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)

Page Created By Split April 11, 2026

 

B a c k   T o   I n d e x