan tribes, he [Brian Houghton Hodgson] has almost exclusively remained master of a field of research in which he had been the first to break ground.

1874, B[rian] H[oughton] Hodgson, “Notice”, in Essays on the Languages, Literature, and Religion of Nepál and Tibet: Together with Further Papers on the Geography, Ethnology, and Commerce of those Countries. … Reprinted, with Corrections and Additions, from “Illustrations of the Literature and Religion of the Buddhists,” Serampore, 1841; and “Selections from the Records of the Government of Bengal, No. XXVII.”, Calcutta, 1857, London: Trübner & Co., 57 & 59, Ludgate Hill, →OCLC, page vi:

It may be assumed as a starting-point, that the case-affixes are remnants of nouns or perhaps pronouns, which have been cut down and worn away by use. I think it will be admitted by all philologists that any other assumption would be irreconcileable, not only with the fundamental principles of modern Aryan glossology, but with the universal laws of language.

1875, John Beames, “Declension”, in Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India: To Wit, Hindi, Panjabi, Sindhi, Gujarati, Marathi, Oṛiya and Bangali, volumes II (The Noun and Pronoun), London: Trübner & Co., 57 & 59, Ludgate Hill, →OCLC, § 55 (Case-affixes), page 249:

If the indexed items (E3) are core terms for descriptive glossology (C4), they are underlined, and their definitions will be found in Annex V, in a record indicated by the notation preceding the index term.

1981, Fred W[arren] Riggs, Interconcept Report: A New Paradigm for Solving the Terminology Problems of the Social Sciences, Volumes 44-53 (Reports and Papers in the Social Sciences; 47), Paris: UNESCO, →OCLC, page 45:

And in the sanctified, post-exorcist intercourse which leads to conception, Margrethe appears 'obediently', speaking in initiated, divine tongues, interpreted by 'the friends': glossology.

1992, Karola Dillenburger, Violent Bereavement: Widows in Northern Ireland, Aldershot, Hampshire: Avebury, →ISBN, page 198:

A similar and more influential use of the term can be found in William Whewell's Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (1847), where phenomenology occurs in the context of the "palaetiological sciences" (i.e., sciences which deal with more ancient conditions of things), as that branch of these studies which is to be followed by aetiology and theory. Among such phenomenologies Whewell mentions particularly phenomenological uranology, phenomenological geography of plants and animals, and even a phenomenological glossology.

1994, Herbert Spiegelberg, Karl Schuhmann, “Introduction”, in The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction, 3rd rev. and enlarged edition, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, →DOI, →ISBN, page 8:

(chiefly lexicography) The definition and explanation of terms in constructing a glossary.


homoglyph

/ˈhɒməʊɡlɪf/

First attested in 1938; formed as homo- (“same”) + glyph after homograph.

The homoglyphs I (uppercase i) and l (lowercase L) confused many who typed in the URL.

The E variant of the moon sign may perhaps be regarded as a homoglyph.

1938, Sylvanus Griswold Morley, The Inscriptions of Petén, volume IV, page 43:

The lower case “L”, Upper case “i”, and Numeral “One” are homoglyphs.

All the other consonant phonemes are transcribed into the homoglyphs of their IPA representations.

2007, Shinji Ido, Bukharan Tajik, page page 4:

The pair shown is the letter f and the guilder currency sign [ƒ]. Homoglyphs can also occur within the same writing system.

2009, Theodore Rosendorf, The Typographic Desk Reference, page 50:

(linguistics, computing) A character identical or nearly identical in appearance to another, but which differs in the meaning it represents; thus, in character encoding terms, a character with an identical or near-identical glyph, or the glyph itself.

homoglyphe

a character identical or nearly identical in appearance to another, but which differs in the meaning it represents


allocutive

(grammar) Relating to the marking of addressees in the grammar of a sentence whether or not they are actants in it.


polysynthesis

en-noun

polysynthesis (countable and uncountable, plural polysyntheses)

(linguistics) The formation of a word by the combination of several simple words; agglutination.


consonantism

consonantism (countable and uncountable, plural consonantisms)

(linguistics, phonology) The consonant system of a language or dialect.

(linguistics, phonology) The consonants, sequence of consonants, or the quality peculiar to the consonants of a given word or group of words.


similative

(grammar) A grammatical case expressing similarity; the similative case.


paenultima law

First attested in 1892; Latin paenultima (“penult”) + English law.

He calls attention to the large number of words found over and over again with a metrical accent which does not follow the ‘paenultima law’, but falls on the last syllable…or even on the fourth syllable from the end.

1892, The Journal of Philology, XX, page 138:

(linguistics and orthoëpy, sometimes “the paenultima law of accentuation”) The rule of Classical Latin pronunciation which states that a word receives antepenultimate stress if its penult is a short or metrically light syllable, but receives penultimate stress if its penult is a long or metrically heavy syllable.

penultima law

forms reducing the ae digraph of paene to e


zero ending

The Polish word for "cat" is "kot". Its genitive form is "kota", which has the ending "–a". Because the nominative form consists of the stem without an ending, it can be said that "kot" has the zero ending. In a table listing the endings one could hence write: "Nominative: –∅, Genitive: –a".

(grammar) The absence of an ending after a noun‐stem in a language in which endings are normally applied; often written as ∅


double-dotted

(linguistics, of a letter) Having a diaeresis/umlaut/rock dots


semivocal

semivocal sound

(phonetics) Of or relating to a semivowel.


ult

Main stress falls on the antepenult, with secondary stress falling on the ult.

2013, Elizabeth C[ook] Zsiga, The Sounds of Language, Wiley, →ISBN, page 368:

(phonology) The final (ultimate) syllable of a word.


perispomenon

/ˌpɛɹɪˈspəʊmənɒn/

From Ancient Greek περισπώμενον (perispṓmenon).

bor

περισπώμενον

(linguistics, of a word) Having a circumflex accent on the last syllable.

perispomenon

with a circumflex accent on the last syllable


perispomenon

/ˌpɛɹɪˈspəʊmənɒn/

περισπώμενον

All contract forms of these adjectives are perispomena; except ώ for έω and όω in the dual

1893, William Watson Goodwin, A Greek Grammar:

(linguistics) A word with a circumflex accent on the last syllable.


Canadian raising

en-noun

Canadian raising (countable and uncountable, plural Canadian raisings)

(phonology, dialectology) The phenomenon in some dialects of English, especially Canadian English, in which /aɪ/ is realized as [ʌɪ] and/or /aʊ/ is realized as [ʌʊ] or [ɛʊ] before underlying unvoiced consonants.

(phonology, dialectology) A similar but more restricted phenomenon, found in most dialects of American English, that applies only to /aɪ/, which is realized as [ʌɪ] in certain contexts, especially before underlying unvoiced consonants but with significant speaker-to-speaker variation.


asonant

The first d in "Wednesday" and the s in "aisle" are asonant.

Thus reponens is an asonant rhyme to deprœlian in the following stanza.

1829, Rhyme the Leading Principle of Latin Versification, page 15:


presential

en-adj

presential (comparative more presential, superlative most presential)

more presential (comparative)
most presential (superlative)

/pɹɪˈzɛnʃəl/

(grammar, archaic) Pertaining to the present tense.


monitive

monitive (comparative more monitive, superlative most monitive)

more monitive (comparative)
most monitive (superlative)

Maidu, too has a distinct combination of mood and aspect suffixes for a category labeled the 'monitive optative'.

1985, Timothy Shopen, Language Typology and Syntactic Description, page 164:

Maidu, a language of northern California, shows a comparable set of inflectional mood suffixes: an indicative -'æ, an interrogative -ḱade, and intentive (Ø), a monitive -y?y for warnings, a hortative -á, a present imperative -pi, and an absent imperative -padá for actions to be carried out at a later time, in the absence of the speaker.

2001, Marianne Mithun, The Languages of Native North America, page 171:

The temporal adverb gero 'afterward' (section 20.1.2.1) can occur as a monitive particle in imperative, jussive, and optative sentences.

2022, Rudolf P.G. De Rijk, Standard Basque: A Progressive Grammar, page 581:

(linguistics) A mood implying an unpleasant or undesirable future consequence.


autosegment

(linguistics) A segment on an autosegmental tier.


vocule

Borrowed from Latin vocula, diminutive of vox, vocis (“voice”).

The emphatic vocule denotes great energy of sentiment

1827, James Rush, The Philosophy of the Human Voice:

(phonetics, archaic) A short or weak utterance; a faint or feeble sound, as when separating the lips in pronouncing p or b.


adverbial case

(grammar) a noun case in the Abkhaz, Georgian, and Udmurt languages


aphthong

From Ancient Greek ἄφθογγος (áphthongos). Compare diphthong.

The letters "gh" in "knight" are an aphthong.

(phonology, archaic) A letter or combination of letters employed in spelling a word but not pronounced; a silent letter or polygraph


provection

en-noun

provection (countable and uncountable, plural provections)

From Latin prōvectiō (“an advancement”), from prōvehō.

(linguistics) The carrying forward of a final consonant to a following word, as in "a nickname" from Middle English "an ekename".


osculant

From Latin osculans, osculantis, present participle of osculari (“to kiss”). See osculate.

(Bantu linguistics) Intermediate between multiple potentially reconstructible protoforms, but having a mismatch in semantics or morphology that cannot be explained through regular patterns of change.


Sanskritization

(linguistics) The introduction of Sanskrit vocabulary into another language or dialect.

(grammar, linguistics) The modification of a word's structure to render its appearance to that of a Sanskrit word.


passival

(grammar) An archaic progressive construction in middle voice (syntactically active but semantically passive), replaced by the passive progressive in modern English. For example, "the house is building", "the meal was eating", "the trunks were carrying down" (today "the house is being built", "the meal is being eaten").


kinemics

(linguistics) The study of gestures as body language


exclamative

(linguistics) A clause type used to make an exclamation, such as "What a mess they made!" or "How stupid I was!"

exclamative marker
exclamative marker#English

(linguistics) Short for exclamative marker.


monoptote

From Latin monoptotum, from Ancient Greek μονόπτωτος (monóptōtos).

A noun which is found in one case only, is called a Monoptote; if found in two cases, a Diptote; if in three, a Triptote; if in four, a Tetraptote; and if in five, a Pentaptote.

1836, Ethan Allen Andrews, A Grammar of the Latin Language for Use of Schools and Colleges:

What is meant by monoptote, diptote, and triptote nouns? Give examples.
A monoptote is a noun which has only one case, as natu; a diptote two, as fors, forte; a triptote three, as opis, opem, ope.

1882, Edward Henslowe Bedford, A digest of the […] questions in Latin grammar, page 18:

(grammar, obsolete) A noun which only occurs in one case.


reversive

The reversive suffix only occurs with quite a small number of verbs that all denote an action of placing an object in a certain position, which is inherently reversible[…]

2000, Maria Soukka, A descriptive grammar of Noon: a Cangin language of Senegal:

(linguistics) Designating the reversion of an action.


replacive

Replacive conjuncts indicate that what is being said is a replacement for what has been said before.

1969, Sidney Greenbaum, Studies in English adverbial usage:


infixation

infixation (usually uncountable, plural infixations)

(linguistic morphology) Word-formation involving an infix or infixes; adding an infix to a word.

(grammar) The state or quality of being infixed.


necronym

From necro- + -onym; from Ancient Greek νεκρός (nekrós, “death”) + ὄνομα (ónoma, “name”).

Some cultures have a taboo against uttering necronyms.

[…] necronym taboo (i.e., a prohibition on saying the names of people who have passed away) […]

2007, Claire Bowern, Linguistic Fieldwork: A Practical Guide, Springer, →ISBN, page 227:

ln some cultures the dead are given a new proper name, known as a "necronym," to avoid breaking the taboo. Necronyms sound to me a great deal like the euphemisms we use, such as "passed on" or "passed away," to say that someone died ...

1998, Louise Harmon, Fragments on the Deathwatch, MA: Beacon Press:

Often a recently deceased person is referred to circumlocutory by a teknonym or necronym according to their relationship with some living [person].

1999, David McKnight, People, Countries, and the Rainbow Serpent: Systems of Classification Among the Lardil of Mornington Island, Oxford University Press, USA:

Each list ends with a necronym: John for Timothy, […]

2003, The Genealogist, volumes 17-18, page 212:

A substitute name used to refer to a person who has died (instead of the name the person had in life).

[…] a Penan may be designated by three sorts of terms: a personal name, a teknonym ('father of so-and-so', 'mother of so-and-so') and, finally, what one feels like calling a necronym, which expresses the kinship relation of a deceased relative to the subject: 'father dead', 'niece dead', etc. The western Penan have no less that twenty-six distinct necronyms, corresponding to the degree of kinship, relative age of the deceased, [etc].

1966, Claude Lvi-strauss, The Savage Mind, University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 191:

An individual takes a necronym, or death-name, when some of his primary relatives die, namely a parent, a sibling, ...

1978, Victor T. King, Essays on Borneo societies:

A name or name element which indicates that someone the person was closely related to is dead.


percontative

Some [grammatical writers] call these affections of the verb moods; others call them divisions, qualities, states, species, &c.; and as to the various appellations of each mood we have the personative and impersonative, the indicative, declarative, definitive, modus finiendi, modus fatendi, the rogative, interrogative, requisitive, percontative, assertive, enunciative, vocative, precative, deprecative, responsive, concessive, permissive, promissive, adhortative, optative, dubitative, imperative, mandative, conjunctive, subjunctive, adjunctive, potential, participial, infinitive, and probably many others.

1845, Edward Smedley, Hugh James Rose, and Henry John Rose [eds.], Encyclopædia Metropolitana I: “Universal Grammar and Philology”, pages 50–51

‘Perfect Dicibles are of various sorts: Interrogative; Percontative; Adjurative; Optative; Imprecative; Execrative; Substitutive; Compellative; Hypothetical; and, lastly, Dubious.’

1849, Herman Melville, Mardi II (1922 reprint), page 285

Destined for internal consumption, these three words nevertheless provoked the reply which you see here: who doesn’t? With an interrogation point, for the reply was percontative.

1960, Raymond Queneau [aut.] (+ unknown tr.), Zazie, page 128

rhetorical questioning
rhetorical question#English

(grammar, rare) That is, expressed in, or having the character of the grammatical mood (mode) of rhetorical questioning; percontatorial.


verbnoun

A calque of the Welsh berfenw: berf → verb + enw → noun.

(Welsh grammar) A verb form which acts as a defective noun, having functions similar to the English infinitive and gerund, and the Latin supine.


proparoxytonic

(prosody) Of or relating to words whose stress falls on the antepenultimate (third to last) syllable


ĭ

(lexicography) A dictionary transcription for the KIT vowel


semiweak

semiweak verbs

(linguistics) Having only some of the characteristics of a weak verb.


causee

(linguistics) The agent of the caused event in a causative construction.


desinential

From Medieval Latin dēsinentia + -al. Compare French désinentiel.

Furthermore, b, as a desinential element, has a dynamic function.

1877, Fitzedward Hall, On English Adjectives In-able:

desinential consonant

desinential letter

desinential morpheme

desinential stress

(linguistics) consisting of desinences or grammatical endings; terminal


preteritive

a preteritive verb

(grammar, archaic) Used only or chiefly in the preterite or past tenses.


anaptotic

From Ancient Greek ἀνάπτωσις (anáptōsis, “falling back”), in reference to πτῶσις (ptôsis, “grammatical case”).

der

anaptotic languages

(linguistics, archaic) Having lost, or tending to lose, inflections by phonetic decay; uninflected


polysyntheticism

en-noun

polysyntheticism (countable and uncountable, plural polysyntheticisms)


CFG

context-free grammar
context-free grammar#English

(linguistics, computing theory) Initialism of context-free grammar.


preformative

From pre- (prefix meaning ‘before; physically in front of’) + formative, modelled after Late Latin praeformativus (originally used in relation to the grammar of Semitic languages).

prefix

(grammar, chiefly in Semitic languages) of a letter, syllable, etc.: attached to the beginning of a word as a formative element.


lect

Use of the compound element -lect as an independent noun.

These, together with (some) Romansh lects, belong to our West Rhaetian; the /ȫ/ also supported by two lects from the Ticino which by our criteria are NWIt, and by the partially umlauting lects of Lombardy which together with (some) Engadine lects belong to our East Rhaetian.

1980, Frederick B. Agard, The Genealogy of the French Language, published in Contributions to historical linguistics, →ISBN, page 222:

(linguistics, sociolinguistics) A specific form of a language or language cluster: a language or a dialect.

idiomo

linguistics, sociolinguistics: a specific form of a language or language cluster: a language or a dialect


fourgram

(linguistics) An n-gram consisting of four items from a sequence.

fjórstæða

linguistics: an n-gram consisting of four items from a sequence


n-gram

Hyland's study demonstrates how n-grams can reveal similarities and differences both between genres and between different sets of writers.

2012, Winnie Cheng, Exploring Corpus Linguistics: Language in Action, Routledge, →ISBN:

(computational linguistics) A contiguous sequence of n items (usually characters or words) from a given sequence of text or speech, used in analysis.

N-Gramm

linguistics: contiguous sequence of n items


jukujikun

Borrowed from Japanese 熟字訓 (jukujikun, literally “compound character reading”).

bor+

(linguistics) A Japanese word whose kanji spelling conveys the meaning based on the individual characters, but whose reading is not directly related to the spelling.


dis legomenon

From Ancient Greek δίς λεγόμενον (dís legómenon, “(something) said only twice”), from δίς (dís, “twice, doubly, again”) and λεγόμενον (legómenon), passive participle of λέγω (légō).

bor

δίς λεγόμενον

Beyond [violenza's] dis legomenon (two appearances) in Inferno 11, and its hapax legomenon ... in Inferno 12 and 29, the word ... seems to have exhausted its impact[.]

2017 January, Ellie Emslie Stevens, “Eschatological Inversions in Isaiah and Dante: From Malicious to Redemptive Violence”, in Annali d'Italianistica:

(linguistics) A word that occurs only twice in a given corpus.


mouillation

(phonetics) The act of uttering the sound of a mouillé letter.


persistive

en-adj

persistive (comparative more persistive, superlative most persistive)

more persistive (comparative)
most persistive (superlative)

The present paper looks at so-called persistive markers (denoting something like “still going on”) in the sub-Saharan Bantu languages, one of the major subgroups of the Niger-Congo language phylum.

2008, Jouni Filip Maho, “Comparative TAM morphology in Niger-Congo”, in Folke Josephson, Ingmar Söhrman, editors, Interdependence of Diachronic and Synchronic Analyses:

Persistive aspect is marked with a post-initial prefix shí-. Its high tone does not surface when combined with a construction that uses melodic tone 4

(grammar) Indicating a situation that was the case at one time (usually past) and continues to a later time (usually time of speaking).


amphigory

From French amphigouri, of uncertain derivation; perhaps from Ancient Greek ἀμφί (amphí) + γῦρος (gûros, “circle”) or -αγορία (-agoría, “speech”).

There is always a danger that a poet, in search after the infinitely ingenious, may lapse into amphigory, into sheer absurdity and triviality, which Cowper, in spite of his elegant lightness, does not always escape.

1919, Edmund Gosse, “The Lyrical Poetry of Thomas Hardy”, in Some Diversions of a Man of Letters, London: Heinemann, page 253:

Greenberg answered with the same sort of polite amphigory the cosmic linguist had selected. “I have long wished for the boon of experiencing in person the scholarly aura of Dr. Ftaeml, but I had never dared let the wish blossom into hope. Your servant and pupil, sir.”

1954, Robert A. Heinlein, chapter 6, in The Star Beast, New York: Ballantine, page 100:

You will notice that the selection by Hiraf is either meaningless or ambiguous when analyzed, although it has an impressive ring at first reading. Nonsense statements such as these are known as amphigory and are characteristic of much occult metaphysics. Amphigory, of course, allows readers to project their own meaning into such statements, since there is little inherent meaning to begin with

1990, Andrew Neher, chapter 7, in The Psychology of Transcendence, New York: Dover, page 284:

A nonsense verse; a rigmarole, which is meaningless despite possibly appearing to have meaning.


stemline

(linguistics) The line connecting individual letters in Ogham.


phonate

From Ancient Greek φωνή (phōnḗ, “voice, sound”) + -ate (suffix indicating action in a specified manner), modelled after phonation. φωνή is ultimately derived from Proto-Indo-European *bʰeh₂- (“to say, speak”).


pluralizer

In verbs, where it occupies suffix position 5, its occurrence as pluralizer of a third person expressed by a prefix is highly restricted; cf. 5.451. Instead, in verbs, it seems on the way to becoming a person marker (rather than a mere pluralizer) for the second person plural exclusive;

1973, Hans Cristoph Wolfart, Plains Cree, page 49:

The pluralizer is most frequently used with animate nouns, but this is not always the case, e.g. Nigerian PE 'dè nyám dḝm ' 'the yams'.

2000, John Holm, An Introduction to Pidgins and Creoles, page 215:

The evidence in chapter 15 suggests that the suffix -z is the unmarked pluralizer; yet , of our six verbs , only two take it .

2022, Rudolf P.G. De Rijk, Standard Basque: A Progressive Grammar, page 118:

(grammar) A syntactic marker that indicates something is plural; a plural marker.


phonotypy

en-noun

phonotypy (usually uncountable, plural phonotypies)

(historical, phonetics) The English Phonotypic Alphabet, a phonetic alphabet developed in the 1850s.


parallel text

A text placed alongside its translation or translations. Sometimes called a side-by-side translation.


participialize

en-verb

participialize (third-person singular simple present participializes, present participle participializing, simple past and past participle participialized)

participializes (present singular third-person)
participle participializing (present)
participialized (participle past)
participialized (past)

(grammar, transitive) To form into, or put in the form of, a participle.


compensatorily lengthen

compensatorily lengthen (third-person singular simple present compensatorily lengthens, present participle compensatorily lengthening, simple past and past participle compensatorily lengthened)

compensatorily lengthens (present singular third-person)
compensatorily lengthening (participle present)
compensatorily lengthened (participle past)
compensatorily lengthened (past)

Back-formation from compensatory lengthening.

back-form

compensatory lengthening
compensatory lengthening

(phonology, transitive) To lengthen (a vowel) upon dropping the consonant that had followed it; to cause to undergo compensatory lengthening.


compensatory lengthening

en-noun

compensatory lengthening (countable and uncountable, plural compensatory lengthenings)

/kəmˈpɛnsəˌtɔɹi ˈlɛŋ(k)θənɪŋ/

(phonology, uncountable) The lengthening of a vowel sound which occurs when a following consonant is lost, regarded as an extreme form of fusion; (countable) an instance of this.


asyndesis

From Latin asyndesis, from Ancient Greek ἀσύνδεσις (asúndesis), from ἀ- (a-, “a-, un-: without”) + σύνδεσις (súndesis, “binding, joining”), from συνδεῖν (sundeîn, “to join, to bind”) + -σῐς (-sis, “-sis: forming nouns”), from σῠν- (sun-, “together”) + δεῖν (deîn, “to bind, to tie”). Equivalent to a- + syn- + -desis or a- + syndesis.

(grammar, rhetoric) Synonym of asyndeton: lack or omission of conjunctions, especially for rhetorical effect.


momentaneous

From Latin momentaneus. Compare French momentané. Doublet of momentane.

(grammar) Of or relating to a grammatical aspect relating to an action that takes place at a specific point in time.


aptote

From Latin aptotum, from Ancient Greek ἄπτωτος (áptōtos, “without cases”).

der

(grammar, obsolete) A noun (broadly speaking) which has no distinction of cases; an indeclinable noun.


pseudogapping

(linguistics) A form of ellipsis that elides most but not all of a non-finite verb phrase, as in "He drinks milk more often than he does water".


post-creole continuum

en-noun

post-creole continuum (plural post-creole continua)

(linguistics) A situation wherein a creole language consists of a spectrum of varieties between those most and least similar to the superstrate language.


epithetic

/ˌɛpɪˈθɛtɪk/

an epithetic vowel

(linguistics) Of or relating to epithesis.


epithesis

epithesis (countable and uncountable, plural epitheses)

From Ancient Greek ἐπίθεσις (epíthesis).

Some linguists distinguish between epenthesis, addition within a word, and epithesis, addition at the end.

1972, Bruce L. Liles, Linguistics and the English Language: A Transformational Approach:

(linguistics) The addition of a letter or sound at the end of a word, without changing its meaning.


stacked modal

For quotations using this term, see Citations:stacked modal.

(rare, grammar) A double modal (or, rarely, any string of multiple modals, e.g. a triple modal).


double modal

The first instances of double modals date back to the seventeenth century.

2019, Irina S. Lebedeva, Svetlana N. Orlova, “Semantics and pragmatics of the double modal ‘might could’”, in Training, Language and Culture, volume 3, number 2, →DOI:

(grammar) A sequence of two modal verbs, such as "might could", an impossible construction in standard English, but one used in some dialects, especially Southern US English.


mirativity

A non-evidential extension of the dubitative marker is associated with mirativity, found in contexts when the speaker is stunned or perplexed by a discovery.

2014, The Grammar of Knowledge, page 212:

(grammar, of a mood) The quality of being mirative, that is, of expressing (surprise at) an unexpected revelation or new information.


rhematic

rhematic (countable and uncountable, plural rhematics)

From Ancient Greek ῥηματικός (rhēmatikós, “verbal, pertaining to verbs”), from Ancient Greek ῥηματ- (rhēmat-), ῥῆμα (rhêma, “verb (grammar), word”) + -ικός (-ikós, “-ic; suffix meaning ‘of or pertaining to, in the manner of’”).

der

Within a non-theme, transitionals cede to rhematics, the transition itself being lowest on the CD scale.

1995, Francis P. Dinneen, “Different Constants”, in General Linguistics, Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, →ISBN, page 565:

(linguistics) The provision of new information regarding the current theme.

The object of rhetoric is persuasion,—of logic, conviction,—of grammar, significancy. A fourth term is wanting, the rhematic, or logic of sentences.

1830 September 23, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Logic”, in H[enry] N[elson] C[oleridge], editor, Specimens of the Table Talk of the Late Samuel Taylor Coleridge. […], volume I, London: John Murray, […], published 1835, →OCLC, page 207:

He [Coleridge] establishes an opposition between Σύνταξις ῥημάτων or ῥηματική ("rhematic"), the art of joining words into sentences, and γραμματική ("grammar"), which in its derivation from γράμμα (a letter, written character) is the art of joining letters together, spelling. Or, cf CN IV 4771: "Grammar [is] the scheme & instrument of connecting words significantly, the Meta-grammatic <rhematic>, the Doctrine of arranging words perspicuously" […]

1984, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, edited by George Whalley, Marginalia II: Camden to Hutton (The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge; 12, part 2; Bollingen Series; 75), London: Routledge & Kegan Paul; Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, →ISBN, page 881:

(chiefly linguistics, obsolete, rare) In the work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834): the doctrine or study of arranging words into sentences clearly.


rhematic

Rhematic relations are, in a sense, 'intermediate syntactic meanings'. To avoid a proliferation of types of intermediate meanings I do not extend the concept of intermediate syntactic meaning to cover rhematic relations.

1983, Hans-Heinrich Lieb, Integrational Linguistics (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory; 17), volume I (General Outline), Amsterdam, Philadelphia, Pa.: John Benjamins Publishing Company, →ISBN, page 364:

In addition, if imitation and recycling tend to turn thematic titles into rhematic ones as I have shown for Situations, the use of sequels and continuations cannot avoid doing so. The title Le Menteur [The Liar: [Pierre] Corneille] was perfectly thematic; in La Suite du Menteur [Sequel to The Liar: Corneille], which is rhematic (this play is the sequel ...), Le Menteur itself becomes rhematic (this play is the sequel to the play entitled ...).

1997, Gérard Genette, translated by Jane E. Lewin, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 87:

Given that rhematic subjects are more common in Czech than in English […], the degree of syntactic constancy among rhematic subjects may be supposed to be lower than among subjects counted without respect to their FSP [functional sentence perspective] role. To test this assumption, I collected 50 rhematic subjects from each original of Čermáková's sources and examined their syntactic counterparts in the other language.

2003, Libuše Dušková, “Constancy of Syntactic Function across Languages”, in Josef Hladký, editor, Language and Function: To the Memory of Jan Firbas, Amsterdam, Philadelphia, Pa.: John Benjamins Publishing Company, →ISBN, page 132:

The terms "theme" and "rheme" are both derived from Greek, and are parallel to each other. The term "theme" comes from the Greek root the- "to set", or "establish", and means "that which is set or established". The term "rheme" is derived from the root rhe- "to say", or "tell", and means "that which is said or told" (about that which was set or established beforehand). These terms are also convenient because adjectives are easily derived from them: "thematic" and "rhematic", respectively. The etymology of the terms presupposes that the thematic part of the sentence contains the topic, while the rhematic part conveys new information about the topic.

2007, Iryna Alexeyeva, Theoretical Grammar Course of Modern English, Vinnytsia, Ukraine: Nova Knyha, →ISBN, page 295:

(linguistics) Of a part of a sentence: providing new information regarding the current theme.

Rhematic Indexical Sinsign: As an object of raw experience, a burst of unplanned hollering is a rhematic indexical sinsign: it directs attention to the object which caused the presence of the sign […].

1995, Victorino Tejera, Literature, Criticism, and the Theory of Signs (Semiotic Crossroads; 7), Amsterdam, Philadelphia, Pa.: John Benjamins Publishing Company, →ISBN, page 137:

[Charles Sanders] Peirce argues that common and proper nouns function typically as indices, whereas verbs and adjectives are typically icons and rhemes (MS 516:39). The noun camel is a rhematic index when it is interpreted and thus connected with real-life experience. The adjective green is a rhematic icon open to many interpretations because it says nothing about any object to which this color should be attributed.

2015, Winifried Nöth, “Three Paradigms of Iconicity Research in Language and Literature”, in Masako K. Hiraga, William J. Herlofsky, Kazuko Shinohara, Kimi Akita, editors, Iconicity: East Meets West (Iconicity in Language and Literature; 14), Amsterdam, Philadelphia, Pa.: John Benjamins Publishing Company, →ISBN, pages 29–30:

(Peircean semiotics) Of or pertaining to a sumisign (a sign that represents its object in respect of quality and so, in its signified interpretant, is represented as a character or mark).

rhematic adjectives

Passive rhematic adjectives ending in -able […]

1877, Fitzedward Hall, On English Adjectives in -able, with Special References to Reliable, London: Trübner, →OCLC, page 47:

Emotion may sometimes cause the speaker to adopt a marked sequence, and the rhematic adjective will then appear in sentence-initial position.

1976, Patrick David Teskey, Theme and Rheme in Spanish and English (Occasional Papers in Linguistics and Language Learning; 1), Coleraine, County Londonderry: Board of Studies in Linguistics, New University of Ulster, →ISBN, page 40:

Since in many languages adverbs do not have a fixed place in the word order, questions can be used to isolate the unmarked position of rhematic adverbs. […] There are facets of contrastive NPs [noun phrases] which are both "old" or thematic information and "new" or rhematic information. Consider the use of contrastive constructions to repair texts. In such cases the contrastive NP represents rhematic information in that it adds information to the text which corrects the hearer's error.

1992, Russell S. Tomlin, Richard Rhodes, “Information Distribution in Ojibwa”, in Doris L. Payne, editor, Pragmatics of Word Order Flexibility (Typological Studies in Language; 22), Amsterdam, Philadelphia, Pa.: John Benjamins Publishing Company, →ISBN, pages 120 and 130:

In terms of its phrasal environment, adjective intensification seems to occur most 'naturally' in predicative position. By modifying an independent, rhematic adjective, the intensifiers seem to perform their function in the most efficient way.

1999, Gunter R. Lorenz, Adjective Intensification – Learners Versus Native Speakers: A Corpus Study of Argumentative Writing, Amsterdam, Atlanta, Ga.: Rodopi, →ISBN, page 210:

(grammar, obsolete, rare) Having a verb for its base; derived from a verb.


mirative

en-noun

mirative (countable and uncountable, plural miratives)

Auguste Dozon
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Kostandin Kristoforidhi

Possibly from (ad)mirative, from French admiratif (“tending to admire”) (used by French diplomat and scholar Auguste Dozon (1822–1890), imitating the use of the Ancient Greek ἀπροσδόκητος (aprosdókētos, “unexpected”) in a similar context by Albanian translator and scholar Kostandin Kristoforidhi (1826–1895)), from Latin admīrārī, present active infinitive of admīror (“to admire, respect; to be astonished, to be surprised at”), from ad- (“to”) + mīror (“to admire, marvel at; to be amazed or astonished at”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *smey- (“to be glad, laugh”)).

noncog

ἀπροσδόκητος

der

Although the Maidu 'evidential' -wéw (Shipley 1964:45) might correspond somewhat to the Washo visual, and the (unexemplified) Sierra Miwok 'circumstantial evidence' marker taˀ, tat, ˀiš- (Freeland 1951:169) may correspond to the Washo inferential (mirative).

1986, Wallace [L.] Chafe, Johanna Nichols, editors, Evidentiality: The Linguistic Coding of Epistemology, Norwood, N.J.: Ablex Publishing Corporation, →ISBN, footnote 7, page 8:

In Archi mirativity is grammaticalized as part of the verbal category of evidentiality, so the study of the mirative in Nakh-Daghestanian languages might help to identify the meaning of exclamatives more precisely.

2011, Elena Kalinina, “Exclamative Clauses in the Languages of the North Caucasus and the Problem of Finiteness”, in Gilles Authier, Timur Maisak, editors, Tense, Aspect, Modality and Finiteness in East Caucasian Languages (Diversitas Linguarum; 30), Bochum, North Rhine-Westphalia: Universitätsverlag Dr. N. Brockmeyer, →ISBN, →ISSN, pages 197–198:

The Tarms Quechua Mirative often refers to information that is withheld from the addressee until the speaker sees fit to reveal it, a frequent strategy in narratives of which the unexpected outcome is reserved for the end. By consequence, the speaker him/herself need not be under the impact of surprise any longer when using the Mirative. […] Characteristically, actions performed during one's sleep or in a state of unconsciousness are expressed in the Mirative[…]. The Mirative can also be used in recounting dreams[…].

2013, Willem F. H. Adelaar, “A Quechuan Mirative?”, in Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, Anne Storch, editors, Perception and Cognition in Language and Culture (Brill’s Studies in Language, Cognition and Culture; 3), Leiden, Boston, Mass.: Brill, →ISBN, →ISSN, section 3 (Meaning and Use), pages 99–100:

(uncountable, grammar) A grammatical mood that expresses (surprise at) unexpected revelations or new information.

[T]he speaker had heard on the radio that a bear had attacked a woman. From the description of her wounds on the radio, he infers, using the mirative/inferential particle lą̄ą̄, that she was dragged by the bear. […] This particle also implies that the speaker was surprised at the event. Bear attacks are uncommon in Arizona, and the woman was someone the speaker was acquainted with. In fact, lą̄ą̄ is more fundamentally a mirative than an inferential, […]

2003, Willem J. de Reuse, “Evidentiality in Western Apache (Athabaskan)”, in Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, R. M. W. Dixon, editors, Studies in Evidentiality (Typological Studies in Language; 54), Amsterdam, Philadelphia, Pa.: John Benjamins Publishing Company, →ISBN, →ISSN, section 2.2.1 (The Mirative/Inferential), page 81:

He [Timothy Jowan Curnow] points out that miratives are very rare with first person, more common with second, and most common with third person. In all cases, however, non-miratives are more common than miratives.

2018, Gwendolyn Hyslop, “Mirativity and Egophoricity in Kurtöp”, in Simeon Floyd, Elisabeth Norcliffe, Lila San Roque, editors, Egophoricity (Typological Studies in Language; 118), Amsterdam, Philadelphia, Pa.: John Benjamins Publishing Company, →DOI, →ISBN, page 117:

(countable, grammar) (An instance of) a form of a word which conveys this mood.

miratiivi

form of a word which conveys a mirative mood


mirative

noncog

ἀπροσδόκητος

The prefinal suffix -áʔyiʔ Mirative indicates that the speaker knows of the action described by the verb, not having observed it occur, but only inferentially from observation of its effects. It thus commonly conveys an emotion of surprise.

1964, William Horton Jacobsen, Jr., “The Prefinal Suffixes”, in A Grammar of the Washo Language (unpublished Ph.D. in Linguistics dissertation), Berkeley, Calif.: University of California, Berkeley, →OCLC, paragraph 28.7, page 630:

In the first in-depth analysis of a mirative construction which I am aware of, discussing the Turkish "evidential" perfect, Slobin & Aksu (1983; see also Aksu-Koç & Slobin 1986) give a unified characterization of the category as marking that the speaker's mind was "not prepared" for the information which is now being relayed. […] In this paper I adopt the older term "mirative" for the marked category, leaving the unmarked category unlabelled.

1997, Scott DeLancey, “Mirativity: The Grammatical Marking of Unexpected Information”, in Linguistic Typology, volume 1, Berlin, New York, N.Y.: Mouton de Gruyter, →ISSN, page 36:

This is why a noneyewitness evidentiality specification in a two-term system and an inferential evidential in a three-term system may acquire a mirative extension. In Quechua […] the reported evidential can be used in a mirative sense.

2003, Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, “Evidentiality in Typological Perspective”, in Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, R. M. W. Dixon, editors, Studies in Evidentiality (Typological Studies in Language; 54), Amsterdam, Philadelphia, Pa.: John Benjamins Publishing Company, →ISBN, →ISSN, page 192:

A "mirative" meaning can be associated with information acquired through any means – be it "inferentially from observation" of the effects of the event, as in Washo (Jacobsen 1964: 630), or through first-hand observation, inference or hearsay as in Kham (Watters 2002: 300).

2012, Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, “The Essence of Mirativity”, in Linguistic Typology, volume 16, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, →DOI, →ISSN, page 436:

(grammar) Of or relating to the mirative mood.


proplet

From proposition + -let, coined by Roland Hausser.

(computational linguistics) A basic element of a proposition.


grammatical alternation

en-noun

grammatical alternation (countable and uncountable, plural grammatical alternations)


Verner alternation

Verner alternation (countable and uncountable, plural Verner alternations)

From Verner's law, itself named after 19th century Danish linguist Karl Verner.

(Indo-European studies) The alternation between consonants in different forms of a word stem in the Germanic languages, as a result of Verner's law.

grammatische wisseling

Alternation between consonants in the Germanic languages


semblative

(grammar) A grammatical case that denotes the similarity of one entity to another.


parelcon

From Ancient Greek παρέλκων (parélkōn), from παρέλκω (parélkō, “to draw aside, to be redundant”), from ἕλκω (hélkō).

(grammar) The addition of a syllable or particle to the end of a pronoun, verb, or adverb.


grammatischer Wechsel

From German grammatischer Wechsel (literally “grammatical alternation”).

bor

Verner alternation
Verner alternation#English

(Indo-European studies) Synonym of Verner alternation


etacism

en-noun

etacism (usually uncountable, plural etacisms)

From eta + -cism (phenomenon related to a specific phoneme). Compare itacism, from the modern pronunciation of eta.

q

(grammar) The pronunciation of the Greek eta like the Italian long e, or the vowel in the English word ate.


ecthlipsis

en-noun

ecthlipsis (countable and uncountable, plural ecthlipses)

Borrowed from Ancient Greek ἔκθλιψις (ékthlipsis, “a squeezing out”), from ἐκθλίβω (ekthlíbō, “to squeeze out”), from θλίβω (thlíbō, “to squeeze; to compress”).

bor

(phonology) The dropping out or suppression from a word of a consonant, with or without a vowel.

(phonology) The elision of a final /m/, with the preceding vowel, before a word beginning with a vowel.


faucal

Ayin is the most difficult of the faucals.

(phonetics) A sound produced in the fauces.


postfixal

(linguistics) Relating to, or taking the form of, a postfix.


ecbatic

(grammar) Denoting a mere result or consequence.


permansive

(linguistics, of an aspect) permanent, stative, maintaining the same state


unround

en-verb

unround (third-person singular simple present unrounds, present participle unrounding, simple past and past participle unrounded)

unrounds (present singular third-person)
unrounding (participle present)
unrounded (participle past)
unrounded (past)

(linguistics, transitive) To change (a vowel) so that it is no longer round.


LLG

The Logical Language Group
w:The Logical Language Group

(linguistics) Initialism of The Logical Language Group.


Rhaeto-Romance

From Latin Rhaetus + -o- + Romance, after German Rhätoromanisch.

(linguistics) A group of related Romance languages spoken in north and north-eastern Italy and southeastern Switzerland, or any of these languages individually.


determiner phrase

en-noun

determiner phrase (plural determiner phrases)

(linguistics) A phrase headed by a determiner.


suffixoid

From suffix + -oid, Coined by US etymologist and philologist Yakov Malkiel circa 1966.

coinage

(linguistics) A wordfinal segment that has characteristics of both a free morpheme and a bound morpheme.


resumptive pronoun

en-noun

resumptive pronoun (plural resumptive pronouns)

(grammar) A pronoun in a relative clause which refers to the antecedent of the relative pronoun.

resumptivum

a pronoun in a relative clause which refers to the antecedent of the relative pronoun (grammar)


community language

community language (plural community languages)

Commonly spoken community languages in Australia include Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Arabic, Greek, Italian, indigenous languages, and so on.

(sociology, linguistics) An unofficial language spoken by a minority of people.

1985 UNESCO Regional Office for Education in Africa. 1985. African community languages and their use in literacy and education : a regional survey. Dakar : UNESCO.
Such languages, which serve the purposes of general communication over fairly wide areas within countries, are what are referred to as the community languages of Africa.

(sociology, linguistics) An unofficial language spoken as a local lingua franca among people of diverse ethno-linguistic backgrounds.


resumptively

(linguistics) In a resumptive manner; in terms of, or by means of, resumption.


Academy

* French académie, from Latin acadēmīa, from Ancient Greek Ἀκαδημία (Akadēmía), a grove of trees and gymnasium outside of Athens where Plato taught; from the name of the supposed former owner of that estate, the Attic hero Akademos. Compare academe, academia, Akademeia.

(classical studies, history) The school for advanced education founded by Plato; the garden where Plato taught.

(classical studies) The disciples of Plato.

(classical studies, philosophy) Platonism.