SPAN

1. (Syntax) A sequence of heads in which the higher takes the next lower (or its projection) as a complement (Svenonius 2012, 2016; Merchant 2015; Svenonius 2023). | Peter Svenonius, 2023
2. (Syntax) A contiguous sequence of heads in a head-complement relation. | Peter Svenonius, 2016
3. (Syntax) A complement sequence of heads, e.g. if T selects VP as a complement, and V is the head of VP, then T-V is a span. That spans are a significant entity for syntax has been implicitly recognized in the Head Movement Constraint: A head may only move to the head selecting it, thus a head may only move within a span (e.g. V can move to T). Brody's Mirror theory goes so far as to equate spans with words (so if T and V do not form a word, then in that case VP is not the complement of T), replacing head movement with a linearization instruction for a complex head (e.g. a V-T word can spell out in V (English) or T (French)). This suggests a close connection between spell-out and spans. | Peter Svenonius, 2012

SPANNING
(Syntax; Morphology) The most parsimonious account of (apparent) portmanteaux is in terms of an exponent spelling out more than one formative (necessitating late insertion) (Haugen and Siddiqi 2016). An alternative to Fusion and to mutually conditioned allomorphy with a null exponent is that two formatives may be spelled out by a single exponent if they occur in the right configuration: constituency, for Nanosyntax, or a span, for Spanning. P (e.g. French de) and D (e.g. le), being in the same spell-out cycle, form a span. On a Spanning account, they can be spelled out together by a single exponent (e.g. du) without movement, Fusion, morphological merger, or lowering (Svenonius 2012). | Peter Svenonius, 2023

SPEAKER COMMITMENT
(Semantics) When we communicate, we infer a lot beyond the literal meaning of the words we hear or read. In particular, our understanding of an utterance depends on assessing the extent to which speakers are committed to the events they describe. An unadorned declarative like The cancer has spread conveys firm speaker commitment of the cancer having spread, whereas There are some indicators that the cancer has spread imbues the claim with uncertainty. When I say, I don't think you should go, you take me to believe that you should not go. | Marie-Catherine de Marneffe, 2022

SPEAKER QUANTITY PRINCPLE
(Pragmatics) A particular kind of conversational implicature are so-called quantity implicatures. For illustration, consider the following conversation:

1. Bubu: All of my friends are metalheads.
   Kiki: Some of my friends are too.

2. It's not the case that all of Kiki's friends are metalheads.

Speaker Quantity Principle
A cooperative speaker provides all true and relevant information she is capable of.

SPEC
(Syntax) Anything that combines with an X' to form an X''. | ?
See also SPECIFIER.

SPEC-TO-SPEC ANTI-LOCALITY
(Syntax) A constraint:

Spec-to-Spec Anti-Locality (From Erlewine 2016 as revised in Deal 2019)
Movement of a phrase from the Specifier of XP must cross a maximal projection other than XP.
 
Movement from position α to β crosses γ if and only if γ dominates α but does not dominate β.

SPECIFICITY

1. (Semantics; Pragmatics) Definiteness expresses the discourse pragmatic property of familiarity, while specificity mirrors a more finely grained referential structure of the items used in the discourse. A specific NP indicates that it is referentially anchored to another discourse object. This means that the referent of the specific expression is linked by a contextually salient function to the referent of another expression.
    Indefinite expressions show a contrast in readings that can be informally illustrated by example (1) from Fodor and Sag (1982). The indefinite NP a student has two interpretations: In the specific interpretation the referent of the indefinite NP is determined, as the continuation (1a) suggests. In the non-specific reading, the referent is not determined as the continuation (1b) motivates:
   1. A student in Syntax I cheated on the exam.
      a. His name is John.
      b. We are all trying to figure out who it was.
    There is no uniform definition of the notion of specificity. The literature provides characterizations for different aspects of specific NPs, as listed in (2).
   2. Pretheoretical and informal characterization of specificity from the literature
      a. Certainty of the speaker about the identity of the referent.
      b. The referent is fixed / determined / not depending on the interpretation of the matrix predicate.
      c. Specific indefinite NPs are "scopeless" or "referential terms", i.e. they behave as if they always have the widest scope.
      d. Specific indefinite NPs are referential terms, i.e. they are existentially presupposed.
      e. Specific indefinite NPs can be paraphrased by a certain.
    | Klaus von Heusinger, 2002
2. (Semantics; Pragmatics) A semantic-pragmatic notion that distinguishes between different uses or interpretations of indefinite noun phrases. Roughly speaking, it corresponds to the referential intentions of the speaker using an indefinite noun phrase. The speaker can intend to refer to a particular entity using an indefinite noun phrase, or not. This very general communicative option is mirrored in the linguistic category of specificity, which has become a central notion in analyses of syntactic as well as semantic phenomena.
    Various types of specificity are discussed in the research literature:
   1. Referential specificity.
   2. Scopal specifity.
   3. Epistemic specificity.
   4. Partitive specificity.
   5. Topical specificity.
   6. Noteworthiness as specificity.
   7. Discourse prominence as specificity.
    Recent approaches to specificity include choice function approaches. I argue that there is a core semantic notion of specificity, namely referential anchoring, which connects the semantic properties of specific indefinites with their discourse properties. | Klaus von Heusinger, 2019
3. (Semantics) 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).
    The following sentence has the interpretation that the speaker has a particular Norwegian in mind:
   1. Minna wants to meet the Norwegian.
    | SIL Glossary of Linguistic Terms, 2003

SPECIFICITY CONSTRAINT
(Syntax) Specificity Condition is a condition on movement which states that movement out of specific NPs leads to worse results than movement out of non-specific NPs. This is shown by the contrast in (1) and (2), which show wh-movement out of a definite NP, and (3) and (4), which show wh-movement out of a non-specific indefinite NP. Also known as Specificity Constraint.

1. * who did you see [ that picture of t ]
2. * who did you see [ John's picture of t ]
3. who did you see [ three pictures of t ]
4. who did you see [ more pictures of t ]

SPECIFIER
(Syntax) In the X-bar theory of generative syntax, the specifier is the position which is directly dominated by the maximal projection of X:

[_XP specifier X ]

SPECTRAL TILT

1. (Phonetics) A measure of the degree to which intensity drops off as frequency increases. | Sathya Adithya Thati, Bajibabu Bollepalli, Peri Bhaskararao, and B. Yegnanarayana, 2012
2. (Phonetics) The amplitude of the harmonics resulting from vocal fold vibration falls off by 12 dB per octave. This means that each time the frequency doubles, the amplitude of the harmonics decreases by 12 dB. This is called the spectral slope (or tilt or roll-off) in the source spectrum. | Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics, 2001

SPEECH ACCOMMODATION
See ACCOMMODATION.

SPEECH PLANNING

1. (Speech Production) Preplanning in speech production has been a central topic in linguistic and psycholinguistic research. Linguists are concerned with the concurrence of message planning and speech articulation. It is posited that language production is incremental: planning of the upcoming messages and articulation of the current message may proceed simultaneously. These studies are structured around two central questions:
   1. How far ahead do speakers plan before the onset of the articulation?
   2. What is the base unit in this advanced planning (e.g., clauses or sub-clausal phrases)?
    | Alvin Cheng-Hsien Chen and Shu-Chuan Tseng, 2019
2. (Speech Production) Models of language production generally share the assumption that speech planning functions incrementally (Bock and Levelt 1994, Kempen and Hoenkamp 1987, Levelt, 1989). Incrementality entails that when planning at, for example, the level of grammatical encoding, speakers do not plan the entire surface structure of an utterance before beginning to articulate the utterance. Many accounts of incrementality assume rigidly small planning units, such as a phrase at a time (Bock and Levelt 1994, Griffin 2001, Kempen and Hoenkamp 1987, Meyer, Sleiderink, and Levelt 1998, Levelt 1989, Smith and Wheeldon 2001). Other research suggests that planning scope (i.e., the amount of the surface structure speakers plan in advance of articulation) at various levels of representation is flexibly incremental: The size of the planning unit is sensitive to local circumstances (Costa and Caramazza 2002, Christianson and Ferreira 2005, Damian and Dumay 2007, F. Ferreira and Swets 2002, 2005, Korvorst, Roelofs and Levelt 2006, Schriefers and Teruel 1999, Wagner, Jescheniak and Schriefers 2010). For example, speakers under an explicit deadline plan in smaller increments compared to speakers with no such deadline (F. Ferreira and Swets 2002, 2005). | Benjamin Swets, Matthew E. Jacovina, and Richard J. Gerrig, 2013

SPELL-OUT

1. (Syntax) To supply a realization. E.g., a specific rule for English might spell out a plural morpheme in its regular basic form (-(e)s).
    Hence, in Chomsky's minimalist program, a stage in the derivation of a sentence at which properties that bear only on Phonetic Form are subject to processes of computation separate from those that bear on Logical Form. | Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics, 2007
2. (Syntax) Instruction to switch to PF. What happens at PF is a point of debate; if one assumes that lexical items come from the lexicon fully inflected, phonological features are "stripped away" at PF. Another possibility is that Spell-Out accesses the lexicon to associate the syntactic structure with phonological features. (Chomsky 1993, 1995, 1998) | Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics, 2001

SPELL-OUT CYCLE

1. (Syntax) We assume that Spell-out to the PF and LF components occurs in cycles, or phases (Chomsky 2001, Nissenbaum 2000, Svenonius 2001, a.o.). | Eva Dobler, Heather Newell, Maire Noonan, Glyne Piggott, Mina Sugimura, Lisa Travis, and Tobin Skinner, 2011
2. (Syntax) The order of operations in Swedish vP-fronting supports a model of cyclic Spell-out, or derivation by phase (e.g. Chomsky 2001, Svenonius 2001, Fox and Pesetsky 2005, a.o.). Namely, Lowering of tense must occur on a Spell-out cycle that precedes the narrow syntactic operation of vP-fronting. I here follow the standard assumption that Spell-out cycles, or phases, correspond to vP and CP at the clausal level. | Tobin R. Skinner, 2008
3. (Syntax) Perhaps the most relevant PF fact about language is linear order. If linearization is not part of Narrow Syntax (as made explicit by Kayne's 1994 Linear Correspondence Axion), and if linear order is established at Spell-Out (as seems reasonable given what Spell-Out is), and if Spell-Out happens phase by phase, linearization will happen phase by phase, too. This is what the title of Fox and Pesetsky's (2005) "Cyclic Linearization" paper refers to. The claim that linear order is established at Spell-Out, in a cyclic fashion, as expected in a Multiple Spell-Out architecture, is one part of their proposal. | Barbara Citko, 2014

SPIRANTIZATION
(Phonology) The change of oral stops to fricatives (spirants). Voiced stops undergo spirantization as a result of the reduction of oral compression to facilitate glottal voicing: /b/ > /β/, /d/ > /ð/ and /g/ > /ɣ/. In voiceless aspirated stops, the release is often misinterpreted by listeners as frication, i.e. /p^h/ > /p^φ/, /t^h/ > /t^θ/ and /k^h/ > /k^x/, and these affricates further evolve into fricatives /f/, /θ/ and /x/ (Stuart-Smith 2004). | Alcorac Alonzo Déniz, 2013

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