SUSPENDED AFFIXATION

1. (Morphology; Syntax) Refers to a situation where in a coordinate construction, an affix is omitted from one of the coordinands that another coordinand has, so that in a sense the affix has scope over both coordinands.
   1. Turkish:
      Tebrik
      congratulation

      ve
      and

      tesekkür-ler-im-i
      thank-PL-1SG-ACC

      sunarim.
      I.offer

      'I offer my congratulations and thanks.'
    (Kabak 2007, Lewis 1967) | Glottopedia, 2009
2. (Morphology, Syntax) Or, brachylogy (Pounder 2006), or, morphological ellipsis (ibid.), or, coordination reduction (Kenesei 2007), or, unbalanced coordination (Johannessen 1998). A phenomenon, or a class of superficially similar phenomena, when an affix only appears on the edgemost coordinand (or disjunct), but takes scope over all the coordinands (or disjuncts); see (1). Suspended affixation is possible both with suffixes and prefixes. The properties of coordinations with more than two coordinands are completely identical to those with two coordinands in the relevant respects. In pretheoretical terms, I will say that the "suspended" affix is shared between the conjuncts (or disjuncts).
   1. XP₁ Conj XP₂-AFF instead of XP₁-AFF Conj XP₂-AFF
   2. John('s) or Mary's signature
   3. Turkish:
      yɯlan(-dan)
      snake(-ABL)

      ve
      and

      köpek-ten
      dog-ABL

      korkuyorum.
      I.fear

      'I fear snakes and dogs.'
   The term "suspended affixation" was apparently coined by Lewis (1967). | David Erschler, 2012

SWIPING

1. (Syntax) It has been observed at least since Ross (1969) and Rosen (1976) that English allows a peculiar type of elliptical wh-questions that can be found only under sluicing, in which the wh-object of the preposition appears not after the preposition but before it. Merchant (2002) calls this construction "Swiping" (Sluiced Wh-word Inversion with Prepositions In Northern Germanic).
   1. John fixed it, but I don't remember what with.
   2. John was talking, but I don't remember who to.
    | Koji Sugisaki, 2008
2. (Syntax) Found in sluices involving certain prepositions, in which the [+wh] object of the preposition appears not after the preposition in the usual head-complement order, but before it, as in (1).
   1. Peter went to the movies, but I don't know who with.
    I will call this kind of exceptional inversion of the usual order of the preposition and its argument swiping, for sluiced wh-word inversion with prepositions (in Northern Germanic). | Jason Merchant, 2002

SWITCH-REFERENCE

1. (Grammar) Any clause-level morpheme that signals whether certain prominent arguments in "adjacent" clauses co-refer. In most cases, it marks whether the subject of the verb in one clause is co-referent with that of the previous clause, or of a subordinate clause to the matrix (main) clause dominating it. | Wikipedia, 2015
2. (Grammar) A grammatical category with the following features:
   • It signals the identity or nonidentity of the referent of an argument of one clause, usually its subject, with an argument of another clause, which is likewise usually the subject.
   • Switch reference functions to avoid ambiguity of reference; for example, it may distinguish between two referents that are third person and that, thus, may not be otherwise distinguished on the verb.
   • It relates clauses, usually adjacent, that may be subordinate or coordinate to one another.
   • It is expressed
     • usually by inflectional affixes on the verb
     • sometimes by the same affixes that express subject-verb agreement within the clause, and
     • rarely by a morpheme independent of the verb.
    (Haiman and Munro 1983) | SIL Glossary of Linguistic Terms, 2003
3. (Grammar) A family of grammatical devices whose primary function is to indicate whether two linked clauses have coreferential pivots, where the pivot is a prominent argument of some sort. This is illustrated by the following examples from Mbyá (Tupi-Guarani: Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay), where SR markers are clause-final particles that indicate whether the subject of a subordinate clause is coreferential with (Same Subject, SS) or disjoint from (Different Subject, DS) the superordinate subject:
   1. Ava
      man

      o-o
      A3-go

      vy
      SS

      mboi
      snake

      o-exa
      A3-see

      'When [the man]_i went he_i saw the snake.' (Dooley 1989)
   2. Ava
      man

      o-o
      A3-go

      ramo
      DS

      mboi
      snake

      o-exa
      A3-see

      'When the man went, the snake saw him.' (Dooley 1989)
    In some languages, in addition to their function of reference tracking, SR markers can be used to indicate whether the events or situations described by the marked and reference clauses differ with respect to some parameter, such as time, place or actuality. This phenomenon is known as non-canonical switch-reference. | Guillaume Thomas, 2022

SYLLABIFICATION
(Morphology) The division of a word in syllables in conformity with universal and language-specific requirements (e.g. Maximal Onset Principle, sonority hierarchy). | Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics, 2001

SYLLABLE WEIGHT
(Phonology) A property of syllables, referring to the quantity or internal structure of syllables.
 Syllables can be divided into light and heavy depending on language-specific requirements (in some languages also superheavy syllables are distinguished). Initial consonants of syllables are irrelevant to quantity. Depending on language-specific requirements there can be an opposition between short and long vowels: V and VC group together as light as opposed to VV which is heavy.
 Another distinction commonly found is that between a short vowel (light) and VV/VC (heavy). Superheavy are VVC and VCC in languages that distinguish light/heavy/superheavy.
 Syllable weight plays a determining role in the distribution of stresses in Quantity-Sensitive stress systems. Heavy syllables generally attract stress regardless of their position in the word. Light syllables are stressed only according to their position in the word. (Hayes 1981; Hyman 1985; McCarthy; Prince 1983, 1986; Van der Hulst 1984) | Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics, 2001

SYNCRETISM
(Morphology) Occurs when functionally distinct occurrences of a single lexeme are identical in form. The term arose in historical linguistics, referring to the convergence of morphological forms within inflectional paradigms. In such cases, a former distinction has been syncretized.
 E.g., in English, the nominative and accusative forms of you are the same, whereas he/him, she/her, etc., have different forms depending on grammatical case. In Latin, the nominative and vocative of third-declension nouns have the same form (e.g., rex 'king' is both nominative and vocative singular).
 In German, the infinitive, first person plural present, and third person plural present of almost all verbs are identical in form:

1. German:
   1. nehmen 'to take'
   2. wir nehmen 'we take'
   3. sie nehmen 'they take'

2. German < Old High German
   1. infinitive nehmen < neman
   2. first person plural nehmen < nemem
   3. third person plural nehmen < nemant

SYNTACTIC BOOTSTRAPPING
(Acquisition) A theory which proposes that children learn word meanings by recognizing the syntactic categories (such as nouns, adjectives, etc.) and structure of their language. Children have innate knowledge of the links between syntactic and semantic categories and can use their observations about syntax to make inferences about word meaning. Learning words in one's native language can be challenging because the extralinguistic context of use does not give specific enough information about word meanings. This problem can be overcome by using information present in a word's syntactic category. Once conclusions are made about a word's syntactic category, a child can then infer aspects of the word's meaning.
 The first appearance of empirical evidence of syntactic bootstrapping comes from 1957 research done by Roger Brown. | Wikipedia, 2017

SYNTACTIC CONDITION ON SLUICING

1. (Syntax) 

   Syntactic Condition on Sluicing
   Given a prospective ellipsis site E and its antecedent A, non-pronunciation of the phonological content associated with any head h ∈ E is licit if at least one of the following conditions hold

   1. h did not originate within E's eventive core
   2. h has a structure-matching correlate i ∈ A.

    In other words: when deletion of a constituent is triggered, for each head in that constituent the deletion mechanism checks whether that head is inside the eventive core of the elided TP, or is a member of a movement-dependency chain whose tail is inside the eventive core of the elided TP. If no, the head is deleted with no further questions asked; if yes, a search for a structure-matching correlate of the head in the ellipsis-licensing antecedent is initiated, and the derivation crashes if none can be found. | Deniz Rudin, 2019
2. (Syntax) 

   Syntactic Condition on Sluicing
   Given a prospective ellipsis site E and its antecedent A, non-pronunciation of the phonological content associated with any head h ∈ E is licit if at least one of the following conditions holds.

   1. h did not originate within E's eventive core;
   2. h has a structure-matching correlate i ∈ A.

    In this condition, the critical component is (a), in which the head h that is not a lexical head but a functional one need not be phonologically realized. Accordingly, tense, finiteness and modality residing in the clausal spine do not need to be identical for the ellipsis to occur. It is only the eventive core in the sense of Langacker (1974) that counts in the computation of identity in ellipsis. Rudin (2019) takes the eventive core to be the vP of a clause, "the complete verbal complex, including the origin sites of verbs and their internal and external arguments" in his terms.
    Despite apparent mismatch in relevant features or values, a functional or inflectional head can then be part of ellipsis, remaining silent at PF. | Myung-Kwan Park and Wooseung Lee, 2023

SYNTACTIC ERGATIVITY

1. (Syntax) Many morphologically ergative languages display asymmetries in the extraction of core arguments: while absolutive arguments (transitive objects and intransitive subjects) extract freely, ergative arguments (transitive subjects) cannot. This falls under the label syntactic ergativity (see, e.g. Dixon 1972, 1994; Manning 1996; Polinsky [2017]). | Jessica Coon, Pedro Mateo Pedro, and Omer Preminger, 2014
2. (Syntax) In a subset of morphologically ergative languages, ergative subjects cannot undergo extraction with a gap under relativization, focusing, wh-question formation, or topicalization (e.g. Dixon 1979, 1994; Marantz 1984; and discussion in Coon and Adar 2013). This is known as syntactic ergativity, a phenomenon which reflects a restriction on A-bar movement of the ergative expression. In such languages, relativization with a gap is limited to intransitive subjects and transitive objects (absolutive arguments).
    Accusative languages do not demonstrate a comparable asymmetry between the nominative and the accusative arguments; both nominative and accusative arguments in accusative languages can usually undergo extraction. | Lauren Eby Clemens, Jessica Coon, Pedro Mateo Pedro, Adam Milton Morgan, Maria Polinsky, et al., 2015

SYNTACTIC FORMATIVE

1. (Syntax) A constituent licensed by syntactic (rather than morphological) rules. | Arnold M. Zwicky, 1987
2. (Syntax) A dualist syntax has two components: (1) the lexicon, a structured set of formatives ("words"); and (2) rules for combining those formatives into utterances. | Stephen Wechsler, 2008
3. (Syntax) The syntactic component is the central component in a transformational grammar and the generative source that plays the role of mediating the pairing of meanings to pronunciations of all and only the sentences of a language by generating an infinite set of abstract strings of formatives (i.e. minimal syntactically functioning units) with their structural descriptions. The structural descriptions of the abstract strings of formatives consist of hierarchically organized underlying and superficial phrase markers, which serve as inputs to the semantic and phonological components respectively. | Nahm Sheik Park, 1969
4. (Syntax) Formatives in Korean are non-mandatory sentential elements, which is a major feature in their syntactic behavior that differentiates them from inflectional elements of familiar Indo-European languages (including Russian and English), whose mandatory appearance in the sentence is regulated by the grammar of sentence-formation. | Sung-ho Choi, 2012

SYNTACTIC IDENTITY

1. (Syntax) In (1), there seems to be strict syntactic identity between the content of the ellipsis site and the antecedent.
   1. Someone [was crowned America's next Drag Superstar]. I wonder who [was crowned Americas next Drag Superstar].
    There are instances where syntactic identity does not hold, yet an elliptical example is well-formed—i.e., regardless of the mismatch. There are instances where syntactic identity does not hold, and an elliptical example is ill-formed—i.e., because of the mismatch.
   2. Tense/Finiteness Mismatch
      I [fixed the car], though initially I didn't know how [to fix the car].
      Antecedent: past tense; Ellipsis site: infinitival.
   3. Voice Mismatch
      *Someone [crowned Jaida], but we don't remember by who(m) [Jaida was crowned].
      Antecedent: active voice; Ellipsis site: passive voice.
    | Rodrigo Ranero, 2023
2. (Syntax) One major research tradition posits that ellipsis is subject to a syntactic identity condition (possibly in addition to semantic and other containment conditions) requiring that an elided XP have a syntactically identical antecedent XP′, modulo contrastive elements; representatives of this general approach include Ross 1969, Sag 1976, Kitagawa 1991, Fiengo and May 1994, Chung et al. 1995, Fox 2000, Kehler 2002, Chung 2005, Merchant 2005, and many others. | Jason Merchant, 2008

SYNTACTIC IDENTITY CONDITION ON ELLIPSIS
(Syntax) 

Syntactic Identity Condition on Ellipsis (Ranero 2021)

1. The antecedent and material properly contained in the ellipsis site must be featurally non-distinct.
   Featurally distinct heads are those which:
   1. Exist in both the antecedent and elided structure, and
   2. Are coded with features that are non-identical.
2. There must be a strict one-to-one match between all Roots properly contained in the ellipsis site and Roots in the antecedent.

1. Privative features present in the ellipsis site but not the antecedent (or vice versa).
2. Functional projections present in the ellipsis site but not the antecedent (or vice versa).

SYNTAX-SEMANTICS INTERFACE

1. (Syntax; Semantics) The study concerned with linguistic phenomena that are the product of interactions between principles of syntactic organization and principles of semantic interpretation. Such interactions abound in natural language and can be found in all subsystems of the grammar. | Martin Hackl, 2013
2. (Syntax; Semantics) A commonplace observation about language is that it consists of the systematic association of sound patterns with meaning. Syntax studies the structure of well-formed phrases (spelled out as sound sequences). Semantics deals with the way syntactic structures are interpreted. However, how to exactly slice the pie between these two disciplines and how to map one into the other is the subject of controversy. In fact, understanding how syntax and semantics interact (i.e., their interface) constitutes one of the most interesting and central questions in linguistics.
    Traditionally, phenomena like word order, case marking, agreement, and the like are viewed as part of syntax, whereas things like the meaningfulness of a well-formed string are seen as part of semantics. Thus, for example, I loves Lee is ungrammatical because of lack of agreement between the subject and the verb, a phenomenon that pertains to syntax, whereas Chomky's famous colorless green ideas sleep furiously is held to be syntactically well-formed but semantically deviant.
    Perhaps the key issue at the interface of syntax and semantics concerns the nature of the mapping between the two, which has been at the center of much research within generative grammar. An important approach, pursued especially within Categorial Grammar and related lexicalist frameworks, has been dubbed by E. Bach the rule-by-rule hypothesis. It assumes that for each syntactic rule determining how two or more constituents are put together, there is a corresponding semantic rule determining how the respective meanings are to be composed. On this view, the interface task is to figure out which syntactic rules are mapped onto which semantic composition modes.
    A somewhat different line is pursued within transformational approaches to syntax such as the Government and Binding framework or the more recent Minimalist Program. Within such approaches, there are no rules in the traditional sense but only very general schemata and principles that interact in yielding pairing of phonetic representations and logical forms. Logical forms (LFs) are syntactic representations where phenomena like scope and anaphoric links are unambiguously represented. | Gennaro Chierchia, 2001

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