ARCHAISM

1. (General) Or, lexical zombie. From Greek ἀρχή 'ancient, beginning'. A word or phrase (or a particular meaning of a word or phrase) that is no longer in common use and is considered extremely old-fashioned.
    A grammatical archaism is a sentence structure or word order that's no longer in common use in most dialects.
    Linguist Tom McArthur (2018) notes that literary archaism occurs "when a style is modeled on older works, so as to revive earlier practices or achieve the desired effect."
    Examples:
   1. The old man raised the axe and split the head of John Joel Glanton to the thrapple. (Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 1985)
   2. [Nick Faldo] speaks in a jaunty, clipped, wised-up vernacular, mixing street-smart patter with solid analysis. His vocabulary is rich in curious archaisms—jeepers, crumbs, gee—and eccentric asides. (Jason Cowley, "Nick's Second Coming." The Guardian, Oct. 1, 2006)
   
    | Richard Nordquist, 2019
2. (Diachronic) There is a traditional definition of archaism in Hungarian linguistics from the early seventies, according to which any obsolete linguistic unit can be considered archaic if "it fits into a previous state of the developing linguistic system, or it is peculiar to the previous state of the linguistic system", i.e. if the unit gets into the present discourse through borrowing (Tompa 1972, see also Fónagy 1970). Thus the main basis of comparison in this narrower, linguistic approach of archaism is the historical formation of the linguistic system itself, in other words an expression is labelled as archaic according to whether it is part of the present system of language or it belongs to a previous state of this system. There is a principle of structuralism in the background of this definition (see Saussure 1997, Ladányi-Tolcsvai Nagy 2008), which considers the history of language as a temporal succession of synchronic systems, as a diachronic sequence of states. The definition of archaism includes also the presupposition that the states of the linguistic system can be separated clearly, and the linguistic units belong to one or to another state unambiguously. | Gábor Simon, 2013

AREAL LINGUISTICS

1. (Sociolinguistics) Seeks to document and understand the phenomenon of parallel structural organization in languages (typically, languages of different families), which are spoken in the same or adjoining geographical areas. | N.J. Enfield, 2005
2. (Sociolinguistics) A branch of linguistics that studies (using the methods of linguistic geography) distribution of linguistic phenomena in the spatial extent and interlingual (interdialectic) interaction.
    The term spatial/areal linguistics was first introduced by M.J. Bartoli and J. Vidossi, but the principles were developed by Bartoli in 1925. Areal linguistics is closely linked to linguistic geography and dialectology.
   • Main aim: To determine the area of language (or dialect) within the borders of the linguistic features.
   • Main research methods: the linguageographical method (displaying phenomena on the map) or areal (isoglossive) method. The studies identify the regions (areas) the interaction of dialects languages, and areal communities—sprachbunds ('federations of languages') sharing common structural features.
   • Object: Territorial distribution of languages and linguistic phenomena.
   • Subject: General linguistic problems:
     • Division of proto-language states at historically attested languages and dialect continuum.
     • Giving areal characteristic features of the interacting languages and dialects of certain region.
     • Finding regularities of language contacts.
     • Development of areal typology principles, setting a theory of language interaction (theory of sprachbund).
     • Defining the role of substrates in the area of contacts.
     • The study of language interference in geographically contiguous languages.
     • Development of ethno-linguistic and socio-linguistic typology for geographically contiguous languages.
    | Ongarbaeva Meruyert, 2013

ARGUMENT

1. (Syntax/Semantics) An expression that helps complete the meaning of a predicate, the latter referring in this context to a main verb and its auxiliaries. In this regard, the complement is a closely related concept. Most predicates take one, two, or three arguments. A predicate and its arguments form a predicate-argument structure. The discussion of predicates and arguments is associated most with (content) verbs and noun phrases (NPs), although other syntactic categories can also be construed as predicates and as arguments.
    Arguments must be distinguished from adjuncts. While a predicate needs its arguments to complete its meaning, the adjuncts that appear with a predicate are optional; they are not necessary to complete the meaning of the predicate (cf. Kroeger 2004). Most theories of syntax and semantics acknowledge arguments and adjuncts, although the terminology varies, and the distinction is generally believed to exist in all languages. Dependency grammars sometimes call arguments actants, following Lucien Tesnière (1959). | Wikipedia, 2024
2. (Syntax, Semantics) Systematically ambiguous. In semantics, an argument is the entity about which a predication is made. In syntax, an argument is a constituent (noun phrase, adpositional phrase) that is required by another (predicative, argument-taking) constituent (verb, relational adjective, relational noun). In this second, syntactic sense, arguments are also called argument terms. Argument terms are said to be sub-categorized by their governing predicates.
    In generative syntax, Argument is a phrase which is a referential expression and which is associated with a theta-role assigned by a lexical head.
    In the following sentences, the underlined noun phrases (or adpositional phrases) are arguments (or argument terms):
   1. Tasaku bought a ticket on Friday.
   2. Please give my regards to your husband.
   3. On the boat the passengers rely on the captain.
   
    The NPs John and apples in (4) are arguments of eat, and the embedded sentence in (5) is an argument of obvious.
   4. John eats apples.
   5. That you're in love is obvious.
   
    Arguments are typically contrasted with adjuncts, i.e. noun phrases or adpositional phrases that are not syntactically required, but serve to modify the clause or another constituent.
    Semantics: In the formula P(a), a is called the argument of the predicate P. Generally, for a predicate with arity n, in P(a₁,...,a_n), a₁,...,a_n are called the arguments of P.
    Subtypes: core argument, peripheral argument, external argument, internal argument. | Glottopedia, 2014
3. (Semantics) By argument structure of a lexical item I mean simply a labelled listing of the arguments that a lexical item can have. I will adopt the labelling proposed by Gruber (1976) (Actor, Theme, Goal, Source), though the actual labels themselves are not important. These are called thematic relations. | Edwin Williams, 1981

ARGUMENT CLUSTER COORDINATION

1. (Syntax) Example:
   1. give a teacher an apple and a policeman a flower
   
    The argument cluster coordination construction is an example of a universal tendency for "deletion under coordination" to respect basic word order: in all constructions in all languages, if arguments are on the left of the verb then argument clusters coordinate on the left, if arguments are to the right of the verb then argument clusters coordinate to the right of the verb (Ross 1970):
   1. SVO:
      SVO and SO
      *SO and SVO
   2. VSO:
      VSO and SO
      *SO and VSO
   3. SOV:
      SO and SOV
      *SOV and SO
   
    | Mark Steedman, 2012
2. (Syntax) ACC is characterized by non-constituent sequences that are parallel in structure. For instance:
   1.  I bought John a microphone on Monday and Richie a guitar on Saturday.
   
    In (1), the conjunction is between John a microphone on Monday and Richie a guitar on Saturday which are both nonconstituents and include parallel arguments:
   • The NPs John and Richie.
   • The NPs a microphone and a guitar.
   • The PPs on Monday and on Saturday.
   
    | Jessica Ficler and Yoav Goldberg, 2016

ARGUMENT ELLIPSIS
(Syntax) A conceptually simpler alternative to Verb-stranding Verb Phrase Ellipsis, Argument Ellipsis (AE) assumes that ellipsis targets just what is missing, namely, the internal argument. In this analysis, the verb is generated outside the elided constituent; verb raising may or may not be involved ((3) depicts AE with verb raising). In Hebrew:

1. Gil
   Gil

   hizmin
   invited

   et
   ACC

   axot-o.
   sister-his.

   Yosi
   Yosi

   gam
   too

   hizmin
   invited

   ___.
    

   'Gil invited his sister. Yosi did too.'
2. VSVPE:
   [_TP Yosi_i [_T' gam [_T' hismin-v-T [_vP t_i [_v' t_v [_VP t_V [_DP et axoto ]]]] ]]]
3. AE:
   [_TP Yosi_i [_T' gam [_T' hismin-v-T [_vP t_i [_v' t_v [_VP t_V [_DP et axoto ] ]]]]]]

ARGUMENT SHARING
(Syntax) The intuitively prior sense of the term is brought out in the following observations about the sentence (1) in Oriya:

1. kaali
   yesterday

   raatire
   night-PP

   mun
   I

   maacha
   fish

   -Te
   -a

   kiNi
   buy

   keLaai
   clean

   bhaaji
   fry

   khaaili
   eat-PAST-1SG

   'Last night, having bought, cleaned and fried a fish, I ate it.'

2. Argument sharing – Sense I
   A token-occurrence of an NP serves, for a set of consecutive verbs V₁, V₂, ... V_n, as the only overt NP which instantiates a given argument-function AF relative to each of the verbs.
   Specifications:
   1. An NP counts as serving an AF with regard to verb V if
      1. it refers to an entity understood as carrying one of the thematic roles tied to V; and/or
      2. it carries a "grammatical function" (GF) relative to V.
   2. The argument-function instantiated relative to each verb can be understood either such that it is the same AF (thematic role, and/or GF) relative to each verb, or possibly different ones.

ARTICULATORY-PERCEPTUAL SYSTEM

1. (Cognition) Within the generative, modular paradigm, Chomsky (1995) distinguishes two interface levels: the level of phonetic form (PF) is the interface with sensorimotor systems, the level of logical form (LF) is the interface with systems of conceptual structure and language use. The two performance systems involved are the articulatory-perceptual system and the conceptual-intentional system. | Roeland van Hout, Aafke Hulk, and Folkert Kuiken, 2003
2. (Cognition) The language faculty interacts with various performance systems, principle among them being the articulatory/perceptual system, which controls the production and reception of linguistic events, and the conceptual/intentional system (or belief system), which determines the content of interpretations and what is said. | Michael O'Rourke, 2007

ARTICULATORY PHONOLOGY

1. (Phonology) A linguistic theory originally proposed (1986) by Catherine Browman of Haskins Laboratories and Louis M. Goldstein of Yale University and Haskins. The theory identifies theoretical discrepancies between phonetics and phonology and aims to unify the two by treating them as low- and high-dimensional descriptions of a single system.
    Unification can be achieved by incorporating into a single model the idea that the physical system (identified with phonetics) constrains the underlying abstract system (identified with phonology), making the units of control at the abstract planning level the same as those at the physical level.
    The plan of an utterance is formatted as a gestural score, which provides the input to a physically based model of speech production—the task dynamics model of Elliot Saltzman (1986, 1987). The gestural score graphs locations within the vocal tract where constriction can occur, indicating the planned or target degree of constriction. | Wikipedia, 2024
2. (Phonology) In AP, the basic units of phonological representation are not features or segments, but articulatory gestures. A gesture can be thought of as a task, a goal to be achieved through articulatory movements. Typical tasks in speech production might include:
   • "Form a closure with the lips."
   • "Spread the vocal folds."
   • "Position the tongue body close to but not touching the velum."
   
    Formally, articulatory goals are defined in terms of tract variables (Browman and Goldstein 1989). The most commonly used are those in (1). Each tract variable refers to a region of the vocal tract. Some of the goals specify a degree of constriction; other specify a location of constriction.
   1. Tract variables
      lip aperture (LA)
      tongue body constriction location (TBCL)
      lip protrusion (LP or PRO)
      tongue body constriction degree (TBCD)
      tongue tip constriction location (TTCL)
      velic aperture (VEL)
      tongue tip constriction degree (TTCD)
      glottal aperture (GLO)
   
    Each of these variables can take a range of values (Browman and Goldstein 1989), as shown in (2).
   2. Constriction degree values: closed, critical, narrow, mid, wide.
      Constriction location values: protruded, labial, dental, alveolar, postalveolar, palatal, velar, uvular, pharyngeal.
   
    Segments have no formal role in most AP work; they are regarded as epiphenomenal. Typically, what would be considered a segment in other frameworks corresponds to several gestures in AP. A transcription of [t], for example, would correspond to the gestures "GLO wide" (for voicelessness), and "TT alveolar closed." Since they refer to the same articulator, the variables of TTCD and TTCL must be specified together, as must TBCL and TBCD, and LA and LP. | Nancy Hall, 2018

ARTIFICIAL FORM

1. (Morphology) I will deal with two categories of artificial forms.
   1. A "word" that features two or more morphological units, where the stem or one of the inflective components is irregular or artificial. An artificial form is at odds with an authentic, naturally occurring word that is considered to be "meaningful" in both speech and writing. An example in English of an artificial form is uncomprehensible, which features three authentic morphemes (the affixes un- and -able and the stem comprehend). But uncomprehensible is not an authentic word because of the improper use of the prefix un-. Uncomprehensible stands in contrast to the authentic incomprehensible, which is a meaningful word.
   2. A "word" that consists of two morphological units, e.g., one from Standard Biblical Hebrew and the other from Aramaic. This second category is sometimes called a hybrid, which (speaking linguistically) is a word that consists of two or more different languages. The second category is also called Portmanteau blending (Zuckermann 2009), but unlike the artificial forms of 1QIsa^a, Portmanteau blending generally creates meaningful words.
    | Donald W. Parry, 2014
2. (Examples)
   • Similar instances are found in the inflection of compounds in -ος. For instance, the genitive of ἡνίοχος appears in the form ἡνιόχοιο, used five times at verse end. The wish to use other case forms in the same metrical position then led poets to create the artificial forms ἡνιοχῆα and ἡνιοχῆες. | Lucien van Beek, 2022
   • While the synthetic (monolectic) perfect had vanished from the living language, it was still widely used in Byzantine literary texts. This article explores how often the synthetic perfect actually was used in different kinds of texts, what its exact meaning was, and for what reasons this artificial form was applied. | Martin Hinterberger, 2014
   • The mother, by her own reckoning, speaks "Irish" all the time, but has no problem with lacing her speech with unassimilated as well as assimilated loanwords from English. The civil servant, on the other hand, stands for a "bilingualism" where a pristine but artificial form of Irish is spoken, and where "standard [Irish] and grammar" are objects of value in an English-speaking world. | Steve Coleman, 2009
   • What an irony it is, that the supposed attempt to bring homo sapiens down a few notches in the natural order has taken the form of us humans hectoring another species into emulating our instinctive form of communication, or some artificial form we have invented, as if that were the measure of biological worth. | Elisabeth A. Lloyd, 2004
   • We measure the frequencies of function word lemmas as identified by the NLPWin system. In order to be maximally "content-independent", we normalized all personal pronouns to an artificial form perspro in order to not pick up on 'she' or 'he' frequencies which would be linked to the gender of characters in the works of fiction rather than author style. | Michael Gamon, 2004
   • The difference between communication strategies used to communicate a problem meaning and those used to communicate a problem word is explored. The conclusion is reached that whereas other communication strategy researchers rightly obtain data more on the former, Paribakht's (1985) method gives data on a rather artificial form of the latter. | Phil Scholfield, 1987
   • Greek school children are forced to learn an artificial form of their language, Katharevousa, in which textbooks and scholarly treatises are written; this conflicts with everyday spoken Demotic Greek and makes learning extremely confusing. | Marylle J. Goumas, 1974

ARTIFICIAL LANGUAGE LEARNING TASK

1. (Experimental Linguistics) In which learners are taught miniature constructed languages in a controlled laboratory setting. A valuable experimental tool for research on language development. These methods offer a complement to natural language acquisition data, allowing researchers to control both the input to learning and the learning environment. A large proportion of artificial language learning studies has aimed to understand the mechanisms of learning in infants. | Jennifer Culbertson and Kathryn Schuler, 2019
2. (Experimental Linguistics) The earliest uses of artificial language (or grammar) learning in psychology were focused on whether learners could extract implicit rules or rule-like generalizations from structured input (e.g., Braine 1963, Reber 1967). These experiments were extended starting in the 1990s to show that learners could use distributional information in the input—statistical learning—to form representations of word boundaries and phrasal constituents, along with syntax-like rules (Saffran et al. 1996, Mintz et al. 2002, Reeder et al. 2013). More recently, researchers in cognitive psychology and theoretical linguistics have begun adapting artificial language learning methods to study how statistical learning might interact with or be shaped by other properties of the cognitive system. An explicit goal of this research is using these methods to provide evidence for cognitive constraints or biases which might explain specific features of language structure.
    The most important contribution of artificial language learning experiments to date is in allowing researchers to test the predicted behavioral effects of hypothesized constraints in a controlled laboratory environment. Observations from linguistic typology or language acquisition can be used to generate hypotheses linking language structure to human cognition. The predictions of these hypotheses can be tested using precisely designed experimental manipulations. While most work in theoretical syntax does not yet incorporate this kind of evidence, the last decade has seen a surge in the use of artificial language learning experiments in research on theoretical phonology. For the most part, these studies have explicitly focused on statistical typological tendencies, attempting to show that typologically common patterns are acquired (or inferred) more readily than rare patterns. In other words, this research is focused on uncovering cognitive biases which might explain a given typological distribution. Such biases are difficult to test with natural language acquisition data alone, since no two natural languages will differ only in the phenomenon of interest. Further, the researcher cannot control the frequency with which particular learners might receive relevant information in the input. Where research has in fact focused on apparently non-defeasible principles, the problem is obvious: there simply are no natural language acquisition data available.
    Using artificial language learning experiments makes it possible to perfectly match languages aside from properties of interest, to control input frequency, and to compare learning of attested versus unattested and common versus rare linguistic patterns. In addition to this, these methods allow us to explore whether the same biases are found across development, how they might be amplified or dampened by language experience, and how widely they apply across cognitive domains. | Jennifer Culbertson, 2021

ASPECT

1. (Grammar) A category associated with verbs that expresses a temporal view of the event or state expressed by the verb. Aspect is often indicated by verbal affixes or auxiliary verbs.
    Some kinds:
   • Imperfective Aspect.
   • Perfective Aspect.
   • Cessative Aspect.
   • Inchoative Aspect.
   
    | SIL Glossary of Linguistic Terms, 2003
2. (Grammar) In English and in many other languages it is the verb which carries the tense system discriminations of past, present and future. The role of what is called in grammar tense is to relate the time of the situation described in the sentence to the time of speaking. A situation described in the past tense is located prior to the moment of speaking, and a situation described in the present tense is located temporally as simultaneous with the moment of speaking. It was observed long ago that verbs carry other discriminations involving the notion of time, for example, whether the event referred to by the verb begins, ends or is still occurring, whether it is complete or incomplete, single or iterative, protracted or momentaneous . Temporal discriminations of this kind are known in the literature as aspectual ones, and the phenomenon is called aspect. | Dorit Abusch, 1985
3. (Grammar) The term designates the perspective taken on the internal temporal organization of the situation, and so aspects distinguish different ways of viewing the internal temporal constituency of the same situation (Comrie 1976, after Holt 1943, Bybee 2003). The situation is meant here as general term covering events, processes, states, etc., as expressed by the verb phrase or the construction. Unlike tense, which is situation-external time, aspect is situation-internal and non-deictic, as it is not concerned with relating the time of the situation to any other time point. | Anna Kibort, 2008

ASPECTUAL CLASSES
(Semantics) A classification of verbs with respect to their aspectual properties, dating back to an Aristotelian classification of situations. The most popular aspectual classes are those proposed in Vendler (1967) (extending a classification in Kenny 1963) and applied and formalized in Dowty 1979: States, Activities (unbounded processes), Accomplishments (bounded processes), and Achievements (point events). Examples:

• States: Socrates is mortal. She is in danger. He loves potatoes.
• Activities: John walked miles and miles. She drove him safely.
• Accomplishments: John walked home. She ate a sandwich.
• Achievements: She reached the top. He won the race.

1.  For hours she was in danger.
2.  ? For hours she reached the top.

ASSIBILATION
(Phonology) Any process by which a consonant becomes a sibilant. Often the easiest way to see this is to look at cognates, e.g.

• Attentio in Latin and attention in English (/t/ vs /ʃ/).
• Water in English and Wasser in German (/t/ vs /s/).
• Out in English and Aus in German (/t/ vs /s/).

ASSOCIATED MOTION
(Grammar) A verbal category, separate from tense, aspect, mood and direction, whose function is to associate, in different ways, different kinds of translational (spatial displacement or change of location) motion to a (generally non-motion) verb event. As an illustration, example (1), from the Amazonian language Cavineña, shows seven suffixes (out of an inventory of 12) expressing different associated motion (AM) values, in combination with the verb 'see'.

1. Cavineña (Takanan; Guillaume 2006, 2008, 2009)
   ba- 'see O'
   ba-ti- 'go and see O'
   ba-na- 'come and see O'
   ba-aje- 'see O while going'
   ba-be- 'see O while coming'
   ba-kena- 'see O and go'
   ba-dadi- 'see O while O is moving away'
   ba-tsa- 'see O while O is approaching'
   etc.

ASSOCIATED MOTION SYSTEM
(Grammar) Verbal suffixes whose primary function is to add a motion co-event to the event expressed by the verb.
 In Atlantic languages, associated motion (AM) is expressed by three types of systems.

1. Common to African languages (Bourdin 2005, 2006, Belkadi 2015, 2015, Creissels and Bassène 2021).
    AM is expressed as a peculiar function of a deictic directional morpheme. The primary function of these morphemes is to add a deictic orientation to motion events expressed by motion verbs in a discursive perspective. In this paper, this function will be referred to by the abbreviation DD (for Deictic Direction). This directionality is oriented with respect to a deictic center, usually the speaker.
2. Rarely described in African languages (Voisin 2010, 2013).
    AM is the primary and exclusive function of the verbal suffixes, which are dedicated to the expression of AM meanings.
3. Even much more rare than the preceding ones in African languages (and possibly elsewhere in the languages of the world).
    AM is the primary but non-exclusive meaning of the dynamic deictic morphemes, which can also have a DD function.

ASSOCIATIVE PLURAL
(Grammar) Associative plural constructions consist of a noun X (typically of human reference, usually a person's name or a kin term) and some other material, most often an affix, a clitic, or a word. The meaning of the construction is 'X and other people associated with X'.
 An example is Japanese Tanaka-tachi 'Tanaka and his associates'.
 The reader may have come across various other terms in the literature for the associative plural and related constructions, such as Delbrück's elliptical dual (1893), Jespersen's approximative plural (1965), the term plural a potiori used in Indo-European and Semitic studies, and the label репрезентативная множественность 'representativnaja mnozžestvennost' (representative plural) employed by Russian Orientalists. | Michael Daniel and Edith Moravcsik, 2013

ASYMMETRIC OVERLAP HYPOTHESIS
(Phonology) X and Y can be asymmetrically misperceived if they have an asymmetric acoustic overlap, meaning X overlaps with Y in acoustic space more than Y overlaps with X. | Ollie Sayeed, 2023

ASYMMETRY OF TIME
(Semantics) Because language unfolds in time, which flows asymmetrically from the past to the future, comprehenders get access to information in a way that is ordered. | Alexandros Kalomoiros, 2023

ASYNDETON
(Grammar) From Greek ἀσύνδετον 'not bound together'. The joining together of syntactic units without a conjunction. E.g.:

1. I'm tired, I'm hungry.
2. I'm exhausted, I've walked twenty miles.

AT-ISSUE MEANING
(Semantics) We will call the "literal", "surface" meaning of a sentence the at-issue meaning of the sentence. The main, literal meaning of the sentence is the at-issue meaning, because that's the main "issue" being discussed. "Issue" here just means 'topic of discussion', and not something negative like 'problem'. | Catherine Anderson, Bronwyn Bjorkman, Derek Denis, Julianne Doner, Margaret Grant, Nathan Sanders, and Ai Taniguchi, 2022

ATB
See ACROSS-THE-BOARD.

ATELIC
See TELICITY.

ATTENTIONAL LOAD HYPOTHESIS
(Cognitive) When little attention is required to solve a set task, inputs associated with distractor stimuli "leak through" and cause disruption. But when the task is difficult, attention is totally occupied, leaving nothing left over (to attend to distractors). | Zoya Bylinskii, 2014

ATTITUDINAL
(Semantics) Or, affective, or, emotive. Antonyms, cognitive, referential. A term sometimes used as part of a classification of types of meaning: it refers to the emotional element in meaning, as in the different attitudes expressed by varying the intonation or loudness of a sentence, e.g. anger, sarcasm. In the context of prosody, attitudinal meaning is usually distinguished from grammatical meaning. | David Crystal, 2008

ATTRACTIO INVERSA

1. (Grammar) Or, inverse attraction. A species of solecism, in which an antecedent is declined for the case of its relative pronoun, contrary to the antecedent's syntactic function.
   1. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
   2. Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.
   
    The antecedent (underlined) in (1a) is syntactically the object of the verb let, but it is declined for the case of the relative who which follows it. The phrase's grammatical form is (1b). | Wiktionary, 2024
2. (Stylistics; Syntax) How conscious Roman poets were that a syntactic pattern was archaic rather than simply part of an established poetic language is often difficult to determine, but the isolation of some examples of archaism must point to deliberate selection for effect, as in (1).
   1. urbem quam statuo vestra est (Virg. Aen. 1.573)
      'the city which I set is yours'
   
    This is an instance of so-called attractio inversa, which may be seen as a continuation of an inherited Indo-European pattern for restrictive relatives with the head incorporated into the relative clause. The pattern is well attested in early Latin:
   2. eunuchum quem dedisti nobis, quas turbas dedit! (Terence, Eun. 653)
      'the eunuch whom thou hast given us, which multitudes he hath given!'
   3. agrum quem vir habet tollitur (Cato, Or. fr 3,2)
      'the land which the man has is taken away'
   4. ab arbore abs terra pulli qui nascentur, eos in terram deprimito (id., de agr. 51)
      'the chicks that are born from the tree from the ground, by lowering them to the ground'
   
    The pattern is even extended, though rarely, to appositive clauses:
   5. Naucratem quem convenire volui in navi non erat (Plautus, Am. 1009)
      'The sailor I wanted to meet was not on board'
   
    It is, however, apparently found nowhere else in classical poetry or prose, and it seems a safe conclusion that the stately archaism is deliberately selected to emphasize the solemn pronouncement.
    A distinction is sometimes made between a relative clause with embedded nucleus (i.e. what might traditionally be taken to be the antecedent is incorporated into the relative clause and takes its case from that) and attractio inversa, where it is assumed that the antecedent is extracted from the main clause and fronted, with attraction to the case of the relative pronoun; so there would be a difference between the two sentences from Cato, with ab arbore abs terra pulli qui nascentur, eos ... as an example of an embedded nucleus, and agrum quem vir habet, tollitur as an example of attractio inversa; I follow Hettrich (1988) in regarding the distinction as unnecessary in such instances. | J.H.W. Penney, 1999

ATTRIBUTIVE COMPOUND
(Syntax) An endocentric compound that consists of a non-head (a modifier), e.g. tennis, and a head, e.g. ball, as in (1) (Ingason and Sigurðsson 2020).

1.  tennis ball (a ball for playing tennis)

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