accidental gap
phonological or morphological form that constitutes possible bub non-occurring lexical items; word that follows a language’s morphological rules but is not an actual word
acronym
word composed of the initials of several words and pronounced as such (ex. “PET scan” from Positron-Emission-Tomography scan)
affricate
a sound produced by a stop closure followed immediately by a slow release characteristic of a fricative; phonetically a sequence of stop + fricative like the “ch” in “chip” [tʃ]
allophone
a predictable phonetic realization of a phoneme (ex. p and p^h)
alveolar ridge
the part of the hard palate directly behind the upper front teeth
antonyms
words that are opposite with respect to one of their semantic properties (definitions); ex: tall/short are both alike in that they describe height, but opposite in regard to the extent of the height
aphasia
language loss or disorder following brain damage (ex: Broca’s aphasia as a result of damage to Broca’s area of the brain)
assimilation
a phonological process that changes feature values of segments to make them more similar (ex: a vowel becomes nasalized when followed by a nasal consonant); also called feature-spreading
babbling
speech sounds produced in the first few months after birth that gradually come to include only sounds that occur in the language of the household; deaf children do this with hand gestures
back-formation
creation of a new word by removing an affix from an old word (ex: donate from donation); or by removing what is mistakenly considered an affix (ex: edit from editor)
bilabial
a sound articulated by bringing both lips together
blend
a word composed of the parts of more than one word (ex: smog from smoke + fog)
Broca’s area
a front part of the left hemisphere of the brain, damage to which causes agrammatism or Broca’s aphasia; also called Broca’s region
case endings
suffixes on the noun based on its grammatical function, such as ‘s of the English genitive case indicating possession (ex: Robert’s dog)
circumfix
a bound morpheme, parts of which occur in a word both before and after the root (ex: in German, g—-t in geliebt, “loved,” from the root lieb)
cocktail party effect
an informal term that describes the ability to filter out background noise and focus on a particular sound source or on a particular person’s speech
codeswitching
the movement back and forth between two languages or dialects within the same sentence or discourse
coinage
the construction and/or invention of new words that then become part of the lexicon (ex: podcast)
complement
the constituent(s) in a phrase other than the head that complete(s) the meaning of the phrase and which is C-selected by the verb. In the verb phrase "found a puppy", the noun phrase "a puppy" is a complement of the verb "found"
complementary distribution
the situation in which phones never occur in the same phonetic environment (ex: p and p^h in English); allophones are in complementary distribution
concordance
an alphabetical index of the words in a text that gives the frequency of each word, its location in the text, and its surrounding context
consonant
a speech sound produced with some constriction of the air stream
constituent
a syntactic unit in a phrase structure tree (ex: “the girl” is a noun phrase constituent in the sentence “the boy loves the girl”)
continuant
a speech sound in which the air stream flows continually through the mouth; all speech sounds except stops and affricates
cortex
the approximately ten billion neurons that form the outside surface of the brain; also referred to as gray matter
count nouns
nouns that can be enumerated (ex: one potato, two potatoes)
creole
a language that begins as a pidgin and eventually becomes the native language of a speech community
cuneiform
a form of writing in which the characters are produced using a edge-shaped stylus, and most notably utilized by ancient civilizations of the Middle East such as the Sumerians
deictic/deixis
refers to words or expressions whose reference relies on context and the orientation of the speaker in space and time
determiner (Det)
the syntactic category, also functional category, of words and expressions which when combined with a noun form a noun phrase; includes the articles “the” and “a”, demonstratives such as “this” and “that”; quantifiers such as “each” and “every”, etc.
dissimilation
phonological rules that change feature values of segments to make them less similar; ex: a fricative dissimilation rule: /θ/ is pronounced [t] following another fricative; in English dialects with this rule, sixth is pronounced [sikst]
entailment
the relationship between two sentences, where the truth of one necessitates the truth of the other
epenthesis
the insertion of one or more phones in a word (ex: the insertion of /ə/ in /tʃɪldrɛn/ to make it /tʃɪlədrɛn/)
eponym
a word taken from a proper name, such as Hertz for “unit of frequency”
etymology
the history of words; the study of the history of words
fricative
a consonant sound produced with so narrow a constriction in the vocal tract as to create sound through friction (ex: /s/, /f/)
function word
a word that does not always have a clear lexical meaning but has a grammatical function; function of words include conjunctions, preposition, articles, auxiliaries, complementizers, and pronouns
garden path sentences
sentences that appear at first blush to be ungrammatical, but with further syntactic processing turn out to be grammatical (ex: The horse raced past the barn fell.)
glide
a speech sound produced with little or no obstruction of the air stream that is always preceded or followed by a vowel
Grimm’s Law
the description of a phonological change in the sound system of an early ancestor of the Germanic languages formulated by Jakob Grimm
hierarchical structure
the groupings and subgroupings of the parts of a sentence into syntactic categories (ex: [the/bird//sang]; the groupings and subgroupings of morphemes in a word (ex: [un//lock/able] vs. [un/lock//able]; hierarchical structure is generally depicted in a tree diagram
hypercorrection
deviations from the “norm” thought by speakers to be “more correct” such as saying “between he and she” instead of “between him and her”
ideogram, ideograph
a character of a word-writing system, often highly stylized, that represents a concept, or the pronunciation of the word representing that concept; pictograms that represent ideas and are not as direct/literal
implicature
an inference based not only on an utterance, but also on assumptions about what the speaker is trying to achieve (ex: “Are you using the ketchup?” to mean “Please pass the ketchup.”)
impoverished data
refers to theincomplete, noisy, and unstructured utterances that children hear, including slips of the tongue, false starts, and ungrammatical/incomplete sentences, together with a lack of concrete evidence about abstract grammatical rules and structure
infix
a bound morpheme that is inserted into the middle of another morpheme; do not exist in English except in profane words (ex: “unbelievable” to “un-f*cking-believable”)
intransitive verb
a verb that must not have a direct object complement (ex: sleep, rise)
jargon
special words peculiar to the members of a profession or group (ex: “glottis” for phoneticians); also the nonsense words sometimes used by Wernicke’s aphasia
late closure principle
a psycholinguistic principle of language comprehension that states: attach incoming material to the phrase that was most recently processed (ex: “he said that he slept yesterday” associates “yesterday” with “he slept” rather than “he said”)
lateralization, lateralized
terms used to refer to cognitive functions localized to one or the other hemisphere of the brain
lexicon
the component of the grammar containing speakers’ knowledge about morphemes and words; a speaker’s mental dictionary
lingua franca
a language common to speakers of diverse languages that can be used for communication and commerce (ex: English is the lingua franca of international airline pilots)
liquids
a class of consonants including /l/ and /r/ and their variants that share vowel-like acoustic properties and may function as syllabic nuclei
manner of articulation
the way the air stream is obstructed as it travels through the vocal tract; stop, nasal, affricate, and fricative are some manners of articulation
metathesis
the phonological process that reorders segments, often by transposing two sequential sounds (ex: the pronunciation of “ask” in some dialects as “aks”)
morphology
the study of the structure of words; the component of the grammar that includes the rules of word formation
narrowing
a semantic change in which the meaning of a word changes in time to become less encompassing (ex: “deer” once meant “animal”)
node
a labeled branch point in a phase structure tree; part of the graphical depiction of a transition network represented as a circle, pairs of which are connected by arcs
Optimality Theory
the hypothesis that a universal set of ranked phonological constraints exists, where the higher the constraint is ranked, the more influence it exerts on the language (ex: in English, one constraint–Obstruent sequences may not differ with respect to their voice feature at the end of a word.)
overgeneralization
children’s treatment of irregular verbs and nouns as if they were regular (ex: bringed, goed, foots, mouses for brought, went, feet, mice); this shoes that the child has acquired the regular rules but has not yet learned that there are exceptions
paradox
a sentence to which it is impossible to ascribe a truth value (ex: “This sentence is false.”)
parse
the act of determining the grammaticality of sequences of words according to rules of syntax, and assigning a linguistic structure to the grammatical ones
petroglyph
a drawing on a rock made by prehistoric people
phonotactics/phonotactic constraints
rules stating permissible strings of phonemes; ex: within a syllable in English, a word-initial nasal consonant may be followed only by a vowel
pidgin
a simple but rule-governed language developed for communication among speakers of mutually unintelligible languages, often based on one of those languages (called the lexifier language)
Pinyin
an alphabetic writing system for Mandarin Chinese using a Western-style alphabet to represent individual sounds
place of articulation
the part of the vocal tract at which constriction occurs during the production of consonants
prosodic feature
the duration (length), pitch, or loudness of speech sounds
rebus principle
in writing, the use of a pictogram for its phonetic value (ex: using a picture of a bee to represent the verb “be” or the sound [b])
recursive rule
a phrase structure rule that repeats its own category on its right side; ex: VP –> VP PP, hence permitting phrase structures of potentially unlimited length, corresponding to that aspect of speakers’ linguistic competence
reflexive pronoun
a pronoun ending with -self that generally requires a noun-phrase antecedent within the same S (ex: myself, herself, ourselves, itself)
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
the proposition that the structure of a language influences how its speakers perceive the world around them; it is often presented in its weak form, linguistic relativism, and its strong form, linguistic determinism
semantics
the study of the linguistic meaning of morphemes, words, phrases, and sentences
sentence (S)
a syntactic category of expressions consisting minimally of a noun phrase (NP) followed by a verb phrase (VP) in d-structure; also called a TP (tense phrase); the head of this is the category Aux
spectrogram
a visual representation of speech decomposed into component frequencies, with time on the horizontal axis, frequency on the vertical axis, and intensity portrayed on a gray scale–the darker, the more intense (aka a voiceprint)
spoonerism
a speech error in which phonemic segments are reversed or exchanged (ex: “You have hissed my mystery lecture” instead of “You have missed my history lecture”); named after Revered William Archibald Spooner
suppletive forms
a term used to refer to inflected morphemes in which the regular rules do not apply (ex: “went” as the past tense form of “go”)
tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon
the difficulty encountered from time to time in retrieving a particular word or expression from the mental lexicon; anomic aphasics suffer from an extreme form of this problem
Universal Grammar (UG)
the innate principles and properties that pertain to the grammars of all human languages
velar
a sound produced by raising the back of the tongue to the soft palate, or velum
Verner’s law
the description of a conditioned phonological change in the sound system of certain Indo-European languages wherein voiceless fricatives were changed when the preceding vowel was unstressed; it was formulated by Karl Verner as an explanation to some of the exceptions to Grimm’s Law