Linguistics Final

Inflectional Morpheme

A bound grammatical morpheme that is affixed to a word according to the rules of syntax; grammatical function; no change in word class; slight meaning change, if any; follow derivational morphemes in a word; are productive; mark properties such as tense, gender, case

Affix

A bound morpheme attached to a stem or root

Infix

A bound morpheme that is inserted in the middle of a word or stem

Circumfix

A bound morpheme, parts of which occur in a word both before and after the root; un-like-ly

Synonomy

A meaning relation in which sentences have the same truth values in all situations; e.g., "the boss put the meeting off," "the boss put off the meeting," and "the boss postponed the meeting

Derivational Morpheme

A morpheme added to a stem or root to form a new stem or word, possibly resulting in a syntactic category change; not required by rules of grammar; lexical function; may cause word class and meaning change; precede inflectional morphemes in a word; sometimes productive and sometimes not

Count Noun

A noun that can be enumerated; e.g., 'one potato, two potatoes'

Mass Noun

A noun that cannot be ordinarily enumerated; e.g., one cannot buy many 'rices,' but one can buy a lot of 'rice,' thereby modifying the words around 'rice' rather than enumerating the word itself

Complementer Phrase (CP)

A phrase whose head (C) may introduce a complementiser (e.g, 'that') and possibly a preposed Aux, and whose complement is S; ex: "that if I love tacos"

Entailment

A relationship between propositions and ideas; if the truth of [proposition X] makes a second [proposition Y] also true, then [X entails Y]; e.g., [Helga is planting flowers] and [Helga is planting orchids]; however, Y does not always entail X in return; e.g., just because Helga is planting flowers does not mean she is planting orchids

Free Morpheme

A single morpheme that constitutes a word

Transitive Verb

A verb that categorically (must) select(s) an obligatory NP complement; a verb that takes on a direct object; e.g., 'find' in "find the ball"

Intransitive Verb

A verb that must not have a direct object complement; cannot take on an NP complement; ex: 'slept' in "Michael slept" would become ungrammatical with the addition of an NP: "*Michael slept a nap"

Constituent

A word or a group of words which function(s) as a single unit within a hierarchical structure; "the girl" is a NP (type of constituent) in "The boy loves the girl"

Synonym

A word with the same or nearly the same meaning as another; e.g., 'bucket' and 'pail'

Minimal Pairs

Actual words that are identical (rhyme), with the exception of ONE different sound; e.g., puta (bitch) and puto (rice cake)

Allomorph

Alternative phonemic form of a morpheme; e.g., /-s/, /-z/ and /-əz/ forms the plural morpheme in 'cats,' 'dogs,' and 'kisses'

Prefix

An affix that is attached to the beginning of a morpheme or stem; un-like

Suffix

An affix that is attached to the end of a morpheme or stem; like-ly

Binary Features

An attribute that could be true/false, past/present, etc.; some features seem obvious and useful, and allow us to create semantic classes; a 'woman' is [human] [mature] [female]

Adjuncts

An optional phrase that is not selected by the verb; ex: 'in the garage' in the sentence "The boy found the ball in the garage"

Marked Anytonym

Antonym not used in questions of degree; e.g., 'low' is the marked word in the pair 'high/low' because we ordinarily ask "How 'high'" something is, not "How 'low'"

Gradable Antonymy

Antonyms related in such a way that more of one is less of the other; can be placed on a spectrum in which there is middle-ground; e.g., "How big is the lake?" The answer can be anywhere from [massive<--->tiny]

Contradiction

Arises when one part of a statement conflicts in meaning with, or denies, another part; e.g., "married bachelor" is a contradiction because the definition of being a bachelor is not being married, therefore this phrase negates said definition

Auxiliary 'Be' Verbs

Associated with progressive aspect or passive voice; support lexical verbs; 'was' in "The mouse was eating for some time"

Connotation

Association connected to certain word or emotional suggestions related to that word; context-dependent

Maxim of Relevance

Be relevant and don't stray from the topic

Closed Class

Category of words that is rarely added to; prepositions and conjunctions

Maxim of Manner

Clarity; be brief, orderly, and specific

Open Class

Class of lexical content words; can and regularly do add new words to these classes

Multiple Complementary Antonymy

Closed sets can be defined as multiple complementaries; e.g., days of the week (Monday is not Friday, etc.)

Gricean Maxims

Co-operative principles; when what we say is not exactly what we mean, yet others understand the meaning of what is said; in "He opened the book and read a chapter," it is understood that the chapter was read from the same book mentioned

Perfect Aspect

Completed event; have [aux] + Verb-en [lex]; e.g., "I [have eaten]"

Syllabic Onset

Consonant cluster at the beginning of a syllable

Phoneme

Contrastive sounds with contrastive distribution (non-interchangeable); distinctive sounds of a language; /p/, /b/, /t/, etc.

Componential Analysis

Defining semantic/linguistic terms, in terms of features; reduces a definition to a minimal set of binary features to differentiate words (not things) from each other

Derivational Affixes

Derive a new word; change meaning; frequently change word class

Coreferential

Describes NP's that refer to the same entity; includes pronouns; e.g., 'it' and 'chicken' in the sentence "Susan prepared the chicken and ate it"

Protoype Theory

Describing prototypical/ideal specimen a word refers to; indicate how far other things the word refers to stray from that prototype

Recursion

Embedding phrases/constituents with phrases/constituents of the same type; ex: "[A [[hungry] mouse]]

Modal

Express possibility; speaker's attitude towards event, state; an auxiliary verb other than 'be,' 'have,' and 'do;' e.g., 'can,' 'could,' 'will,' 'would,' and 'must'

Aspect

Expresses how the action or state relates to the flow of time

Tense

Expression of time or event, relative to time the sentence/statement is made; English is a two-way system of tense, using Past Tense and Non-Past Tense

Idiom

Expression whose meaning does not conform to the principle of compositionality; meaning is not a sum of parts; language-specific and follow standard grammar; resist any form of modification; e.g., "kick the bucket" is an idiom meaning 'to die'

Meaning Test

For constituents; Constituents are also semantic, coherent units; ex: "The large evil leathery alligator" is one constituent because removal of any of its units creates an incoherent sentence

Substitution Test

For constituents; Take a sequence of words you'd like to test and replace them with a single, relevant word; if the new sentence is grammatically satisfied, the removed sequence of words is a constituent; ex: substituting 'the energized bunny' with 'it' in the sentence "The energized bunny frolicked in the woods" leaves you with "It frolicked in the woods," a grammatically correct sentence

Answer (Stand-Alone) Test

For constituents; The answer to a wh- question in a sentence, if coherent, is a constituent; ex: "The chef chased the big mouse out the door." Who chased the mouse? [The Chef] --> NP

Movement Test

For constituents; moving sequences of words to a different part of the sentence; if the sentence still makes sense, the moved sequence is a constituent; this is the most effective and most problematic of the tests for constituency

Omission Test

For constituents; remove part of sentence you are testing; if it remains a complete sentence, the removed part is a constituent; ex; taking 'effortlessly' out of "Alligators swim effortlessly" leaves you with a complete sentence

Participle

Form of a verb that occurs after auxiliary verbs 'be' and 'have;' occur in past, present, and passive forms

Past Tense

Generally means the past relative to the moment of speaking

Inflectional Affixes

Give additional grammatical information; cannot change base word classes; cannot change base meaning

Future Tense

Grammaticalization of the future, relative to the time of speaking (does not occur in English)

Copula 'Be' Verbs

Have minimal meaning; followed by DP, PP, NP, or AdjP; occur with tense or aspect; e.g., 'was' in "The mouse was my pet"

Auxiliary Verbs

Helper verbs; have a functions; can't be used alone

Complementary Antonymy

If [A] is true, then [B] is not, and vice versa; e.g., 'alive' and 'not dead' or 'dead'

Two-Way Entailment Test (Synonymy)

If word [X] entails word [Y] and word [Y] can replace word [X] in a sentence and vice versa, then words [X] and [Y] are Synonyms; "Leo watched/observed the moon"

Functional Category

Includes determiners, auxiliaries, complementizers, and conjunctions

Maxim of Quantity

Information; be informative and say just enough, not too much

Speech Production Processes

Initiation, Phonation (voicing of sound, VO+ or VO-), Articulation (manipulation of airstream to form sounds)

Metaphor

Intentional untruth; poetic (her eyes were the stars), everyday (time is money), ideas as weapons (theory was shot down), and moving towards the future (I'll do it when the time comes)

Denotation

Literal meanings of words; context-free sense

Lexical Verbs

Main verbs; attach meaning to something tangible; can be used alone

Hyponymy

Meaning of one word entails broader meaning of another, where the broader meaning is known as the superordinate; e.g., 'sapphire' is a hyponym of the superordinate 'blue'

Particle

Morpheme that generally follows a noun and expresses grammatical functions such as topic, subject, object, location, etc.

Bound Morpheme

Morpheme that must be attached to other morphemes; include prefixes, suffixes, infixes, circumfixes, and some roots

Bound Morphemes

Morphemes that must be attached to a stem or another morpheme; e.g., 's' in 'swim-s'

Free Morphemes

Morphemes used independently as word forms; e.g., 'text' and 'book' in 'text-book'

Reduplication

Morphological process that repeats or copies all or part of a word to produce new words; ex: itty-bitty

Family Resemblances

No one feature common to all, but there are overlapping features

Allophone

Non-distinctive variations of a phoneme in a language; usually predictable; are in complementary distribution (cannot occur in the same spot/place); [p] and [p ʰ] are allophones of the phoneme [p]

Open Syllable

Nothing comes after the vowel (nucleus)

Content Words

Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs; constitute the majority of vocabulary

Entails

One sentence entails another if the truth of the first necessarily implies the truth of the second; e.g., "the sun melted the ice" entails "the ice melted" since if the first is true, the second must be true also

Polysemy

One word with multiple related senses; e.g., 'music' is both sounds produced by music and also refers to specific genres of music as an artform

Progressive Aspect

Ongoing event; be [aux] + Verb-ing [lex]; e.g., "I [am eating]"

Underlying Phoneme

Phoneme that is most commonly used or normally considered when associated with the original allophone; the phoneme that turns up in the greatest number of environments

Embedding

Phrases/constituents appearing inside other phrases/constituents; ex: "[The child [in the picture]]"

Indirect Object

Precedes the direct object and tells to whom or for whom the action of the verb is done and who is receiving the direct object; "boy" in 'Susan gave the puppy to the boy' and "him" in 'Susan gave him the puppy'

Semantic Rules

Principles for determining the meaning of larger units like sentences from the meaning of smaller units like NP's and VP's

Deixis

Refers to words or expressions whose reference relies entirely on context and the orientation of the speaker in space and time; e.g., I, yesterday, there, this cat

Relational Antonyms

Same interaction from opposing viewpoints; If [A] does [X] to [B], then [B] does [Y] to [A]; John gives apples to Chris, therefore Chris receives apples from John. give/receive, buy/sell, parent/child

Cause

Semantic role of NP whose referent is a natural force that is responsible for change; e.g., 'the wind' in "The wind damaged the roof"

Intension

Set of referents a word has in all possible worlds

Extension

Set of referents a word has in the actual world

Morpheme

Smallest unit of meaningful sounds/functions in language; every word contains at least one morpheme; 'house' in 'house,' 'green-house,' and 'mad-house-s'

Phonology

Sound system in a language; component of grammar that includes inventory of sounds; study of all sound systems in language

Placement of Stress

Stress in a syllable is carried on the vowel

Semantics

Study of linguistic meaning of morphemes, words, phrases, and sentences

Morphology

Study of structure of words; component of grammar that includes rules of word formation

Substitution Test (Synonymy)

Substituting one word for another does not change the meaning of the sentence or phrase, both the original and substituted words are synonymous

Implication

Surface meaning of sentence does not seem relevant to the context; if we accept that the speaker is cooperative and truthful, we may look for the meanings implied by their speech

Complementizer

Syntactic and Functional; includes 'that,' 'if,' 'for,' and 'wether;' introduce an embedded sentence; e.g., "his belief that sheepdogs can swim;" has effect of turning a sentence into a complement

Conjunction (Conj)

Syntactic and Functional; joins two like syntactic categories together; e.g., 'and,' 'but,' 'for'

Determiner (Det)

Syntactic and Functional; words and expressions that, when combined, form a NP; includes articles 'the,' and 'a;' includes demonstratives such as 'this' and 'that;' includes quantifiers such as 'each' and 'every;' and expressions such as 'William's;' includes possessive pronouns; includes number terms such as 'most,' 'several;' the, a, my, his, your, each, some, many, two, several, this, those

Prepositional Phrase (PP)

Syntactic and Phrasal; consists of a P as the head and a NP; e.g., "in the room"

Adjective Phrase (AdjP)

Syntactic and Phrasal; head is an adjective and possibly accompanied by modifiers, that occurs inside NP's and as complements of the verb 'be;' e.g, "worthy of praise," "several meters high," "green," and "more diffictult

Adverb Phrase (AdvP)

Syntactic and Phrasal; head is an adverb possibly accompanied by other modifiers; e.g., "very quickly," or "quite soon"

Verb Phrase (VP)

Syntactic; expression that contains a verb as its head along with its complements such as NP's and PP's; e.g., "gave the book to the child"

Sentence (S)

Syntactic; expressions consisting minimally of a NP, followed by an Aux, followed by a VP; the head of S is Aux; ex: "Beavers build dams"

Adjective (Adj)

Syntactic; head of AdjP's; semantic effect of qualifying or describing the referents of nouns; e.g., bright, tall, intelligent

Noun (N)

Syntactic; head of NP's; have grammatical alternations for number, case, and gender; occur with determiners

Verb (V)

Syntactic; head of VP's; semantically, denote actions, sensations and states; tests include combining with adverbs and/or modals

Preposition (P)

Syntactic; heads PP's; at, in, on , up, of, etc.

Auxiliary (Aux)

Syntactic; includes auxiliary verbs and abstract tense morphemes; forms of 'have' or 'be' and 'do' verbs; have, be, do, can, may, might, must, will, shall, should, would, could

Adverb (Adv)

Syntactic; qualify the verb, such as manner adverbs like 'quickly' and time adverbs like 'soon;' answer wh- and how questions; some qualify adjectives; position depends on its semantic type

Unmarked Antonym

Term used to refer to a member of gradable pairs of antonyms used in questions of degree; 'high' is the unmarked member of the pair 'high/low'

One-Way Test [entailment]

Test for Hyponymy; The ocean is blue/cerulean/sapphire ---> if the words in place of the superordinate in question are true, they are hyponyms

Type-Of Test

Test for Hyponymy; is Y a 'type of' X? If so, X is a superordinate of Y

Subject

The NP in a S (sentence) that appears immediately below the VP in a phrase structure tree; "the zebra" in 'the zebra has stripes'

Stem

The base to which one or more affixes are attached to create a more complex form that may be another stem or word

Head (of a phrase)

The central word of a phrase whose lexical category defines the type of phrase; e.g. the noun 'man' is the head of the NP "the man who came to dinner;" the verb 'wrote' is the head of the VP "wrote a letter to his mother;" the adjective 'red' is the head of the AdjP "very bright red"

Complement

The constituents in a phrase other than the head that completes the meaning of the phrase and which is selected by the verb; in the VP "found a puppy," the NP 'a puppy' is a complement of the head verb 'found'

Referent

The entity designated by an expression; words, phrases, and sentences that refer to something in the real world or our imagination

Direct Object

The entity that is acted upon by the subject; "the puppy" in 'the boy found the puppy'

Derived Word

The form that results from the addition of a derivational morpheme

Root

The morpheme that remains when all affixes are stripped from a complex word; 'system' from un-system-atic-ally

Pragmatics

The study of how context and situation affect meaning

Phrasal Semantics

The subfield of semantics concerned with the meaning of syntactic units larger than the word

Lexical Semantics

The subfield of semantics concerned with the meanings of words and the meaning relationships among words

Infinitive

The uninflected form of a verb that does not express tense; e.g., (to) 'swim'

Syllabic Rhyme

The vowel and anything following it in a syllable

Agent

Thematic role; animate entity that has control or performs the actions deliberately/consciously; 'Ashley' in "Ashely ate the pizza"

Experiencer

Thematic role; animate entity whose senses are affected emotionally or psychologically; 'She' in "She worries a lot"

Patient

Thematic role; entity significantly/permanently effected by the action; 'the pizza' in "Ashley at the pizza"

Theme

Thematic role; entity that exists, undergoes movement from one place to another or is temporarily affected; 'the chair' in "Ashley moved the chair"

Goal

Thematic role; intended endpoint of an event; 'to the wall' in "I shifted the chair to the wall"

Location

Thematic role; represents final stopping point of an object or where an event takes place; 'the kitchen' in "He is working in the kitchen"

Stimulus

Thematic role; that which affects the senses; 'the squirrel' in "The girl noticed the squirrel"

Instrument

Thematic role; the means by which the object is affected; 'a rock' in "She broke the window with a rock"

Source

Thematic role; the place or origin; 'from Wellington' in "She is driving from Wellington"

Maxim of Quality

Truth; don't lie or make unsupported claims

Compound Words

Two or more free morphemes treated as a single morpheme; 'pick-pocket' or 'green-house'

Paraphrases

Two sentences are paraphrasal if they have the same truth conditions; [active] dog is chasing cat and [passive] cat is being chased by dog; this two-way entailment is the same as we saw for synonyms, but here it applies to sentences

Antonymy

Two words that contextually express 'opposite' meanings with relation to their semantic meanings; typically differ in only one element of meaning

Semantic Primitives

Use 'simple' undefinable concepts that exist in all languages to define words

Closed Syllable

Vowel followed by a consonant

Sense

What we understand from words and phrases

Syllabic Consonant

When a consonant is able to fill a vowel slot in a syllable

Complex Words

Words containing at least two morphemes, one of which is bound; 'cat-s' or 'con-struc-tion'

Function Words

Words that don't have clear lexical meanings but have grammatical functions; include conjunctions, prepositions, articles, auxiliaries, and pronouns

Homonym

Words that share the same spelling and pronunciation but have different, unrelated meanings; e.g., (baseball)(mammal) bat

Homophone

Words that sound the same but have different meanings and spellings; e.g., to, too, two

Fuzzy Concepts

Words with no fixed meaning in relation to each other; how to compare binary features of 'chicken' and 'vitamins'

Homograph

Words written the same but pronounced differently; e.g., 'minute,' depending on its pronunciation can refer to the unit of time or something extremely small

'Be' Verbs

am, are, is, was, were, being

Suppletive Form

an inflected morpheme in which the regular rules do not apply; went (goed) and worse (badder)