Glossary (LIST of linguistic terms)

 

 

Abbreviation – a reduced version of a word, phrase, or sentence.

Affix – a meaningful form that is attached to another form, to make a more complex word.

Ambiguity – expression of more than one meaning.

Amelioration – a change of meaning in which a word loses an originally unpleasant sense.

Antonym – word that is opposite in meaning to another word.

Assimilation – the influence exercised by one sound upon the articulation of another, so that the sounds become more alike (ten in ten pounds becoming tem).

Back formation – a process of word formation where a new word is formed by removing an imagined affix from another word (editor – edit).

Barbarism – (use of) a word or action not in accordance with normal standards.

Blend – the result of two elements fusing to form a new word or construction.

Borrow – to introduce a word (or some other linguistic features) from one language or dialect into another; vocabulary borrowings are usually known as loan words.

Clipping – a process of word formation in which a new word is produced by shortening (examination – exam); also called reduction.

Cockney – characteristic of a native of London, esp. of the East End or speaking its dialect; this dialect.

Compound – a unit of vocabulary which consists of more than one lexical stem.

Conversion – a process of word formation where lexemes are made to change their word class without the tradition of an affix.

Creole – When children start learning a pidgin as their first language and it becomes the mother tongue of a community, it is called a creole. Like a pidgin, a creole is a distinct language which has taken most of its vocabulary from another language, the lexifier, but has its own unique grammatical rules. Unlike a pidgin, however, a creole is not restricted in use, and is like any other language in its full range of functions. Examples are Gullah, Jamaican Creole and Hawaiian Creole English.

Denotation – the objective (‘dictionary’) relationship between a word and the reality to which it refers; also called cognitive/referential meaning.

Derivation – a major process of word formation, especially using affixes to produce new words (act – action).

Deterioration – a change of meaning in which a word acquires a negative evaluation; also called pejoration.

Dialect – a language variety in which use of grammar and vocabulary identifies the regional or social background of the user. (CEEL) Regional dialect –a variety of a language spoken in a particular area of a country. Some regional dialects have been given traditional names which mark them out as being significantly different from standard varieties spoken in the same place. Some examples are “Hillbilly English” (from the Appalachians in the USA) and “Geordie” (from Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK). Minority dialect – a variety used sometimes by members of a particular minority ethnic group as a marker of identity, usually alongside a standard variety. Examples are African American Vernacular English in the USA, London Jamaican in Britain and Aboriginal English in Australia.

Doublet – one of a pair, esp. one of two words of the same derivation but different sense (fashion and faction, cloak and clock).

Etymology – study of the origins and history of the form and folk etymology – altering an unfamiliar word to make it more familiar (asparagus – sparrow grass); also called popular etymology.

Extension – in historical linguistics, widening the meaning of the word; also called generalization.

Generalization – in historical linguistics, widening the meaning of the word; also called extension.

Holonym – a word denoting whole of some part (e.g. jacket and sleeve).

Homographs – words with the same spelling but different meaning (e.g. wind ‘air’ vs. wind ‘turn’).

Homonyms – words with the same form but different meaning (e.g. ear ‘corn’ vs. ear ‘body part’).

Homophones – words with the same pronunciation but different meaning (rode/rowed).

Hybrid – a word composed of elements from different languages (television, from Greek and Latin).

Hyponym – a more specific term whose meaning is included in the meaning of a more general term (cat is a hyponym of animal).

Hyponymy – the relationship between specific and general words, when the former are included in the latter.

Hyperonym – a more general term whose meaning includes the meaning of a more specific term (animal is the hyperonym of cat).

Idiolect – the linguistic system of an individual speaker.

Inflection – in grammar, an affix that signals a grammatical relationship, e.g. case, tense (e.g. girl’s, walked).

Lexeme – a unit of lexical meaning, which exists regardless of any inflectional endings it may have or the number of words it may contain.

Lexicon – total stock of meaningful units in a language – not only the words and idioms, but also the parts of words which express meaning, such as prefixes and suffixes.

Lexicology – a branch of linguistics which deals with the study of all aspects of the vocabulary of the language (how words are formed, how they have developed over time, how they are used now, how they relate in meaning to each other and how they are handled in dictionaries and other word books).

Lexicography – a branch of lexicology dealing with writing dictionaries.

Lingua franca – a medium of communication for people who speak different first languages.

Loan translation – a borrowed item in which the parts are translated separately into a new language, as in superman from German Übermensch; also called a calque.

Meronym – a word denoting part of some whole (e.g. sleeve and jacket).

Meronymy – the relation between part and whole (e.g. wheel and car).

Metaphor – a figurative expression in which one notion is described in terms usually associated with another (e.g. launch an idea).

Metonymy – a semantic change where an attribute is used for the whole (e.g. crown and king).

Morpheme – the smallest meaningful unit in a language.

Narrowing – in historical linguistics, a type of change in which a word becomes more specialized in meaning (Old English mete ‘food’, now a type of food); also called restriction.

Native – belonging to a person or thing by nature, innate, inherent, natural, born in a place, indigenous, not exotic; of the natives of a place.

Native (first) language – the language first acquired as a child (mother tongue, native language), or preferred in a multilingual situation.

Origin – derivation, beginning or rising or coming from something, person’s ancestry, source, starting point (a word of Latin origin; country of origin).

Part-whole relation – the relation between part and whole; also called meronymy (e.g. wheel and car).

Pidgin – a new language which develops in situations where speakers of different languages need to communicate but don’t share a common language. The vocabulary of a pidgin comes mainly from one particular language (called the “lexifier”). An early “pre-pidgin” is quite restricted in use and variable in structure. But the later “stable pidgin” develops its own grammatical rules which are quite different from those of the lexifier. Once a stable pidgin has emerged, it is generally learned as a second language and used for communication among people who speak different languages. Examples are Nigerian Pidgin and Bislama (spoken in Vanuatu).

N o t e: pidgin is believed to have been a Chinese pronunciation of the English word business. There have been many forms of pidgin English, often with common elements because of the wide range of contacts made by commercial shipping.

Polysemy – different meanings of the same word.

Productivity – the potential of a linguistic rule to produce many instances of the same type.

Reference – the relationship between linguistic forms and entities in the world (referents).

Referent – an entity in the world denoted by a linguistic form.

Restriction – in historical linguistics, a type of change in which a word becomes more specialized in meaning (Old English mete ‘food’, now a type of food); also called narrowing.

Root – the base form of a word, from which other forms derive.

Semantic component – an element of a word’s meaning (girl – ‘young’, ‘female’, ‘human’); also called a semantic feature.

Semantic field – an area of meaning (e.g. colour) identified by a set of mutually defining items (red, blue, green, etc.); also called a lexical field.

Semantic relations – the meaning relations between words, as identified by the use of synonyms, antonyms, etc.; also called sense relations.

Semantics – the study of linguistic meaning.

Sense relations – the meaning relations between words, as identified by the use of synonyms, antonyms, etc.; also called semantic relations.

S entence – the largest structural unit that displays stateable grammatical relationships, not dependent on any other structure.

Source language – a language from which a word or text is taken.

Standard – a prestige variety, used as an institutionalized norm in a community; forms and varieties not conforming to this norm are said to be nonstandard or (pejoratively) substandard.

Stem – an element in a word to which affixes are attached.

Synonym – a word that has the same meaning (in a particular context) as another word (e.g. a nice range/selection of flowers).

Triplet – a group or set of three of one kind.

Variety – a situationally distinctive system of linguistic expression (legal, formal, etc.). Indigenized variety – indigenized varieties are spoken mainly as second languages in ex-colonies with multilingual populations. The differences from the standard variety may be linked to English proficiency, or may be part of a range of varieties used to express identity. For example, “Singlish” (spoken in Singapore) is a variety very different from Standard English, and there are many other varieties of English used in India.

Vernacular – the indigenous language or dialect of a community.

Word formation – the process of creating words out of sequences of morphemes.

 

 

Sources of Definitions

Crystal, D. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language / D. Crystal. – Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English. – Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1982.