Sank's Glossary of Linguistics 
Pro-Pros

PRO-DIASYSTEMATIC CHANGE
(Diasystemic Construction Grammar) Antonym, counter-diasystematic. Innovations that facilitate the establishment of language-unspecific structures in a common constructional system. | Steffen Höder, 2014

PRO-DROP

  1. (Grammar; Typology) Or, null-subject. In pro-drop languages, such as Italian, a pronominal subject may be phonetically null in tensed sentences. It is generally assumed that in such cases, the subject is the element pro, and that this pro is licensed by the verbal inflection (INFL). (Jaeglli and Safer, eds., 1989; Rizzi 1982) | Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics, 2001
  2. (Grammar; Typology) Or, Subject Drop. Pro Drop languages are those languages which do not obligatorily require the presence of phonetically realized subjects in tensed clauses. I do not mean to imply that a deletion process is involved.
     It has been argued (Chomsky 1979, Rizzi 1979) that Pro Drop languages are characterized by the following properties, which are illustrated in the following sentences in Italian:
    1. Subject Drop (SD):
      [NP
      e]
      [he]
      verrà.
      will.come
    2. Subject postposing:
      [NP
      e]
      verrà
      will.come
      Gianni.
      Gianni
    3. That-t violations:
      Chi
      Who
      credi
      do.you.believe
      [S'
      [S'
      che
      that
      [S
      [S
      [NP
      [NP
      e]
      e]
      verrà?
      will.come
      ]]
      ]]
     None of these constructions are allowed in a non-Pro Drop language such as English. | Wynn Chao, 1981

PRO-DROP PARAMETER

  1. (Syntax) Or, null subject parameter. In government-binding theory, the "pro-drop parameter" determines whether the subject of a clause can be suppressed.
     In universal grammar, it's a parameter that determines whether the subject in declarative sentences may be deleted. Parameters vary in different languages within certain defined limits. Languages such as Italian and Arabic can have subject-less declarative sentences (Italian parla 'he/she speaks/talks') and are referred to as pro-drop languages. However, languages such as English, French and German do not typically omit the subject in declarative sentences and are referred to as non-pro-drop languages:
    Subject Verb
    Italian (lui) parla pro-drop
    Arabic (huwa) yatakalamu pro-drop
    English he speaks non-pro-drop
    French il parle non-pro-drop
    German er spricht non-pro-drop
     The term "pro-drop" is used because in the d-structure of the grammar, the empty subject position is filled by the element pro, e.g. pro parla. | Wikipedia, 2023
  2. (Syntax) Or, null-subject parameter. The parameter that determines whether or not a language is pro-drop. A positive setting of the parameter allows an empty pro-element to be identified by its governor, which is the case in pro-drop languages. | Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics

PROBE-GOAL

  1. (Syntax) In Chomsky's formulation of the Case-agreement system, "probes", e.g. functional heads such as T and v*, target and agree with goals, e.g. referential and expletive nominals, within their c-command domain and value their uninterpretable Case features. Within this system, Case-agreement can be long-distance and does not necessarily trigger movement, e.g. in the case of there-expletive constructions and Icelandic Quirky Case. | Sandiway Fong, 2005
  2. (Syntax) Current minimalism takes syntactic operation Agree to be triggered by underlying feature checking requirements (Chomsky 2000, 2001), where probes, carrying some semantically uninterpretable and lexically unvalued formal feature, search down in their c-command domain for a matching active goal carrying a semantically interpretable and lexically valued feature. Syntactic operation Move, in turn, is a superfunction of Agree where the goal remerges under probe-goal Agree to a position higher than the probe if the probe contains an additional [EPP]-feature. | Hedde Zeijlstra, 2007
  3. (Syntax) Agree is a syntactic operation taking place between a probe P and a goal G between which a Matching relation holds. Chomsky's (2000) definition:
    Matching is a relation that holds of a Probe P and a goal G. Not every matching pair induces Agree. To do so, G must (at least) be in the domain D(P) of P and satisfy locality conditions.
     The simplest assumptions for the probe-goal system are:
    1. Matching is feature identity.
    2. D(P) is the sister of P.
    3. Locality reduces to "closest c-command".
     | Roberta D'Alessandro, 2016

PRODUCTION PRACTICE
(Acquisition) What might be the actual mechanism for a causal link between comprehension and production? One that presents itself in the context of the limited auditory short-term memory skills of individuals with Down syndrome (Seung and Chapman 1999) is a flow of information from auditory activation to the phonological mappings in anterior Broca's area (BA45), acting as internal "production practice" of an early stage of speech organization, when rate of input and processing demands permit, and reflective of the degree of prior long-term language learning. Such activation is demonstrated in adult PET imaging studies of hearing and repeating word lists with no requirement for rehearsal (Price et al. 1996); it might be construed as the physical instantiation of a nonintentional, subvocal version of the articulatory loop that has been posited as part of phonological working memory (Baddeley 1990). However, this version is dependent on the developmentally learned mapping of speech production onto speech perception (Kent 1992) and hence on long-term phonological and language learning, as is consistent with recent revisions in theorists' views of phonological memory (Gathercole and Martin 1996). The claim, then, is that comprehension leads to activation of anterior Broca's area and thus acts as a kind of practice of early stages of production, when it occurs, thus linking the amount of language input addressed to and comprehended by the child to features of production. | Robin S. Chapman, Hye-Kyeung Seung, Scott E. Schwartz, and Elizabeth Kay-Raining Bird, 2000

PRODUCTIVITY
(Construction Grammar) Refers to the range of lexical items that may fill the slots of constructions. | Florent Perek, 2016

PROLEPSIS

  1. (Syntax) Refers to a construction where a structural complement of the matrix verb is semantically related to the predicate of an embedded clause.
    1. I believe of John that he likes Mary.
     In (1), the proleptic constituent John is related to the position occupied by the coreferential pronoun he. | Martin Salzmann, 2017
  2. (Syntax) A grammatical construction that consists of placing an element in a syntactic unit before that to which it would logically correspond.
    1. That noise, I just heard it again.
     In (1), that noise grammatically belongs in place of it. | Wiktionary, 2022

PROMINENT FEATURE VALUATION CONDITION
(Syntax) 

  1. Prominent Feature Valuation Condition on pronominal subject ellipsis
    T can license ellipsis of a pronominal subject pro if:
     i. T is associated with an E(llipsis)-feature (e.g., Merchant 2001); and
     ii. agreement between T and pro involves valuation of the most prominent feature of T.
  2. Feature prominence
    person > number > gender > Case
 | Ana Maria Martins and Jairo Nunes, 2021

PROPER CONTAINMENT

  1. (Syntax) 
    Proper containment in ellipsis
    X is properly contained in Y if there is at least one occurrence of Y that dominates every occurrence of X.
     | Rodrigo Ranero Echeverría, 2023
  2. (Mathematics) The symbol ⊊ is used to denote proper containment of sets. For example,
    1.  ℤ ⊊ ℚ
    2.  {1, 2, 3} ⊊ {1, 2, 3, 4}
     However, you cannot say
    1.  ℕ ⊊ ℕ
     | Karl Schwede, 2009

PROPORTIONAL MEASURE FUNCTION
(Semantics) Proportional readings of comparatives involve a proportional measure function, which maps parts of an entity to the proportion they represent of the totality, as in (1). This measure function is introduced by a null functional head Meas, as in (2).

  1. A proportional measure function is a function of the following form:
    For yx : μcDIM;x (y) = μcDIM−prop;x (y) = μcDIM (y) / μcDIM (x)
  2. MeasAc = λP<et> λd λx.∃y [yxμcDIM−prop;x (y) = dP(y)]
 | Stephanie Solt, 2018

PROSODIC CULMINATION
(Prosody) Selkirk's (1980, 1984, 1995) influential prosodic hierarchy hypothesis assumes culminant prosodic phrases, i.e. phrases with a single head representing the prosodic peak (or "culmination") of a phrase. | Vieri Samek-Lodovici, 2006

PROSODIC DOMAIN FORMATION

  1. (Phonology; Prosody) In the study of prosodic phenomena, it has been observed that the domains of phonological rules that apply across word boundaries are hierarchically structured, forming the so-called Prosodic Hierarchy. Although various versions of the Prosodic Hierarchy have been suggested, the hierarchy usually consists of Utterance (Utt), Intonational Phrase (IntP), Phonological Phrase (PhP), and Prosodic Word (PrW) in the following manner (Halliday 1967, Selkirk 1978, Nespor and Vogel 1986):
    <
    [
    {
    (
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    ) (
     
     
     
     
     
     
    }{
    ) (
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    ) (
     
     
     
     
     
    ] [
    }{
    ) (
     
     
     
     
    >
    ]
    }
    )
    Utt
    IntP
    PhP
    PrW
     Some argue that this hierarchy is constructed solely on the basis of phonetic facts (e.g. Jun 1998), and others argue that it is formed with recourse to syntactic information in the process of syntax-phonology mapping (Selkirk 1986, Nespor and Vogel 1986). | Yoshihito Dobashi, 2016
  2. (Phonology; Prosody) The establishment of a hierarchically organized phonological constituent structure which provides the characteristic domains for phonological and phonetic phenomena defined on the sentence. | ?

PROSODIC HEAD

  1. (Prosody) Within a prosodic constituent, in the unmarked case, one of the daughter constituents constitutes the prosodic head, the locus of prominence ore stress. | Elisabeth Selkirk, 2001
  2. (Prosody) An accented syllable. | Núria Esteve-Gibert et al., 2017
  3. (Prosody) A metrically prominent prosodic category. | John Alderete, 1995
  4. (Prosody; Optimality Theory) We assume that the position of prosodic heads is governed by the constraints listed in (1), adapted from McCarthy and Prince 1993 and Truckenbrodt 1995, 1999. The constraints HP and HI push stress rightmost in a sentence by requiring prosodic heads to align with the right boundary of the corresponding phonological and intonational phrases (henceforth respectively called "P-phrases" and "I-phrases"). STRESSXP requires lexical projections to express prosodic prominence by attracting a prosodic head on one of their lexical items.
    1. a. HP: Align the right boundary of every P-phrase with its head(s).
      b. HI: Align the right boundary of every I-phrase with its head(s).
      c. STRESSXP: Each lexically headed XP must contain a phrasal stress (where "phrasal stress" refers to the head of a P-phrase).
     Assuming that clauses are parsed within single I-phrases (Halliday 1970, Pierrehumbert 1980, Selkirk 1984, Gussenhoven 2004), the above constraints subsume the Nuclear Stress Rule (Chomsky and Halle 1968) by assigning stress rightmost whenever no other constraint interferes with them. | Caroline Fery and Vieri Samek-Lodovici, 2006

PROSODIC HIERARCHY

  1. (Phonology) Or, phonological hierarchy. If we want to understand spoken word recognition, it is important to note that the concept of a word itself is different for the spoken and written versions of any language. The concept of a word in spoken language can be understood best as part of a phonological hierarchy. Such a hierarchy starts with the largest psychologically valid unit (that which typical users acknowledge in planning their language use). It then describes a series of increasingly smaller regions of a phonological utterance, which may indeed not be units that a typical user acknowledges. From larger to smaller units, this hierarchy is generally described as follows:  | Michael Rost, 2011
  2. (Prosody) Describes a series of increasingly smaller regions of prosodic constituents as shown below (Nespor and Vogel 1986). The constituents of the prosodic hierarchy are domains within which phonological rules apply. When a phonological (or tonal) rule is restricted within a certain domain, it may only apply if both the segments triggering the application of the rule and the segments undergoing the change are all included within that domain.
    1. Utterance Phrase (UP)
    2. Intonational Phrase (IP)
    3. Phonological Phrase (PP)
    4. Clitic Phrase (C)
    5. Phonological Word (PrWd)
    6. Foot (Σ)
    7. Syllable (σ)
     | Mpho Raborife, Sigrid Ewert, and Sabine Zerbian, 2015
  3. (Prosody) Prosodic hierarchy (adapted from Nespor and Vogel):
    mora < syllable < foot < prosodic word < phonological phrase < intonational phrase < phonological utterance
     | Wendy Sandler and Diane Lillo-Martin, 2005
  4. (Prosody) The constituents of prosodic structure belong to distinct prosodic categories, arranged in a prosodic hierarchy (Selkirk 1980 et seq):
    Utterance (Utt)
    Intonational Phrase (IP)
    Major Phonological Phrase (Map) (a.k.a. Intermediate Phrase)
    Minor Phonological Phrase (MiP) (a.k.a. Accentual Phrase)
    Prosodic Word (PWd)
    Foot
    Syllable
     The claim is that an utterance is parsed into a sequence of prosodic constituents at each level of the hierarchy. In the unmarked case, prosodic structure is strictly layered, in the sense that a constituent of a higher level in the hierarchy immediately dominates only constituents of the next level down in the hierarchy. These constituents are arranged in a well-formed bracketing or tree. In addition, within a prosodic constituent, in the unmarked case, one of the daughter constituents constitutes the prosodic head, the locus of prominence or stress. | Elisabeth Selkirk, 2001

See Also PROSODIC STRUCTURE HYPOTHESIS.

PROSODIC MORPHOLOGY
(Morphology; Prosody) A theory of how morphological and phonological determinants of linguistic form interact with one another in a grammatical system. A core area of investigation is the way in which prosodic structure impinges on templatic and circumscriptional morphology, such as reduplication and infixation.
 There are three essential claims:

  1. Prosodic Morphology Hypothesis
    Templates are defined in terms of the authentic unit prosody: mora (μ), syllable (σ), foot (F), prosodic word (PrWd).
  2. Template Satisfaction Condition
    Satisfaction of templatic constraints is obligatory and is determined by the principles of prosody, both universal and language-specific.
  3. Prosodic Circumscription
    The domain to which morphological operations apply may be circumscribed by prosodic criteria as well as by the more familiar morphological ones.
 In short, the theory of prosodic morphology says that templates and circumscription must be formulated in terms of the vocabulary of prosody, and must respect the well-formedness requirements of prosody. | John J. McCarthy and Alan Prince, 1994

PROSODIC MORPHOLOGY HYPOTHESIS
(Morphology; Prosody) It asserts that the templates of reduplicative or templatic morphology are defined in terms of the authentic units of prosody: the mora, the syllable, the foot, and the phonological word. In other words, the Prosodic Morphology Hypothesis demands that the vocabulary of templates is the same as the vocabulary of prosody in general, including stress, syllabification, epenthesis, compensatory lengthening, rhyme, "counting rules", and poetic meter. | John McCarthy and Alan Prince, 1990

PROSODIC PHRASE BOUNDARY
(Prosody) The main phonetic correlates of prosodic phrase boundaries are:

  1. Speech pauses.
  2. Boundary tones.
  3. Final lowering.
  4. Pitch reset.
  5. Pre-final lengthening.
  6. A resistance against cross-boundary coarticulation.
 De Pijper and Sandermann (1994) have demonstrated by perception experiments with delexicalized stimuli that these acoustic features are also interpreted as boundary signals without any higher-level linguistic information. | Uwe D. Reichel and Katalin Mády, 2014

PROSODIC STRUCTURE HYPOTHESIS
(Prosody) According to the prosodic structure hypothesis (Selkirk 1986, Nespor and Vogel 1986), the output phonological representation of the sentence contains a prosodic phrasing structure which is related to, but not strictly determined by, the syntactic and information structure of the sentence. This prosodic phrasing structure is hypothesized to play a crucial role in organizing the other aspects of output phonological representation, namely the segmental, tonal and prominence structures of the sentence. Prosodic phrasing structure is also assumed to play an important role in organizing the phonetic interpretation of the sentence. This hypothesis thus gives prosodic structure a central role in mediating between phonetics on the one hand and syntax or semantics on the other. | Elisabeth Selkirk, 2001
See Also PROSODIC HIERARCHY.

PROSODIC TEMPLATE
(Morphology) The canonical pattern tier of Prosodic Morphology. A particular type composed of C and V can be referred to as a CV-skeleton. Other sorts of prosodic templates may consist of higher-level prosodic units, like syllables (σ), metrical feet (F), subunits of these, and perhaps combinations of units from different levels. The tiers with segmental material are then mapped onto the prosodic templates by the operation of autosegmental rules of association. | John J. McCarthy, 1982

PROSODIC WORD
(Phonology) Or, prosodic word or pword or PrWd; symbolized as ω. A constituent in the phonological hierarchy higher than the syllable and the foot but lower than intonational phrase and the phonological phrase. It is largely held (Hall 1999) to be a prosodic domain in which phonological features within the same lexeme may spread from one morph to another or from one clitic to a clitic host or from one clitic host to a clitic. | Wikipedia, 2022

PROSODY

  1. The description of rhythm, loudness, pitch, and tempo. It is often used as a synonym for suprasegmentals, although its meaning is narrower: it only refers to the features mentioned above. | Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics, 2001
  2. Prosody is the organization of speech into a hierarchy of units or domains, some of which are more prominent than others. That is, prosody serves both a grouping function and a prominence-marking function in speech. As examples of the grouping function, some ways in which smaller units are combined to form larger ones (perhaps via intermediate groupings) include: segments combine to form syllables, syllables combine to form words, and words combine to form phrases. As examples of the prominence-marking function, there are at least two levels of prominence in English: lexical stress, or prominence at the word level, and pitch accent, or prominence at a phrasal level.
     Some prosodic constituents: utterance, Intonational Phrase, Phonological Phrase, Intermediate/Accentual Phrase, Phonological Word, foot, syllable, mora.
     Some levels of prominence: nuclear accent, pitch accent, lexical primary stress, lexical secondary stress. | Patricia A. Keating, 2003

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