TONAL ACCENT
See PITCH ACCENT.

TONAL CENTER OF GRAVITY
(Phonetics) Abbreviated TCoG. A gestalt or global measure of F₀ event localization that succeeds in accounting both for the demonstrated contributions of F₀ TP-alignment, and for the strength of global F₀ contour shape as cues to intonational contrasts, while referring directly to neither of these things. The TCoG model lies at the heart of a research program whose goal, broadly expressed, is to develop a more robust and perceptually realistic model of tonal timing and scaling patterns than currently exists; one that captures key configurationist insights (i.e., the relevance of contour shape in tonal implementation), but nonetheless maintains the core advantages of a level-based AM phonology. | Jonathan Barnes, Nanette Veilleux, Alejna Brugos and Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel, 2012

TONE CONTOUR
(Phonology) Or, contour tone. A tone in a tonal language which shifts from one pitch to another over the course of the syllable or word. Tone contours are especially common in East, Southeast Asia, West Africa, Nilo-Saharan languages, Khoisan languages, Oto-Manguean languages and some languages of South America.
  When the pitch descends, the contour is called a falling tone; when it ascends, a rising tone; when it descends and then returns, a dipping or falling-rising tone; and when it ascends and then returns, it is called a peaking or rising-falling tone. A tone in a contour-tone language which remains at approximately an even pitch is called a level tone. Tones which are too short to exhibit much of a contour, typically because of a final plosive consonant, may be called checked, abrupt, clipped, or stopped tones. | Wikipedia, 2021

TONE LANGUAGE
(Phonology) A language in which differences in meaning can be signaled by differences in pitch. E.g. Nupe (spoken in Nigeria):

• bá (high) 'be sour'
• ba (mid) 'cut'
• bà (low) 'count'

TONE SANDHI
(Phonology) From the Sanskrit word for 'joining'. A phonological change occurring in tonal languages, in which the tones assigned to individual words or morphemes change based on the pronunciation of adjacent words or morphemes (Yip 2002). It usually simplifies a bidirectional tone into a one-direction tone (Wang 1967). It is a type of sandhi, or fusional change.
  Tone sandhi occurs to some extent in nearly all tonal languages, manifesting itself in different ways (Gandour 1978).
  Tone sandhi is compulsory as long as the environmental conditions that trigger it are met. It is not to be confused with tone changes that are due to derivational or inflectional morphology. Such a change is not triggered by the phonological environment of the tone, and therefore is not an example of sandhi. Changes of morphemes in Mandarin into its neutral-tone are also not examples of tone sandhi. | Wikipedia, 2022

TONOGENESIS
(Phonology) The historical orgin of tone. A process in which a language that lacks tones gains them. E.g.:

• Tones can originate from earlier consonantal contrasts.
• A language may acquire tones through bilingualism if influential neighboring languages are tonal.
• Tone may arise spontaneously, and surprisingly quickly.
• Very often, tone arises as an effect of the loss or merger of consonants.

TOPIC

1. (Discourse) In discourse there are places where new semantic environments are established. These semantic boundaries, called "Topics," are signaled in many different ways, often by the use of several types of signals at once. One signal is the use of discourse markers. In their lexicon, Louw and Nida create an entire domain specifically for discourse markers -- familiarity with the lexical items within this domain is good to acquire for exegesis. A second signal to be aware of is the disruption of cohesion. Where there are disruptions in cohesion because of shifts in grammar (e.g., changes in tense form, changes in person/participants, etc.) or semantics (e.g., breaking of semantic chains), especially in conjunction with the use of discourse or deictic markers, the author is likely signaling the establishment of a new Topic in the discourse. Everything between Topic shifts is the Comment. | James D. Dvorak, 2008
2. (Discourse) "The participant most crucially involved in the action sequence" (Givón 1983). Givón has identified several characteristics of topics.
   1. Topical participants are mentioned more often than non-topical participants: "More important discourse topics appear more frequently in the register, i.e. they have a higher probability of persisting longer in the register"(Givón 1983).
   2. In many languages, "topical referents are most commonly given special grammatical marking, while non-topical ones are left unmarked" (Givón 1995). The distal demonstrative determiner is one such special marker in Old English.
   3. One way to identify topics is to measure topic persistence.
   | Richard Epstein, 2011

TOPIC ACCESSIBILITY SCALE
(Syntax) Lambrecht (1994) noted that it is likely that the more accessible the topic referent of an utterance is, the less processing effort to interpret that utterance is needed. This correlation is summarized as the Topic Accessibility Scale below. Chafe (1987) also states that it requires low cognitive effort to interpret a discourse-active referent.

Topic Accessibility Scale

Active	Most accessible
Accessible
Inactive
Brand-new anchored
Brand-new unanchored	Least accessible

TOPIC PERSISTENCE
(Discourse) As Givón has demonstrated, one way to identify topics is to measure persistence, or the number of recurrences of a referent in the following text. The more highly topical a referent, the more frequently it should be mentioned again after it is first introduced in a section of the discourse. In several studies, Givón argues that a topic persistence measurement of less than two should be considered low; greater than two is considered high (Wright and Givón 1987, 1995). In other words, a referent that recurs more than twice in the ten clauses following its appearance in a passage should be considered highly persistent, which is an indication of high topicality. A referent that recurs only once or twice, or never again, is not highly persistent and thus, not a topic. | Richard Epstein, 2011

TOPICAL/FOCAL
(Information Structure) Givón states that discourse is made up of a combination of new and old information. We shall refer to the new information as focal, and the old information as presupposed or topical. Presupposed, topical information is "assumed by the speaker to be accessible to the hearer" either from the preceding text, or from a general knowledge of the world; focal information is "assumed by the speaker to be inaccessible to the hearer" (Givón 1992). Presupposed information serves as the "grounding point" or framework within which the focal information is processed (Givón 1992). By definition, the focal information is the most important part of the utterance, with the presupposed information grounding it to the context. | Steven E Runge, 2012

TOPICALIZATION
(Syntax) A mechanism that establishes an expression as the sentence or clause topic; in English, by having it appear at the front of the sentence or clause (as opposed to in a canonical position further to the right). Topicalization often results in a discontinuity and is thus one of a number of established discontinuity types (the other three being wh-fronting, scrambling, and extraposition). Topicalization is also used as a constituency test; an expression that can be topicalized is deemed a constituent. The topicalization of arguments in English is rare, whereas circumstantial adjuncts are often topicalized. Most languages allow topicalization, and in some languages, topicalization occurs much more frequently than in English. | Wikipedia, 2016

TOPONYM
A word that is the name of a place.
 Examples:

1. As with the glyph for jade, it is frequent in representations of a religious nature and in toponyms alike.
2. As this toponym is situated along the right side of the map, it would correspond to the east.
3. Toponyms ending in -thorpe, -by, -combe, -gill and -royd are associated with regions settled by different groups such as Celts, Vikings, Danes, and Saxons.

TP

1. (Syntax) Abbreviation for Tense Phrase. A phrase seen, in generative accounts, as headed by a unit characteristically realized by a tense inflection. | Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics, 2007
2. (Syntax) Stowell's account of sequence of tense is based on a syntactic TP (tense phrase) with the following geometry:
   1. 
           TP
          ╱╲
         ╱   ╲
        ZP₀     T'
               ╱╲
             ╱   ╲
            T     VP
                ╱╲
               ╱   ╲
              ZP₁     VP
       
    The tense node T denotes, in my terms, a relation between local evaluation time and eventuality time; ZP₀ denotes the local evaluation time and ZP₁ corresponds to the eventuality argument of the verb. | Dorit Abusch, 1994
3. (Syntax) Looking at the relation of VPs and small clauses to matrix clauses tells us something about how language goes about adding information beyond predicate meeting arguments. At a minimum, tense (and aspect, and a significant portion of modality and other inflectional elements) is added in a larger clause that includes a VP or small clause as a complement. The current view seems to be to separate out a number of distinct syntactic units providing these, singling out tense as the salient unit. Not long ago, a single inflectional position was assumed to combine them all. But regardless, the picture is that within a matrix clause a predication structure falls under a structure proving tense information, at least. The picture is something like:
   1. [ _TP tense plus ... [ _VP predicate and arguments ] ]
    We do not get a matrix clause, and do not get something we are able to assert, until we get up at least as high as TP, a tense phrase, according to current theories. Such a structure grammatically encodes the idea that additional temporal information beyond objects meeting properties is needed to describe the world. Syntax provides a separate syntactic position for adding it, such as the T head (the main syntactic component of the T phrase). | Michael Glanzberg, 2018

TP ELLIPSIS

1. (Syntax) Abbreviation for Tense Phrase Ellipsis. A type of predicate ellipsis. In VP Ellipsis, another kind of predicate ellipsis, the verb in T is phonologically realized; in TP Ellipsis, it is deleted.
   1. Portuguese
      a.
       

      Bach
      Bach

      é
      is

      difícil
      hard

      de
      to

      interpretar
      play,

      e
      and

      Mozart
      Mozart

      também.
      also.

      (TPE)
      
      b.
       

      Bach
      Bach

      é
      is

      difícil
      hard

      de
      to

      interpretar
      play

      e
      and

      Mozart
      Mozart

      também
      also

      é.
      is.

      (VPE)
      

        'Bach is hard to play, and Mozart (is) too.'
    | Anna Maria Martins, 2016
2. (Syntax) Example:
   1. Spanish
      Juan fue al cine y María también
      lit. 'Juan went to the cinema and Mary also'
    | Andrés Saab, 2010

TRACE
(Syntax) A phonetically null element said by Chomsky and his followers to occupy the position from which a syntactic element has been moved.

1. Mary_i I really love t_i.

TRACE THEORY
(Syntax) Theory about traces left by movement. This theory assumes that if an element X has been moved in the course of a derivation, it has left a trace in its original position.
 In (1) the NP John is moved while leaving a trace t, indicating its d-structure position.

1. John_i seems [t_i to have left]

TRADITIONAL TRANSMISSION
(Diachronic) The process by which language is passed down from one generation to the next. In this manner, it is often also referred to as cultural transmission where it is a mechanism of iterated learning. Common processes would include imitation or teaching. The model purports that present learners acquire the cultural behavior, that is language in this instance, by observing similar behaviors in others who acquired the language the same way (Thompson, Smith, and Wright 2015). | Wikipedia, 2021

TRANSITIVITY-CHANGING OPERATIONS
(Grammar) 

	Macrorole
Operation	Actor	Undergoer
Installation	actor-focused transitivization: causative	undergoer-focused transitivization: applicative, extraversive
Suppression	actor-focused detransitivization: passive, anticausative	undergoer-focused detransitivization: antipassive, introversive

TRANSLANGUAGING

1. (Sociolinguistics) A theoretical lens that offers a different view of bilingualism and multilingualism. The theory posits that rather than possessing two or more autonomous language systems, as has been traditionally thought, bilinguals, multilinguals, and indeed, all users of language, select and deploy particular features from a unitary linguistic repertoire to make meaning and to negotiate particular communicative contexts. | Sarah Vogel and Ofelia García, 2017
2. (Pedagogy) An approach that affirms and leverages students' diverse and dynamic language practices in teaching and learning. | Sarah Vogel and Ofelia García, 2017

TRANSLOCATIVE
See VENITIVE.

TRANSPARENCY
(Grammar) We consider an alternative categorization of idioms. More precisely, we cross-classify idioms according to two dimensions: figuration and "transparency". Figuration reflects the degree to which the idiom can be assigned a literal meaning. Transparency (or opacity) relates to how easy it is to recover the motivation for an idiom's use, or, in other words, to explain the relationship between its literal meaning and its idiomatic one. Idioms are figurative if their literal meaning can conjure up a vivid picture in the speaker's mind.
 Within the figurative idioms we distinguish between two types. In transparent figurative idioms the relationship between the literal picture and the idiomatic meaning is perceived to be motivated. English examples include saw logs ('snore') and the cat's out of the bag ('previously hidden facts were revealed'). Conversely, opaque figurative idioms portray a picture whose relationship to the idiomatic meaning is not perceptible. English examples include shoot the breeze ('chat') and chew the fat ('talk socially, gossip').
 Idioms which are not figurative do not have a comprehensible literal meaning, and as such are necessarily opaque. Among these idioms we find what are referred to as cranberry idioms (Moon 1998, Trawinski et al. 2008), which, similarly to "cranberry morphemes", have parts which have no meanings (e.g., run amok 'behave in an unrestrained manner' and take umbrage 'take offense'). These idioms may have been figurative and transparent once, but synchronically they contain a word whose meaning is not accessible to contemporary speakers. | Livnat Herzig Sheinfux, Tali Arad Greshler, Nurit Melnik, and Shuly Wintner, 2019

TREE
(Syntax) A two-dimensional diagram used in generative grammar as a convenient means of displaying the internal hierarchical structure of sentences as generated by a set of rules. The root of the "tree" diagram is at the top, consisting of the initial symbol S. From this topmost point or node, branches descend corresponding to the categories specified by the rules (e.g. NP, VP). The internal relationships of parts of the tree are described using "family tree" terminology: if two categories both derive from a single node, they are said to be sisters, and daughters of the mother node from which they derive. | David Crystal, 2008

TREEBANK

1. (Corpus) A syntactically processed corpus that contains annotations of natural language data at various linguistic levels (word, phrase, clause and sentence levels). A "treebank" provides mainly the morphosyntactic and syntactic structure of the utterances within the corpus and consists of a bank of linguistic trees, thereby its name. | Bernard J. Jansen, Amanda Spink, and Isak Taksa, 2008
2. (Corpus) A collection of POS-tagged sentences that are bracketed to align with constituency. | Maeve Carmody and Ryan M. Kasak, 2023

TRIPLE-AGREEMENT LANGUAGE
(Typology) A language in which the verb agrees with all arguments present in a clause (Rosen 1990). | Fabian Heck and Mark Richards, 2007

TRIVALENT SEMANTICS
(Semantics) I'll define a trivalent language, L, and describe how we can assign values analogous to probabilities to it. The language, L formed in the usual way, with an extra operator ‖:

• A, B ... are atomic sentences.
• if α and β are sentences so are α ∧ β, α ∨ β, α ‖ β and ¬ α

α ‖ β is undefined for every member of W where β is not T (i.e. where β is false or undefined) and otherwise has the same truth-value as α.

A	B	A ‖ B
T	T	T
F	T	F
T	F	U
F	F	U
T/F	U	U
U	T/F	U

TRUNCATED CLAUSE
(Syntax) Clauses that lack some otherwise expected layers have been described in the literature as truncated (see Rizzi 1993 and subsequent work on root infinitives and language acquisition). While in everyday usage truncation may suggest the removal of some existing material, this is not the sense in which it has been used in the linguistic literature: "truncated clauses" are typically ones that lack some layers because those layers were never built up in the first place. | Tamás Halm, 2021

TRUNCATED CLEFT
(Syntax) Or, hidden cleft, or, reduced cleft. 

1. a. It's Beverly.
   b. That was his father.
   c. It could have been me.
   d. That might be Adrian.

2. a. It's Beverly that makes the best pies.
   b. That was his father that went to Hamburg.
   c. It could have been me that drove the car.
   d. That might be Adrian that's knocking on the door.

TRUTH CONDITION
(Semantics, Pragmatics) The condition under which a sentence is true. For example, It is snowing in Nebraska is true precisely when it is snowing in Nebraska. Truth conditions of a sentence do not necessarily reflect current reality. They are merely the conditions under which the statement would be true (Birner 2013).
 More formally, a truth condition makes for the truth of a sentence in an inductive definition of truth. Understood this way, truth conditions are theoretical entities.
 To illustrate with an example: Suppose that, in a particular truth theory (Field 1972) which is a theory of truth where truth is somehow made acceptable despite semantic terms as close as possible, the word Nixon refers to Richard M. Nixon, and is alive is associated with the set of currently living things. Then one way of representing the truth condition of Nixon is alive is as the ordered pair in (1).

1. <Nixon, {x: x is alive}>

TYPE

1. (Semantics) A notion developed in mathematical logic and used as part of the conceptual apparatus underlying formal semantics (notably, in lambda calculus). A type-theoretic approach offers a mathematical perspective for the categorial syntax of natural language, using the notion of a hierarchy of types as a framework for semantic structure (as in Montague grammar).
    Basic (or primitive) types, e.g. 'entity', 'truth value', 'state', are distinguished from derived or complex types, e.g. functional types: an example is (a, b), i.e. all functions taking arguments in the a domain apply to values in the b domain. | David Crystal, 2008
2. (Lexical) A term used as part of a measure of lexical density. The type/token ratio is the ratio of the total number of different words (types) to the total number of words (tokens) in a sample of text.
    Types are used in several models of lexical representation (notably, typed feature structures) to refer to a superordinate category. The types are organized as a lattice framework, with the most general type represented at the top and inconsistency indicated at the bottom. Similarities in lattices specify compatibility between types. Subtypes inherit all the properties of all their supertypes: for example, in a typed feature structure hierarchy, the subtype sausages under the type food ('sausages are a type of food') means that sausages has all the properties specified by the type constraints on food, with some further properties of its own. | David Crystal, 2008

Page Last Modified January 20, 2024

 

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