Lexical decisionTask of subjects in psycholinguistic experiments who on presentation of a spoken or printed stimulus must decide whether it is a word or not.

Lexical gapPossible but non-occurring words; forms that obey the phono-tactic rules of a language yet have no meaning, e. g., blick in English.Lexical gaps occur in a language when it lacks a word for a concept (which may be expressed lexically in another language).

Lexical semanticsThe subfield of semantics concerned with the meanings of words and the meaning relationships among words; a study of the conventions of word meaning.

Lexical valency The aptness of a word to appear in various combinations (Ginzburg et al.)

LexicographerOne who edits or works on a dictionary.

LexicographyThe editing or making of a dictionary.

LexicologyThe study of the lexicon, or word-stock, its meaning, the relations among lexemes, the structure of lexemes, their etymology and lexical units, and relations between lexicology and other areas of the language: phonology, morphology, phraseology, lexicography, and syntax.

LexiconOur mental dictionary; stores information about words and the lexical rules we use to build them.

Lingua francaA language common to speakers of diverse languages that can be used for communication and commerce; a language used as a medium of communication between speakers of different languages.

Linguistic competenceUnconscious knowledge of grammar that allows us to produce and understand a language.

Linguistic relativityA theory that language and culture influence or perhaps even determine each other.

Linguisticsthe scientific study of language.

Linguistic theoryA theory of the principles that characterize all human languages; the “laws of human language.”

Linguistic universalCharacteristic shared by all human languages.

Loan translationsCompound words or expressions whose parts are translated literally into the borrowing language, e. g., marriage of convenience from French mariage de convenance. Also called calque.

Loan wordA word in one language whose origins are in another language; a word borrowed into a language from another language.

MacronA short straight line placed above a vowel to indicate that it is pronounced long.

Malapropism Use of the wrong word which resembles phonologically the intended word; type of production error by which a speaker uses a semantically incorrect word in a place of phonetically similar word without being aware of the mistake.

MarkedIn a gradable pair of antonyms, the word that is not used in questions of degree, e. g., low is the marked number of the pair high/ low because we ordinarily ask How high is the mountain? not How low is the mountain?; in a masculine/ feminine pair, the word that contains a derivational morpheme, usually the feminine word, e. g., princess is marked, whereas prince is unmarked (Cf. unmarked)

Markedness Opposition in meaning that differentiates between the typical meaning of a word and its “ marked” meaning or opposite (right is unmarked, and left is marked).

Mass nounsNouns that cannot ordinarily be enumerated, e. g., bread, meat, and milk (Cf. count nouns).

Mental lexiconThe dictionary that is in the speaker’s mind; it contains a list of words as well as rules that help to coin words that are not listed.

MeronymyA part– whole relationship between lexemes.

MetaphorNon-literal meaning of one word or phrase describes another word or phrase.

MetonymyDescription of something in terms of some-thing with which it is closely associated.

Mixed metaphorA metaphor that comprises parts of different metaphors: hit the nail on the jackpot com-bines hit the nail on the head and hit the jackpot (Denham & Lobeck).

Monomorphemic wordA word that consists of one morpheme.

MorphAny concrete realization of a morpheme.

MorphemeSmallest unit of linguistic meaning or function; a minimal unit of meaning or function in a language.

Morphological motivation The relationship between morphemes.

Morphological rulesRules for combining morphemes to form stems and words.

Morphological typologyClassification of languages according to common morphological structures.

MorphologyThe study of the structure of words; it also includes the rules of word-formation; the study of how languages combine morphemes to make words; the systematic patterning of meaningful word parts, including prefixes and suffixes; study of the system of rules underlying our knowledge of the structure of words.

Motivation The relationship existing between the phonemic or morphemic composition and structural pattern of the word, on the one hand, and its meaning on the other (Arnold).

Mutually intelligibleLanguage varieties that can be understood by speakers of the two (or more) varieties.

NarrowingChange in words’ meanings over time to more specific meanings.

NegationCausing a statement to have the opposite meaning by inserting not between Aux and V

NeologismA newly coined word which is intended to gain or appears to be gaining common currency in the language.

Notional meaning A meaning when a word expresses ideas, concepts, images, and feelings.

NymsMeaning relationships among words— antonyms, synonyms, homonyms, etc.

Onomatopoeia/ onomatopoeicA word that mirrors an aspect of its meaning; words whose pronunciations suggest their meaning; the naming of a thing or action by a vocal imitation of the sound associated with it, e.g., e.g. cuckoo is onomatopoeic.

Open form classThe class of lexical content words; a category of words that commonly adds new words, e. g., nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and verbs; a category of words that accepts new members (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs).

OvergeneralizationApplication of a grammatical rule more broadly than it is generally applied.ParadigmA set of forms derived from a single root morpheme; the system of grammatical forms characteristic of a word, e. g., take, takes, taken, took, taking; or woman, women, woman’s, and women’s.

ParoleIn structural linguistics, the physical utterance itself; the use of a sign or a set of signs. Part of speechClassification of a word according to its form and function.

Philosophical semantics The subfield of semantics that is concerned with logical properties of language.

Phonetical motivation When there is a certain similarity between the sound-form of a word and its meaning when speech sounds may suggest spatial and visual dimensions, shape, and size.

PhraseA syntactic unit (NP, VP, etc.) headed by a syntactic category ( N, V, etc.); a syntactic constituent headed by a lexical category, i.e. a noun, adjective, verb, adverb or preposition, e.g., with hospitality (noun phrase).

Phraseology A subfield of lexicology that studies phraseological units.

Phraseological unit A stable combination of words with complete or partial transferred meaning

Phrase structureA system of rules that organizes words into larger units or phrases.

PhrenologyA pseudoscience, the practice of which is determining personality traits and intellectual ability by examination of the bumps on the skull. Its contribution to neurolinguistics is that its methods were highly suggestive of the modular theory of brain structure.

PictogramA picture or symbol that represents an object or idea; a form of writing in which the symbols resemble the objects represented; a non-arbitrary form of writing.

PidginA simple but rule-governed language developed for communication among speakers of mutually unintelligible languages, often based on one of those languages.

Pluralia tantumrefers to a noun that is morphologically plural but semantically singular (trousers).

PolymorphemicWords consisting of more than one morpheme.

PolysemyA semantic process whereby a lexeme assumes two or more related meanings. PragmaticsThe study of language use in context; the study of how context and situation affect meaning; study of the meanings of sentences in context (utterance meaning).

Praxisis educational jargon for ‘practice’ or ‘enaction,’ from the Greek verb prattein, ‘to do.’

PredicateSyntactically, the verb phrase (VP) in the clause [NP VP].

PrefixAn affix that is attached to the beginning of a morpheme or stem; an affix that attaches to the beginning of a root; an affix that goes before the stem.

Preposition(P) The syntactic category, also lexical category, that heads a prepositional phrase.

Prepositional objectThe grammatical relation of the noun phrase that occurs immediately below a prepositional phrase (PP) in deep structure.

Prepositional phrase(PP) The syntactic category, also phrasal category, consisting of a preposition and a noun phrase.

Principle of compositionalityA principle of semantic interpretation that states that the meaning of a word, phrase, or sentence depends both on the meaning of its components (morphemes, words, phrases) and how they are combined structurally.

ProcliticsClitics which are attached to the beginning of the host.

ProductiveRefers to morphological rules that can be used freely and apply to all forms to create new words, e. g., the addition to an adjective of - ish meaning “ having somewhat of the quality,” such as newish and tallish.

Qualitative researchResearch that is done in a natural setting, involving intensive holistic data collection through observation at a very close personal level without the influence of prior theory and contains mostly verbal analysis(Perry, 2011, p. 257).

Quantitative researchA study that uses numerical data with emphasis on statistics to answer the research questions.

ReduplicationA morphological process of forming new words by repeating the entire free morpheme (total reduplication) or a part of it (partial reduplication): wishy- washy, teensy- weensy, etc.

Reference deals with the relationship between linguistic elements, words, sentences, etc., and the non-linguistic world of experience (Palmer).

ReferentThe object, relationship, and class of objects outside world to which a word refers. Regional dialectA dialect spoken in a specific geographic area that may arise from, and is reinforced by, that area’s integrity.

RegionalismA feature that distinguishes one regional dialect from others

RegisterManner of speaking or writing style adopted for a particular audience (e. g., formal versus informal); a stylistic variant of a language appropriate to a particular social setting; also called style; language style appropriate to a particular social setting; a way of using the language in certain contexts and situations, often varying according to formality of expression, choice of vocabulary and degree of explicitness.

Register tonesLevel tones; high, mid, or low tones.

Relational oppositesPair of antonyms in which one describes a relationship between two objects and the other describes the same relationship when the two objects are reversed.

RetronymAn expression that would once have been redundant, but which societal or technological changes have made non-redundant.

RootThe morpheme at the core of a word to which affixes are added.

Root morphemeA morpheme to which an affix can be attached.

Second language acquisition (SLA, L2 acquisition)The acquisition of another language or languages after first language acquisition is under way or completed.

Semantic featuresA notational device for expressing the presence or absence of semantic properties by pluses and minuses; the smallest component of meaning in a word; classifications of meaning that can be expressed in terms of binary features [+/–], such as [+/– human], [+/– animate], [+/– count].

Semantic fieldsBasic classifications of meaning under which words are stored in our mental lexicons.

Semantic motivation The co-existence of direct and figurative meanings of the same word within the same synchronous system (Arnold).

Semantic propertiesThe components of meaning of a word, e. g., “old” is a semantic property of man, woman, wine, story, and movie.

Semantic shiftChange in the meaning of words over time.

SemanticsThe study of the linguistic meaning of morphemes, words, phrases, and sentences; the study of the meanings of words and sentences; the study of meaning communicated through language; system of rules underlying our knowledge of word and sentence meaning.

Semasiology The science of meanings or sense development (of words); the explanation of the development and changes of the meanings of words (Encyclopedia).

SemioticsThe study of sign systems; the use of sign systems.

Sensedeals with the complex system of relationships that hold between the linguistic elements themselves and is concerned with extralinguistic relations (Palmer).

Sentence semantics The subfield of semantics that studies the meanings of the sentences and meaning relations between the sentences.

Shift in connotationChange in words’ general meanings over time.

Shift in denotationComplete change in words’ meanings over time.

SignThe abstract link that connects sound and idea.

SignificationThe process of creating and interpreting symbols.

SignifiedIn structural linguistics, the concept, idea, or meaning of the signifier.

SignifierIn structural linguistics, a spoken or signed word or a word on a page.

SimileComparison, usually of two unlike things, in order to create a non-literal image.

SlangAn informal word or expression that has not gained complete acceptability and is used by a particular group; aword and a phrase used in casual speech, often invented and spread by close- knit social or age groups, and fast changing.

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 818