Glossary of Key Terms PDF

Glossary of key terms achromatic refers to the tone range which in English includes black, white and grey. acronyms are words composed of initial letters, for example NATO for Northern Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Sometimes a distinction is made between acronyms, which are pronounced as single wor...

Glossary of key terms achromatic refers to the tone range which in English includes black, white and grey. acronyms are words composed of initial letters, for example NATO for Northern Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Sometimes a distinction is made between acronyms, which are pronounced as single words (fol- lowing the usual rules of English phonology), and initialisms like BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) for which each initial letter name is pronounced. active vocabulary is a term for the vocabulary a speaker normally uses. Passive vocabulary is understood by an individual but not frequently used. affixes are elements which can be attached to the beginning or end of a word (or part of a word) to change the meaning or word class. Prefixes attach to the beginning of a word, for example un-­ in unhappy, pseudo-­ in pseudoscience, and suffixes attach to the ends of words, for example -­ment in embankment, -­y in tricky. amelioration (occasionally called melioration or elevation) occurs when words acquire more positive connotations, moving either from a negative or neutral meaning to a positive one, or from a negative meaning to a neutral one, for example sinful ‘full of sin’ ameliorating to ‘bad, unac- ceptable’, as in a sinful waste of money. Contrasted with pejoration. antonymy occurs when two or more words or senses of words ­­(antonyms) contrast in one element of their meaning. Antonymous words are sometimes divided into sub-­types. Happy and sad are graded antonyms or polar terms which refer to positions on a scale, in this case a scale of emotions. True and false are true antonyms, also called binary antonyms or complementary terms, which describe an either/ or ­situation; something is either one or the other. 177 178 glossary of key terms archaisms are words or phrases which sound old-­fashioned and tend to be used in historical contexts, for example forsooth ‘in truth’, wireless ‘radio’. back-­formations are verbs formed from nouns rather than vice versa because these nouns appear to be suffixed (although historically are not), for example burgle from burglar, edit from editor. basic colour categories (BCCs) are the principal divisions of the colour space which underlie the basic colour terms (BCTs) of a par- ticular speech community. A BCC is an abstract concept which oper- ates independently of things described by terms such as green or yellow. BCCs are presented in small capital letters, for example green. See also macro-­categories. basic colour terms (BCTs) are the words which languages use to name basic colour categories. A BCT, such as green or yellow, is known to all members of a speech community and is used in a wide range of con- texts. Other colour words in a language are called non-­basic terms, for example sapphire, scarlet or auburn. binary antonyms see antonymy bleaching see grammaticalisation blends are words formed from the initial part of one word and the final part of another (which sometimes have some shared sounds or syllables), such as smog from smoke + fog, metrosexual from metropolitan + heterosexual. borrowing is the process by which words (loanwords) or senses of words from one language are adopted by another, for example chic from French, brother ‘member of a religious order’ on the model of Latin frater. The form or pronunciation of a borrowed word is often naturalised in the bor- rowing language over time so that it looks or sounds more like a native word, for example beef from Old French boef, potato from Spanish patata. brightness refers to the amount of light contributed to a colour impres- sion by an object producing or reflecting light. broadening see widening categorisation is the process by which people group similar things together under a shared name. Basic level categories are those, such as Chair or Anger, which people most readily use to conceptualise and name things in their interaction with the world around them. They are contrasted with more general superordinate categories, such as Furniture or Emotion, and more specific hyponymic categories, such as Armchair or Rage.  glossary of key terms 179 chaining describes the development of a polysemous word form which has semantically linked senses, for example attractive from literal mean- ings of ‘absorbing’ or ‘pulling towards’ to more abstract meanings of ‘inspiring admiration, affection, sympathy’, etc. Also called radiation. citations are quotations in a dictionary that exemplify a defined sense of a word. classical categorisation theory is associated with Aristotle’s theory of categorisation, where category membership is clear-­cut and binary. Membership is based on a set of criteria, necessary conditions, which all members must fulfil and which together constitute sufficient condi- tions for category membership. Thus, in order to be a member of the category of Aunts, someone must be female and the sister of a parent. All members of a category are equal, with no better or worse examples. Contrasted with prototype theory. clipped (cut) describes a word form that has been shortened, for example uni for university, phone for telephone. clippings (abbreviations) are clipped word forms. cognate describes either forms or languages that share a common source, for example English flower, French fleur and Italian fiore, or the English, German and Dutch languages. Cognitive Linguistics is a discipline which combines insights from linguistics and psychology, focusing on the connection between mental processes and the production and understanding of language. Cognitive Semantics is a branch of Cognitive Linguistics and is par- ticularly concerned with categorisation and the relationship between meaning and thought. co-­hyponym see hyponymy collocations are strings in which particular words occur together or collocate, for example salt and pepper, environmentally friendly; these words are known as collocates or sometimes collocators. colour in the technical language of Colour Studies denotes all the elements which combine to create a particular colour experience, ­­including hue, saturation, brightness and tone. common refers to the ancestor language of words that occur in various forms in a group of related languages; for example English go and staff can be traced back to Common Germanic. 180 glossary of key terms complementary terms see antonymy components are units of meaning smaller than a word, for example [+human] is a component of the meaning of man and woman. Componential Analysis (CA) uses components to formulate semantic distinctions. composite categories see macro-­categories compounding is the process by which two (or occasionally more) independent words are joined to make a new form or compound, for example phonebox from phone + box. conceptual domains (sometimes called conceptual fields) are areas of experience in the external world, such as farming or pleasure, ­­ which provide reference points for the language used to discuss them. conceptual metaphors are metaphors which are systematic in that they are found in many different linguistic expressions; for example, the conceptual metaphor time is a physical substance is reflected in the expressions have time, save time and waste time. connotative meaning is opposed to denotative meaning and refers to meaning that varies according to factors such as speaker and social context, where the connotations of a word are said to differ. constant reference is a property of words or phrases that refer to a unique entity, for example Dubai, Eric Cantona. conventional metaphors or metonymies are metaphors or metony- mies which have been established in the linguistic system for some time and might not be noticeable to speakers because they are so frequently used, for example see ‘understand’. converse terms or conversives are antonyms which denote a recipro- cal relationship, for example over/under, sister/brother. conversion occurs when one part of speech is ‘converted’ to use as another; for example, the noun access can be used as a verb (to access information). core vocabulary is the basic vocabulary of everyday life which is known by most speakers, used in most contexts, and likely to remain stable over long periods of time. degeneration see pejoration denotative meaning is opposed to connotative meaning and refers to a word’s denotation or basic core meaning, which is generally agreed  glossary of key terms 181 by speakers of a language and appears in dictionaries. Contrasted with connotation. derivation is the process by which a word is created or derived from a historically earlier word or root. The derivation of ModE right, for example, is OE riht. descriptivism is the view that linguists should be concerned with describing how language is used rather than prescribing ‘correct’ usage. Contrasted with prescriptivism. deterioration see pejoration diachrony refers to the study of the diachronic development of lan- guage, i.e. its development over time. Contrasted with synchrony. Discourse Analysis, also called Text Linguistics, is the academic discipline concerned with the study of linguistic relationships within texts. domain see conceptual domains domain matrix see profiling dysphemism occurs when a serious or frightening topic is treated in an inappropriately light-­hearted way, for example bite the dust for die. elevation see amelioration entailments are the correspondences between aspects of a source and target in a metaphorical mapping; for example, the metaphor argu- ment is war, found linguistically in expressions like we fought on every point and she wouldn’t back down, has entailments including the people arguing are opponents in conflict and being persuaded is defeat in battle. eponymous forms come from trade-­names or the names of inventors or famous people, for example escalator, hoover, scrooge. etymology can refer either to the study of the origins of words or to an account of the history of a particular word. etymon refers to a word from which another word has developed, for example ModE heavenly from its OE etymon heofon ‘heaven’ + the suffix -­lic. euphemism occurs when an unpleasant or taboo topic is named by a word (a euphemism) which disguises its unpleasant aspects, for example little girls’ room for ‘lavatory’. 182 glossary of key terms evolutionary sequence is a formula which claims to display the order in which basic colour categories are likely to develop in differ- ent languages, as revealed by the identification of their basic colour terms. expert taxonomies are systems of classification devised by people with specialised knowledge such as scientists. As in classical categorisa- tion theory, membership is on an either/or basis. Contrasted with folk taxonomies. fade-­out describes the fact that our knowledge of a system, such as kinship, tends to disappear as that system loses salience in our lives. folk taxonomies are systems of classification based on the way things are perceived and grouped together in everyday life. A folk taxonomy of a conceptual domain such as Animals or Plants is likely to differ from an expert taxonomy of the same topic. frame is the term used for the body of knowledge speakers need in order to understand and produce the language used in particular situations such as ‘shopping in a supermarket’. Frames are described in scripts, which set out the necessary contextual and linguistic information. fuzzy set theory introduced the idea that categories have a clear core but less clear boundaries. Members of categories thus range from best examples to least good examples. generalisation see widening graded antonyms see antonymy grammaticalisation occurs when a word loses some of its semantic content and becomes part of the grammatical system, for example the modal auxiliary verbs can and must. A more general term for loss of semantic content, like that which has affected the adjectives awesome and ghastly, is bleaching. headword refers to the word at the beginning of a dictionary entry, which the entry defines and describes. holonym see meronymy homographs are words which are spelled the same but pronounced ­differently, for example minute of time and minute ‘small’. homonymy occurs when words share the same form but derive from different roots, for example the homonyms fair ‘pretty’ and fair ‘a market’. Homonymic clash occurs when the meanings of homonyms  glossary of key terms 183 are likely to be confused in context; in such cases one or more senses of a homonym may undergo semantic change or die out. Homographs and homophones are sub-­ types of homonyms. Contrasted with polysemy. homophones are words which are pronounced the same but spelled differently, for example flour and flower, great and grate. hue in the technical language of colour studies is one of the elements which make up colour. Hue refers to the range of different impressions perceived on the spectrum of visible light, designated by both BCTs and non-­basic terms, for example green, blue, indigo, violet. hyperonym see hyponymy hyponymy or inclusion refers to the relationship between the general and the specific which occurs in hierarchies of meaning rep- resented by words such as animal, mammal, cow, where animal is the superordinate or hyperonym and mammal and cow are hyponyms in a hyponymous or hyponymic relationship to it. Co-­hyponyms are words which occur at the same level in a hierarchy of meanings, for example apple, pear and banana in a category of Fruit. They are vari- ously referred to as contiguous, partially synonymous or incompat- ible terms. image metaphors are metaphors motivated by visible similarities between source and target, such as similarities of shape or size; for example, a finger of toast, a carpet of flowers. Indo-­European is a large language family stretching from India to Europe. One of its branches is Germanic, which includes English, Dutch, Frisian, German and the Scandinavian languages. invited inferencing occurs when an utterance has a possible meaning in context that is more than the surface meaning of the individual words; for example, He fainted when you arrived invites the interpretation ‘He fainted because you arrived’. kennings are metaphorical compounds found in OE poetry, for example hwælweg ‘whale + way = the sea’. lexeme see word lexical field see semantic domains lexical gaps occur when a language lacks a word or established phrase to express a concept. The lack may become apparent when new objects 184 glossary of key terms or ideas are introduced, or when a foreign word or phrase with no native equivalent is conventionally used, for example rendezvous. lexical item see word Lexical Semantics is the academic discipline concerned with the study of word meaning in its various aspects. lexical sets are groups of words relating to aspects of particular areas of experience. They combine to form semantic fields, as, for example, the set of cooking terms contributes to the field of Food. lexicalisation refers to the situation where a language already has or acquires a word or established phrase to express a concept. Cultural change may lead to new concepts being lexicalised. lexicon is sometimes used as a synonym for dictionary or for any sys- tematic presentation of vocabulary, such as a thesaurus; it is also used to mean the complete vocabulary of a language. Mental lexicon is used to describe an individual’s vocabulary. linguistic determinism see Sapir-­Whorf Hypothesis linguistic relativity see Sapir-­Whorf Hypothesis linguistic universals are features that are so fundamental to human thought and experience that we might reasonably expect to find them in all languages. It would, for example, be strange to find a language that had no way of expressing negation. loanword see borrowing macro-­categories or composite categories are broader than basic colour categories. They occur when speakers perceive groups of similar hues, such as red, brown, orange, pink and purple, as ­­belonging to a single category and refer to it by a single basic colour term. mapping refers to a link between two concepts which involves ­­‘projecting’ aspects of one onto the other, so that it is described or thought of in terms of that concept; for example, the metaphor fight ‘argue’ maps physical conflict onto verbal disagreement, so that verbal disagreement is described and thought of as physical conflict. melioration see amelioration meronymy refers to the relationship between wholes and parts, as in finger and thumb being meronyms of the holonym hand, which refers to the whole.  glossary of key terms 185 metalanguage is the technical terminology used to discuss a subject. metaphor refers to a type of mapping between two concepts, often based on a perceived similarity between the source and target, or some association in basic human experience, for example monkey ‘cheeky child’, I see ‘I understand’. metaphorical polysemy is polysemy triggered by metaphor where both the literal and the metaphorical meanings survive, for example carrot ‘vegetable, reward’. metonymical polysemy is polysemy triggered by metonymy where both the literal and the metonymical meanings survive, for example glass ‘material, drinking vessel’. metonymy refers to a type of mapping between two concepts where one is used to refer to the other because they are associated in experience, for example the crown ‘the monarch’, an elegant wardrobe ‘elegant clothes’. monosemy occurs when a word is a monoseme with a single sense. Contrasted with polysemy. monosyllabic words consist of a single syllable. morphemes are linguistic units which cannot be analysed into smaller meaningful units. The word outlandish consists of three morphemes, out-­ land-­ish. Morphology refers either to the study of morphemes or to the morphological structure of individual words. motivation refers to the basis or explanation for a metaphorical or metonymical mapping, or for any kind of semantic change; for example, the metaphor mouse ‘shy person’ is motivated by a perceived similarity between the behaviour of mice and that of shy people. narrowing or specialisation occurs when the meaning of a word (or of one of its senses) becomes more restricted and specific over time, for example meat ‘food’ narrowing to mean ‘flesh’. necessary conditions see classical categorisation theory non-­basic colour terms see basic colour terms Old Norse (ON) was the language spoken by the Scandinavian ­­invaders of Britain. onomasiology is concerned with the form or forms used to express a particular meaning. A conceptually organised thesaurus can be described as onomasiological. Contrasted with semasiology. 186 glossary of key terms ontological metaphors are metaphors in which the targets – abstract states, processes or relations – are ‘seen as’ physical entities with sub- stance that can be manipulated, for example time is a physical sub- stance, understanding is grasping. opaque see transparent ostensive definition occurs when a speaker points to something and says the word used to refer to it, i.e. defines it by giving an example. overstatement (hyperbole) is used to draw attention to something by using exaggerated language, for example by saying I loathe tomatoes when you merely dislike eating them. paradigmatic relationships are formed by items which can occur in the same position in a grammatical structure, as many adjectives can in the frame The _______ woman looked up. Contrasted with syntagmatic relationships. passive vocabulary see active vocabulary pejoration (sometimes called deterioration or degeneration) occurs when words acquire more negative connotations, moving either from a neutral or positive meaning to a negative one, or from a positive meaning to a neutral one, for example peasant ‘agricul- ­­ tural worker’ pejorating to ‘unsophisticated person’. Contrasted with amelioration. polar terms see antonymy polysemy occurs when a single form has two or more senses, all ­­deriving from the same root, for example the many meanings (polysemes) of the polysemous form book which have developed during the course of its history. If there is a risk of polysemes being confused in context, one or more of them may undergo semantic change or die out. Contrasted with monosemy and homonymy. polysyllabic words have more than one syllable. Pragmatics is the academic discipline concerned with the study of ­language in everyday interaction. prefix see affixes prescriptivism is the view that language use should be regulated in order to exclude ‘incorrect’ usage. Contrasted with descriptivism.  glossary of key terms 187 productive is a term applied to linguistic processes which are still in use at a given time. In ModE, for example, the processes of affixation and compounding are still productive in creating new words. profiling refers to imposing structure on a conceptual domain in order to present information in a particular way. The various ways in which a domain can be profiled are referred to as its domain matrix. Any par- ticular profile of a domain is referred to as a schema. proto-­is attached to the names of languages and language families to indicate their earliest form, whether attested or reconstructed. prototype refers to the best or most typical example of a category. When confronted with potential members of a category, we judge them consciously or unconsciously by their prototypicality or degree of likeness to central members. Thus for many speakers an apple would be a more prototypical example of the category Fruit than a pomegran- ate. This approach to categorisation is known as prototype theory and is contrasted with classical categorisation theory. Prototype effects recognised by speakers include degrees of category membership and the fuzzy nature of category boundaries. Where a form develops more than one meaning in the course of its history, prototype split is said to have taken place. radiation see chaining reference is the relationship between the words we use (referring expressions) and the things we are talking about (the referents of the words). reflex refers to the surviving form of an earlier form, for example ModE heaven is the reflex of OE heofon. Reflexes often have different meanings from their earlier forms. register is the language appropriate for use in a particular context. I was proceeding towards the entrance would be acceptable in a formal or legal register, but less so in the register of colloquial speech. root refers to the ultimate source of a word, which may itself be a word (an etymon) or a unit smaller than a word (a morpheme). The root of OE fisc ‘fish’ lies in Common Germanic and is the base from which ModE words such as fish, fishy and fisherman are formed. salience is roughly synonymous with prominence or importance. Languages often have detailed vocabularies for things that are salient in the lives of their speakers. 188 glossary of key terms Sapir-­Whorf Hypothesis refers to views on the relationship between language and culture arising from the work of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf. Most discussions make a distinction between lin- guistic determinism, the view that language imposes categories on the world, and linguistic relativity, the weaker claim that languages reflect the world-­views of their speakers. saturation refers to purity of hue, for example a fully-­saturated, vivid blue compared with a dull, greyish blue. schema see profiling script see frame semantic change refers to change in the meaning or meanings of a word in the course of its history. semantic domains are large groupings of words related to a particular area of experience, for example the vocabulary of Sport or Education. These are also called lexical fields or semantic fields, although some- times these terms refer particularly to groupings of words structured by sense relationships. semantic field see semantic domains semantic space is a way of conceptualising the vocabulary of a lan- guage as objects occupying a metaphorical space. semasiology is concerned with the meaning or meanings attached to individual word forms. An alphabetically-­organised dictionary, listing forms and definitions, can be described as semasiological. Contrasted with onomasiology. sense refers to the meaning or one of the meanings of a word, as in ‘the six main senses of the noun carpet in the OED’. It also refers to the ­­connections (sense relationships) which words have with other words in the language system such as their synonyms or antonyms. Sociolinguistics is the academic discipline concerned with the study of language use among different groups in society. source (or vehicle) in a metaphor or metonymy refers to the concept mapped onto, or used to talk or think about, something else (the target); for example, in the metaphorical expression you are an angel, angel is the source. specialisation see narrowing  glossary of key terms 189 stem refers to the part of a word which remains unchanged when affixes are added. Thus place is the stem in words such as placing, placed and replace. stereotype refers to a list of typical features, or an imagined entity with those features, which can be abstracted from a prototype and used in assessing category membership. Structuralism refers to an approach to Linguistics associated with the work of Ferdinand de Saussure. Structuralist Semantics views word meanings as forming semantic networks. sufficient conditions see classical categorisation theory suffix see affixes superordinate see hyponymy synchrony refers to the study of language at a single stage in its devel- opment. Synchronic research takes no account of what led up to or followed this stage. Contrasted with diachrony. synecdoche is the traditional term for metonymies where a part stands for the whole or the whole for a part, for example his career on the stage (‘in the theatrical profession’) or the theatre was good to him (‘the institution of the theatre’). synonymy occurs when two or more words or senses of words ­­(synonyms) share all or most of their meaning. Truly synonymous words (true or perfect synonyms) are extremely rare. Even pairs like radio and wireless, which refer to the same object, are differentiated by the contexts in which they are used. syntagmatic relationships are formed by items, often referred to as col- locates, which occur together in a grammatical structure, for example boy and kicked and kicked and ball in the sentence The boy kicked the ball. Contrasted with paradigmatic relationships. systemic regulation occurs when a language changes in order to accommodate new developments, as when the introduction of a new word leads to change in the meaning of one or more existing words. target (or tenor) in a metaphor or metonymy refers to the concept which is described in terms of something else (the source); for example, in the metonymical expression I like your wheels ‘I like your car’, ‘car’ is the target. Text Linguistics see Discourse Analysis 190 glossary of key terms thesaurus is the term applied to a book of words organised according to the concepts they express, for example Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases. tone refers to the amount of black or white which is perceived as being involved with a hue in a visual impression, for example pale or light green compared with dark green. transparent describes words such as compounds when the meaning of the whole is obvious from the meaning of the parts, for example toast-­ rack ‘a rack in which to put toast’. Where the meaning is not obvious, as in paperback ‘a book with a soft cover’, it is described as opaque. true antonyms see antonymy understatement (litotes) is used to downplay the seriousness of a situation, for example by saying Mary is a bit upset when in fact she is extremely angry. variable reference is a property of words or phrases that refer to sets of referents, for example mouse, village. vogue expressions are those which pass quickly in and out of fashion. widening (sometimes called broadening or generalisation) occurs when the meaning of a word (or of one of its senses) becomes more general over time, so that it can be used to refer to a broader, less spe- cific concept, for example bird ‘young bird’ widening to mean ‘bird (of any age)’. word is notoriously difficult to define as a technical term of Linguistics despite being unproblematic in everyday language. In this book we define it as a linguistic unit which expresses a single concept (or group of concepts). In most cases, such units are single forms, separated from each other by spaces in modern typography. Sometimes, however, they may be multiword expressions such as phrases (in fact) or idioms (pleased as punch). Some writers use the term lexeme to cover both single and multiword forms. Others use lexeme in a more abstract way to refer to the base form of a word (walk) and any inflected or derived forms (walked, walking, walker, walkway). The accompanying term for each realisation of the base form is lexical item.