Sank's Glossary of Linguistics 
D-Dh

D-STRUCTURE
(Syntax) That level of representation which is completely determined by lexical information, Theta-theory, the Projection Principle, and X-bar theory, and which is input to the transformational component which derives S-Structure. Abandoned in Chomsky 1992. | Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics, 2001

DATIVUS ETHICUS

  1. (Grammar) Ethic dative indicates that the person in the dative is or should be especially concerned about the action, e.g. Quid mihi Celsus agit? 'What is Celsus doing (I am especially interested in what it is)?' | Wikipedia, 2022
  2. (Grammar) The ethical or ethic dative, in the succinct definition of the Oxford English Dictionary, is "used to imply that a person, other than the subject or object, has an interest in the fact stated."
     Havers (1931) stresses that as Gefühlsträger its significance resides in the sphere of expressions of warmth of heart rather than those of cool intellect. To cite only one example from Greek:
    1. μηδέ μοι οὕτως θῦνη διὰ προμάχων
      'Nor, I pray thee, rush about thus amidst the foremost fighters' (Iliad v. 249)
     | T. Muraoka, 1978

DATIVUS SYMPATHETICUS

  1. (Grammar) A dative construction that implies a possessive relationship between the dative referent and another participant in the situation. | Liljana Mitkovska, 2007
  2. (Morphosyntax) Abraham (1973) takes the embedding under an NP node as the crucial property of the dative of pertinence, and this is what makes it different from the sympathetic dative, which is embedded under a PP node.
    1. Sympathetic Dative (Abraham 1973)
      Ich blickte dem Mädchen ins Gesicht.
     Abraham includes parts of clothes into the subset of possessive datives, as in (2), but only if they are, like body parts, dominated by an NP. If they are dominated by a PP, they are described as the Sympathetic dative (3):
    1. Pertinenzdativ (Abraham 1973)
      Der Hut brennt mir.
    2. Sympathetic Dative (Abraham 1973)
      Der Regen tropfte ihm in den Kragen.
     Havers (1911) distinguishes six subsets of Dativus sympatheticus on the basis of lexical classes of nouns or verbs that take a dative:
    1. The whole body or parts thereof.
    2. The human soul.
    3. Persons or things that belong to a person.
    4. Verbs that denote acquisition or loss of possession.
    5. Nouns denoting kinship terms and friendship.
    6. Verbs of motion.
     Another important conclusion Havers (1911) has made is that the use of Dativus sympatheticus has developed as in (4):
    1. 1st person > 2nd person > 3rd person > proper names > kinship terms > other common nouns
     | Dubravko Kučanda, 1996

DE DICTO
See DE RE.

DE RE

  1. (Semantics) There is an intuitive contast between descriptive thoughts about an object (e.g. the thought that the strongest man in the world can lift 150 kilos) and "nondescriptive" or de re thoughts about an object (e.g. the thought that that man is drunk). | François Recanati, 2009
  2. (Semantics) "De re" and "de dicto" have been used to label a host of different, albeit interrelated, distinctions. De dicto means 'of, or concerning, a dictum', that is, something having representative content, such as a sentence, statement or proposition. De re means 'of, or concerning, a thing'. For example, a de dicto belief is a belief that a bearer of representative content is true, while a de re belief is a belief concerning some thing, that it has a particular characteristic.
     Consider (1).
    1. John believes his next-door neighbor is a Buddhist.
     This statement is ambiguous. Construed de dicto, it is true in the following circumstance: John has never had any contact with his next-door neighbor. Nevertheless, John believes that his next-door neighbor is bound to be a Buddhist. Construed in this de dicto fashion, the statement does not attribute to John a belief that is distinctively about a particular individual. In contrast, construed de re, it does attribute to John a belief that is about a particular individual. For example, construed de re, the statement is true in the following circumstance: John encounters his next-door neighbor, Fred, at a party without realizing that Fred is his next-door neighbor. On the basis of his conversation with Fred, John forms a belief about the individual who is in fact his next-door neighbor to the effect that he is a Buddhist. | Andre Gallois, 1998
  3. (Semantics) The terms "de re" (Latin: 'about the thing') and "de dicto" (Latin: 'about what is said') refer to two distinct interpretations of Noun Phrases that emerge in intensional environments involving a participant's knowledge or belief states about a proposition (also known as propositional attitude reports). A classic example from Quine (1956) is (1), which displays the two readings.
    1. Ralph believes that someone is a spy.
      • de re reading: Ralph believes of somebody x that x is a spy.
      • de dicto reading: Ralph believes that there is a spy, though he doesn't know who in particular it is.
     The de re reading of (1) states that Ralph has a belief about a particular person being a spy. For example if Ralph observes his coworker Hubert making photocopies of top-secret documents, (1) would be appropriately used because Ralph believes that someone (namely Hubert) is a spy. The de dicto reading is a statement about the subject's beliefs about the more general existence of a spy. For example, if Ralph has not directly observed behavior indicative of spying, but has suspicions that there is a spy in his midst (e.g. if the enemy intelligence agency is consistently receiving top-secret intelligence information), then (1) would describe Ralph's beliefs de dicto that somebody is a spy.
    1. Estefan thinks a dog bit him.
      • de re reading: Estefan believes he was bitten by Fido.
      • de dicto reading: Estefan believes he was bitten by some dog (or other).
     (Cresswell and von Stechow 1982, Kaplan 1969, Lewis 1979, Quine 1956) | Glottopedia, 2021

DE SE

  1. (Semantics) Indexical beliefs that can be expressed with I are sometimes (following Lewis 1979) called "de se beliefs". (De se is Latin for 'of oneself'.) Those expressed with now are sometimes called "de nunc beliefs". (De nunc is Latin for 'of now'.) Some philosophers hold that indexical beliefs are "de re beliefs", which are beliefs of objects. (De re is Latin for 'of objects'.) | David Braun, 2017
  2. (Semantics) If Smith says I am hungry, then she makes a de se assertion and expresses a de se belief, that is, an assertion and a belief that are irreducibly about the way she herself is. If Jones says Smith believes that she herself is hungry, he attributes a de se belief to Smith.
     More generally, de se attitudes are those that we express with I or other first-person pronouns, and those that we attribute to others with emphatic reflexives such as she herself and he himself (and with certain other constructions where appropriate). De se attitudes do not merely lurk at the margins of our psychology and our discourse about it, they are everywhere. | Neil Feit and Alessandro Capone, 2013

DEBITIVE MOOD

  1. (Grammar) A specific mood of Modern Eastern Armenian that primarily expresses an "obligatory action". It has also epistemic meaning. Debitive mood also signals the speaker's estimation of the necessity to perform an action. | Jasmine Dum-Tragut, 2010
  2. (Grammar) A mood used in Latvian to express obligation or duty (Nau 1998). In debitive mood all persons are formed by declining the pronoun in the dative case and using the 3rd person present stem prefixed with jā-. Auxiliary verbs in case of compound tenses do not change, e.g., man jālasa, man bija jālasa, man ir bijis jālasa, man būs jālasa, man būs bijis jālasa - 'I have to read, I had to read, I have had to read, I will have to read, I should have read' (literally 'I will have to had read' where the future expresses rather a wish and replacing the future with subjunctive [man būtu bijis jālasa] would be less unorthodox.) More complex compound tenses/moods can be formed as well, e.g., quotative debitive: man būšot jālasa - 'I will supposedly have to read,' and so forth.
     Some authors (Dahl and Koptjevskaya-Tamm, no date) question the status of Latvian debitive as a mood on the grounds that a mood by definition cannot be combined with another mood (as can be seen above.) Some speculate (Björn and De Haan, no date) that the failure of Latvian to develop a verb "to have" has contributed to the development of debitive. To express possession of something as well as necessity Latvian uses similar constructions to those used by Finnic languages. | Wikipedia, 2022

DEFINITE FUTURE TENSE
(Grammar) Or, polite present tense. Used in Korean grammar to express absolute certainty about a future event. | Microsoft TakeLessons, 2018

DEFINITENESS

  1. (Semantics) For the purposes of this article, we will say that a definite noun phrase is one whose referent is identifiable. | Richard Epstein, 2011
  2. (Semantics) Most linguists no doubt accept the following as a good informal working definition: the use of a definite NP means that the speaker assumes that the hearer can know who or what he is talking about. This knowledge is available to him either from the NP itself or from the previous discourse, the situation of speaking, the hearer's general knowledge of the world, or whatever.
     It is only when we attempt to formulate this informal definition more precisely that problems begin to arise. A very well-known attempt at such a more explicit definition is Christophersen's (1939) familiarity theory. A more recent attempt is the location theory proposed by Hawkins (1978). Whereas Christophersen argues that the use of the definite article is a signal that the referent is somehow "familiar" to the hearer, Hawkins claims that it is an instruction to the hearer to "locate" the referent in some "shared set of objects". However, Hawkins also introduces another element into his definition. According to him, NPs involving the definite article always have "inclusive" reference, i.e. they "refer to the totality of the objects or mass in the relevant shared set". | Renaat Declerck, 1985
  3. (Semantics) A feature of noun phrases, distinguishing between referents or senses that are identifiable in a given context (definite noun phrases) and those which are not (indefinite noun phrases). The prototypical definite noun phrase picks out a unique, familiar, specific referent such as the sun or Australia, as opposed to indefinite examples like an idea or some fish.
     There is considerable variation in the expression of definiteness across languages, and some languages such as Japanese do not generally mark it so that the same expression could be definite in some contexts and indefinite in others. In other languages, such as English, it is usually marked by the selection of determiner (e.g., the vs a). In still other languages, such as Danish, definiteness is marked morphologically. | Wikipedia, 2022

DEFINITENESS EFFECT
Certain constructions are usually characterized by a non-definiteness requirement on the theme argument, namely definiteness effect (DE). In other words, in some constructions sensitivity to definiteness, or more specifically to definite determiner phrases (DPs), has been observed across languages so that there is a tendency for definite DPs not to appear in these constructions. However, there are exceptions to this restriction where both definites and indefinites are allowed. There is evidence to believe that DE is present in some way in most, if not all, languages, although its manifestation may be obscured by a combination of lexical and syntactic factors (Leonetti 2008).
 In English, the DE occurs in a number of constructions. The construction with which the DE is typically associated in English is the existential construction (For the DE in have sentences refer to Tham 2006 and in attributive comparatives refer to Beil 1997). These constructions start with an expletive (there) followed by a verb and a DP and sometimes a prepositional phrase. | Meisam Rahimi and Manijeh Youhanaee, 2013

DEGREE ABSTRACTION PARAMETER
(Syntax) The Degree Abstraction Parameter: A language {does, does not} have degree abstraction in the syntax. | Chris Kennedy, 2007

DEICTIC CENTER
A deictic center, sometimes referred to as an origo, is a set of theoretical points that a deictic expression is 'anchored' to, such that the evaluation of the meaning of the expression leads one to the relevant point.
  As deictic expressions are frequently egocentric, the center often consists of the speaker at the time and place of the utterance and, additionally, the place in the discourse and relevant social factors. However, deictic expressions can also be used in such a way that the deictic center is transferred to other participants in the exchange or to persons/places/etc. being described in a narrative (Levinson 2006). So, for example, in the sentence I am standing here now, the deictic center is simply the person at the time and place of speaking. But say two people are talking on the phone long-distance, from London to New York. The Londoner can say We are going to London next week, in which case the deictic center is in London, or they can equally validly say, We are coming to New York next week, in which case the deictic center is in New York (Lyons 1977). | Wikipedia, 2022

DEIXIS
Pronounced /daIksIs/ or /deIksIs/ (OED 2003). The use of general words and phrases to refer to a specific time, place, or person in context, e.g., the words tomorrow, there, and they. Words are deictic if their semantic meaning is fixed but their denoted meaning varies depending on time and/or place. Words or phrases that require contextual information to be fully understood--for example, English pronouns--are deictic. Deixis is closely related to anaphora. In linguistic anthropology, deixis is treated as a particular subclass of the more general semiotic phenomenon of indexicality, a sign "pointing to" some aspect of its context of occurrence.
  Deixis is believed to be a feature (to some degree) of all natural languages (Lyons, 1977). The term's origin is Ancient Greek: δειξις, 'display, demonstration, or reference', the meaning point of reference in contemporary linguistics having been taken over from Chrysippus. | Wikipedia, 2022

DEMONIC NEGATION
Modern Irish presents a peculiar left-peripheral emphatic negator, 'Demonic Negation' (DemNeg; McCloskey 2009, 2018). DemNeg derives from the expressions do dheamhan/don diabhal ('to a demon/to the devil').
  DemNeg can appear on its own in the left periphery (bare DemNeg, cf. (1)) or it can be followed by a constituent (DemNeg+XP, cf. (2)). It only occurs in the left periphery.

  1. Dheamhan a mbuail-eann sé duine
    demon aN hit-PRS he person
    'Indeed, he hits nobody'
  2. Dheamhan duine a bhuail-eann sé
    demon person aL hit-PRS he
    'Not a man does he hit'
DemNeg+XP also occurs in negative fragment answers to yes-no questions:
 3. a. An bhfuil aon churach ag dul siar?
C.INT is any boat PROG go.NFIN west
'Is any boat going west?'
b. Dheamhan churach
demon boat
'No boat at all'
| Nicola D'Antuono, 2022

DEMONSTRATIVE
There are three criteria that are relevant for the notion of demonstrative that I (Holger Diessel) have used in this (1999) study.

  1. (Syntax) First, deictic expressions serving specific syntactic functions. Many studies confine the notion of demonstrative to deictic expressions such as English this and that, which are used either as independent pronouns or as modifiers of a cooccurring noun, but the notion I will use is broader. It subsumes not only demonstratives being used as pronouns or noun modifiers but also locational adverbs such as English here and there.
  2. (Pragmatics) Second, demonstratives generally serve specific pragmatic functions. They are primarily used to focus the hearer's attention on objects or locations in the speech situation (often in combination with a pointing gesture), but they may also function to organize the information flow in the ongoing discourse. More specifically, demonstratives are often used to keep track of prior discourse participants and to activate specific shared knowledge. The most basic function of demonstratives is, however, to orient the hearer outside of discourse in the surrounding situation.
  3. (Semantics) Finally, demonstratives are characterized by specific semantic features. All languages have at least two demonstratives that are deictically contrastive: a proximal demonstrative referring to an entity near the deictic center and a distal demonstrative denoting a referent that is located at some distance to the deictic center. There are, however, a few languages in my sample in which some demonstratives are distance-neutral. For instance, though German has three adverbial demonstratives—hier 'here', da 'there', and dort 'there'—it employs a single demonstrative pronoun: dies 'this/that'. Demonstratives such as German dies are typologically uncommon.

DENOMINAL VERB
(Morphology) A verb formed directly from a noun, such as to dust (from the noun dust), to victimize (from the noun victim), and to defrost (from the noun frost).
  Types of denominal verbs include

  1. ornative verbs (such as to blanket, to accessorize, and to hyphenate);
  2. locative verbs (such as to bottle, to stage, and to hospitalize);
  3. privative verbs (such as to weed, to milk, and to mine).
| Richard Nordquist, 2015; Valerie Adams, 2013

DEP-IO CONSTRAINT
(Optimality Theory) The DEP constraint family ("anti-epenthesis"). The constraint DEP-IO means: 'Every segment of the Output has a correspondent in the Input' (no phonological epenthesis). | ?

DEPENDENCY

  1. (Syntax) A syntactic dependency is a relation between two words in a sentence with one word being the governor and the other being the dependent of the relation. Syntactic dependencies often form a tree. | WebAnno, 2016
  2. (Syntax) Dependency is the notion that linguistic units, e.g. words, are connected to each other by directed links. The (finite) verb is taken to be the structural center of clause structure. All other syntactic units (words) are either directly or indirectly connected to the verb in terms of the directed links, which are called dependencies. | Wikipedia, 2022

DEPENDENCY GRAMMAR
(Syntax) Dependency grammar (DG) is a class of modern grammatical theories that are all based on the dependency relation (as opposed to the constituency relation of phrase structure) and that can be traced back primarily to the work of Lucien Tesnière. Dependency is the notion that linguistic units, e.g. words, are connected to each other by directed links. The (finite) verb is taken to be the structural center of clause structure. All other syntactic units (words) are either directly or indirectly connected to the verb in terms of the directed links, which are called dependencies. Dependency grammar differs from phrase structure grammar in that while it can identify phrases it tends to overlook phrasal nodes. A dependency structure is determined by the relation between a word (a head) and its dependents. Dependency structures are flatter than phrase structures in part because they lack a finite verb phrase constituent, and they are thus well suited for the analysis of languages with free word order, such as Czech or Warlpiri. | Wikipedia, 2022

DESINENCE
(Morphology) An older term for an inflectional ending.

DETERMINER PHRASE
(Syntax) A noun phrase according to an analysis popular from the mid-1980s, in which it is seen as having a determiner as its head. Eg 'the old man' is a DP headed by 'the', with 'old man', headed in turn by 'man', as its dependent.

DEVERBAL
(Morphology) A deverbal is a word (usually a noun or an adjective) that is derived from a verb. Also called derivative noun and derivative adjective. Put another way, a deverbal is a verb that has been converted to a noun or an adjective by the addition of an appropriate morpheme (usually a suffix). | Richard Nordquist, 2017

 

Page Last Modified February 17, 2024

 
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