Linguistic terminology terms | LETTER - S

What is salient information?

Salient information is given information that the speaker assumes to be in the addressee 's consciousness at the time of the speaker’s utterance .

• What is given information?

Prince 1981 228

What is a same subject marker?

A same subject marker is a distinction in the verb morphology of a clause that indicates that the subject is identical to the subject of another clause, such as one of the following:

• A following clause
• The final clause in a clause chain
• The main clause in a sentence

• What is switch reference?

Thompson and Longacre 1985 187, 201

Longacre 1985 254

What is a scalar implicature?

A scalar implicature is a quantity implicature based on the use of an informationally weak term in an implicational scale .

The use implicates that all similar utterances using an informationally stronger term are not true because, according to the conversational maxim of quantity , a speaker would ordinarily be required to make a stronger, more informative utterance if a true one were available.

• What is a quantity implicature?

Levinson 1983 133–134

Gazdar 1979 56–59

What is a scalar property lexical relation?

Understanding the scalar property lexical relation is important in using words which refer to such things as

• dimensions, and
• physical properties.

A scalar property lexical relation is an association between sets of lexical units which refers to the relative values for a property of an object or event as determined against a qualitative standard.

A scalar property set has the structure of a scale.

Here are some frames for testing and eliciting a scalar property lexical relation:

• Using a set of objects differing only in a particular property (such as size), ask a language associate to describe and compare the different objects.
• The <property name> of an <object name, activity name> can range from A, to B, to C…to F.

What is a scale schema?

A scale schema is an image schema that

• involves an increase or decrease of physical or metaphorical amount, and

• consists of any of the following:

  • A closed- or open-ended progression of amount
  • A position in the progression of amount
  • One or more norms of amount
  • A calibration of amount

• Physical amounts
• Properties in the number system
• Economic entities such as supply and demand

• What is an image schema?

Johnson 1987 122–124

What is a second part?

A second part is the second utterance in an adjacency pair .

• What is a dispreferred second part?
• What is a preferred second part?

Levinson 1983 303–304

What is second person deixis?

Second person deixis is deictic reference to a person or persons identified as addressee .

• you
• yourself
• yourselves
• your
• yours

• What is person deixis?

Crystal 1980 263

Hartmann and Stork 1972 168

Mish 1991 1060

Levinson 1983 62

Fleming 1988 322

What is a secondary articulation?

A secondary articulation is an additional articulation process that affects vowel or consonant production.

What is a secondary sense?

A secondary sense is a meaning that is more abstract than a primary sense of a lexeme but still shares some of its semantic components .

Because it has a different range of reference, its usage contexts and collocates are different from those of a primary sense.

The word jungle has a primary sense meaning 'land covered with dense growth of trees, tall vegetation, vines, typically in tropical regions, and inhabited by predatory animals.' This is what most people think of when the word jungle is used in isolation.

However, jungle can also refer to any place with a dense, tangled growth of trees and vegetation, as illustrated in the sentence, 'I need to take care of the jungle in my backyard.' This meaning is a secondary sense of jungle. It shares the semantic components 'plant life' and 'density' with the primary sense of jungle. It does not share the components 'tropical' and 'predatory animals.'

What is a segment?

A segment is any discrete unit or phone , produced by the vocal apparatus, or a representation of such a unit.

What is self-initiated repair?

Self-initiated repair is a repair that the speaker of the utterance that needs repair makes without a prompting from another participant.

• What is a repair?

Levinson 1983 340–341

What is self-repair?

Self-repair is a repair that is performed by the speaker of the utterance that needs repair.

• In the following exchange, the last turn is a self-repair:

  A: I need a new bolt for my oil filter.
  B: A BOLT?
  A: I mean for my oil PAN.

• The following is a self-initiated self-repair .

  I need a new bolt for my oil filt— um, PAN.

• What is a reformulation?
• What is a third turn repair?

• What is a repair?

Levinson 1983 340–341

What is a semantic component?

A semantic component is a potentially contrastive part of the meaning of a lexical unit .

The focal semantic component of execute is “put to death”.

Here is a table that describes some kinds of semantic components:

What is a semantic role?

A semantic role is the underlying relationship that a participant has with the main verb in a clause .

Semantic role is the actual role a participant plays in some real or imagined situation, apart from the linguistic encoding of those situations.

• What is accompaniment as a semantic role?
• What is agent as a semantic role?
• What is a beneficiary as a semantic role?
• What is causer as a semantic role?
• What is a counteragent as a semantic role?
• What is dative as a semantic role?
• What is experiencer as a semantic role?
• What is factitive as a semantic role?
• What is goal as a semantic role?
• What is instrument as a semantic role?
• What is locative as a semantic role?
• What is manner as a semantic role?
• What is measure as a semantic role?
• What is a path?
• What is patient as a semantic role?
• What is range as a semantic role?
• What is a result?
• What is source as a semantic role?
• What is time as a semantic role?

• Comparison of semantic role and grammatical relation

What is semantics?

Here are two senses for semantics:

1. Semantics is, generally defined, the study of meaning of linguistic expressions.

2. Semantics is, more narrowly defined, the study of the meaning of linguistic expressions apart from consideration of the effect that pragmatic factors, such as the following, have on the meaning of language in use:

   • Features of the context
   • Conventions of language use
   • The goals of the speaker

Crystal 1985 274

Leech 1983 5–6

Lyons 1981 136, 163–164

Levinson 1983 5–34

What is a sense?

In LinguaLinks, the word "sense" is used in two ways:

1. In discussions about data storage and management, a sense is a structural part of a lexical entry . It contains the relevant semantic, grammatical, and anthropological information for a lexical unit .

   Examples:

   "add a sense to the entry" "delete the sense"

2. In discussions about semantic analysis, a sense is the meaning of a lexical unit .

   Examples:

   "define each sense of the lexeme" "compare lexically related senses"

What is a sense group?

A sense group is a collection of senses organized according

• to lexical category

• to conceptual extendedness , or

• to semantic similarity.

What is a sense type?

A sense type is a classification of a sense on the basis of its conceptual extendedness . In other words, it is a classification of the primary sense of a lexeme and the degree to which another sense is different from the primary sense.

Sense types provided in the lexical database are as follows:

• Primary
• Secondary
• Figurative

What is a sensory evidential?

A sensory evidential is an evidential signaling that the speaker’s evidence for the truth of his or her statement is derived from the speaker’s own sensory experience.

• What is a nonvisual evidential?
• What is a visual evidential?

• What is evidentiality?

Palmer 1986 74–75

What is a sentence?

A sentence is a grammatical unit that is composed of one or more clauses .

The meaning of the term sentence may be expanded to include elliptical material and nonproductive items.

• What is a complex sentence?
• What is a compound sentence?
• What is a matrix sentence?
• What is a simple sentence?

• What is a construction?

Crystal 1980 319–320

Hartmann and Stork 1972 206

Pei and Gaynor 1954 194

Pike and Pike 1982 456–457

Mish 1991 1072

What is a sentence adverb?

A sentence adverb is an adverb that modifies a whole sentence .

• What is an adverb? (Linguistics)

Schachter 1985 20

What is a sentence elicitation frame?

A sentence elicitation frame is a syntactic construction that has a blank left in it for eliciting or testing words.

Here are examples of different kinds of sentence elicitation frames:

• A frame for eliciting nouns

  • This is a dog.
  • This is a pig.
  • This is a _______.

• A frame for eliciting adjectives

  • A ball is round.
  • A block is square.
  • A pencil is _______.

What is sentential complementation?

Sentential complementation is a kind of sentence in which one of the arguments of a verb is a clause. That clausal argument is called a complement clause .

What is a separable affix?

A separable affix is an affix that can be detached from its stem and located elsewhere in a construction .

• What is an affix? (Linguistics)

Hartmann and Stork 1972 207

What is a sequence?

A sequence is a unit of conversation that consists of two or more adjacent and functionally related turns .

• What is an adjacency pair?
• What is an insertion sequence?
• What is an overall organization?
• What is a post-sequence?
• What is a presequence?

McLaughlin 1984 169

Hopper, Koch, and Mandelbaum 1986 170

What is a sequential relation?

A sequential relation is a temporal relation in which the event or state of a latter-expressed proposition is communicated to have occurred after the event or state of a prior-expressed proposition.

• at once
• soon
• next time

• What is a temporal relation?

Halliday and Hasan 1976 261–262

Longacre 1983 98–99

Longacre 1985 244

What is a serial verb construction?

A serial verb construction is a string of verbs or verb phrases within a single clause that

• express simultaneous or immediately consecutive actions
• have a single grammatical subject
• have no connective markings, and

• are marked or understood as having the same grammatical categories , such as

  • aspect
  • modality
  • negativity or positivity, and
  • tense .

• What is a construction?

Noonan 1985 55, 76–77

Sebba 1987 1-2, 86–87

What is setting information?

Setting information is a kind of nonevent in discourse that provides locative, temporal and circumstantial information about a sequence of events.

• It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly a shot rang out. (The first sentence contains temporal setting information.)
• Every tree and blade of grass was dripping, and the road shone like a river. The Pedestrian wasted no time on the landscape, but set out at once... (The first sentence contains circumstantial and locative setting information.)

Grimes, J. E. 1975

What is silence?

Silence is the absence of speech.

Silence is assigned different significance by conversation analysts depending on such factors as the following:

• Its length
• Where it occurs in a conversation

• What is a hesitation pause?
• What is a switching pause?

Levinson 1983 298–299

What is a similar pair?

A similar pair is two words in which

• phonetically similar segments occur in quite similar environments, and
• no phonetically plausible rationale can be found to show how one of the segments has been modified by its environment .

The phonetically similar segments being contrasted are [p] and [b].

• [opa] ‘it is finished’
• [aba] ‘place’

• What is contrast in analogous environments?

What is a similarity relation?

A similarity relation is an interpropositional relation indicating that the events or states expressed in the propositions have a likeness of function or import.

Here are some examples of items that indicate similarity relations:

• similarly
• likewise
• in the same way

• What is an interpropositional relation?

Halliday and Hasan 1976 247

What is a simile?

A simile is a comparison between two things.

It is signaled overtly; in English, a simile is expressed by the words like or as.

• What is a trope?

Corbett 1971 479

Beekman and Callow 1974 127

Mish 1991 1098

What is a simple sentence?

A simple sentence is a sentence containing one main clause and no subordinate clauses .

• What is a sentence?

Hartmann and Stork 1972 209

Crystal 1985 280

Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik 1985 719

Mish 1991 1099

What is a simulfix?

A simulfix is a change or replacement of vowels or consonants (usually vowels) which changes the meaning of a word.

• Eat in past tense becomes ate.
• Tooth becomes teeth when plural .

• What is an affix? (Linguistics)

What is a simultaneous relation?

A simultaneous relation is a temporal relation in which the events or states of proposition(s) are communicated as occurring at the same time.

• Mrs. Brown bought groceries while Mr. Brown got gas for the car.
• Bob simultaneously talked on the phone and washed dishes.
• Mr. Smith was telling the same old joke; meanwhile, Mr. Jones tried to look interested.

• What is a temporal relation?

Halliday and Hasan 1976 262

Fleming 1988 182

Longacre 1983 95–96

Longacre 1985 243

What is a sincerity condition?

A sincerity condition is the psychological state of the speaker concerning the propositional content of an illocutionary act .

The sincere or insincere expression of this state necessarily accompanies all illocutionary acts, except for an act having a declarative illocutionary point , so that an act having

• an assertive point commits the speaker to having a state of belief
• a commissive point commits the speaker to having a state of intention
• a directive point commits the speaker to having a state of desire, and
• an expressive point commits the speaker to having an emotional, attitudinal, or sensory state.

Searle and Vanderveken 1985 18–19

What is singular number?

Singular number is number that refers to one member of a designated class.

• The singular form bat as opposed to bats.
• Mass nouns may be indicated by singular number, such as the singular form sugar.

• What is number?

Crystal 1980 245

Hartmann and Stork 1972 210

What is a singulative?

A singulative is a grammatical form, adjunct, or variant of a word that expresses the individuation of a single referent from a group or mass.

Pei and Gaynor 1954 198

Hartmann and Stork 1972 210

What is a situational elicitation frame?

A situational elicitation frame is a hypothetical situation that is constructed to help you constrain and control what you elicit.

• A frame for eliciting verbs

  To find the vernacular expression for the English word language associate the following story: rescue, you tell a

  “A child was fishing by the river bank. The bank gave way under the child; she fell into the river and was immediately carried into the current, endangering her life. Her father heard her screams for help and ran to his canoe, paddled down to her and pulled her into the canoe.”

  Then you ask the language associate “What happened?” or “What did the father do?”

  The language associate gives you one or more vernacular expressions for “He rescued her.”

• A frame for eliciting expressions

  To find out appropriate vernacular greetings, you ask a language associate the following questions:

  “What would you say to someone (as a greeting) if you met them coming toward you on the road? What about at the market? At the river? At someone else's house? At your house? At their house?”

  The language associate gives you one or more vernacular expressions for greetings.

What is a situationally evoked entity?

A situationally evoked entity is a referent that is given information because of the prominence of the referent in the extralinguistic context.

The door is previously unmentioned, but it is given information because there is only one door and its existence is known.

• What is an evoked entity?

Prince 1981 233, 236

What is social deixis?

Social deixis is reference to the social characteristics of, or distinctions between, the participants or referents in a speech event.

• What is absolute social deixis?
• What is relational social deixis?

• What is deixis?

Levinson 1983 63, 93

Fillmore 1975 76

What is solidarity?

Solidarity is a scale of perceived like-mindedness or similarity of behavioral disposition between a speaker and addressee deriving from their similar

• backgrounds
• acquaintance, or
• personal characteristics, such as sex.

In some languages, solidarity affects the choice of expressions of social deixis .

• What is familiarity?
• What is intimate social deixis?
• What is politeness?

Brown, R. and Gilman 1960 258

What is a solutionhood relation?

A solutionhood relation is an interpropositional relation in which a proposition(s) is presented as an answer or remedy for a problem, such as one of the following, communicated in another proposition(s):

• A lack of information
• A desire
• An intellectual issue
• A need
• A calamity
• A frustration

• What is an interpropositional relation?

Mann and Thompson 1987b 49–52

Beekman, Callow, and Kopesec 1981 88–89

What is the sonority scale?

The sonority scale is a list of phonetic segments showing the relative resonance of phonetic segments in relation to other segments.

Sonority is the resonance of a sound in relation to other sounds. A sonority scale shows the sonority of a sound in relation to other sounds.

Here is a diagram that shows the relative sonority of different phones :

Burquest and Payne 1993 101

What is source as a participant role?

Source is the participant role of the referent from whom a message ultimately comes, especially in the case in which the referent is distinct from the speaker .

• What is a participant role?

Levinson 1983 68–69, 72–73

Longacre 1983 161

What is source as a semantic role?

Source is the semantic role of the following referents:

• The place of origin (with verbs of motion, locomotion, and propulsion)
• The entity from which a physical sensation emanates (with verbs of sensation, attention, and speech)
• The original owner in a transfer (with verbs of acquisition, transfer, and grab)

• As the place of origin:

  • John fell off the chair. (with a motion verb)

  • The baby crawled from the kitchen to the door. (with a locomotion verb)

  • John threw the knife into the box. (with a propulsion verb)

    Note:

    With propulsion verbs, the source is coreferential with the agent.

• As the entity from which a physical sensation emanates:

  • John smelled the odor of onions. (with a sensation verb)

  • The people watched the performance of the dancers. (with an attention verb)

  • The mother told her child a story. (with a speech verb)

    Note:

    With speech verbs, the source is coreferential with the agent.

• As the original owner in a transfer:

  • John obtained an application form from the office. (with an acquisition verb)

  • John bought the book from Tom. (with a transfer verb)

  • John grabbed the book from Tom. (with a grab verb)

• What is a semantic role?

Longacre 1983 161–163

What is a source domain?

A source domain is a concept that is metaphorically used to provide the means of understanding another concept.

• What is an image schema?

Lakoff, G. 1987 276–277, 288

What is a speaker?

A speaker is the utterer of a message.

A speaker is typically the deictic center of his or her own deictic references. These are grammaticalized in first person morphemes.

• What is a participant role?

Fillmore 1975 40

Levinson 1983 68

What is a specialized figurative text?

A specialized figurative text is a text belonging to one of several creative genres that makes extensive use of stylized, poetic, and figurative language.

• Jokes
• Poems
• Proverbs
• Puns
• Riddles
• Sayings
• Songs

What is a specification relation?

A specification relation is an elaboration relation in which a proposition provides more information about another proposition by restating it more narrowly.

• What is an exemplification relation?

• What is an elaboration relation?

Dijk 1981 269–270, 278–279

Beekman, Callow, and Kopesec 1981 96–97

Hollenbach 1975 18

Longacre 1983 120

What is specificity?

Specificity is a kind of definiteness, expressed by the interpretation of or grammatical marking on a noun or noun phrase , indicating that the speaker presumably knows the identity of the referent(s) .

• What is definiteness?

Anderson, S. 1985 179

Hawkins, J. 1978 203–204

What is speculative mood?

Speculative mood is an epistemic mood that signals that the speaker judges from certain facts that the proposition expressed by his or her utterance is possibly true.

• What is judgment modality?

Palmer 1986 59–60

What is a speech act?

A speech act is an act that a speaker performs when making an utterance , including the following:

• A general act ( illocutionary act ) that a speaker performs, analyzable as including

  • the uttering of words ( utterance acts )
  • making reference and predicating ( propositional acts ), and
  • a particular intention in making the utterance ( illocutionary force )
• An act involved in the illocutionary act, including utterance acts and propositional acts
• The production of a particular effect in the addressee ( perlocutionary act )

• What is an illocutionary act?
• What is a perlocutionary act?
• What is a propositional act?
• What is an utterance act?

• What is meaning and pragmatic function?

Searle 1969 22–25

Crystal 1985 285

What is a standard implicature?

A standard implicature is a conversational implicature based on an addressee 's assumption that the speaker is being cooperative by directly observing the conversational maxims .

• What is conversational implicature?

Levinson 1983 104

What is the state of the glottis?

The state of the glottis is the amount of

• vibration in the vocal folds, and
• closure in the glottis .

What is a statement?

Here are two senses for statement:

1. A statement is an illocutionary act that has the assertive illocutionary point of saying that some state of affairs is true.
2. A statement is a sentence having a form that is typically used to express such illocutionary acts (such as an English declarative sentence which has a subject followed by a verb ).

• What is a tag statement?

• What is an illocutionary act?

Crystal 1985 286

Hartmann and Stork 1972 218

What is a stative verb?

A stative verb is a verb that expresses a state of affairs or being rather than action.

Stative verbs differ from verbs of action not just in meaning but in formal structure and usage.

Some verbs have both senses that express

• a state of affairs or being, and
• action.

• be
• concern
• have
• know

Crystal 1991 326

Elson and Pickett 1988 99

What is status?

Status is a scale of social standing that is often realized in differing socially deictic linguistic forms.

• What is an equivalent?
• What is inferior status?
• What is a reverential form?
• What is superior status?

Lyons 1977b 576–577

What is a stem?

A stem is the root or roots of a word, together with any derivational affixes , to which inflectional affixes are added.

A stem consists minimally of a root , but may be analyzable into a root plus derivational morphemes . A stem may require an inflectional operation (often involving a prefix or suffix) in order to ground it into discourse and make it a fully understandable word. If a stem does not occur by itself in a meaningful way in a language, it is referred to as a bound morpheme .

• What is a construction?
• What is a morpheme type?

Crystal 1985 287

Mish 1991 1154

What is stem modification?

Stem modification is a morphological process whereby an affix occurs simultaneously with a root or stem .

The kind of affix involved in this process is called a simulfix .

The tense/aspect morpheme in the English verb paradigm of 'to sing' occurs simultaneously with the verb stem:

• sing
• sang
• sung

What is still tense?

Still tense is an absolute tense carrying the presupposition that an event or state held before the moment of utterance .

In positive declarative clauses , still tense asserts that the event or state holds at the moment of utterance.

• What is absolute tense?

Comrie 1985b 53–55

What is a stop?

A stop is a sound produced with a complete closure of the vocal tract.

p, b, k, t, j

What is strength of illocutionary point?

Strength of illocutionary point is the strength of assertion of, commitment to bring about, direction to another to bring about, or expression of a psychological state toward the propositional content of an illocutionary act .

Searle and Vanderveken 1985 , to whom are due the terms degree of strength of illocutionary point and degree of strength of sincerity conditions , allow that there is generally a correlation between the two terms. However, they cite requesting and ordering as illocutionary acts that show a distinction between the two strengths. Ordering, in their analysis, has a greater degree of strength of illocutionary point than requesting, due at least in part to the institutional authority of the orderer. But they hold that ordering does not necessarily express a commitment to a stronger accompanying psychological state of desire; that is, requesting and ordering need not have a different degree of strength of the sincerity conditions, despite their different degree of strength of illocutionary point. Thus, they distinguish the two terms.

The second act in each pair has a greater degree of strength of illocutionary point than the first:

• Suggesting and swearing
• Promising and vowing
• Requesting and demanding
• Approving and endorsing

Searle and Vanderveken 1985 19–20, 41–43

What is strength of sincerity conditions?

Strength of sincerity conditions is the strength of the psychological state that the speaker commits to in employing a particular illocutionary force .

Searle and Vanderveken 1985 , to whom are due the terms degree of strength of illocutionary point and degree of strength of sincerity conditions, allow that there is generally a correlation between the two. However, they cite requesting and ordering as illocutionary acts that show a distinction between the two strengths. Ordering, in their analysis, has a greater degree of strength of illocutionary point than requesting, due at least in part to the institutional authority of the orderer. But they add that ordering does not necessarily express a commitment to a stronger accompanying psychological state of desire; that is, requesting and ordering need not have a different degree of strength of sincerity conditions, despite their different degree of strength of illocutionary point. Thus, they distinguish the two terms.

The second act in each pair has a greater degree of strength of sincerity conditions than the first:

• Suggesting and swearing
• Promising and vowing
• Requesting and demanding
• Approving and endorsing

Searle and Vanderveken 1985 19–20, 41–43

What is stress?

Stress is an increase in the activity of the vocal apparatus of a speaker.

What is a strong epistemic qualification?

A strong epistemic qualification is an epistemic qualification that signals the highest degree of certainty.

• I know that …
• It’s certain that …
• Undoubtedly …

• What is an epistemic qualification?

Caton 1981 87

What is a structural metaphor?

A structural metaphor is a conventional metaphor in which one concept is understood and expressed in terms of another structured, sharply defined concept.

Here are some examples of the

argument-as-war

• Your claims are indefensible.
• He attacked every weak point in my argument.
• His criticisms were right on target.

• I demolished his argument.

• What is a conventional metaphor?

Lakoff, G. and Johnson 1980 4–5, 61

What is a subentry in a lexical database?

A subentry is a unit in the lexical database representing a lexeme that is made up of more than one morpheme , and is lexically related to one or more major entries .

While related to the major entry(s), the subentry contains its own phonological, semantic, grammatical, and anthropological information. The subentry usually has a meaning that is greater than the sum of its component morphemes.

• Derivatives (derived forms)
• Compounds
• Idioms
• Phrase equivalents for key terms for translation
• Sayings
• Phrasal verbs

The subentry inadangyan is a derivative of the major entry adangyan, which is shown below. The form inadangyan appears as a cross reference in the major entry and also as its own entry.

Subentries are not

• homophonous forms
• minimal pairs, or
• other interesting bits of information not closely related structurally to the main entry.

What is a subject?

A subject is a grammatical relation that exhibits certain independent syntactic properties, such as the following:

• The grammatical characteristics of the agent of typically transitive verbs
• The grammatical characteristics of the single argument of intransitive verbs
• A particular case marking or clause position
• The conditioning of an agreement affix on the verb

• The capability of being obligatorily or optionally deleted in certain grammatical constructions, such as the following clauses:

  • Adverbial
  • Complement
  • Coordinate
• The conditioning of same subject markers and different subject markers in switch-reference systems
• The capability of coreference with reflexive pronouns

The identification of the subject relation may be further confirmed by finding significant overlap with similar subject relations previously established in other languages. This may be done by analyzing correspondence between translation equivalents .

• What is a grammatical relation?

Crystal 1985 293

Hartmann and Stork 1972 224

Pei and Gaynor 1954 205

Mish 1991 1174

Pike and Pike 1982 458–459

Andrews, A. 1985 68–69, 103–117

Comrie 1989 66

What is a subject complement?

A subject complement is a complement that is used to predicate a description of the subject of a clause .

• Ambrose was bishop.
• Ambrose was holy.

• What is a predicate adjective?
• What is a predicate noun?

• What is a complement?

Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik 1985 55, 737, 742

Crystal 1985 :60

Hartmann and Stork 1972 182

Mish 1991 926

What is subjunctive mood?

Subjunctive mood is a mood that typically signals irrealis meanings, such as

• potentiality
• uncertainty
• prediction
• obligation, and
• desire.

It most typically occurs in a subordinate clause , but may occur outside of one.

• What is irrealis modality?

Nida 1949 169

Pei and Gaynor 1954 205

Bybee 1985 186

Crystal 1980 338

Hartmann and Stork 1972 224

Lyons 1977b 817, 848

Mish 1991 1174

What is a subordinate clause?

A subordinate clause is a clause that is embedded as a constituent of a matrix sentence and that functions like a noun , adjective , or adverb in the resultant complex sentence .

• What is a clause?

• What is a relative clause?
• What is an adverbial clause?

Hartmann and Stork 1972 76, 224

Foley, W. and Van Valin 1984 243

Thompson and Longacre 1985 172

Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik 1985 44, 719, 991

Mish 1991 1175

Crystal 1980 106, 129

What is a subordinating conjunction?

A subordinating conjunction is a conjunction that links constructions by making one of them a constituent of another. The subordinating conjunction typically marks the incorporated constituent.

• What is an adverbializer?
• What is a complementizer?
• What is a relativizer?

• What is a conjunction?

Crystal 1985 294

Hartmann and Stork 1972 224

Anderson, S. 1985 30

Schachter 1985 46, 50

Mish 1991 1175

What is a substance metaphor?

A substance metaphor is an ontological metaphor in which an abstraction, such as an event, activity, emotion, or idea, is represented as material.

• What is an ontological metaphor?

Lakoff, G. and Johnson 1980 25, 31

What is a substantive?

A substantive is a broad classification of words that includes nouns and nominals .

The term substantive is extended by some to include pronouns .

• What is a noun?
• What is a nominal?

• What is a word?

Crystal 1985 295

Hartmann and Stork 1972 225

Mish 1991 1176

What is subtraction?

Subtraction is a morphological process of modification that removes one or more segments from a root or stem .

• What is modification?

Matthews 1991 142

What is success of fit?

Success of fit is a correspondence between the state of affairs described by the propositional content of an illocutionary act and the state of affairs in the world.

Here are some examples of success of fit:

• The truthfulness of an assertive act’s contents
• The status of a commissive act’s contents as kept by the speaker
• The fulfillment of a directive act’s contents by the person from whom compliance is sought
• A declarative act that is successfully performed

Searle and Vanderveken 1985 95–98

What is a suffix?

A suffix is an affix that is attached to the end of a root or stem .

The past tense suffix -ed attaches to the end of the stem walk to form the past tense verb walked.

• What is an affix? (Linguistics)

• What is suffixation?

Crystal 1980 340

Hartmann and Stork 1972 226

Mish 1991 1179

What is suffixation?

Suffixation is a morphological process whereby a bound morpheme is attached to the end of a stem .

The kind of affix involved in this process is called a suffix .

The past tense suffix -ed attaches to the end of the stem walk to form the past tense verb walked.

• What is a morphological process?

What is a summary relation?

A summary relation is a contraction relation in which a proposition(s) repeats, in abbreviated form, the information of a group of propositions previously expressed.

• What is a contraction relation?

Mann and Thompson 1987b 72

Beekman and Callow 1974 299

Beekman, Callow, and Kopesec 1981 97

What is a summons-answer sequence?

A summons-answer sequence is a pre-sequence that consists of a that turn

• seeks attention, and
• grants it, opening the way for the talk to follow.

• What is a presequence?

Levinson 1983 309–310, 345–346

What is superessive case?

Superessive case is a case that expresses location on the referent of the noun it marks.

It has the meaning of "on" or "upon."

The term superessive case is used especially in studies of Finno-Ugric grammar.

• What is case?

Pei and Gaynor 1954 207

Gove 1966 2293

What is superior status?

Superior status is social deixis that encodes high status.

• What is status?

Brown, R. and Gilman 1960 256–257

What is supplemental information in a definition?

Supplemental information is an optional part of the definition of a lexical unit , containing culturally or logically expected information.

• Optional antecedents:

  • Cause
  • Condition
  • Grounds
  • Motivation
  • Reason

• Optional consequents:

  • Consequence
  • Effect
  • Purpose
  • Result
• Typical associated emotion
• Typical attribute or characteristic
• Typical connotation
• Typical instrument
• Typical means
• Typical sociocultural context

What is suppletion?

Suppletion is the replacement of one stem with another, resulting in an allomorph of a morpheme which has no phonological similarity to the other allomorphs.

• The following table illustrates stem suppletion:

  Morphological process	Regular, nonsuppletive stem	Suppletive stem
  Addition of past tense suffix	walk—walked	go—went
  Addition of comparative or superlative suffix	big—bigger— biggest	good—better—best

• The following table illustrates affix suppletion:

  Morphological process	Regular, nonsuppletive affix	Suppletive affix
  Addition of plural suffix	cat—cats	cherub—cherubim ox —oxen

Here are some kinds of suppletion:

• Stem suppletion
• Affix suppletion

• What is modification?

What is a suprafix?

A suprafix is a kind of affix in which a suprasegmental is superimposed on one or more syllables of the root or stem, signalling a particular morphosyntactic operation .

This is a morphological process .

The placement of stress in the following words signals the difference between a noun and a related verb:

• 'produce, n.
• pro'duce, v.

Suprafixes of tone occur on verb roots. The two suprafixes use different tones on different groups of verbs. In the following group of verbs, the high to low tone is the perfective morpheme. The mid to high tone is the imperfective morpheme.

• What is an affix? (Linguistics)

What is a suprasegmental?

A suprasegmental is a vocal effect that extends over more than one sound segment in an utterance, such as pitch, stress, or juncture pattern.

In

SIL

• tone
• vowel length, and
• features like nasalization and aspiration.

What is switch reference?

Switch reference is a grammatical category with the following features:

• It signals the identity or nonidentity of the referent of an argument of one clause , usually its subject , with an argument of another clause, which is likewise usually the subject.

  Switch reference functions to avoid ambiguity of reference; for example, it may distinguish between two referents that are third person and that, thus, may not be otherwise distinguished on the verb.

• It relates clauses, usually adjacent, that may be subordinate or coordinate to one another.

• It is expressed

  • usually by inflectional affixes on the verb
  • sometimes by the same affixes that express subject-verb agreement within the clause, and
  • rarely by a morpheme independent of the verb.

• What is a different subject marker?
• What is a same subject marker?

• What is discourse deixis?

Haiman and Munro 1983 ix–xiii

What is a switching pause?

A switching pause is silence between turns .

• What is attributable silence?
• What is a gap?
• What is a lapse?

• What is silence?

McLaughlin 1984 111–113

What is a syllabic consonant?

A syllabic consonant is a phonetic element that normally patterns as a consonant, but may fill a vowel slot in a syllable.

• The final nasals in /pattern/
• The final nasals in /bottom/

What is syllabification?

Syllabification is the process in which consonants function on the periphery of a syllable.

What is a syllable?

A syllable is a unit of sound composed of

• a central peak of sonority (usually a vowel), and
• the consonants that cluster around this central peak.

Syllable structure, which is the combination of allowable segments and typical sound sequences, is language specific.

Here is an example of the syllable structure of the English word limit:

Here are some kinds of syllables:

Here is a diagram of a syllable:

• What is metrical phonology?

What is a syllepsis?

A syllepsis is the use of a single word in such a way that it is syntactically related to two or more words elsewhere in the sentence , but has a different meaning in relation to each of the other words.

• What is a pun?

Corbett 1971 483

Mish 1991 1195

What is symbolic usage?

Symbolic usage is the use of a deictic expression in such a way that its interpretation depends only on general knowledge of the extralinguistic situation, rather than on physical (visual, and so forth) monitoring of it.

• This city is really beautiful.
• We can’t afford a holiday this year.

What is gestural usage?

Fillmore 1975 40

Levinson 1983 65

What is a synecdoche?

A synecdoche is a figure of speech in which the one of the following (or its reverse) is expressed:

• A part stands for a whole
• An individual stands for a class
• A material stands for a thing

• Fifty head referring to 50 head of cattle
• Cat referring to a lion

• What is metonymy?

Lakoff, G. and Johnson 1980 36

Mish 1991 1197

Neufeldt 1991 1358

What is a synonym lexical relation?

Discovering and understanding the use of words which have the lexical relation synonym is important for the accurate and effective choice of words in communication and translation.

A synonym lexical relation is a relationship between two or more lexical units which have identical core semantic components and which differ only with respect to their supplemental or peripheral components.

The underlying structure of a synonym set is a simple set .

Here is a frame for testing and eliciting a synonym lexical relation set:

• X is Y.

What is a syntactic category?

A syntactic category is a set of words and/or phrases in a language which share a significant number of common characteristics. The classification is based on similar structure and sameness of distribution (the structural relationships between these elements and other items in a larger grammatical structure), and not on meaning. In generative grammar, a syntactic category is symbolized by a node label in a constituent structure tree.

There are major and minor syntactic categories:

• All phrasal syntactic categories

  Examples:

  NP (noun phrase), VP (verb phrase), PP (prepositional phrase)

• Word-level syntactic categories that serve as heads of phrasal syntactic categories

  Examples:

  noun, verb

  See:	lexical category

• Categories that do not project to a phrasal level

  Example:

  Yes-No question markers

Contrast syntactic category with the following:

• Grammatical category (person, number, tense, aspect, mood, gender, case, voice...)
• Grammatical class (transitive and intransitive verbs; count and mass nouns…)
• Grammatical relations (subject, direct object, indirect object…)
• Functional categories (agent, patient, instrument…; topic, comment…; definite NP)

Note: The terms grammatical category and grammatical class have also been used as synonyms for ‘part of speech’.

Bickford and Daly 1996 F4, page 2

What is a syntactic function?

A syntactic function is the grammatical relationship of one constituent to another within a syntactic construction.

• What is an adjunct?
• What is a complement?
• What is a grammatical relation?
• What is a head?
• What is a modifier?
• What is a predicate?
• What is a predicator?

Crystal 1985 129

What is a syntagmatic lexical relation?

A syntagmatic lexical relation is a culturally determined pattern of association between pairs of lexical units (A1-B1, A2-B2, A3-B3…) where the

• two members of each pair (A1 and B1)

  • have compatible semantic components
  • are in a fixed syntactic and semantic relationship to each other, and
  • are typically associated with each other, and

• corresponding members of each pair (A1, A2, A3…)

  • belong to the same lexical category
  • fill the same syntactic position in a syntactic construction, and
  • have the same semantic function.

• Actor
• Undergoer
• Location
• Instrument
• Benefactor
• Goal
• Feel
• Sound
• Degradation
• Intensification
• Material composition

For more information on the lexical relations listed above, refer to Coward and Grimes 1995 .

Syntagmatic lexical relations are structured in sets of pairs .