UMLAUT
(Phonology) From German, 'sound alteration'. A sound change in which a vowel is pronounced more like a following vowel or semivowel. The term "umlaut" was originally coined in connection with the study of Germanic languages, as it had occurred prominently in the history of many of them. While a common English plural is umlauts, the German plural is Umlaute.
 Umlaut is a form of assimilation, the process of one speech sound becoming more similar to a nearby sound. If a word has two vowels, one far back in the mouth and the other far forward, it takes more effort to pronounce. If the vowels were closer together, it would take less effort. Thus, one way the language may change is that these two vowels get drawn closer together.
 In the general sense, umlaut is essentially the same as regressive metaphony.
 The most commonly seen types of umlaut are the following:

• Vowel raising, triggered by a following high vowel (often specifically a high front vowel such as /i/).
• Vowel fronting, triggered by a following front vowel (often specifically a high front vowel such as /i/).
• Vowel lowering, triggered by a following non-high vowel (often specifically a low vowel such as /a/).
• Vowel rounding, triggered by a following rounded vowel (often specifically a high rounded vowel such as /u/).

UNACCUSATIVE VERB
(Syntax) A subclass of intransitives. Their single arguments denote direct objects in relational grammar and GB, instead of agent-like participants. Thus unaccusatives are defined syntactically rather than semantically.
 English unaccusatives are fall, arrive or melt. In German there are unaccusative verbs like entgleiten 'slip' or zerbrechen 'break'.
 In English as well as in German, unaccusatives differ from other verbs in the selection of their perfective auxiliary. The unaccusatives take a form of to be or sein, respectively, whereas the other verbs take a form of to have or haben, respectively. (Burzio 1986, Bußmann 2002, Perlmutter 1978, Pullum 1988) | Glottopedia, 2009

UNDERGENERATION
(Syntax) A generative grammar undergenerates when it fails to generate grammatical sentences. | Line Mikkelsen, 2006

UNDERLYING REPRESENTATION
(Phonology, Morphophonology) Or, underlying form. The abstract form that a word or morpheme is postulated to have before any phonological rules have applied to it (Sylvain and Halle 2006, O'Grady and Archibald 2005). By contrast, a surface representation is the phonetic representation of the word or sound. The concept of an underlying representation is central to generative grammar (David Crystal 2009). | Wikipedia, 2021

UNDERSPECIFICATION

1. (Phonology) A phenomenon in which certain features are omitted in underlying representations. Restricted underspecification theory holds that features should only be underspecified if their values are predictable. For example, in English, all front vowels (/i, ɪ, e, ε, æ/) are unrounded. It is not necessary for these phonemes to include the distinctive feature [−round], because all [−back] vowels are [−round] vowels, so the distinctive feature is not distinctive if we know the vowel to be front.
    Radical underspecification theory, on the other hand, also allows for traditionally binary features to be specified for only one value, where it is assumed that every segment not specified for that value has the other value. For example, instead of the features [+voice] and [−voice], only [+voice] is specified and voicelessness is taken as the default. | Wikipedia, 2020
2. (Phonology) A term in feature theories that characterizes various approaches which see it as desirable that information should be omitted from underlying phonological representations. The representations should be minimally specified, or underspecifled. There is a departure from the concept of 'full' specification present in early generative phonology: the view that the output of the phonological component must contain fully specified binary feature matrices. Underspecification theory is concerned with the extent to which feature distinctions should appear in a phonological representation, not as a binary choice of [+feature] vs. [−feature], but as a choice between [+feature] and no marking at all. It therefore looks in particular at which feature values are predictable and may thus be left unspecified in a representation without harming the surface form. | David Crystal, 2008
3. (Semantics) The term is also used in relation to other levels of language for any model which does not require the specification of all the factors potentially involved in an analysis. In semantics, for example, there are approaches to formalization which do not completely specify all features of logical structure (e.g. in representing scope ambiguities). | David Crystal, 2008

UNERGATIVE VERB
(Semantics, Syntax) A special kind of intransitive verb. Semantically, unergative verbs have a subject perceived as actively initiating or actively responsible for the action expressed by the verb. E.g.: in English run, talk and resign are unergative verbs. In syntax, unergative verbs are characterized as verbs with an external argument. (Burzio 1986, Perlmutter 1984) | Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics, 2001

UNIFORMITY CONSTRAINT
(Optimality Theory) A faithfulness constraint that penalizes segmental coalescence when a segment in the output has multiple corresponding segments in the input.

UNIFORMITY ("No coalescence") (McCarthy and Prince, 1995)
No element of S₂ has multiple correspondents in S₁.

UNINTERPRETABLE FEATURES

1. (Syntax) An important player in the Minimalist framework; essential to movement and other relations in syntax. For example, it is assumed that uninterpretable features render a linguistic object active, allowing it to be targeted by syntactic operations (Chomsky 2000). A version of this assumption is that once an expression no longer contains any uninterpretable features, it necessarily spells out.
    The idea is that uninterpretability forces feature matching, and any uninterpretable feature which has been matched is deleted. Feature matching is constrained by the structure of the derivation: uninterpretable features can be thought of as triggering a search of their sister (and whatever it dominates), the search terminating when a matching feature is found, or when some other barrier to the search is encountered, e.g. a phase boundary.
    This interpretable/uninterpretable asymmetry in feature-feature relations is rather natural in a derivational system, since the uninterpretable features are those that drive the derivation, while the interpretable ones are those that are used, in the final representation, to connect with the semantic systems (or the phonological ones). | David Adger and Peter Svenonius, 2011
2. (Syntax) The lexicon contains bundles of features. These feature bundles are assembled by a computational process into syntactic structures for interpretation by the conceptual-intensional and articulatory-perceptual systems.
    Among these features, we have:
   • Interpretable features (such as the category feature that determines the category of the lexical item).
   • Uninterpretable features (such as the selectional feature [uN*] on a transitive verb). Uninterpretable features are intolerable at the interfaces, and must be removed (by checking) or the derivation crashes.
    Uninterpretable features vary along two dimensions: Privative/unvalued; strong/weak.
   1. Privative (uninterpretable) features (such as [uN*]) which are checked by matching features (such as [N] or [uN*]).
   2. Unvalued (uninterpretable) features (such as [uInfl:]) which are checked by features that can provide a value (such as [tense:past]).
   3. Strong (uninterpretable) features can only be checked if they are local (sister) to the feature that checks them.
   4. Weak (uninterpretable) features can be "checked at a distance."
    | Paul Hagstrom, 2003

UNIQUENESS THEORY
See MAXIMALITY THEORY.

UNIVERBATION

1. (Morphology) The diachronic process of combining a fixed expression of several words into a new single word (Brinton and Traugott 2005). The univerbating process is epitomized in Talmy Givón's (1971) aphorism that "today's morphology is yesterday's syntax". | Wikipedia, 2022
2. (Morphology) The syntagmatic condensation of a sequence of words recurrent in discourse into one word, as when the Spanish combination a tras 'to back' becomes atrás 'behind'. It affects both lexemes and grammatical formatives. Unlike processes of word formation, including conversion of a syntactic construction into a word, as in forget-me-not, and compounding, as in Spanish lavaplatos 'dishwasher', univerbation is a spontaneous process. There are two main types of univerbation:
   1. Phrasal univerbation downgrades a phrase to a word, as when Latin terrae motus 'earth's movement' becomes Spanish terremoto 'earthquake'.
   2. Transgressive univerbation coalesces a string of words which do not form a syntagma into a word, as when French par ce que becomes parce que.
    A set of univerbations may share structural features and may therefore evolve into a pattern of compounding. Thus, blackbird originated by univerbation, but may now provide a pattern of compounding. As a consequence, univerbation and compounding are not always easily distinguishable. | Christian Lehmann, 2020

UNMARKED WORD ORDER
See NEUTRAL WORD ORDER.

UPDATE
(Semantics) Suppose that we follow Stalnaker 1978, and we view a context as a set of possible worlds: the worlds that are compatible with the common assumptions of the interlocutors in a conversation. Then uttering a sentence like John likes listening to Bach has the effect that it removes from the context the worlds where John doesn't like listening to Bach. Therefore, the meaning of this sentence is that it removes certain worlds from the context. The process by which utterances progressively shrink the context set is known as update. | Alexandros Kalomoiros, 2023

UPDATE POTENTIAL
(Semantics) A distinction of "Theme" vs. "Rheme", i.e., Topic vs. Comment:

• Rheme: The "update potential" of the sentence.
• Theme: Where the update should apply, what the sentence is "about".

UPDATE SEMANTICS
(Semantics) A particular way in which the interpretation-as-process idea can be implemented. The central idea behind update semantics is very simple. We start with a simple model of a hearer/receiver who receives items of information sequentially. At every moment the hearer is in a certain state: she possesses certain information. This state is modified by the incoming information in a systematic way. We now analyze the meaning of the incoming items as their contribution to the change of the information state of the receiver. Thus, meanings are seen as actions, or, more precisely, as action types: They are not the concrete changes of some given state into another, but what such concrete changes have in common. | Rick Nouwen, Adrian Brasoveanu, Jan van Eijck, and Albert Visser, 2016
See Also DYNAMIC SEMANTICS.

UPHI (UΦ)

1. (Syntax) Wurmbrand (2017) argues on the basis of several types of mismatches (gender mismatch nouns, pluralia tantum nouns, and polite pronouns) that Agree is sensitive to the existence of a dual feature system simultaneously present in the grammar (Pollard and Sag 1994, Wechsler and Zlatic 2000, 2003, Smith 2015, a.o.). In this proposal, gender and number features come in two versions, interpretable [iφ] and uninterpretable [uφ] ones. The former yield semantic agreement which may apply in syntax or semantics; the latter trigger formal agreement applying in syntax or PF. Syntactic agreement (formal or semantic) is established via Agree. | Elena Anagnostopoulou, 2017
2. (Syntax) Agreement features (person/number) are called φ-features.
   • φ-features are interpretable on DP: for example, ⟨iφ: 3.sg⟩
   • φ-features are non-interpretable on T: ⟨uφ: ___⟩
   • φ-features are specified similarly to T-features, for example, on DP John we have ⟨iφ: 3.sg⟩
    | Andrei Antonenko, 2018

UPRO

1. (Syntax) Novel theoretical and empirical evidence suggests that the null subjects traditionally labelled as pro and PRO, rather than being inherently distinct, are manifestations, differentiated in the course of the derivation, of what is underlyingly a single underspecified nominal pro-form, which we will call UPro. Included under this UPro are pro, OCPRO and also the various types of 'non-obligatory control' (NOC) PRO, including arbitrary PRO (PRO_arb). The interpretive and distributional distinctions lurking behind these labels result from how UPro interacts with its structural environment and language-specific rules of morpho-phonological realization. Specifically, OCPRO labels a rather specific interpretation that arises in embedding contexts where a syntactic OC relationship with an antecedent can be established. Different types of pro and NOCPRO, on the other hand, involve 'control' by (typically) silent representations of discourse-contextual elements in the clausal left periphery. Finally, PRO_arb arguably involves the failure to establish a referential dependence, which we will formalize in terms of a failure to Agree in the sense of Preminger (2014). Crucial evidence motivating the approach proposed here will be adduced from Sundaresan's (2014) "Finiteness pro-drop Generalisation", which reveals an otherwise unexpected complementarity of OCPRO and pro. | Thomas McFadden and Sandhya Sundaresan, 2018
2. (Syntax) PRO and pro are surface variants of a single underspecified, referentially deficient nominal UPro, and compete for the same structural slot.
    The silent nominals labelled "pro" and "PRO" are contextually distinguished surface variants of a single, underspecified, underlying form: UPro. This immediately accounts for their complementary distribution.
    Different types of control arise purely as a function of differences in structural conditions on Agree between the Probe (controllee = UPro) and Goal. | Sandhya Sundaresen, 2023

USAGE-BASED LINGUISTICS

1. (General) Throughout the 20th century, structuralist and generative linguists have argued that the study of the language system (langue, competence) must be separated from the study of language use (parole, performance), but this view of language has been called into question by usage-based linguists who have argued that the structure and organization of a speaker's linguistic knowledge is the product of language use or performance. On this account, language is seen as a dynamic system of fluid categories and flexible constraints that are constantly restructured and reorganized under the pressure of domain-general cognitive processes that are not only involved in the use of language but also in other cognitive phenomena such as vision and (joint) attention. The general goal of usage-based linguistics is to develop a framework for the analysis of the emergence of linguistic structure and meaning.
    In order to understand the dynamics of the language system, usage-based linguists study how languages evolve, both in history and language acquisition. One aspect that plays an important role in this approach is frequency of occurrence. As frequency strengthens the representation of linguistic elements in memory, it facilitates the activation and processing of words, categories, and constructions, which in turn can have long-lasting effects on the development and organization of the linguistic system. A second aspect that has been very prominent in the usage-based study of grammar concerns the relationship between lexical and structural knowledge. Since abstract representations of linguistic structure are derived from language users' experience with concrete linguistic tokens, grammatical patterns are generally associated with particular lexical expressions. | Holger Diessel, 2017
2. (General) Or, exemplar-based linguistics. A set of approaches, the advent of which has resulted in a major change in the theoretical landscape of linguistics and in the range of methodologies that are brought to bear on the study of language acquisition/learning, structure, and use. In particular, methods from corpus linguistics are now frequently used to study distributional characteristics of linguistics units and what they reveal about cognitive and psycholinguistic processes. | Stefan Th. Gries and Nick C. Ellis, 2015

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