AREAL LINGUISTICS

1. (Sociolinguistics) Seeks to document and understand the phenomenon of parallel structural organization in languages (typically, languages of different families), which are spoken in the same or adjoining geographical areas. | N.J. Enfield, 2005
2. (Sociolinguistics) A branch of linguistics that studies (using the methods of linguistic geography) distribution of linguistic phenomena in the spatial extent and interlingual (interdialectic) interaction.
    The term "spatial/areal linguistics" was first introduced by M.J. Bartoli and J. Vidossi, but the principles were developed by Bartoli in 1925. Areal linguistics is closely linked to linguistic geography and dialectology. | Ongarbayeva Meruyert, 2013

ARGUMENT

1. (Syntax/Semantics) An expression that helps complete the meaning of a predicate, the latter referring in this context to a main verb and its auxiliaries. In this regard, the complement is a closely related concept. Most predicates take one, two, or three arguments. A predicate and its arguments form a predicate-argument structure. The discussion of predicates and arguments is associated most with (content) verbs and noun phrases (NPs), although other syntactic categories can also be construed as predicates and as arguments.
    Arguments must be distinguished from adjuncts. While a predicate needs its arguments to complete its meaning, the adjuncts that appear with a predicate are optional; they are not necessary to complete the meaning of the predicate. Most theories of syntax and semantics acknowledge arguments and adjuncts, although the terminology varies, and the distinction is generally believed to exist in all languages. Dependency grammars sometimes call arguments actants, following Lucien Tesnière (1959). | Wikipedia, 2023
2. (Syntax, Semantics) Systematically ambiguous. In semantics, an argument is the entity about which a predication is made. In syntax, an argument is a constituent (noun phrase, adpositional phrase) that is required by another (predicative, argument-taking) constituent (verb, relational adjective, relational noun). In this second, syntactic sense, arguments are also called argument terms. Argument terms are said to be sub-categorized by their governing predicates.
    In generative syntax, Argument is a phrase which is a referential expression and which is associated with a theta-role assigned by a lexical head.
    In the following sentences, the underlined noun phrases (or adpositional phrases) are arguments (or argument terms):
   1. Tasaku bought a ticket on Friday.
   2. Please give my regards to your husband.
   3. On the boat the passengers rely on the captain.
    The NPs John and apples in (4) are arguments of eat, and the embedded sentence in (5) is an argument of obvious.
   4. John eats apples.
   5. That you're in love is obvious.
    Arguments are typically contrasted with adjuncts, i.e. noun phrases or adpositional phrases that are not syntactically required, but serve to modify the clause or another constituent.
    Semantics: In the formula P(a), a is called the argument of the predicate P. Generally, for a predicate with arity n, in P(a₁,...,a_n), a₁,...,a_n are called the arguments of P.
    Subtypes: core argument, peripheral argument, external argument, internal argument. | Glottopedia, 2014

ARGUMENT CLUSTER COORDINATION
(Syntax) Example:

1. give a teacher an apple and a policeman a flower

1. SVO:
   SVO and SO
   *SO and SVO
2. VSO:
   VSO and SO
   *SO and VSO
3. SOV:
   SO and SOV
   *SOV and SO

ARGUMENT ELLIPSIS
(Syntax) A conceptually simpler alternative to Verb-stranding Verb Phrase Ellipsis, "Argument Ellipsis" (AE) assumes that ellipsis targets just what is missing, namely, the internal argument. In this analysis, the verb is generated outside the elided constituent; verb raising may or may not be involved ((3) depicts AE with verb raising). In Hebrew:

1. Gil
   Gil

   hizmin
   invited

   et
   acc

   axot-o.
   sister-his.

   Yosi
   Yosi

   gam
   too

   hizmin
   invited

   ___.
    

   'Gil invited his sister. Yosi did too.'
2. VSVPE:
   [_TP Yosi_i [_T' gam [_T' hismin-v-T [_vP t_i [_v' t_v [_VP t_V [_DP et axoto ]]]] ]]]
3. AE:
   [_TP Yosi_i [_T' gam [_T' hismin-v-T [_vP t_i [_v' t_v [_VP t_V [_DP et axoto ] ]]]]]]

ARGUMENT SHARING
(Syntax) The intuitively prior sense of the term is brought out in the following observations about the sentence (1) in Oriya:

1. kaali
   yesterday

   raatire
   night-PP

   mun
   I

   maacha
   fish

   -Te
   -a

   kiNi
   buy

   keLaai
   clean

   bhaaji
   fry

   khaaili
   eat-PAST-1^st-sg

   'Last night, having bought, cleaned and fried a fish, I ate it.'

2. Argument sharing – Sense I
   A token-occurrence of an NP serves, for a set of consecutive verbs V₁, V₂, ... V_n, as the only overt NP which instantiates a given argument-function AF relative to each of the verbs.
   Specifications:
   1. An NP counts as serving an AF with regard to verb V if
      1. it refers to an entity understood as carrying one of the thematic roles tied to V; and/or
      2. it carries a "grammatical function" (GF) relative to V.
   2. The argument-function instantiated relative to each verb can be understood either such that it is the same AF (thematic role, and/or GF) relative to each verb, or possibly different ones.

ARTICULATORY-PERCEPTUAL SYSTEM

1. (Cognition) Within the generative, modular paradigm, Chomsky (1995) distinguishes two interface levels: the level of phonetic form (PF) is the interface with sensorimotor systems, the level of logical form (LF) is the interface with systems of conceptual structure and language use. The two performance systems involved are the articulatory-perceptual system and the conceptual-intentional system. | Aafke Hulk, Folkert Kuiken, Richard J. Towell, and Roeland van Hout, 2003
2. (Cognition) The language faculty interacts with various performance systems, principle among them being the articulatory/perceptual system, which controls the production and reception of linguistic events, and the conceptual/intentional system (or "belief system"), which determines the content of interpretations and what is said. | Michael O'Rourke, 2007

ARTICULATORY PHONOLOGY
(Phonology) A linguistic theory originally proposed in 1986 by Catherine Browman of Haskins Laboratories and Louis M. Goldstein of Yale University and Haskins. The theory identifies theoretical discrepancies between phonetics and phonology and aims to unify the two by treating them as low- and high-dimensional descriptions of a single system.
 Unification can be achieved by incorporating into a single model the idea that the physical system (identified with phonetics) constrains the underlying abstract system (identified with phonology), making the units of control at the abstract planning level the same as those at the physical level.
 The plan of an utterance is formatted as a gestural score, which provides the input to a physically based model of speech production—the task dynamics model of Elliot Saltzman (2006, 2013). The gestural score graphs locations within the vocal tract where constriction can occur, indicating the planned or target degree of constriction. | Wikipedia, 2021

ARTIFICIAL LANGUAGE LEARNING TASK

1. (Experimental Linguistics) In which learners are taught miniature constructed languages in a controlled laboratory setting. A valuable experimental tool for research on language development. These methods offer a complement to natural language acquisition data, allowing researchers to control both the input to learning and the learning environment. A large proportion of artificial language learning studies has aimed to understand the mechanisms of learning in infants. | Jennifer Culbertson and Kathryn Schuler, 2019
2. (Experimental Linguistics) The earliest uses of artificial language (or grammar) learning in psychology were focused on whether learners could extract implicit rules or rule-like generalizations from structured input (e.g., Braine 1963, Reber 1967). These experiments were extended starting in the 1990s to show that learners could use distributional information in the input—statistical learning—to form representations of word boundaries and phrasal constituents, along with syntax-like rules (Saffran et al. 1996, Mintz et al. 2002, Reeder et al. 2013). More recently, researchers in cognitive psychology and theoretical linguistics have begun adapting artificial language learning methods to study how statistical learning might interact with or be shaped by other properties of the cognitive system. An explicit goal of this research is using these methods to provide evidence for cognitive constraints or biases which might explain specific features of language structure.
    The most important contribution of artificial language learning experiments to date is in allowing researchers to test the predicted behavioral effects of hypothesized constraints in a controlled laboratory environment. Observations from linguistic typology or language acquisition can be used to generate hypotheses linking language structure to human cognition. The predictions of these hypotheses can be tested using precisely designed experimental manipulations. While most work in theoretical syntax does not yet incorporate this kind of evidence, the last decade has seen a surge in the use of artificial language learning experiments in research on theoretical phonology. For the most part, these studies have explicitly focused on statistical typological tendencies, attempting to show that typologically common patterns are acquired (or inferred) more readily than rare patterns. In other words, this research is focused on uncovering cognitive biases which might explain a given typological distribution. Such biases are difficult to test with natural language acquisition data alone, since no two natural languages will differ only in the phenomenon of interest. Further, the researcher cannot control the frequency with which particular learners might receive relevant information in the input. Where research has in fact focused on apparently non-defeasible principles, the problem is obvious: there simply are no natural language acquisition data available.
    Using artificial language learning experiments makes it possible to perfectly match languages aside from properties of interest, to control input frequency, and to compare learning of attested versus unattested and common versus rare linguistic patterns. In addition to this, these methods allow us to explore whether the same biases are found across development, how they might be amplified or dampened by language experience, and how widely they apply across cognitive domains. | Jennifer Culbertson, 2021

ASPECT
(Grammar) A category associated with verbs that expresses a temporal view of the event or state expressed by the verb. Aspect is often indicated by verbal affixes or auxiliary verbs.
 Some kinds:

• Imperfective Aspect.
• Perfective Aspect.
• Cessative Aspect.
• Inchoative Aspect.

ASPECTUAL CLASSES
(Semantics) A classification of verbs with respect to their aspectual properties, dating back to an Aristotelian classification of situations. The most popular aspectual classes are those proposed in Vendler 1967 (extending a classification in Kenny 1963) and applied and formalized in Dowty 1979: States, Activities (unbounded processes), Accomplishments (bounded processes), and Achievements (point events). Examples:

• States: Socrates is mortal. She is in danger. He loves potatoes.
• Activities: John walked miles and miles. She drove him safely.
• Accomplishments: John walked home. She ate a sandwich.
• Achievements: She reached the top. He won the race.

1. For hours she was in danger.
2. ?For hours she reached the top.

ASSIBILATION
(Phonology) Any process by which a consonant becomes a sibilant. Often the easiest way to see this is to look at cognates, e.g.

• Attentio in Latin and attention in English (/t/ vs /ʃ/)
• Water in English and Wasser in German (/t/ vs /s/)
• Out in English and Aus in German (/t/ vs /s/)

ASSOCIATED MOTION
(Grammar) A verbal category, separate from tense, aspect, mood and direction, whose function is to associate, in different ways, different kinds of translational (spatial displacement or change of location) motion to a (generally non-motion) verb event. | Guillaume and Koch, 2021

ASSOCIATED MOTION SYSTEM
(Grammar) Verbal suffixes whose primary function is to add a motion co-event to the event expressed by the verb. | Sylvie Voisin, 2021

ASSOCIATIVE PLURAL
(Grammar) Associative plural constructions consist of a noun X (typically of human reference, usually a person's name or a kin term) and some other material, most often an affix, a clitic, or a word. The meaning of the construction is 'X and other people associated with X'. An example is Japanese Tanaka-tachi 'Tanaka and his associates'.
 The reader may have come across various other terms in the literature for the associative plural and related constructions, such as Delbrück's elliptical dual (1893), Jespersen's approximative plural (1965), the term plural a potiori used in Indo-European and Semitic studies, and the label representativnaja mnozžestvennost' (representative plural) employed by Russian Orientalists. | Daniel and Moravcsik, 2013

ASYMMETRIC OVERLAP HYPOTHESIS
(Phonology) X and Y can be asymmetrically misperceived if they have an asymmetric acoustic overlap, meaning X overlaps with Y in acoustic space more than Y overlaps with X. | Ollie Sayeed, 2023

ASYMMETRY OF TIME
(Semantics) Because language unfolds in time, which flows asymmetrically from the past to the future, comprehenders get access to information in a way that is ordered. | Alexandros Kalomoiros, 2023

ASYNDETON
(Grammar) From Greek ἀσύνδετον 'not bound together'. The joining together of syntactic units without a conjunction. E.g.:

1. I'm tired, I'm hungry.
2. I'm exhausted, I've walked twenty miles.

AT-ISSUE MEANING
(Semantics) We will call the "literal", "surface" meaning of a sentence the "at-issue meaning" of the sentence. The main, literal meaning of the sentence is the at-issue meaning, because that's the main "issue" being discussed. "Issue" here just means 'topic of discussion', and not something negative like 'problem'. | Catherine Anderson, Bronwyn Bjorkman, Derek Denis, Julianne Doner, Margaret Grant, Nathan Sanders, and Ai Taniguchi, 2022

ATB
See ACROSS-THE-BOARD.

ATELIC
See TELICITY.

ATTENTIONAL LOAD HYPOTHESIS
(Cognitive) When little attention is required to solve a set task, inputs associated with distractor stimuli "leak through", and cause disruption. But when the task is difficult, attention is totally occupied, leaving nothing left over (to attend to distractors). | Zoya Bylinskii, 2014

ATTITUDINAL
(Semantics) Or, affective, or, emotive. Antonyms, cognitive, referential. A term sometimes used as part of a classification of types of meaning: it refers to the emotional element in meaning, as in the different attitudes expressed by varying the intonation or loudness of a sentence, e.g. anger, sarcasm. In the context of prosody, attitudinal meaning is usually distinguished from grammatical meaning. | David Crystal, 2008

ATTRIBUTIVE COMPOUND
(Syntax) Attributive compounds are endocentric compounds that consist of a non-head (a modifier), e.g. tennis, and a head, e.g. ball, as in (1) (Ingason and Sigurðsson 2020).

1. tennis ball (a ball for playing tennis)

Page Last Modified November 4, 2023

 

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