ectasis

en-noun

ectasis (countable and uncountable, plural ectases)

(phonology) The lengthening of a syllable from short to long.

èctasi

the lengthening of a syllable from short to long


lunar letter

Calque of Arabic حَرْف قَمَرِيّ (ḥarf qamariyy).

calque

حَرْف قَمَرِيّ


solar letter

Calque of Arabic حَرْف شَمْسِيّ (ḥarf šamsiyy).

حَرْف شَمْسِيّ


boot verb

So called because these verbs form a boot-like shape when highlighted in a conjugation table.

Any of various verbs, generally in Romance languages, in which the first and second persons plural are affected differently by some phonological or morphological rule than the other four forms.


reduplicate

en-verb

reduplicate (third-person singular simple present reduplicates, present participle reduplicating, simple past and past participle reduplicated)

reduplicates (present singular third-person)
reduplicating (participle present)
reduplicated (participle past)
reduplicated (past)

From Medieval Latin reduplicātus, from reduplicāre, from re- with duplicāre.

EtymOnLine

Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “reduplicate”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.

(transitive, linguistics) To repeat (a word or part of a word) in order to form a new word or phrase, possibly with modification of one of the repetitions.


reduplication

en-noun

reduplication (countable and uncountable, plural reduplications)

Contrastive focus reduplication
Shm-reduplication
reduplication

Her Malay was the Malay of the Staate of Lanchap [...] and she spoke it fierily, with crisp glottal checks, with much bubbling reduplication.

1958, Anthony Burgess, The Enemy in the Blanket (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 256:

Grammatically, Malay uses reduplication for plurals (burung = bird, burung-burung = birds) and thus repeated words are commonly heard in Malay speech[.]

2019, Li Huang, James Lambert, “Another Arrow for the Quiver: A New Methodology for Multilingual Researchers”, in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, →DOI, page 10:

(linguistics) The act of, or an instance of, reduplicating.

مضاعفة

the act of, or an instance of, reduplication


predicative

In the sentence, ‘This house is big’, ‘big’ is predicative, whereas in ‘This is a big house’, it is attributive.

Compound adjectives are typically hyphenated in attributive position (for example, 'a high-quality scan is a must'), whereas in predicative position, many house styles specify open styling (for example, 'this scan is high quality.'

(grammar, of an adjectival or nominal phrase) Modifying a noun while in a predicate phrase, which predicate phrase is other than the noun phrase and occurs after a verb, as a predicate; contrasted with attributive.


predicative

(grammar) An element of the predicate of a sentence which complements the subject or object by means of the verb. Predicatives may be nominal or adjectival.

表語

element of the predicate of a sentence which supplements the subject or object by means of the verb

A predicative in Russian is an uninflected word that regularly constitutes a complete utterance when standing alone, i.e., when preceded and followed by silence.

1957, Morton Benson, “The Problem of Predicatives in Russian”, in The Slavic and East European Journal, volume 1, number 4, →DOI, →ISSN, →JSTOR, page 285:

Traditional grammars usually differentiate between neuter short adjectives and predicatives based on whether there is an overt nominative subject; hence курение вредно ‘smoking (noun) is harmful’ is viewed as a clause with nominative subject, zero copula and neuter short form adjective that agrees with the subject in gender, whereas курить вредно (same meaning, literally ‘to smoke is harmful’) is often viewed as an impersonal clause with predicative.

2013, Sergey Say, “On the Nature of Dative Arguments in Russian Constructions with “Predicatives””, in I. Kor Chahine, editor, Current Studies in Slavic Linguistics (Studies in Language Companion Series), page 226:

(grammar) In some languages, a special part of speech used as a predicate and denoting a state of being.

предикати́в

a part of speech used as a predicate and denoting a state of being


cajoler

/kəˈdʒəʊlə(ɹ)/

(linguistics) A speech act intended to persuade or convince, such as the utterance "you know".


allophonic

en-adjective

allophonic (comparative more allophonic, superlative most allophonic)

more allophonic (comparative)
most allophonic (superlative)


abstract verb

(Slavic grammar) A verb of motion whose motion is multidirectional (as opposed to unidirectional) or indirect, or whose action is repeated or in a series (iterative), instead of being a single completed action; always imperfective in aspect, even with prefixes that are normally associated with the perfective aspect (eg. Polish przybiegać).


concrete verb

(abstract) I went to the post office. (there and back, multidirectional)

(concrete) I went to the post office. (and am there now, unidirectional)

(abstract) I went to the theater and had an accident. (the event occurred during the trip there and back)

(concrete) I went to the theater and had an accident. (the event occurred at the theater)

(abstract) I like to fly. (repeated action)

(concrete) I flew to Frankfurt. (a single, completed action)

(Slavic grammar) A verbal aspect in verbs of motion that is unidirectional (as opposed to multidirectional), a definitely directed motion, or a single, completed action (instead of a repeated action or series of actions). Concrete verbs may be either imperfective or perfective.


deictic

en-adj

deictic (comparative more deictic, superlative most deictic)

more deictic (comparative)
most deictic (superlative)

From Ancient Greek δεικτικός (deiktikós, “capable of proof”).

bor

(grammar) Of or pertaining to deixis; to a word whose meaning is dependent on context.


deictic

(grammar) Such a word (such as I or here).


pluralize

en-verb

pluralize (third-person singular simple present pluralizes, present participle pluralizing, simple past and past participle pluralized)

pluralizes (present singular third-person)
pluralizing (participle present)
pluralized (participle past)
pluralized (past)

The word "orange" can be pluralized into "oranges".

Nouns pluralize in English, but verbs do not.

(intransitive, grammar) To take a plural; to assume a plural form.

(intransitive, UK) To hold more than one ecclesiastical benefice at the same time.


formant

Borrowed from German Formant, from Latin fōrmāns (“shaping; forming; fashioning”), present participle of fōrmō (“to shape; to form; to fashion”). Doublet of formans.

der

The resonances of the vocal tract are called formants. Trying to hear the separate formants in a vowel is difficult. We are so used to a vowel being a single meaningful entity that it is difficult to consider it as a sound with separable bits. But it is possible to say vowels so that some of their component parts are more obvious.

2012, Peter Ladefoged, Sandra Ferrari Disner, Vowels and Consonants, Kindle edition, New York: Wiley, →ISBN:

(physics, phonetics) A band of frequencies, in a sound spectrum, that have a greater intensity; they determine the quality of a sound; especially the characteristic sounds of the consonants.

(linguistic morphology) Synonym of formative (“language unit, typically a morph, that has a morphological function”).


homolog

/ˈhɑːməlɑːɡ/

/ˈhoʊməlɑːɡ/

Borrowed from French homologue, From Ancient Greek ὁμόλογος (homólogos, “agreeing, of one mind”), equivalent to homo- + -log.

(linguistics) A word shared by two languages or dialects.


split an infinitive

en-verb

split an infinitive (third-person singular simple present splits an infinitive, present participle splitting an infinitive, simple past and past participle split an infinitive)

splits an infinitive (present singular third-person)
splitting an infinitive (participle present)
split an infinitive (participle past)
split an infinitive (past)

(grammar) To produce a split infinitive.


adnoun

(grammar) an adjective used as a noun (sensu stricto); an absolute adjective (nominalized adjective).

3. An adjective or adnoun, expresses a particular quality ascribed to a substantive—A good man, a bad man, a studious man, a lazy man—The words good, bad, studious, and lazy, express the particular quality which belong to such or such a man.

1830, Thomas Nugent & J. Quiseau, A new Pocket Dictionary of the French and English Languages. In two Parts. 1. French and English.—2. English and French. Containing all the Words in general Use, and authorized by the best Writers. The Fifth American, from the last London Edition, Philadelphia, p.xii ("Section II: Of Grammar in general)")


traductology

The study of the theory and practice of translating and interpreting, especially in an academic context, combining elements of social science and the humanities. More commonly known as translation studies or translatology.


preform

(linguistics) A word that is no longer in use, but has been reconstructed from current ones.


semiosphere

2003 Iu. M. Lotman, Edna Andrews - Conversations With Lotman: Cultural Semiotics in Language, Literature, and Cognition
Lotman's conceptualization of the semiosphere was inspired by Vernadsky's and Teilhard de Chardin's vision of the biosphere and the noosphere.

The semiotic experience in the semiosphere, according to Lotman, precedes the production of discourses because it is one of their conditions. The semiosphere is above all the domain that allows culture to define itself and to situate itself, in order to be able to dialogue with other cultures; it is also a field whose dialogical functioning has as its principle task to regulate and resolve semio-cultural heterogeneities.

2006, Jacques Fontanille, The Semiotics of Discourse, →ISBN, page 205:

The category of boundary leads to two further characteristics of semiosphere: binarism and asymmetry. The translation mechanism responsible for the generation of new meaning in semiosphere presupposes at least two semiotically different participants that are mutually untranslatable.

2011, Claus Emmeche, Kalevi Kull, Towards a Semiotic Biology: Life is the Action of Signs, →ISBN, page 183:

(semiotics) The sphere of semiosis in which the sign processes operate in the set of all interconnected Umwelts; The domain of all signs that represent and define a culture.


discourse marker

en-noun

discourse marker (plural discourse markers)

(linguistics) A word or phrase that marks a boundary in a discourse, typically as part of a dialogue. Discourse markers often signal topic changes, reformulations, discourse planning, stressing, hedging, or backchanneling.


durative

From duration + -ive. Alternatively, borrowed from French duratif, from Old French duratif (“lasting continuously (for a certain time)”), via Anglo-Norman French, and existing in the form duratif from about the twelfth through the fourteenth centuries, when the spelling was altered to durative under the influence of the literary Neolatin movement. Analogous to dure (“to last, to continue”) + -ive.

der

(linguistics) Of or pertaining to the aspect of a verb that expresses continuing action; continuative. Part of the imperfective aspect, as opposed to the perfective aspect, of verbs.

duratiivinen

linguistics: expressing continuing action


durative

(linguistics) This aspect, or a verb in this aspect; a continuative.


adnominal

From ad- + nominal, by analogy with adverbial for verbs.

(grammar) Involving or relating to words that modify a noun.


adnominal

(grammar) The adnominal case: A word or phrase qualifying a noun, such as an adjective or a relative clause.


adnominal

The adjective form of adnoun, by analogy with the use of nominal as the adjective form of noun.

(grammar, dated) Of or pertaining to an adnoun (sensu stricto).


OVS

Object Verb Subject
w:Object Verb Subject

(grammar) Initialism of Object Verb Subject.


terminative case

en-noun

terminative case (plural terminative cases)

The Turkic languages, Hungarian, and Estonian languages have a terminative case.

(grammar) A form of declension that indicates at what point something ends.


terminative

en-adj

terminative (comparative more terminative, superlative most terminative)

more terminative (comparative)
most terminative (superlative)

(linguistics) of, or relating to the terminative case


blanket term

(idiomatic) A word or phrase that is used to describe multiple groups of related things. The degree of relation may vary. Blanket terms often trade specificity for ease-of-use; in other words, a blanket term by itself gives little detail about the things that it describes or the relationships between them, but is easy to say and remember. Blanket terms often originate as slang, and eventually become integrated into the general vocabulary.


brachyology

From Late Latin brachiologia, from Ancient Greek βραχύς (brakhús, “short”) + -λογία (-logía, “speech”); compare brachylogy.

In the words [...of] Acts x. 39. there might be a brachyology, in case the sense were: we are witnesses of all that he did, of this also, that they put him to death. But such an omission is not necessary.

1840, Georg Benedikt Winer, A grammar of the idioms of the Greek language of the New Testament, translated from German to English by J. H. Agnew and O. G. Ebbeke, page 442

So also in Ps 118²⁷ the preposition עד might include the verb ‘come,’ which connects itself so naturally with ‘until,’ and a poetical mode of expression, which is naturally disposed to vivid brachyology (cf. Ps 118), might discover a self-evident point in the circumstance that not the victims themselves but their blood, the precious part of them (Lv 17¹¹), is at last to touch the alter-horns.

1900 September, Ed. König, “Psalm cxviii 27b”, in James Hastings (editor), The Expository Times, Volume XI, Number 12, T. & T. Clark (publisher), page 566

The only trouble is with "over all things;" what is His relation to them? Evidently that of Head also. No other view is admissible exegetically; the question becoming thus a purely grammatical one: Shall we accept a brachyology and understand a second κεφαλην before τη εκκλησια (MEYER, STIER, HODGE approvingly): "gave Him the Head over all things (to be the Head) to the church," or [...]

1870, Philip Schaff (translator) in John Peter Lange, A commentary on the Holy Scriptures: critical, doctrinal, and homiletical, volume 7, page 68:

The author employs a brachyology in the last phrase: the hearers of the phrase "than Abel" [...] will be able to fill this out as "than the blood of Abel" from the mention of "blood speaking" [...] in the preceding phrase.

2000, David Arthur deSilva, Perseverance in gratitude: a socio-rhetorical commentary on the Epistle "to the Hebrews", page 468:

The expression "being-in-Christ" is, therefore, according to Schweitzer, "merely a brachyology for being partakers in the Mystical Body of Christ."

2001, Sang-Won (Aaron) Son, Corporate elements in Pauline anthropology: a study of the selected terms, idioms, and concepts in the light of Paul's usage and background, page 35:

(in discussions of grammar, especially of Biblical grammar) A figure of speech that is an abbreviated expression, for example, the omission of "good" from "good morning!" (resulting in the abbreviated greeting "morning!").


natural language

en-noun

natural language (countable and uncountable, plural natural languages)

Although some computer programs are now widely regarded as having passed the Turing test, it is clear to discerning humans that they still do not use natural language in the same way that sane humans do, as they often spew nonsense, albeit well-formed linguistically, and they cannot engage in some important kinds of original thought.

programming language
programming language

constructed language
constructed language

(retronym, linguistics) Any human language that has evolved naturally in a community, usually in contrast to computer programming languages, to controlled natural languages, and to constructed languages such as Esperanto (although constructed languages are subject to change by natural forces among fluent speakers).


context-free

(linguistics) (Of a grammar) which generates sentences in stages, in such a way that at any intermediate stage, any piece of the sentence is enough to determine the corresponding piece at the next stage; that is, the stagewise transformation at a point does not depend on the rest of the sentence

(linguistics) (Of a formal language) which can be decided by a pushdown automaton or a context-free grammar (sense 1)

yhteydetön

linguistics, formal language: which can be decided by a pushdown automaton or a context-free grammar


formal language

formal language (plural formal languages)

Holonym: formal system

Meronyms: alphabet, symbol, word

(computing theory) A set of finite strings (called words) made of symbols (from a finite set of symbols, called an alphabet).


reification

reification (countable and uncountable, plural reifications)

/ˌɹeɪəfəˈkeɪʃən/

First attested around 1846; a macaronic calque of German Verdinglichung, using -ification (“making”) for ver- + -lich + -ung, and Latin rēs (“thing”) for Ding (“thing”)

(linguistics) The transformation of a natural-language statement into a form in which its actions and events are quantifiable variables.


ateji

ateji (countable and uncountable, plural ateji)

Borrowed from Japanese 当(あ)て字(じ) (ateji) or 宛字(あてじ) (ateji).

(linguistics) The use of kanji chosen primarily for their phonetic (narrow sense) or semantic (broad sense) value to represent foreign or native Japanese words, or the kanji so used.


receptive language

receptive language (countable and uncountable, plural receptive languages)

(linguistics) The ability to comprehend information and understand spoken language (or sign language). It may include understanding of the vocabulary and concepts presented, short-term memory and sequencing information.


mutated contraction

mutated contraction (plural mutated contractions)

Mutated contractions often form diminutive and pejorative terms, such as "Newfie" and "fundie".

(linguistics) An etymological phenomenon when a new word or slang term develops from shortening and slightly altering a longer word.


perlocution

(linguistics) The effect the terms used by a speaker can have on another speaker and their emotions and responses.


soraismus

(rhetoric) The awkward or humorous use of different languages mixed together, often using a foreign term incorrectly or in an inappropriate situation.


ergative verb

Break is an ergative verb because when we say "The window broke", the window is the thing getting broken, it is not the vandal.

Although it is both transitive and intransitive, paint is not an ergative verb, because when we say "Bob paints", this is very different from when we say "Bob gets painted".

Consultation of a corpus of authentic English solved the problem, as clarify was found being used transitively in examples such as She clarified the situation and intransitively in examples such as The situation clarified, and could thus be classified as an ergative verb.

2000, Susan Hunston, Gill Francis, Pattern Grammar:

(linguistics) An ambitransitive verb where the patient is the object of the transitive, but becomes the experiencer of the intransitive use.


illocution

From il- (“in”) (an assimilated version of in-) + locution (“speech”), from Latin loquor.

(linguistics) The aim of a speaker in making an utterance as opposed to the meaning of the terms used.


constative

Coined to translate the German konstatierend, using cōnstāt-, the perfect passive participial stem of the Latin verb cōnstō (“I agree, correspond, or fit; I am certain, decided, or consistent”), suffixed with the English -ive, suggesting a hypothetical Latin etymon of the form *cōnstātīvus.

Statements are constative utterances.

One thing, however, that it will be more dangerous to do, and that we are very prone to do, is to take it that we somehow know that the primary or primitive use of sentences must be, because it ought to be, statemental or constative, in the philosophers' preferred sense of simply uttering something whose sole pretension is to be true or false and which is not liable to criticism in any other dimension.

1962, J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (OUP paperback edition, page 72)

(linguistics) Pertaining to an utterance relaying information and likely to be regarded as true or false.


constative

The distinction between constatives and performatives is one of the distinctions that he starts questioning.

2011, Phyllis Kaburise, Speech Act Theory and Communication: A Univen Study, page 77:

(linguistics) An utterance relaying information and likely to be regarded as true or false.


creaky

en-adj

creaky (comparative creakier, superlative creakiest)

creakier (comparative)
creakiest (superlative)

creaky tone

creaky voice

(linguistics) Of or relating to a special kind of phonation in which the arytenoid cartilages in the larynx are drawn together, compressing the vocal folds.

nariseva

(linguistics) of or relating to a special kind of phonation in which the arytenoid cartilages in the larynx are drawn together, compressing the vocal folds


internationalism

en-noun

internationalism (usually uncountable, plural internationalisms)

(linguistics) A loanword that occurs in several languages with the same or similar meaning and etymology.

kansainvälinen sana

linguistics: a loanword that occurs in several languages with the same or similar meaning and etymology


harden

en-verb

harden (third-person singular simple present hardens, present participle hardening, simple past and past participle hardened)

hardens (present singular third-person)
hardening (participle present)
hardened (participle past)
hardened (past)

From Middle English hardenen, equivalent to hard + -en. Cognate with Danish hærdne (“to harden; cure”), Swedish hårdna (“to harden”), Norwegian herdne (“to harden”), Icelandic harðna (“to harden”).

(transitive, intransitive, phonology) To become or make (a consonant) more fortis; to (cause to) undergo fortition.


origo

Learned borrowing from Latin orīgō. Doublet of origin.

(pragmatics) The reference point on which a deictic relationship is based.


logocentrism

en-noun

logocentrism (countable and uncountable, plural logocentrisms)

The analysis of literature, focusing on the words and grammar to the exclusion of context or literary merit.


oratio obliqua

oratio obliqua (plural orationes obliquae)

From Latin ōrātiō ("speech, discourse, language") and oblīquus ("sidelong, slanting, awry, oblique").

That'-clauses in indirect speech or oratio obliqua are of course cases where I report what someone else or myself elsewhen or elsewhere did say …. - "How To Do Things With Words" (1962) by JL Austin (OUP paperback edition, 70-71)

(grammar) indirect speech/indirect statements


rhetic

Via Ancient Greek ῥῆμα (rhêma, “rheme”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *werh₁-.

This act we may call a rhetic act, and the utterance which it is the act of uttering a rheme. - "How To Do Things With Words" (1962) by J.L. Austin (OUP paperback edition, 93)

(linguistics) Of or pertaining to a rheme.


reduplicative

Grammatically, Malay uses reduplication for plurals (burung = bird, burung-burung = birds) and thus repeated words are commonly heard in Malay speech; in contrast, in English reduplicatives are much less frequent and often involve phoneme modulation (ding-dong; wham-bam).

2019, Li Huang, James Lambert, “Another Arrow for the Quiver: A New Methodology for Multilingual Researchers”, in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, →DOI, page 10:

(grammar) A word obtained by the process of reduplication.


subject-control

(linguistics, of a control verb) whose shared object is its subject.


Niger-Congo

Coined in the 1950s by Joseph Greenberg, from the name of the two principal rivers in the area this language family is spoken, the Niger River and the Congo River.

(linguistics) A major language family of sub-Saharan Africa noted for the use of a noun class system.

Congo River
Joseph Greenberg
Niger River
Niger-Congo languages


control verb

(linguistics) A verb which takes multiple arguments, one of which is another verb, such that one of the control verb's arguments (possibly its subject) is syntactically both an argument of the control verb and an argument of the other verb.


object-control

(linguistics) A control verb whose shared object is not the subject.


anticausative

(grammar, of an intransitive verb) Which shows an action affecting its subject, without indicating the cause.

anticausativo

which shows an action affecting its subject, without indicating the cause


anticausative

(grammar) A verb or construction of this kind.


ich-laut

From German Ich-Laut, from ich (“I”) (which has this sound in German) + Laut (“sound”).

the voiceless palatal fricative, /ç/, especially in the context of the German language, but also sometimes otherwise (because it is best known from German)


sonority

sonority (countable and uncountable, plural sonorities)

/səˈnɔːɹɪti/

/səˈnɔːɹəti/

From sonor(ous) + -ity, from French sonorité, from Latin sonōritās.

It can be seen that vowels have the highest sonority of all phonemes in English, with low vowels being even more sonorous than high vowels.

2009, Ulrike Gut, Introduction to English Phonetics and Phonology, Bern: Peter Lang, →ISBN, page 81:

(linguistics, phonetics) Relative loudness (of a speech sound); degree of being sonorous.


autoclitic

A verbal behavior that has an organizing function; for example, grammatical and rhetorical sequences can be selected by the speaker so as to achieve a particular goal. This occurs because listeners are strongly affected by the composition of the discourse they are exposed to.


phonestheme

(linguistics) A sound that, because it appears in a number of words of similar meaning, has a recognizable semantic association.


wine-whine merger

wine-whine merger (plural wine-whine mergers)

/wəinˈʍəin ˌmɛɾdʒəɾ/

As was the case with the wine–whine merger, date from the early twentieth century show that southeastern Pennsylvania was subject to patterns of variation in pronunciation.

2016, Mark L. Louden, Pennsylvania Dutch: The Story of an American Language, page 228:

Chambers (2002) graphs the trajectory of the wine-whine''' merger in four reigions preserving ʍ.

2019, Keiko Bridwell, “Previous Research on the Wine-Whine''' Merger”, in The Distribution of ʍ, page 7:

In Scottish English, the so-called wine-whine''' merger did not take place, in which historical Old and Middle English /hw/ was replaced by /w/[.]

2021, Zeyu Li, “The Distribution of /w/ and /ʍ/”, in Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory:

(phonology) A merger in which [ʍ] (the voiceless sound heard at the beginning of the word whine in a Scottish accent or several accents in the United States) becomes [w] (the sound heard at the beginning of the word wine); in accents where this merger occurs, whine and wine are homophones.


predictive

Borrowed from Latin praedictivus, from praedico. Equivalent to predict + -ive.

Also, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, predictive conditionals show a high degree of integration thanks to the patterns of verb forms which are characteristic for predictives and which normally do not mix freely with other, non-predictive forms.

1999, Barbara Dancygier, Conditionals and Prediction: Time, Knowledge and Causation in Conditional Constructions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, published 2004, →ISBN, page 76:

In contrast, English-speaking children appropriately differentiate if future predictives from when future predictives, a distinction relevant for English but not for, say, German.

2008, Virginia C. Mueller Gathercole, Routes to Language: Studies in Honor of Melissa Bowerman, page xiv:

(grammar) A conditional statement that includes a prediction in the dependent clause (e.g. "if it rains, the game will be cancelled", "give her an inch and she'll take a mile.").


determinative

(linguistics) An ideogram used to mark semantic categories of words in logographic scripts.

(grammar) A member of a class of words functioning in a noun phrase to identify or distinguish a referent without describing or modifying it.


adverbial phrase

adverbial phrase (plural adverbial phrases)

prepositional phrase
prepositional phrase

(grammar) A phrase that collectively modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, or a prepositional phrase.


adjective phrase

adjective phrase (plural adjective phrases)

(grammar) A phrase that collectively modifies or describes a noun or pronoun and which can usually be used both attributively and predicatively, can be graded, and be modified by an adverb.

adjektiivilauseke

Phrase that modifies or describes a noun or pronoun


palatalised

en-adj

palatalised (comparative more palatalised, superlative most palatalised)

more palatalised (comparative)
most palatalised (superlative)

(phonetics, phonology, chiefly British) Having undergone palatalisation.


wordlist

For example, the focus of most previous wordlists has been on general academic vocabulary or the discipline-specific vocabulary needed in tertiary education.

2018, Clarence Green, James Lambert, “Advancing disciplinary literacy through English for academic purposes: Discipline-specific wordlists, collocations and word families for eight secondary subjects”, in Journal of English for Academic Purposes, volume 35, →DOI, page 105:

(especially linguistics) A written collection of all words derived from a particular source, or sharing some other characteristic.

բառացանկ

collection of all words from a particular source


purism

en-noun

purism (countable and uncountable, plural purisms)

From French purisme, equivalent to pure + -ism.

(linguistics) The desire to use words and forms derived from what is considered the native element in a given language instead of elements considered borrowed or foreign.


sigmate

en-verb

sigmate (third-person singular simple present sigmates, present participle sigmating, simple past and past participle sigmated)

sigmates (present singular third-person)
sigmating (participle present)
sigmated (participle past)
sigmated (past)

(transitive, grammar) To modify (a Greek word) by adding sigma, or by changing another letter to sigma.


casal

a casal ending

casal affix

casal terminatiion


present indicative

(grammar) The present tense in the indicative mood.


gendered

en-adj

gendered (comparative more gendered, superlative most gendered)

more gendered (comparative)
most gendered (superlative)

Grammatically, Hebrew is a gendered language because every noun is either masculine or feminine.

(linguistics, of a language) Having grammatical gender.


collocate

en-verb

collocate (third-person singular simple present collocates, present participle collocating, simple past and past participle collocated)

collocates (present singular third-person)
collocating (participle present)
collocated (participle past)
collocated (past)

Borrowed from Latin collocatum, supine of collocō. Doublet of couch.

(linguistics, translation studies) (said of certain words) To be often used together, form a collocation; for example strong collocates with tea.


collocate

A list of collocations to accompany the SVL words providing their important lexico-grammatical associations could therefore be a useful supplementary resource. Thus, we took an extra step not present in previously developed academic wordlists and created lists of each word's discipline-specific collocates.

2018, Clarence Green, James Lambert, “Advancing disciplinary literacy through English for academic purposes: Discipline-specific wordlists, collocations and word families for eight secondary subjects”, in Journal of English for Academic Purposes, volume 35, →DOI, page 109:

(linguistics) A component word of a collocation; a word that collocates with another.


fronted

en-adj

fronted (comparative more fronted, superlative most fronted)

more fronted (comparative)
most fronted (superlative)

(phonetics) Pronounced in the front manner.


booster

(linguistics) A term that serves to amplify or strengthen an utterance, such as "really".


gentilic

From Latin gentilis (“of a clan or gens”) + English suffix -ic.

Vito Corleone? What kind of name is Corleone? A gentilic?

A personal name derived from a place name.


presupposition

en-noun

presupposition (countable and uncountable, plural presuppositions)

From Middle French présupposition, from Latin praesuppositio, from the past participle stem of praesuppōnere (“to presuppose”).

For instance: a verb might convey someone's evaluation of it as a presupposition. To say ‘they deprived him of a visit to his parents’ presupposes that he wanted to visit (vs. ‘spare him a visit...’).

1971, Paul Kiparsky, Carol Kiparsky, “Fact”, in Danny Steinberg, Leon Jakobovits, editors, Semantics: An Interdisciplinary Reader in Philosophy, Linguistics and Psychology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 351:

(linguistics) An assumption or belief implicit in an utterance or other use of language.


multiplicative

multiplicative (countable and uncountable, plural multiplicatives)

From 6th-century Latin multiplicativus, from Classical Latin multiplicāre (“to multiply”).

(grammar) A grammatical adverbial case in Finnish.


possessive suffix

possessive suffix (plural possessive suffixes)

(linguistics) A suffix that indicates possession, occurs in some Uralic, Turkic, Semitic and Indo-European languages.


delative

From the Latin deferre (“to bear or bring away or down”).

der

(grammar) A grammatical case of nouns used, chiefly in Hungarian, to express movement from the surface of something (like "moved off the table").


lative

(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.


sublative

sub down (to) latus carry.
Perfect passive participle of sufferō (“carry down”).

(grammar) A case of nouns in Finno-Ugric languages used to express the destination of movement, originally onto the surface of something (e.g. climb onto a tree), and, by extension, in other figurative meanings as well (e.g. to university).

sublatiivi

a case of nouns used to express the destination of movement


sublative

en-adj

sublative (comparative more sublative, superlative most sublative)

more sublative (comparative)
most sublative (superlative)

(grammar) Of or relating to the sublative case.

Cessation dependent on a sublative act of the mind

1890, George Thibaut, transl., The Vedānta sūtras:


superessive

From Latin superesse (“to be over and above”).

uder

"TIZA 'ten' and HUSA 'twenty' have irregular superessives in forms such as "TIZA:N + "OT tizenot [tizenot] 'fifteen', HUSA:N + HAT huszonhat [husonhot] 'twenty-six';[…].

1988, Daniel Mario Abondolo, Hungarian Inflectional Morphology, page 264:

[…]the same three dimensions accommodate distinctions not merely between 'interior' and 'exterior' cases but also between them (and 'posterior' cases) and superessives ('superior' cases).

1999, E. K. Brown, Jim Miller, Concise Encyclopedia of Grammatical Categories, page 64:

The following two examples illustrate incorrect delative inflection. This happens either on a personal pronoun in the first sentence (róla 'about/off-of him/ from him' instead of superessive rajta 'about') or in conjunction with nouns.

2007, Gergely Tóth, Linguistic Interference and First-language Attrition: German and Hungarian in the San Francisco Bay Area, page 140:

The preposition faafi has a fairly wide range of uses. Most of these fall into three broad categories. The broadest of these is a locative one, where faafi is used with a superessive significance, with or without contact: 'on (top of)', 'on the surface of', 'over', 'above'. In the superessive contact meaning faafi usually implies the presence of weight, pressure, force exerted by the upper on the lower one, or some other kind of effect.

2008, Frantisek Lichtenberk, A Grammar of Toqabaqita, page 481:

2012, László Kálmán, Péter Rebrus, Miklós Törkenczy, Possible and impossible variation in Hungarian, Ferenc Kiefer, Mária Ladányi, Péter Siptár (editors), Current Issues in Morphological Theory: (Ir)regularity, analogy and frequency, page 28,
These examples show that, while the 1PL possessive endings and the superessive (SUE) determine the quality of the linking vowel (high in 1PL, mid in the superessive), […] .

The superessive case, a grammatical declension used, chiefly in Hungarian, to indicate location on top of something or on the surface of something.


temporal distributive

(grammar) Relating to a word or phrase that describes how an action is distributed over a period of time; e.g. the word "per" in once per week.


situative

en-adj

situative (comparative more situative, superlative most situative)

more situative (comparative)
most situative (superlative)

(grammar) Expressing the location of things in comparison with one another, e.g. the word "to" in the phrase face to face.


shibilant

(phonology) A sibilant (fricative or affricate) pronounced further back in the mouth than [s] and [z]: [ʃ], [ʒ], [t͡ʃ], [d͡ʒ], etc.


copulative

(grammar) That connects the subject of a clause with its complement.


copulative

In Polysyndeton conjunctions flow,
And every word its copulative will shew.

1835, L[arret] Langley, A Manual of the Figures of Rhetoric, […], Doncaster: Printed by C. White, Baxter-Gate, →OCLC, page 53:


n.

Alternative form: n

(linguistics) Abbreviation of intransitive (“neutral”).


desinential inflection

en-noun

desinential inflection (plural desinential inflections)

ʾiʿrāb ʾiʿrāb

(grammar) ʾiʿrāb: a number of nominal, adjectival, and verbal inflectional endings, which are an integral part of Qur'anic and Classical Arabic, although they are generally not written and not pronounced in pausa or written but not pronounced.

إِعْرَاب

system of inflectional endings of Classical Arabic


pausa

From Latin pausa (“break”), from Ancient Greek παῦσις (paûsis). Doublet of pause.

The rule is that in the pausa a word must never end on a short vowel, but it may do so in the context.

1954, Johannes Hendrik Kramers, Analecta orientalia: posthumous writings and selected minor works:

Besides, the pausa endposition may have served to highlight the informational value of the substituendum.

1998, Pádraig MacCoisdealbha, The Syntax of the Sentence in Old Irish, →ISBN:

In pausa you say 'ih, in the jussive la- ta'ih, analogous to 'ih, la- ta'ih. And since t' is complete as two letters, the tongue utters both of them in the pausa.

2004, Gerhard Endress, Rüdiger Arnzen, Jörn Thielmann, Words, Texts, and Concepts Cruising the Mediterranean Sea, →ISBN:

For instance, the perfect in -miš (> -mi before pausa) always has the high unrounded vowel, the abstract noun suffix appears in a single variant +luġ, the infinitive is -maġ and the instrumental +ine.

2005, Éva Ágnes Csató, Bo Isaksson, Carina Jahani, Linguistic Convergence and Areal Diffusion: Case Studies from Iranian, page 245:

(linguistics, phonology) The hiatus between prosodic units, e.g. at the end of a sentence.


ethnolect

AAVE is an ethnolect of African Americans.

A language variety specific to an ethnic group.


orthoepist

/ɔːˈθəʊɪˌpɪst/

/ˈɔːθəʊˌiːpɪst/

/ɔɹˈθoʊəpɪst/

/ˈɔɹθoʊˌɛpɪst/

An expert at orthoepy: a person who studies the pronunciation of words, especially (historical) one of the orthoepists, 16th- and 17th-century linguists who tried to establish standard English pronunciations and spellings.


performative

en-adj

performative (comparative more performative, superlative most performative)

more performative (comparative)
most performative (superlative)

Saying "I do" as part of a wedding ceremony is performative, enacting a marriage.

Thus in the example: 'By saying “I do” I was marrying her', the performative 'I do' is a means to the end of marriage. Here 'saying' is used in the sense in which it takes inverted commas and is using words or language, a phatic and not[…]

1975 April 15, J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words: Second Edition, Harvard University Press, →ISBN:

(philosophy, linguistics) Being enacted as it is said.


pentagraph

(linguistics) A specific sequence of five letters, especially one used collectively to represent a single phoneme.


exolingual

Studies of interaction in contact situations have often concentrated on so-called "exolingual" conversations between natives and non-natives.

2007, Konstanze Jungbluth, Identities in Migration Contexts, page 53:

(linguistics) Pertaining to a series of utterances between two people who do not speak the same language.

exolingue

pertaining to a series of utterances between two people who do not speak the same language


phonically

In accordance with the principles of phonics.

Phonetically; in a manner related to the sound of a word rather than its spelling.


phonologically

en-adv

phonologically (comparative more phonologically, superlative most phonologically)

more phonologically (comparative)
most phonologically (superlative)

(linguistics) In accordance with phonology.


phonemics

(linguistics) The study of phonemes and their written representations.


phonetician

(linguistics) A person who specializes in the study of speech sounds and their representation by written symbols.

(linguistics) A dialectologist; a person who studies regional differences in speech sounds.


philological

historical linguistics
historical linguistics

(linguistics) Pertaining to historical linguistics.


dialectologist

(linguistics) A person who studies regional differences in speech sounds.


phonologist

(linguistics) A person who specializes in phonology, the functional use of sounds in language.


paroxytone

/pəˈɹɒk.sɪˌtəʊn/

Learned borrowing from Ancient Greek πᾰροξῠ́τονος (paroxútonos, “paroxytone”).

lbor

πᾰροξῠ́τονος

(linguistics, of a word) Having the stress or accent on the penultimate syllable.


paroxytone

/pəˈɹɒk.sɪˌtəʊn/

πᾰροξῠ́τονος


parisyllabic

(grammar) Having the same number of syllables in all its inflections.


subvariety

(linguistics) A subordinate language variety.

A secondary or subsidiary variety.
A subordinate language variety.


approximative

In Example 6, we can see speakers using the vague approximatives 'two or three' and 'one or two'.

2007, J. Cutting, Vague Language Explored, page 190:

(grammar) A grammatical construct that expresses approximation.


approbative

From Medieval Latin approbātīvus, from Latin approbō (“assert, accept, confirm”).

der

(linguistics) A word or grammatical form which denotes a positive affect expressing the appreciation or approval of the speaker.


appellative

From the Late Latin appellātīvus, from the stem appella- (“to call”), with the adjectival suffix -ive.

(grammar) Of or pertaining to an appellative noun or common noun.


PDS

(linguistics) Initialism of pet-directed speech.


linker

(grammar) A word or short expression that links clauses or other syntactic elements.


listenership

en-noun

listenership (countable and uncountable, plural listenerships)

/ˈlɪsənəʃɪp/

/ˈlɪsənɚʃɪp/

From listener + -ship (suffix denoting a property or state of being).

suffix

Following are the main features found in the talk of three of the six Thanksgiving celebrants. [...] 3. Pacing. (a) faster rate of speech, (b) inter-turn pauses avoided (silence is evidence of lack of rapport), (c) faster turntaking, (d) cooperative overlap and participatory listenership.

1981, Deborah Tannen, “New York Jewish Conversational Style”, in International Journal of the Sociology of Language, volume 30, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, →DOI, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 137:

Marsha refers to the characteristic which Pam identified, showing verbal agreement, as "a bad habit," claiming that rather than showing good listenership, it often masks not listening ("tune 'em out").

1994, Deborah Tannen, “Gender Differences in Conversational Coherence: Physical Alignment and Topical Cohesion”, in Gender and Discourse, New York, N.Y., Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 124:

These categories form a continuum that shows the degree of floor control, i.e. the left end of the continuum indicates that the speaker has little floor control and is more likely to engage in listenership, while the right end of the continuum shows strong influence on floor control (the speaker can dominate the floor, taking away the floor from the previous speaker).

2001, Hiroko Futo, “Turn-taking in Japanese Conversation”, in Laurence Horn, editor, Turn-taking in English and Japanese: Projectability in Grammar, Intonation, and Semantics (Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics), New York, N.Y., London: Routledge, →ISBN, page 94:

[W]omen tend to provide and expect more listener feedback such as "yeah," "mhm," and "uhuh," so they often get the mistaken impression that men are not listening when they are, while men often mistake women's signs of listenership for signs of agreement, and feel misled when they later learn that the women did not agree.

2012, Deborah Tannen, “Turn-taking and Intercultural Discourse and Communication”, in Christian Bratt Paulston, Scott F[abius] Kiesling, Elizabeth S. Rangel, editors, The Handbook of Intercultural Discourse and Communication (Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics), Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, →ISBN, part III (International Discourse Features), page 149:

(linguistics) The act of paying attention to a conversation or speech; listening.


otsu

Later—during the ninth century—the kō and otsu groups did come to be used interchangeably.

1991, Christopher Seeley, A History of Writing in Japan:

He rejects the claim of Matsumoto (1984) that the kô and otsu -o- vowels are in complementary distribution, and therefore these two vowels are allophones of a single vowel.

2001, John R. Bentley, A Descriptive Grammar of Early Old Japanese Prose:

(linguistics) In Old Japanese, one of two sets of vowels of uncertain pronunciation which fell together in modern Japanese.


ü

(lexicography) A dictionary transcription for the GOOSE vowel


suprasegmental

(phonetics) An effect on speech, such as length, stress, tone, and phonation type, that extends over more than one segment of sounds.


unaspirated

en-adj

unaspirated (comparative more unaspirated, superlative most unaspirated)

more unaspirated (comparative)
most unaspirated (superlative)

Phonetically, in Malay, initial /t/ and /p/ are never aspirated; only /p, b, t, d, k, g/ occur as final stops and are usually unreleased and unaspirated[.]

2019, Li Huang, James Lambert, “Another Arrow for the Quiver: A New Methodology for Multilingual Researchers”, in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, →DOI, page 10:


periphrastic conjugation

en-noun

periphrastic conjugation (plural periphrastic conjugations)

The active periphrastic conjugation in Latin is formed by using the future active participle and the appropriate form of "esse".

(grammar) A conjugation formed by the use of the simple verb with one or more auxiliaries.


sememe

Ultimately from Ancient Greek σημαίνω (sēmaínō, “I signify, I mean”) + -eme. Compare morpheme.

der

Any given word of a natural language in its shared acceptations represents a seme, sememe, or set of sememes, but the profile that we can compile as representing the shared elements in a list of synonymous and parasynonymous words is an artificial construct, an instance of meta-language, thus called a constructed sememe.

1995, Louise Schleiner, Cultural Semiotics, Spenser, and the Captive Woman, Lehigh University Press, page 71:

Since sememes are enhanced in the sememe network (as shown in Fig. 3), both a topic and an article analysis can rely on the sememe network instead of explicit term matching.

2007, Edward H. Y. Lim, Raymond S. T. Lee, “iJADE Infoseeker: On Using Intelligent Context-Aware Agents for Retrieving and Analyzing Chinese Web Articles”, in Raymond S. T. Lee, Vincenzo Loia, editors, Computational Intelligence for Agent-based Systems, Springer, page 138:

HowNet organizes all the sememes into several trees, and each sememe is considered a node of a tree.

2014, Jia-Fei Hong, Verb Sense Discovery in Mandarin Chinese—A Corpus based Knowledge-Intensive Approach, Springer, page 58:

(linguistics) The smallest unit of meaning; especially, the meaning expressed by a morpheme.


ô

(lexicography) A dictionary transcription for the THOUGHT vowel; also an orthographic ⟨o⟩ with a diacritic that marks it as having that value, as in the word "nor".


periphrasis

en-noun

periphrasis (countable and uncountable, plural periphrases)

/pəˈɹɪfɹəsɪs/

From Ancient Greek περίφρασις (períphrasis).

Language learners sometimes use periphrases like "did go" where a native speaker would use "went".

Native speakers use periphrases like "did not go" where a language learner might use "went not".

(linguistics) Expressing a grammatical meaning (such as a tense) using a syntactic construction rather than morphological marking.


null anaphora

We have mentioned above that null anaphora is represented on syntactic trees as “pro”, and that this reflects the native speaker’s intuition that she or he somehow understands what is not overtly expressed and what the content of the null anaphora might be.

2006, Natsuko Tsujimura, An Introduction to Japanese Linguistics:

(linguistics) An implied (but omitted) anaphora.


strophic

en-adj

strophic (comparative more strophic, superlative most strophic)

more strophic (comparative)
most strophic (superlative)

through-composed

antonym(s) of “having each stanza set to the same music”


tribrach

PIE word
 *tréyes
From the Latin tribrachys, from the Ancient Greek τρῐ́βρᾰχῠς (tríbrakhus), from τρῐ- (tri-, “tri-”) + βρᾰχῠ́ς (brakhús, “short”). Compare the French tribraque.

prefix

For your foote tribracchus of all three short, ye haue very few trissillables.

1589, George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie, book ii, chapter xiii (Arb.), page 133

We may vse a Spondee or Iambick and sometime a Tribrack or Dactile.

1602, Thomas Campion, chapter IV, in Observations in the Art of English Poesie, page 11:

Tribrachus or Tribrachys, (Gr[eek]) a Foot in Greek and Latin Verſe, conſiſting of three ſhort Syllables; as Pŏpŭlŭs.

[1706, Edward Phillips, compiler, J[ohn] K[ersey the younger], “Tribrachus or Tribrachys”, in The New World of Words: Or, Universal English Dictionary. […], 6th edition, London: […] J. Phillips, […]; N. Rhodes, […]; and J. Taylor, […], →OCLC, column 1:

Of all the resolved feet, the Tribrach in Trochaic verse with its ictus on the first syllable ⏑́⏑⏑ is most readily recognised by the ear as equivalent to the Trochee.

1827, the Rev’d Canon James Tate, An Introduction to the Principal Greek Tragic and Comic Metres in Scansion, Structure, and Ictus (second edition, 1829), chapter xi: “The Ictus of the long Trochaic of Tragedy”, §5 (page 23)

If the range of pure tribrachic measure, or of tribrachs intermingled with trochees, appears much wider in our song-books than in volumes of poetry written to be read.

1866, John Stuart Blackie, Homer and the Iliad, volume I, page 401:

The plain tribrach is frequent in every one’s reading.

1885, Thomas Dwight Goodell, “Quantity in English Verse”, in Transactions of the American Philological Association, XVI, page 88:

(prosody) A metrical foot consisting of three short syllables.

tribraque

prosody: metrical foot comprising three short syllables


nuncle

From rebracketing of phrases an uncle, mine uncle, thine uncle, etc. Compare neam and naunt.
For the verb, OED suggests an evolution in sense "to claim to be one's uncle" > "to cheat". It compares this derivation with cozen, which it derives from cousin.
For the technical anthropological sense, compare nibling.

(linguistics, anthropology, in the study of kinship terminology) Aunt or uncle; sibling of a parent (regardless of gender).


faux ami

Unadapted borrowing from French faux-ami, from faux (“false”) + ami (“friend”).

ubor

(linguistics, translation studies, lexicography) A false friend; one of a pair of words in different languages or dialects that look similar and may be related but that differ significantly in meaning.


pondian

From The Pond, in reference to the Atlantic Ocean, which separates the United States and Canada from the United Kingdom, + -ian.

(linguistics) Pertaining to differences between English as spoken in the United Kingdom and the United States and or Canada.


echo vowel

(phonology) A paragogic vowel that is a repetition of the final vowel of a word


pendent

en-adj

pendent (comparative more pendent, superlative most pendent)

more pendent (comparative)
most pendent (superlative)

From Middle English pendaunt, Anglo-Norman pendaunt, pendant, respelled to reflect Latin pendēns, pendentis, present participle of pendere (“to hang, to be suspended”). Compare pendant, which retained the spelling.

(grammar, of a sentence) Incomplete in some sense, such as lacking a finite verb.


summation plural

en-noun

summation plural (plural summation plurals)


captative

(linguistics) Describing a verb (in some languages) that has a specific ending or other marker to indicate a hunting or catching function

kaptatiivinen

linguistics: referring to hunting or catching


captative

(linguistics) A verb that has a specific ending or other marker to indicate a hunting or catching function.


hysterology

hysterology (countable and uncountable, plural hysterologies)


substantively

en-adv

substantively (comparative more substantively, superlative most substantively)

more substantively (comparative)
most substantively (superlative)

(grammar, of a word) Employed as a noun.


complementation

en-noun

complementation (countable and uncountable, plural complementations)

(grammar) The relationship of a phrase to its predicate


copular verb

(grammar) A verb that links a subject to a complement that refers to the subject.


fluency

fluency (countable and uncountable, plural fluencies)

From Late Latin fluentia. Cognate with French fluence.

(linguistics) The quality of being fluent in a language; A person's command of a particular language.

usually expressed using the adverb flüssig

Flüssigkeit

for skill and elegance in a native language


aversive

(grammar) A grammatical case indicating that something is avoided or feared; the evitative case.


dormitive principle

dormitive principle (plural dormitive principles)

A modern translation of Latin, virtus dormitiva, coined by Molière in The Imaginary Invalid (1673). In the play, he lampoons a group of physicians providing an explanation in macaronic Latin of the sleep-inducing properties of opium as stemming from its "virtus dormitiva". The currency of this phrase as a critique of scientific claims is due to Gregory Bateson (1976, Steps to an Ecology of Mind p. 5), as is the translation of virtus as 'principle'.

We note Bateson's (1968) dormitive principle at work in which behaviors are described as traits such as LD, which then are used to explain the behavior.

1988, Doreen Kronick, New Approaches to Learning Disabilities: Cognitive, Metacognitive, and Holistic:

For Arrow, many socioeconomic phenomena are explained in terms of the "dormitive principle", which, he says, simply repeats the phenomenon being explained.

2000, “Rational Choice and Rationallity”, in The Paradox of Social Order: Linking Psychology and Sociology, page 14:

If we examine traditional explanations of behavior through the lens of recursion, we will sometimes find what Bateson called "dormitive principles," a form of circular description. A "dormitive principle" is a more abstract repackaging of a description of the item you claim to be explaining. To paraphrase Bateson, this occurs when the cause of a simple action, as for example, when aggression is explained as being caused by an "aggressive instinct" or psychotic symptomatology is attributed to "madness."

2002, Bradford Keeney, Aesthetics of Change, The Guilford Press,, →ISBN, page 33:

And to any intelligent reader, explanation of an 'inherent ability' was reminiscent of Molière's mock explanation of the soporific effects of opium - that it contained a 'dormitive principle'.

2003, Ian Glynn, An Anatomy of Thought: The Origin and Machinery of the Mind:

Similarly, to view “leadership" as something that resides in a person is to generate a dormitive principle. This would inspire such pseudoexplanations as “He leads because he possesses leadership qualities.”

2017, Bradford P. Keeney, Aesthetics of Change, page 38:

Prevent disability from becoming a dormitive principle that can, per se, justify any conduct or event in the interaction of the disabled person

2018, Roberto Pereira, Juan Luis Linares, Clinical Interventions in Systemic Couple and Family Therapy, page 215:

To say that "he only uses drugs because he is the black sheep” is to mix up these logical types, also called invoking the dormitive principle.

2018, Michael D. Reiter, Systems Theories for Psychotherapists: From Theory to Practice:

(idiomatic, rhetoric, logic, linguistics) A type of tautology in which an item is explained in terms of the item itself, only put in different (usually more abstract) words.


Æ

head

Æ (upper case, lower case æ, plural Æs or Æ's)

(chiefly dated or linguistics) A ligature of vowels A and E, called ash.


noun class

(linguistics) A grammatical category similar to gender in which nouns may be organised according to meaning, such as sex, animacy or shape. This is a prominent feature of some of the world's languages, notably the Bantu language family.

naamwoordklas

a category into which nouns may be organised


full name

The complete name of a person, including first name, any middle names, and surname.


properispomenon

/pɹəʊpɛɹɪˈspɒmənɒn/

Learned borrowing from Ancient Greek προπερισπώμενον (properispṓmenon).

lbor

προπερισπώμενον

(linguistics, of a word) In Greek grammar, having a circumflex accent on the penultimate syllable.


properispomenon

en-noun

properispomenon (plural properispomenons or properispomena)

properispomenons (plural)
properispomena (plural)

/pɹəʊpɛɹɪˈspɒmənɒn/

lbor

προπερισπώμενον

(linguistics) A word having such an accent.


unreleased

Phonetically, in Malay, initial /t/ and /p/ are never aspirated; only /p, b, t, d, k, g/ occur as final stops and are usually unreleased and unaspirated[.]

2019, Li Huang, James Lambert, “Another Arrow for the Quiver: A New Methodology for Multilingual Researchers”, in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, →DOI, page 10:

(linguistics, phonology) Of a stop consonant, remaining occluded when spoken.


apocopic

From apocope, from Latin, from Ancient Greek ἀποκοπή (apokopḗ, “a cutting off, termination, apocope”).

der

(linguistics) Of or pertaining to apocope; lacking a final sound or syllable.


apocopate

en-verb

apocopate (third-person singular simple present apocopates, present participle apocopating, simple past and past participle apocopated)

apocopates (present singular third-person)
apocopating (participle present)
apocopated (participle past)
apocopated (past)

From Latin apocopātus (“cut off”), from Ancient Greek ἀποκόπτω (apokóptō, “cut off”).

der

The particles which apocopate the final vowel of the aorist are of two kinds: I. Those which apocopate the final vowel of one verb only. II. Those which apocopate the final vowel of two verbs.

1904, Robert Sterling, A Grammar of the Arabic Language, London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co, →OCLC, page 229:

(linguistics) To shorten using apocope; to remove the final sound or syllable.

"Ciento" apocopates to "cien" before nouns or numbers larger than itself.

1999, Gene Hammitt, Ricardo Gutiérrez Mouat, William Stivers, The Best Test Preparation for the SAT II, Subject Test: Spanish, Piscataway, NJ: Research & Education Association, →ISBN, page R-195:

(linguistics, intransitive) To undergo apocope.


apocopate

A verb form of the prefix conjugation in Semitic which bears no final vowel and is considered the original perfective, but often called jussive mood.


progressive verb

en-noun

progressive verb (plural progressive verbs)

(grammar) A form of a verb in which its gerund (or present participle) is used with any form of the verb "to be"


idiomaticity

idiomaticity (countable and uncountable, plural idiomaticities)

(linguistics, countable, rare) The state of a linguistic expression which exists when the expression exhibits semantic-pragmatic divergence, when the semantic value of the expression differs from its pragmatic value; that is to say, idiomaticity exists when the inherent meaning of the words expressed does not match the meaning of the expression as understood by the users: the sayer(s) and hearer(s).


actant

Simultaneously coined in English and French by Bruno Latour from action + -ant

(grammar) Any of the participants, such as the subject or object, in a grammatical clause.

行動元

any of the participants in a grammatical clause


fansub

fansub (countable and uncountable, plural fansubs)


neoclassical

en-adj

neoclassical (comparative more neoclassical, superlative most neoclassical)

more neoclassical (comparative)
most neoclassical (superlative)

The English word "psychopathy" is a neoclassical compound from Ancient Greek roots.

(linguistics) Being a recent construction based on older, classical elements.

uusklassinen

linguistics: being a recent construction composed of classical elements


declinate

en-verb

declinate (third-person singular simple present declinates, present participle declinating, simple past and past participle declinated)

declinates (present singular third-person)
declinating (participle present)
declinated (participle past)
declinated (past)

Latin dēclīnātus, past participle of dēclīnō (“I decline”).


phonogram

/ˈfəʊ.nə.ɡɹæm/

/ˈfɑ.nəˌɡɹæm/

(linguistics) A character or symbol (grapheme) that represents a sound, as opposed to logograms and determinatives.


Sino-Korean

Until the fifteenth century, Koreans had a native word for the numeral "hundred", but it has since been replaced by a Sino-Korean word.

(specifically, linguistics, of a Korean word) Etymologically borrowed or otherwise derived from an eighth-century dialect of Middle Chinese which greatly influenced the Korean language.

漢字詞

Etymologically from or influenced by Chinese


adposition

From ad- + position, from Latin adpositio, from adpositum, past participle of adponere, an alternative form of apponere (“to put near”).

Throughout this book, I have assumed that adpositions (prepositions and postpositions) are not lexical categories, but rather functional categories.[…]While this view of adpositions is far from unprecedented, it runs contrary to the more standard generative treatment, championed by Jackendoff (1977: 31-33), in which adpositions constitute a fourth lexical category, filling out the logical space of possibilities defined by the two binary-valued features #x2B;#x5C;#x21;#x2F;#x5C;#x21;#x5C;#x21;-#x5C;#x21;#x5C;#x21;#x5C;mathsfN and #x2B;#x5C;#x21;#x2F;#x5C;#x21;#x5C;#x21;-#x5C;#x21;#x5C;#x21;#x5C;mathsfV.

2003, Mark C. Baker, Lexical Categories: Verbs, Nouns and Adjectives, Cambridge University Press, page 303:

2008, Amani Bohoussou, Stavros Skopeteas, Grammaticalization of spatial adpositions in Nànáfwê, Elisabeth Verhoeven, Stavros Skopeteas, Yong-Min Shin, Yoko Nishina, Johannes Helmbrecht (editors), Studies on Grammaticalization, Walter de Gruyter (Mouton), page 77,
It is well known in West African linguistics that languages in this broad sense display adpositions that emerge out of these two sources, namely nouns and verbs.

By establishing adpositions as a constantly referred to but never really demonstrated language category, this book has provided a basis for the theory of the linguistic category.[…]Adpositions could be considered a clear-cut category if one relied on syntax only, for one simple reason: the are specialized in function-marking.

2010, Claude Hagège, Adpositions, Oxford University Press, page 332:

(grammar) An element that combines syntactically with a phrase and indicates how that phrase should be interpreted in the surrounding context; a preposition or postposition.

կապ

element combining with a phrase and indicating how to interpret the phrase in the context


nunation

en-noun

nunation (countable and uncountable, plural nunations)

From nun + -ation, after Arabic تَنْوِين (tanwīn), verbal noun of نَوَّنَ (nawwana, literally “to nunate, nunify”), derived from the letter name نُون (nūn). See nun (“Semitic letter”).

نَهْرٌ (nahr-un, “a river”)

مَلِكٌ (malik-un, “a king”)

The use of a suffix ("-n") signifying a lack of syntactical definiteness of the noun or adjective in standard Arabic. It is written as a diacritic over the final letter.


-fix

The common element of prefix, suffix, and affix — all ultimately from Latin figere (“to fasten”).

infix ― attached within

circumfix ― attached around

(grammar) Forming nouns denoting a morpheme used in word formation joined to a word in the specified way

suffix ― append

prefix ― preface

(chiefly grammar) Forming verbs denoting fastening or attaching (something) in the specified way


circumfix

(grammar) An affix containing both a prefixing and a suffixing element existing as a single morphological unit.

циркумфикс

affix with both a prefixing and suffixing element


circumfix

en-verb

circumfix (third-person singular simple present circumfixes, present participle circumfixing, simple past and past participle circumfixed)

circumfixes (present singular third-person)
circumfixing (participle present)
circumfixed (participle past)
circumfixed (past)

(grammar) Affix a circumfix to (a word).


present conditional

en-noun

present conditional (plural present conditionals)

Coordinate term: past conditional

(grammar, in reference to other languages) The present tense in the conditional mood.


logophor

/ˈlɑ.ɡə.fɔɹ/

/ˈlɒ.ɡə.fɔː/

Introduced by French linguist Claude Hagège, 1974. From logo- + -phor.

(linguistics) A reflexive pronoun with discourse antecedents; i.e. a reflexive pronoun whose antecedent does not occur in the sentence itself.


logophoric

/ˌlɑɡəˈfɔɹɪk/

/ˌlɒɡəˈfɒɹɪk/

(linguistics, of a pronoun) Exhibiting the property of a logophor.


incomplete sentence

incomplete sentence (plural incomplete sentences)

(grammar) A group of words that appear to convey only part of a complete thought, lacking some component which is grammatically necessary to complete the thought.

不完整的句子

a group of words which appears to convey only part of a complete thought (grammar)


declarative

[dɪˈklɛɹəɾɪv]

[dɪˈklæɹəɾɪv]

Palmer (1986:26–28) suggested that all languages have a clear way of indicating that the speaker is making a statement which (s)he believes to be true. Such statements are usually expressed by the declarative grammatical structure and the respective mood is called either "declarative" or "indicative"...

2016, Irina Nikolaeva, “Analyses of the semantics of mood”, in Jan Nuyts, Johan van der Auwera, editors, The Oxford Handbook of Modality and Mood, Oxford: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 69:

(grammar, of a verb, sentence, or mood) Expressing truth.


harakat

From Arabic حَرَكَات (ḥarakāt), plural of حَرَكَة (ḥaraka)

(linguistics) Diacritics marking short vowels in Arabic script.

حَرَكَات

Arabic diacritic — see also vocalization


pronominal verb

pronominal verb (plural pronominal verbs)

(linguistics, grammar) A form of verb that has an attached pronoun in some languages (e.g. French, Spanish).

verb pronominal

a form of verb that has an attached pronoun in some languages (e.g. French, Spanish)


reanalyze

en-verb

reanalyze (third-person singular simple present reanalyzes, present participle reanalyzing, simple past and past participle reanalyzed)

reanalyzes (present singular third-person)
reanalyzing (participle present)
reanalyzed (participle past)
reanalyzed (past)

The word hamburger, which is originally Hamburg + -er, was reanalyzed as ham + -burger, which produced words like cheeseburger.

Thus hamburger (whose true etymology is 'city of Hamburg' + er 'someone from') has been reanalyzed as ham + burger 'burger made with ham.'

2006, Shaligram Shukla, Jeff Connor-Linton, “Language change”, in Ralph Fasold, Jeff Connor-Linton, editors, An Introduction to Language and Linguistics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 296:

(linguistics) To analyze a lexeme with a different structure from its original, often by misunderstanding.


ġ

(lexicography, dated) An orthographic ⟨g⟩ with a diacritic that marks it as being the consonant /d͡ʒ/, as in the word "giant".


hortative

en-adj

hortative (comparative more hortative, superlative most hortative)

more hortative (comparative)
most hortative (superlative)

From Latin hortātīvus, from hortor (“I exhort”).

The ministration of these oracles from the pulpit is to be reformed from any of its factitious peculiarities, and made again what it was among the apostles and their immediate successors—earnest, simple, powerful address—hortative talk, if we may so call it.

January 1854, “The Preaching Required by the Times”, in The National Magazine, volume 4, number 1, New York, Editorial, pages 79–80:

(comparable) Urging, exhorting, or encouraging.

(grammar, not comparable) Of a mood or class of imperative subjunctive moods of a verb for giving strong encouragement.

hortatiivinen

of a mood or class of imperative subjunctive moods of a verb for giving strong encouragement


hortative

(grammar) A mood or class of imperative subjunctive moods of a verb for giving strong encouragement.


dactylic

dactylic (comparative more dactylic, superlative most dactylic)

more dactylic (comparative)
most dactylic (superlative)


dangler

/ˈdæŋɡlə(ɹ)/

Similarly, participles ending in “ing” often cause danglers in scientific writing: […]

2014, Silvia M. Rogers, Mastering Scientific and Medical Writing: A Self-help Guide, page 43:

(grammar, informal) A dangling participle.


competence

en-noun

competence (countable and uncountable, plural competences)

Borrowed from French compétence, from Late Latin competentia.

আহলিয়াত

the quality or state of being competent for a general role.

আহলিয়াত

the quality or state of being competent for a particular task.

(linguistics) The system of linguistic knowledge possessed by native speakers of a language, as opposed to its actual use in concrete situations (performance), cf. linguistic competence.


palatalize

en-verb

palatalize (third-person singular simple present palatalizes, present participle palatalizing, simple past and past participle palatalized)

palatalizes (present singular third-person)
palatalizing (participle present)
palatalized (participle past)
palatalized (past)

Most English speakers palatalize the letter t in the word "nature".

(phonetics, transitive) To pronounce a sound with the tongue against the palate of the mouth when that sound normally would not be so pronounced.

քմայնացնել

to pronounce a sound with the tongue against the palate

(phonetics, intransitive, unaccusative, of a sound) To be pronounced with the tongue against the palate.


palatalization

en-noun

palatalization (countable and uncountable, plural palatalizations)

/ˌpælətəlɪˈzeɪʃən/

From palatal + -ization or palatalize + -ation. Earliest instance 1863 (palatalisation does already occur in 1862 in W. H. I. Bleek's A comparative grammar of South African languages. Part I. Phonology).

The word "nature" is commonly pronounced with a palatalization of the letter t to sound like ch.

(phonology, uncountable) The state or quality of being palatalized, of pronouncing a sound with the tongue against the palate of the mouth that normally is not.

(phonology, countable) An instance of pronunciation in which a sound is palatalized.


predeterminer

(grammar) The function of a phrase that precedes a determiner in a noun phrase and modifies the head noun.


prefixing

(linguistics) Of a language, characterised by heavy use of prefixes to create grammatical forms; as opposed to suffixing.


aspirated

en-adj

aspirated (comparative more aspirated, superlative most aspirated)

more aspirated (comparative)
most aspirated (superlative)

Coordinate term: preaspirated

In English, word-initial single voiceless consonants are aspirated, so that pit is pronounced [pʰɪt] but spit is pronounced [spɪt].

In Cambodian, aspiration is phonemic, so /p/ and /pʰ/ are different phonemes.

(phonetics) Pronounced with an audible breath, a brief expulsion of air at the end of the sound.


denominal

(grammar, linguistics) Denominative (deriving from a noun).


denominal

Coordinate term: deverbal

(grammar, linguistics) A denominative: a word, often a verb, that is derived from a noun or adjective.

denominaali

word that is derived from a noun or adjective


deverbative

(linguistics, grammar, rare) Derived from a verb.


deverbative

(linguistics, grammar, rare) A word or a component of a word that is derived from a verb.


deverbal

(grammar, linguistics) Derived from a verb.


deverbal

Coordinate term: denominal

(grammar, linguistics) A word, especially a substantive, that is derived from a verb.

deverbativum

a word, especially a substantive, that is derived from a verb


compositional

compositional (comparative more compositional, superlative most compositional)

more compositional (comparative)
most compositional (superlative)

The phrase "sum of its parts" is entirely compositional.

A wet súit meaning a suit that is wet is a compositional phrase; a wét suit meaning a garment worn by skin divers is a compound.

1979, Edward S. Klima, Ursula Bellugi, The Signs of Language, page 202:

We have already noted that compounds tend to have meanings that are not entirely compositional and would therefore need to be listed.

2003, Jean Boase-Beier, Ken R. Lodge, The German Language: A Linguistic Introduction, page 153:

Sentence meaning is compositional because, to a large extent, it depends on a combination of the meanings of sentence constituents, which implies the concept of semantic structure.

2004, Sergei Nirenburg, Victor Raskin, Ontological Semantics, page 106:

To cite a textbook example, white house and White House are both written with internal spaces, but the first is argued to be a phrase because it is semantically compositional and has phrase-final stress, while the latter is argued to be a word because it has noncompositional semantics and compound-initial stress.

James Myers, Wordhood and Disyllabicity in Chinesehttps://web.archive.org/web/20221006165522/http://www.ccunix.ccu.edu.tw/~lngmyers/Myers_Ch3_WordsDisyl_Chapter.pdf

(linguistics) Being the sum of its parts.


polysyllabism

en-noun

polysyllabism (usually uncountable, plural polysyllabisms)

1936, Martin Joos, "Book Review: The Psycho-Biology of Language by George K. Zipf," Language, vol. 12, no. 3 (July/Sep), p. 202,
Chinese polysyllabism is a sort of synthesis, or aggregation, or 'addition' of morphemes and their meanings.

(linguistics) The state or characteristic of having or using words containing multiple syllables, sometimes as a stage in the development of language.


overextend

en-verb

overextend (third-person singular simple present overextends, present participle overextending, simple past and past participle overextended)

overextends (present singular third-person)
overextending (participle present)
overextended (participle past)
overextended (past)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-overextend.wav

(linguistics, transitive) To apply (a term) to too many referents, by overextension.


truchman

/ˈtɹʌt͡ʃmən/

From mediaeval Latin turchemannus or French trucheman, from Arabic تُرْجُمَان (turjumān). Doublet of dragoman.

1604, Edward Grimston (translator), The Natural and Moral History of the Indies by José de Acosta (1590), edited by Clements Markham, London: Hakluyt Society, 1853, Volume II, Book 7, Chapter 25, p. 519,
He laboured to make them all understand this discourse, using his interpreters and truchmen. The which being understoode by the King and the other Mexicane Lords, they were wonderfully well satisfied, and shewed great signes of love to Cortes and his company.

1640, William Habington, The Queen of Arragon, Act II, Scene 1, in A Selection of Collection of Old Plays, Volume 9, London: Septimus Prowett, 1825,
[…] And now I have with labour
Attain’d thy language, I’ll thy truchman be.
Interpret for thee to those smaller souls,
Who wonder when they understand not: souls!

1716, William Davenant, “The Philosopher’s Disquisition directed to the Dying Christian” stanza 31 in John Dryden, editor, Miscellany Poems, London: Jacob Tonson, Volume 6, p. 289,
Since justly Clients pay that Judge an awe,
Who Law’s lost Sense interprets and restores;
(Yet Judges are no more above the Law
Then Truchmen are above Ambassadors.)

An I hire a truchman to tell my tale
The lover’s plaint is not told for pay:

1885, Richard Burton, transl., The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, volume I, page 100:


stative

Granted, then, that the original meaning of these verbs was stative, the fact that a number of them have more or less involuntary meaning admits of a ready explanation. From the idea of becoming, in which originally there was in all probability no idea of volition, the idea of becoming, happening independently of the will, might very readily be developed, and this may have taken place in the case of verbs with more or less involuntary meaning. After this involuntary type was once established, it is of course possible that it should have become independently productive, and that verbs expressing an involuntary action not derived from more original stative verbs should take the intransitive form. Such a process, however, does not seem to have taken place in Hebrew. The so-called intransitive verbs, therefore, to judge from the material in Hebrew, seem originally to have denoted states or conditions or a change of state, while the transitive verbs denoted actions.

1903 Frank R. Blake: So-Called Intransitive Verbal Forms in the Semitic Languages. Dissertation Submitted to the Johns Hopkins University. Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. xxiv, pp.145-204

2000James P. Allen: Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs. Cambridge University Press
The stative is a verb form used to express a state of being in which its subject is, was, or will be. Originally, the stative expressed the perfect tense: that is, completed action. By Middle Egyptian, however, other verb forms were used for that function, and the stative had come to express instead the result of a completed action. In this respect, the stative is similar to the English past participle. In the sentence The table is set, for example, the past participle set describes both a state in which its subject (the table) is and the result of a prior action (in this case, of someone setting the table). Because of this similarity, the stative is sometimes called the pseudoparticiple. The stative still retains its older meaning of completed action in one use in Middle Egyptian, and for this reason it is also known as the old perfective.

(grammar) Of a verb: asserting, generally intransitively, that a subject has a particular property or status.


stative

(grammar) A construct asserting that a subject has a particular property.


strong declension

en-noun

strong declension (plural strong declensions)

(linguistics) A class of words in many Germanic languages including English, which decline irregularly rather than by suffixation (for example goose, whose plural is geese).


tenseness

tenseness (countable and uncountable, plural tensenesses)

(phonetics) A particular vowel or consonant quality that is phonemically contrastive in many languages, including English.


nominalize

en-verb

nominalize (third-person singular simple present nominalizes, present participle nominalizing, simple past and past participle nominalized)

nominalizes (present singular third-person)
nominalizing (participle present)
nominalized (participle past)
nominalized (past)

To nominalize an adjective that refers to a known noun, the articles el, la, los, and las are used (Unit 11 §59); to nominalize an adjective that does not refer to a known noun, the neuter article lo is used.

1960, Modern Language Association of America, Dwight le Merton Bollinger, Modern Spanish: A Project of The Modern Language Association, Harcourt, Brace, page 226

But, Dretske asks, what happens when we nominalize a propositional allomorph?

1983, Peter Achinstein, The Nature of Explanation, Oxford University Press US, page 199:

(linguistics) To use as or change into a noun, often by affixing a morpheme.


morphotactics

The ordering restrictions in place on the ordering of morphemes.


pejoration

en-noun

pejoration (countable and uncountable, plural pejorations)

Coordinate term: euphemism treadmill

Nagle explains that the contemporary disapproval of the title is due to a multilayered pejoration inherent in the term Hobson-Jobson.

2014, James Lambert, “A Much Tortured Expression: A New Look At `Hobson-Jobson'”, in International Journal of Lexicography, volume 27, number 1, page 58:

(linguistics) Any process by which a word acquires a more negative meaning.


referential

/ɹɛfəˈɹɛnʃəl/

Thus, the referential location of “town” in an utterance “Went to town”, is simply to be conceived as that location which might also be referred to by “there”, “the place we visited last Thursday”, “your birthplace”, etc.

2011, James Dickins, Extended Axiomatic Linguistics, Walter de Gruyter, page 108:

(linguistics) Of or relating to a referent.


trey

PIE word
 *tréyes
From Middle English treye, from Anglo-Norman trei or treis, from Old French treis (“three”). Doublet of three and tres.

(informal) The third bearer of the same personal name in a family, often denoted by suffixed Roman numeral III.


regiolect

A lect spoken in a particular geographical region.


Standard English

Students with a pronounced Midland South dialect are required to take a course teaching them to speak and write in Standard English.

A debate rages on whether or not the singular they constitutes Standard English usage.

(linguistics) The form of the English language widely accepted as the usual correct form.

প্রমিত ইংরেজী

the form of the English language widely accepted as the usual correct form


actional

en-adj

actional (comparative more actional, superlative most actional)

more actional (comparative)
most actional (superlative)

(grammar, of a verb) Depicting an action having an agent and a patient.


hydronym

/ˈhʌɪdɹənɪm/

Coordinate term: oronym

Numerous hydronyms of Asia Minor, attested in the historical Anatolian languages and going back to Proto-Anatolian, can be compared to the Indo-European derivational type of hydronyms in *-ntʰ-. […] Another hydronym of Proto-Anatolian origin and having wide Indo-European connections is Alda, a river in Asia Minor […]

1995, Thomas V. Gamkrelidze, Vjačeslav V. Ivanov, “Proto-Indo-European in Space and Time, Based on Linguistic and Culture-historical Data [part 2, chapter 11]”, in Johanna Nichols, transl., edited by Werner Winter, Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans: A Reconstruction and Historical Analysis of a Proto-Language and Proto-Culture (Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs; 80), Berlin, New York, N.Y.: Mouton de Gruyter, →ISBN, page 760:

Dutch Zijpe, Zijp (and regional variants) is found in toponyms, e.g. the poulder De/Het Zijpe in the province of North-Holland, the name of the castle Sijpestein (Nieuw-Loosdrecht), […] We are dealing with an old hydronym.

2000, Dirk Boutan, Maarten Kossmann, “On the Etymology of Dutch Zijpe”, in Dirk Boutkan, Arend Quak, editors, Language Contact: Substratum, Superstratum, Adstratum in Germanic Languages (Amsterdamer Beiträge Zur Älteren Germanistik; 54), Amsterdam: Rodopi, →ISBN, page 31:

Considering the fact that the Yeneseic languages are historically spoken along almost the entire length of the Yenesei from the Minusinsk basin to the Arctic zone it is curious that no Common Yeneseic name for the river seems to have been preserved in the linguistic material. […] A hydronym that possibly belongs to this context is Kezes, which has been derived from Ket (*)qä-ses 'large water' […]

2012, Juha Janhunen, “Etymological and Ethnohistorical Aspects of the Yenesei”, in Marek Stachowski, editor, Studia Etymologica Cracoviensia, volume 17, Kraków: Jagiellonian University Press, →ISBN, →ISSN, page 73:

A river name is a hydronym, a name of a body of water. The whole stock of hydronyms in a district, territory, country, or the like is called its hydronymy.

2016, Svante Strandberg, “River Names”, in Carole Hough, Daria Izdebska, editors, The Oxford Handbook of Names and Naming, Oxford: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 105:

(onomastics) The name of a river, lake, sea or any other body of water.


catenative

From Latin catēnātus (“chained”), from catēnāre, from catēna (“chain”).

There is a certain arbitrariness in the way catenatives work. For example, we can use the verb like with either a gerund or an infinitive as its object:[…].

1982, Martha Kolln, Understanding English Grammar, page 229:

Just as many catenatives are followed by the infinitive, so others take the gerund.

2010, Peter Fenn, A Student's Advanced Grammar of English (SAGE), page 492:

Unlike periphrastics, however, catenatives combine certain verbs (e.g., impersonal δεῖ) with an infinitive.

2010, Stanley E. Porter, Jeffrey T. Reed, Matthew Brook O'Donnell, Fundamentals of New Testament Greek, page 351:

Sentences containing catenatives (e.g., gonna, wanna, haveta, etc.) have one proposition, coded by the main verb following these.

2014, Paula Menyuk, Jacqueline W. Liebergott, Martin C. Schultz, Early Language Development in Full-term and Premature Infants, page 225:


postvocalic

(phonetics) (Of a phoneme) occurring after a vowel.


suppletive

suppletive (comparative more suppletive, superlative most suppletive)

more suppletive (comparative)
most suppletive (superlative)

... of optimus, meaning “best,” which in turn is the superlative suppletive form of bonus, “good.”

1999, K. V. Tirumalesh, Grammar and Communication: Essays on the Form and Function of Language, page 237:

(grammar) Supplying an etymologically unrelated word with forms, or which is used as one of its forms, by suppletion (for example, in English, better and best are suppletive forms of good).

suppletiivinen

which supplies an etymologically unrelated word with forms, or which is used as one of its forms


suppletive

(grammar) A form used by way of suppletion.


synonymum

From Czech synonymum / Slovak synonymum.

This was introduced as a synonymum for Zeiller’s L. dichotomum (1880, 1886/8), which according to the later Arber’s discussions (see also Crookall 1929) is not identical with the L. dichotomum Stbg.

1950, Bulletin international: Classe des sciences mathématiques, naturelles et de la médecine, Česká akademie věd a umění, page 38:

Herpetocypris palpiger A. G. Lowndes 1923 is a synonymum for Herpetocypris chevreuxi G. O. Sars 1869.

1952, Zoologické a Entomologické Listy, page 114:

The specimens were determined originally as Romeria gracilis, but according to Geitler (1932) and Komárek (1958) it is a synonymum for Romeria elegans, as its dimmensions^([sic]) lie within the range known for R. elegans.

1964, Sbornik: Scientific papers. Technology of water. Oddil technologie vody, page 515:

The term labor pains is being commonly used as a synonymum for the expulsive contractions of the uterine muscles.

1967, Acta universitatis palackianae olomucensis, page 165:

In this sense, the effective development is a synonymum for optimum development.

It is a synonymum for the term of antisaprobity (B. & Z. CYRUS, 1947) with a completed definition.

1973, Ergebnisse der Limnologie, page 102:

Exactly the above mentioned terms “other pressure” or “advantages of any kind” constitute the synonymums for the ideological subversion by imperialism of the socialist countries.

Obviously on the basis of this assumption, Popescu-Gorj et al. (1958) consider S. ortalidiformis Led. a synonymum for Ch. annellata f. oxybeliformis (H.-S.).

1983, Acta Universitatis Agriculturae: Facultas Agronomica, Vysoká škola zemědělská, page 211:

Antitoxin is (a) the snake venom (b) an antibody (c) a viral product (d) a synonymum for toxoid

1983, Acta Universitatis Carolinae: Medica, Universita Karlova, page 207:

The fact that linear spaces are infinite sets is not too important here permutation is then a synonymum for the bijection.

1983, Czechoslovak Journal of Physics, page 728:

When speaking about edges, we use a notation (x, y) to be a synonymum for {x, y}.

1985, Annual Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science: STACS, page 199:

This then is the place to introduce methodological concepts of statistics into the vocabulary of inductive logic, i.e. to define in it concepts like “empirical means (of a sample)”, “empirical variance (of a sample)”, “empirical dispersion (of a sample)”, “true mean (of the population)” (being a synonymum for “degree of uniformity”), “true variance (of the population)”, “true dispersion (of the population)” etc., as well as the most important methodological concepts “amount of confidence probability”, “confidence interval” and “length of the confidence interval” (being a synonymum for “unexactness of the estimation”.

1986, Atti del Congresso logica e filosofia della scienza, oggi: Epistemologia e logica induttiva, page 85:

The concept of personality was treated primitively by them — as a “great man“, or it was taken as a synonymum for the terms “person” or “individual”.

1991, Sborník prací Filosofické fakulty brněnské university: Řada historická. C, page 132:

Despite that Crosskey (1986) and Zwick ( 1995 ) consider them a synonymum for reptans along with the stress referring to its variability (Niesiolowski 1987) and electrophoretic indistinguishability, Knoz (pers. com.) considers the Central European populations of reptans and galeratum as different.

1992, Acta Zoologica Universitatis Comenianae, Univerzita Komenského, page 58:

In this connection we must stress that „vegetative rapprochement“ belongs to Lysenko's terminology as a synonymum for „vegetative hybridisation“.

2004, Anna Matalová, Jiří Sekerák, Genetics Behind the Iron Curtain: Its Repudiation and Reinstitualisation in Czechoslovakia, page 18:


lemmatisation

en-noun

lemmatisation (countable and uncountable, plural lemmatisations)

(computing, lexicography) The process of finding the lemma that corresponds to an inflected form of a word.


Tocharian

General American, Mary–marry–merry merger

From Latin Tochari + -ian, from Ancient Greek Τόχαροι (Tókharoi, “Kucheans”) (see Τόχαρος (Tókharos)), probably from an Indo-Iranian source (Old Persian [script needed] (tuxāri-), Khotanese [script needed] (ttahvāra)); compare Sanskrit तुखार (tukhāra).

der

(linguistics) An extinct branch of the Indo-European language family, consisting of two languages, Tocharian A and Tocharian B, written in an abugida derived from Brahmi.


weak declension

en-noun

weak declension (plural weak declensions)

(grammar) The declension pattern of a weak noun.


hedging

Such hedging is necessitated by the lack of in-depth knowledge of the contents, which also gives free rein to the scripting of unsubstantiated factoids concerning the book.

2018, James Lambert, “Setting the Record Straight: An In-depth Examination of Hobson-Jobson”, in International Journal of Lexicography, volume 31, number 4, →DOI, page 487:

(pragmatics, composition) The use of intentionally ambiguous or noncommittal statements.


antedating

The new edition of the dictionary contains several antedatings.

Had I access to large databases of scanned-in newspapers from the Philippines, or Africa, or India, etc., we would expect to see a good percentage of antedatings of the current earliest instances.

2018, James Lambert, “A multitude of ‘lishes’: The nomenclature of hybridity”, in English World-Wide, page 14:

(lexicography) An earlier citation of a lexical item.


sluicing

(linguistics) A kind of ellipsis, introduced by an interrogative, where (usually) everything except the interrogative is elided from the clause, as in "I like him, but I don't know why".


comma splice

(grammar) Two independent clauses combined into a run-on sentence with only a comma between them.


imbrication

imbrication (countable and uncountable, plural imbrications)

The Kiyaka perfective, applicative, and causative suffixes display an unusual type of infixation known in the Bantu literature as “imbrication” (see e.g. the discussion of imbrication in Tiene in chapters 4 and 6).

2014, Sharon Inkelas, The Interplay of Morphology and Phonology, Oxford University Press, page 358:

(linguistics) A phenomenon occurring in many Bantu languages in which morphemes interweave in certain morphophonological conditions.


frequentative aspect

(grammar) A subclass of imperfective verbs that denotes a continuously repeated action. An example in English would be the frequentative verb to crackle, as opposed to the nonfrequentative to crack.

fréquentatif

grammatical subclass of the imperfective aspect


différance

From French différance (“deferral”) (coined in this sense by Derrida), from différer (“to postpone”); but punning on différence (“difference”).

(literary theory, linguistics) The endless deferral of any ultimate meaning in a word or sentence, owing to the necessity of recourse to a potentially infinite series of other, equally uncertain words or signs.

差延

the endless deferral of any ultimate meaning in a word or sentence


epenthetic

/ˌɛpənˈθɛtɪk/

From Ancient Greek ἐπενθετικός (epenthetikós, “inserted”).

der

“I’ve added a little vowel between the t and the r,” Baron says. “It elongates the word, it adds an extra syllable to the word, it emphasizes the word. There’s a name for this: epenthetic vowel.”

2015 December 7, Julie Beck, “The Linguistics of 'YouTube Voice'”, in The Atlantic:

(phonology, phonetics) Of or pertaining to epenthesis.

(phonology, of a phoneme or syllable) Inserted into a word.


tagmemics

(linguistics) A theory of discourse that considers context-selected semantically equivalent elements and structures to be different instances of single underlying tagmemes.


reanalysis

(linguistics) Analyzing a lexeme with a different structure from its original, often by misunderstanding.

surface analysis

linguistics: different analysis of a word's structure


subjunctive mood

en-noun

subjunctive mood (plural subjunctive moods)

From subjunctive (from Latin subjunctivus, from sub- (“under”) + junctus (“joined”), perfect passive participle of jungere (“to join”) + adjective suffix -ivus) + mood (from Latin modus).

(grammar) Mood expressing an action or state which is hypothetical or anticipated rather than actual, including wishes and commands.

subjunktiivi

esp. applied for English and descendants of Latin

felszólító mód

see also Usage notes of the latter article


hypercorrection

hypercorrection (countable and uncountable, plural hypercorrections)

(linguistics) Nonstandard language use that results from the over-application of a perceived prescriptive rule.

hiperkorreksie

nonstandard language use that results from the over-application of a perceived prescriptive rule

(linguistics) A nonstandard form so used.


bahuvrihi

Transliteration of Sanskrit बहुव्रीहि (bahuvrīhi, “rich, wealthy”, literally “(possessing) much rice”), itself an example of a bahuvrihi.

translit

Considerable discrepancies prevail with regard to the word मूचिीः which the Calcutta edition and all the authorities except the Bombay copy and No. VI. read without the visarga. It has subsequently been inserted in Mr. [Charles] Wilkins' ms., and is clearly required by the sense, as तोजोमूचिीः is a bahuvrihi or compound epithet.

1825, [Svayambhuva Manu], “[Notes.] Chap. III.”, in Graves Chamney Haughton, editor, Mánava-Dherma-Sástra; or The Institutes of Menu, volume I (Sanscrit Text), London: Printed by Cox and Baylis, Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, →OCLC, page 340:

The drift of this paribâshâ, as Patañjali explains it, is to show that Bahuvrîhi compounds (in English comparable to adjective compounds like lightfoot—i.e. one who possesses light feet,—or blueeye-d, &c.) are of two kinds, the one expressing a quality or an attribute which is essential, and the other expressing a quality or an attribute which is not essential, to the subject so predicated by the compound. Thus, as Patañjali illustrates, if you say: 'there march the priests having red turbans on,' the Bahuvrîhi lohitoshńísháh 'having red turbans on' implies here an essential quality of the priests, since this quality cannot be disconnected from their appearance as they march.

1870 June 8, Th[eodor] Goldstücker, “Appendix to Page 18”, in On the Deficiencies in the Present Administration of Hindu Law; being a Paper Read at the Meeting of the East India Association on the 8th of June, 1870, London: Trübner and Co., 60, Paternoster Row, published 1871, →OCLC, page 48, footnote †:

It would therefore not be surprising if unambiguous bahuvrihi morphology were to be used occasionally in a governing compound.

1986, Alan J[effrey] Nussbaum, Head and Horn in Indo-European (Untersuchungen zur indogermanischen Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaft [Studies in Indo-European Language and Culture], New Series; 2), Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, →ISBN, page 273:

At the same time, none of the extended adjectival bahuvrihis has its linear counterpart in either poem. This is characteristic of the general situation in Old English. Neither the correspondence between the linear and the reversed bahuvrihis nor the relation between the linear and the extended bahuvrihis is symmetrical, […]

1997, Prague Studies in English (Acta Universitatis Carolinae, Philologica), volume XXII, Prague: Universita Karlova, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 16:

The fourth subcategory of exocentric compounds are the infamous bahuvrihi constructions, such as hunchback, paleface, scatterbrain. [Hans] Marchand defines these as expressions which denote somebody (or something) which can be characterised by the feature expressed by the compound. Thus, bahuvrihi compounds have some kind of an identifying function. Marchand provides the following explanation for the origins of bahuvrihi compounds: they were used very early in Indo-European languages, primarily for namegiving, but most of them functioned only as adjectives.

2006, Réka Benczes, Creative Compounding in English: The Semantics of Metaphorical and Metonymical Noun-Noun Combinations (Human Cognitive Processing; 19), Amsterdam, Philadelphia, Pa.: John Benjamins Publishing Company, →ISBN, page 19:

(grammar, also attributive) A type of nominal compound in which the first part modifies the second but neither part alone conveys the intended meaning.


language family

en-noun

language family (plural language families)

(linguistics) A set of languages which have evolved from a common ancestor.