CHIASTIC STRUCTURE
(Stylistics) Or, chiastic pattern, or, ring structure. A literary structure used in ancient literatures including epic poetry (Odyssey and Iliad), scripture (the Torah, the Bible), as well as in the texts of other pre-modern cultures' texts. Concepts or ideas are placed in a special symmetric order or pattern in a chiastic structure to emphasize them.
 For example, suppose that the first topic in a text is labeled by A, the second topic is labeled by B and the third topic is labeled by C. If the topics in the text appear in the order ABC ... CBA so that the first concept that comes up is also the last, the second is the second to last, and so on, the text is said to have a chiastic structure. Also, a chiastic structure can be of the form ABBAABB ... ABBA. | Wikipedia, 2011

CHILD-DIRECTED SPEECH
(Acquisition) Or, motherese, or, baby talk. Research on different speech registers, so far mainly the domain of sociolinguistics (Coupland and Giles 1988), has focussed on the linguistic and pragmatic features of speech accommodation. In this context, researchers have emphasised the similarities between speech addressed to small children (child-directed speech, henceforth CDS) and speech addressed to adult interlocutors with limited cognitive or linguistic capacity (elderspeak and foreigner talk or foreigner-directed speech, henceforth FDS) (Kemper, Ferrell, Harden, Finter-Urczyk, and Billington 1998, Coupland, Giles, and Benn 1986, DePaulo and Coleman 1986). CDS, FDS, and elderspeak share such features as reduced grammatical complexity, lower propositional density, an increase of repetitions, clarifications, simplifications, and elaborations (DePaulo and Coleman 1986, Kemper, Vandeputte, Rice, Cheung, and Gubarchuk 1995). However, one of the main characteristics of CDS is its unique prosody.
 The unique prosodic features of CDS comprise elevated pitch, a wider pitch range and slower speech rate. They are thought to have evolved in order to manipulate infant attention and arousal (Fernald 1993), in particular when physical distances have to be bridged (Falk 2004). Moreover, there is evidence that the prosodic features of CDS facilitate the task of language learning by providing cues for syntactic constituents (Morgan and Demuth 1996). | Sonja Biersack, Vera Kempe, and Lorna Knapton, 2005

CHOMSKY HIERARCHY

1. (Formal Languages) The Chomsky Hierarchy (Chomsky 1956) divides all logically possible patterns into nested regions of complexity. Each of these regions has multiple mathematical definitions that enable any machine or algorithm to generate the strings comprising the pattern (Harrison 1978, Hopcroft, Motwani, and Ullman 2006 [2001]). Also, each region specifically distinguishes abstract, structural properties of grammars: e.g., a machine with finitely many internal states can recognize patterns belonging to only the regular region. Phonological patterns belong to the regular region in this hierarchy (Johnson 1972, Kaplan and Kay 1994). Heinz (2010) further shows that phonotactic patterns in natural languages inhabit proper subsets within the regular region. These patterns are Strictly-Local (SL), Strictly-Piecewise (SP), and Non-Counting (NC or Locally Testable with Order) patterns (Heinz, 2010, Heinz & Rogers 2013, McNaughton and Papert 1971, Rogers et al. 2010, Rogers & Pullum 2011). | Enes Avcu, 2019
2. (Formal Languages) Places regular (or linear) languages as a subset of the context-free languages, which in turn are embedded within the set of context-sensitive languages also finally residing in the set of unrestricted or recursively enumerable languages. By defining syntax as the set of rules that define the spatial relationships between the symbols of a language, various levels of language can be also described as one-dimensional (regular or linear), two-dimensional (context-free), three-dimensional (context sensitive) and multi-dimensional (unrestricted) relationships. From these beginnings, Chomsky might well be described as the "father of formal languages". | John A. Lee, 1995

CHUNK

1. (Computational) In chunking, we carry out segmentation and labeling of multi-token sequences. The smaller boxes [in a figure not shown here] show word-level segmentation and labeling, while the large boxes show higher-level segmentation and labeling. It is these larger pieces that we will call chunks, and the process of identifying them is called chunking. | Steven Bird, Ewan Klein, and Edward Loper, 2008
2. (Computational) Or, shallow parsing, or, light parsing. An analysis of a sentence which first identifies constituent parts of sentences (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.) and then links them to higher order units that have discrete grammatical meanings (noun groups or phrases, verb groups, etc.). While the most elementary chunking algorithms simply link constituent parts on the basis of elementary search patterns (e.g., as specified by regular expressions), approaches that use machine learning techniques (classifiers, topic modeling, etc.) can take contextual information into account and thus compose chunks in such a way that they better reflect the semantic relations between the basic constituents (Jurasky and Martin 2000). That is, these more advanced methods get around the problem that combinations of elementary constituents can have different higher level meanings depending on the context of the sentence.
    It is a technique widely used in natural language processing. It is similar to the concept of lexical analysis for computer languages. Under the name shallow structure hypothesis, it is also used as an explanation for why second language learners often fail to parse complex sentences correctly (Clahsen and Harald 2006). | Wikipedia, 2021
3. (Syntax) E.g., idiom chunks, such as too much in too much has been made of this problem. | ?

CHUNKING

1. (Computational) A generalization of tagging in which a contiguous sequence of words is assigned a single tag. | Steven Bird, Ewan Klein, and Edward Loper, 2006
2. (Acquisition) What's the next letter in a sentence beginning T? You know it is much more likely to be h, or a vowel, than it is z or other consonants. You know it couldn't be q. But I'll warrant you have never been taught this.
    What is the first word in that sentence? You are likely to plump for the, or that, rather than thinks or theosophy. If The, how does it continue? "With an adjective or noun," you might reply. If The cat, then what? And then again, complete The cat sat on the __.
    Fluent native speakers know a tremendous amount about the sequences of language at all grains. We know how letters tend to co-occur (common bigrams, trigrams, and other orthographic regularities). We know the phonotactics of our tongue. We know phrase structure regularities. We know thousands of concrete collocations, and we know abstract generalizations that derive from them. We have learned to chunk letters, sounds, morphemes, words, phrases, clauses, bits of cooccurring language at all levels. | Nick C. Ellis, 2001

CIRCUMBOUNDED

1. (Semantics) Most theories of scalar quantifiers, of whatever persuasion, assume a lexical lower-bound-only, "at least" meaning for scalar quantifiers, offering pragmatic or grammatical mechanisms for deriving the upper bound (Carston 1995, Chierchia 2004, Horn 1972, a.o.). I have challenged the lower-bound analysis in Ariel (2004), proposing instead a circumbounded analysis for quantifier most, where the upper bound too is lexically specified. | Mira Ariel, 2015
2. (Semantics) 
   1.  Some (of the) students passed the exam.
      1.  Truth-conditional interpretation: Some, and possibly all, of the students passed the exam.
      2.  (Secondary) Implicature: Not all of the students passed the exam.
      3.  Strengthened meaning: Some but not all of the students passed the exam.
   2.  John ate some (of the) cookies.
      1.  Truth-conditional interpretation: John ate some, and possibly all, of the cookies.
      2.  (Secondary) Implicature: John did not eat all of the cookies.
      3.  Strengthened meaning: John ate some but not all of the cookies.
    Sentences like (1) and (2) when uttered, are usually interpreted with an additional upper-bounded meaning component as in (1b) and (2b), which results in a circumbounded interpretation of the determiner, as in (1c) and (2c). | Ioannis-Andronikos Rachmanis, 2023

CISLOCATIVE
See VENITIVE.

CLADISTICS
(Evolution) From the ancient Greek κλάδος, 'branch'. The hierarchical classification of species based on phylogeny or evolutionary ancestry. The term phylogenetics is often used synonymously with cladistics. Cladistics is distinguished from other taxonomic systems because it focuses on the evolutionary relationships of species rather than on morphological similarities, which may be convergent, and because it places heavy emphasis on objective, quantitative analysis.
 Cladistics originated in the work of the German entomologist Willi Hennig, who himself referred to it as phylogenetic systematics; the use of the terms cladistics and clade was popularized by other researchers. Cladistics originated in the field of biology but in recent years has found application in other disciplines. | Fossil Wiki, ?

CLADOGRAM
(Evolution) Cladistics generates diagrams called cladograms that represent the evolutionary tree of life. | New World Encyclopedia, 2017

CLASSIFIER

1. (Grammar) A term used for a variety of elements whose function can somehow be described as that of assigning linguistic expressions to classes.
    In Chinese (1), unless the noun itself denotes a unit of a measurement (e.g. nián 'year'), it must be preceded by a classifier when it occurs with a numeral or a demonstrative.
   1. yí
      one

      gè
      CL

      qiú
      ball

      'one ball'
    | Glottopedia, 2014
2. (Grammar) Or, measure word, or, counter word. Abbreviated CLF (Leipzig Glossing Rules) or CL. A word or affix that accompanies nouns and can be considered to classify a noun depending on some characteristics (e.g. humanness, animacy, sex, shape, social status) of its referent (Aikhenvald 2000). Classifiers in this sense are specifically called noun classifiers because some languages in Papua as well as the Americas have verbal classifiers which categorize the referent of its argument (Aikhenvald 2000, 2019).
    In languages that have classifiers, they are often used when the noun is being counted, that is, when it appears with a numeral. In such languages, a phrase such as three people is often required to be expressed as three X (of) people, where X is a classifier appropriate to the noun for people. Classifiers that appear next to a numeral or a quantifier are particularly called numeral classifiers (Aikhenvald 2000). They play an important role in certain languages, especially East and Southeast Asian languages (Enfield 2018), including Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese.
    Numeral classifiers may have other functions too; in Chinese, they are commonly used when a noun is preceded by a demonstrative (word meaning 'this' or 'that'). Some Asian languages like Zhuang, Hmong and Cantonese use bare classifier constructions where a classifier is attached without numerals to a noun for definite reference; the latter two languages also extend numeral classifiers to the possessive classifier construction where they behave as a possessive marker connecting a noun to another noun that denotes the possessor (Matthews 2007).
    Possessive classifiers are usually used in accord with semantic characteristics of the possessed noun and less commonly with the relation between the possessed and the possessor (Aikhenvald 2000, 2019) although possessor classifiers are reported in a few languages (e.g. Dâw) (Aikhenvald 2000).
    Classifiers are absent or marginal in European languages. An example of a possible classifier in English is piece in phrases like three pieces of paper. In American Sign Language, particular classifier handshapes represent a noun's orientation in space. | Wikipedia, 2024

CLAUSAL ARGUMENT
(Syntax) A complex puzzle in syntactic analysis is the distribution of clausal arguments, and in particular of those which can be preceded by an overt pronoun or determiner (generally a definite article, a demonstrative pronoun or a personal pronoun). From a cross-linguistic perspective, the presence of determiners introducing clauses is well attested (e.g. Roussou 1991, Hartman 2012, Kim and Sag 2005, Delicado Cantero 2013, Pietraszko 2019, Jahromi 2011, De Cuba and Ürögdi 2010, a.o.). A typical example of this phenomenon is pronoun it in English, which is able to surface before clausal subjects (1) and clausal direct objects (2):

1. It is important [that you send this document as soon as possible].
2. I heard it [that Sandra moved out].

3. [That you send this document as soon as possible] is important.
4. I heard [that Sandra moved out].

CLAUSAL ARGUMENT ELLIPSIS
(Syntax) It has been observed that argument ellipsis can target not only nominal arguments but also clausal arguments (Shinohara 2006, Saito 2007, Tanaka 2008, Takita 2010). The example in (1) contains a missing embedded clause, which takes the embedded clause of (1b) as its antecedent.

1. Japanese
   a.
    

   Mary-wa
   Mary-TOP

   [_CP
    

   zibun-no
   self-GEN

   iken-ga
   idea-NOM

   tadasii
   correct

   to]
   C

   omotteiru.
   think

     'lit. Mary₁ thinks [that self₁'s idea is correct].'
   b.
    

   John-wa
   John-TOP

   Δ
    

   omotteinai.
   not.think

     'lit. John₂ does not think Δ.' (Δ = [that self_1/2's idea is correct])

CLAUSAL ELLIPSIS
(Syntax) Involves the omission of a whole clause in which a single constituent is left as remnant (Van Craenenbroeck and Merchant 2013). Clausal ellipsis is a general expression that covers different subcategories of this type of ellipsis. Two categories are:

1. Sluicing: Clausal deletion of a complete wh-interrogative clause in which the only element that survives the reduction is the wh-expression (Vicente 2019).
2. Fragment answers: Utterances answering a question in which nearly all the elements that contribute to a clause are elided, leaving a single constituent as the answer to the question (Gengel 2007). They are constituents which replace the wh-word of the preceding question. These utterances can be produced to make assertions and can be identified as true or false, in other words, they are usually employed to convey propositional meaning (Hall 2019).

CLAUSAL ELLIPTICAL CONSTRUCTION
(Syntax) Fragment answers represent 67.50% of the total number of clausal elliptical constructions in Brendan Behan's 1964 play The Hostage. It is the most common subvariety of clausal ellipsis contributing to the cohesion of the dramatic work. From 40 occurrences of clausal ellipsis, 27 correspond to fragment answers such as the ones in (1) and (2).

1. "Who the hell was that?" – "<That was> My mother." (p. 115)
2. "What language is she talking?" – "<She's talking> Italian." (p. 161)

3. Why did they never play the grand old operas now, he asked, Dinorah, Lucrezia Borgia? Because they could not get the voices to sing them: that was why <they never played the grand old operas now Dinorah, Lucrezia Borgia>. (p. 143)

4. "What age is he?" – "<He is> nineteen." (p. 79)
5. "Who's playing up there?" – "Nobody <is playing up there>." (p. 186)

CLAUSAL LEFT PERIPHERY

1. (Syntax) On the basis of empirical evidence drawn mainly from Italian, French and English, Rizzi (1997) developed a first articulated structure of the clausal left periphery along the lines of (1).
   1. [_ForceP [_TopP [_FocP [_TopP [_FinP TP] ] ] ] ]
    In addition to the Force projection, ForceP, which encodes illocutionary force and the Finiteness projection, FinP, which encodes finiteness, there are two projections, TopP and FocP, which are associated with specific discourse functions and are only present when these functions are activated. Topic projections can be iterated, accounting for multiple instances of Clitic Left Dislocation in Romance. As for FocP, the hypothesis is that it can only be activated once in a single C field. Rizzi (1997) accounts for the uniqueness of FocP in terms of interpretation while Haegeman (2012) provides an explanation based on intervention. In later work, Rizzi has argued for additional projections, including ModP (Rizzi 2014) for left peripheral adjuncts, as well as IntP (Rizzi 2001) activated in polar questions. | Marc Authier and Liliane Haegeman, 2018
2. (Syntax) Following Rizzi (1997), the CP domain at the left edge of the clause consists of multiple functional projections (or series thereof). These projections host diverse phrase-initial XPs that are in some sense peripheral to rather than part and parcel of the clause as traditionally defined. For Old French, a similar idea appeared in Skårup (1975), whose model of the Medieval Romance clause appears in (1). Following Diderichsen's positional syntax (e.g., 1957), Skårup posits a series of zones: the verbal zone hosts the finite verb and corresponds descriptively to the second position, and the preverbal zone corresponds to the first position. Importantly, the preverbal zone is preceded by the extraposition zone, which could host XPs that Skårup considered to be outside the clause proper ("hors de la proposition") but nonetheless attached to the following clause.
   1. [Extraposition] [Preverbal zone (=fondement)] [VERBAL ZONE] [Postverbal zone]
    | Bryan Donaldson, 2012

CLAUSAL PRO-FORM
(Grammar) German is known for having different constructions with a pronominal element relating to a sentence-internal dependent clause; cf. (1-5). The term clausal pro-form will be used to refer to such pronominal elements.

1. Maria
   Maria

   hat
   has

   es
   it

   stets
   always

   bedauert,
   regretted

   dass
   that

   Peter
   Peter

   berühmt
   famous

   ist.
   is

   'Maria has always regretted that Peter is famous.'
2. Maria
   Maria

   hat
   has

   es
   it

   behauptet,
   claimed

   dass
   that

   Peter
   Peter

   berühmt
   famous

   ist.
   is

   'Maria claimed that Peter is famous.'
3. Maria
   Maria

   hat
   has

   sich
   REFL

   darüber
   about-that

   gewundert,
   wondered

   dass
   that

   Peter
   Peter

   berühmt
   famous

   ist.
   is

   'Maria was surprised that Peter is famous.'
4. Maria
   Maria

   ist
   is

   darum
   therefore

   der
   the

   Einladung
   invitation

   gefolgt,
   followed

   weil
   because

   der
   the

   Gastgeber
   host

   berühmt
   famous

   ist.
   is

   'Maria accepted the invitation because the host is famous.'
5. Maria
   Maria.ACC

   hat
   has

   es
   it

   überrascht,
   surprised

   dass
   that

   Peter
   Peter

   berühmt
   famous

   ist.
   is

   'It surprised Maria that Peter is famous.'

CLAUSAL SUBJECT
(Grammar) A clausal syntactic subject of a clause; i.e., the subject is itself a clause. The governor of this relation might not always be a verb: when the verb is a copular verb, the root of the clause is the complement of the copular verb. The dependent is the main lexical verb or other predicate of the subject clause. In the following examples, what she said (that is, said) is the clausal subject of makes and interesting, respectively.

1. What she said makes sense.
2. What she said is interesting.
3. What she said was well received.

Page Last Modified September 13, 2024

 

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