DIACHRONIC CONSTRUCTION GRAMMAR

1. (Grammar) In which the objects of study are constructions and how they change over time. | Martin Hilpert, 2021
2. (Grammar) A field of cognitive linguistics which takes a construction grammatical theoretical perspective to the study of linguistic change and which descriptively traces the development of constructions and constructicons. | Dirk Noël and Timothy Colleman, 2021

DIACHRONIC CONVENTIONALIZATION
(Sociolinguistics) Here, we come from a diachronic perspective and look at possible long-term effects of interaction within a linguistic community, which we refer to as conventionalization. Conventionalization is considered a prerequisite for innovation (De Smet 2016) and a relevant component process in long-term, persistent change, as in grammaticalization (i.e. the transformation of lexical to grammatical items; Bybee 2010, Schmid 2015).
 Effects of innovation and conventionalization are encountered, e.g., at the lexico-grammatical level, where items may leave their traditional contexts and acquire new (grammatical) functions or converge on one function over time. A specific example is examined in De Smet's study (2016) of the noun key, showing how it moved to other contexts and adopted different functions and ultimately came to be used as predicative adjective. The more general mechanism proposed by De Smet is that for innovation to occur, items need first to be conventionalized in one grammatical context, thus improving their retrievability, and subsequently become available in different, yet closely related grammatical contexts. | Elke Teich, Peter Fankhauser, Stefania Degaetano-Ortlieb, and Yuri Bizzoni, 2021
See Also GRAMMATICALIZATION.

DIACHRONIC ELLIPSIS MISMATCH
(Grammar) The expression X is derived from the source expression Y through ellipsis as a result of diachronic change/grammaticalization, but X and Y differ in their syntax and semantics. We identify four such cases in Japanese:

1. Existential indeterminates, which are derived from adjunct wh-questions: dare-ka, dare-ka-sira, dare-da-ka, dare-yara. 'someone'
2. Free choice indeterminates, which are derived from unconditionals: dare-de-mo, dare-datte, dare-darooga, dare-nisiro, dare-niseyo. 'anyone'
3. Comparative indeterminates, which are also derived from unconditionals: dare-yori(-mo). 'than anyone'
4. Nominal disjunctions, which are derived from adjunct alternative questions: A-ka, B(-ka), A-da-ka, B-da-ka. 'A or B'

DIACHRONIC FOSSIL
(Historical) Fossilization is a trend towards the freezing-up, the coagulation into a rigid form of one or more otherwise viable items. Evidence for the rigidity of fossils can be found in the inability of these forms to undergo rules which they would undergo if they were not fossilized. A diachronic fossil is an item for which the form it is derived from can be shown to have been a non-fossil in a stage of the language previous to the fossilization of the item in question.
 In Old French, voir was used in the sense of 'look' as well as in the sense of 'see'. Due to homonymy voir could be imperativized.

1.  Ves moi chi (Courtois d'Arras, v. 610)
    'see me here'

2.  Me voici!
    'Here I am!'

3. a. Voyez-cy le contract! (Rabelais, I, 32)
     'see here the contract'
   b. * Voyez-ci, Mesdames et Messieurs, le président de notre club, M. Mediterrannée.
   c. Voici, Mesdames et Messieurs, le président de notre club, M. Mediterrannée.
     'Here is, Ladies and Gentlemen, the president of our club, Mr. M.'

4. a. Viva la patria!
     'Long live our country!'
   b. Viva i nostri soldati!
     'Long live our soldiers!'

DIACONSTRUCTION

1. (Diasystematic Construction Grammar) It has to be expected that categorization as a cognitively economic process does include all languages (and dialects, of course) in any situation in which the available input is multilingual, too. Interlingual identification, therefore, is categorization in very much the prototypical Construction Grammar sense: similar constructions in two different languages are taken to instantiate a common diaconstruction. | Steffen Höder, 2012
2. (Diasystematic Construction Grammar) The following ideas, which are relevant to the integration of multilingual structures, are generally agreed upon in Construction Theory:
   1. Constructions are linguistic elements that pair form with meaning (i.e. lexical meaning or grammatical function); any grammar can be described as an inventory of such constructions, covering all levels of the language system, including syntax, morphology, lexicon, and more.
   2. Some constructions are lexically or phonologically filled (such as words or morphs), while others are partially filled (for example in inflectional paradigms) and yet others are maximally schematic (such as syntactic or prosodic constructions).
   3. Constructions with different degrees of schematicity are interconnected through inheritance links within a constructional network, reflecting the fact that some constructions are productive and rule-based, while others are not predictable from more abstract structures.
   4. Speakers acquire schematic constructions on the basis of the available input, via processes of abstraction, generalization, and categorization in order to achieve a cognitively economic representation.
    In Höder (2012), I have argued that there is no a priori reason why these usage-based processes should be sensitive to (let alone be blocked by) language boundaries in multilingual environments. From a Construction Grammar perspective, one should rather expect them to involve all linguistic structures the speakers are exposed to, independently of their belonging to one language or the other. Furthermore, one should expect that the establishment and acquisition of multilingual constructions is limited only by the possibilities of formal and/or functional categorization. Cross-linguistic categorization is thus tantamount to the contact linguistic notion of interlingual identification (Weinreich 1964), i.e. the establishment of functional or formal equivalence between elements of different languages by multilingual speakers. This process eventually allows for the construction of linguistic diasystems, consisting of interconnected language-specific constructions and language-unspecific diaconstructions. | Steffen Höder, 2014

DIAGLOSSIA
(Sociolinguistics) Auer (2005) offers a typology of contemporary European dialect/standard constellations. He observes that in many European language areas, dialect/standard diglossia has given way to a situation with intermediate variants located between the standard and base dialects. He uses the notion of diaglossia to conceptualize this situation in which the dichotomy implied by the concept of diglossia is replaced by an almost fuzzy continuum of variants which are neither distinctly dialectal nor standard, and which can differ in the extent to which they resemble base dialect forms on the one hand, and standard forms on the other. Such intermediate forms are referred to with the terms diaglossia and diaglossic reportoire instead of perhaps more common terms such as regiolect and regional dialect, because "the implication [of the morpheme -lect] that we are dealing with a separate variety is not necessarily justified." It makes more sense to think of the space between base dialect and standard as a continuum with non-discrete intermediate structures, and with a "good degree of levelling between the base dialects [...] which at the same time implies advergence to the standard."
 In Europe today, Auer continues, diaglossic repertoires are found everywhere, from Norway to Cyprus and from Poland to Spain. As a typological label, diaglossia is not an empirically observable phenomenon but a concept applied to an analysis of linguistic variants in use. It is a general description of the varietal spectrum available to language users in a specific community at a given place and time. | Gijsbert Rutten, 2016

DIALECT CLUSTER

1. (Sociolinguistics) In other situations, a closely related group of varieties possess considerable (though incomplete) mutual intelligibility, but none dominates the others. To describe this situation, the editors of the Handbook of African Languages (2012) introduced the term dialect cluster as a classificatory unit at the same level as a language. A similar situation, but with a greater degree of mutual unintelligibility, has been termed a language cluster (Hansford, Bendor-Samuel, and Stanford 1976).
    In the Language Survey Reference Guide issued by SIL International, who produce Ethnologue, a dialect cluster is defined as a central variety together with a collection of varieties whose speakers can understand the central variety at a specified threshold level (usually between 70% and 85%) or higher. It is not required that peripheral varieties be understood by speakers of the central variety or of other peripheral varieties. A minimal set of central varieties providing coverage of a dialect continuum may be selected algorithmically from intelligibility data (Grimes 1995). | Wikipedia, 2024
2. (Sociolinguistics) In a discussion on interpreting intelligibility scores, Joseph Grimes (1995) asserts that a threshold of 85% comprehension is needed before any group of speech varieties can be considered varieties of a single language; scores between 70–85% indicate that comprehension is marginal.

   At threshold levels high enough to guarantee good communication from the central dialect to its periphery (usually 85% or above), it is reasonable to speak of the dialect cluster as a single language from the linguistic point of view. Speech varieties that come together at only 70% or below are too distinct to qualify as the same language. In between, 70% to 85%, is an area of marginal intelligibility where some communication is satisfactory and some is not. The threshold depends on the risk associated with not communicating well; the final criteria are not purely linguistic. (Grimes 1995)

    | Michael Ayotte and Melinda Lamberty, 2002

DIALECT COMPETITION
(Examples)
○ A social network strength factor (Hirano 2011) with adjusted technique showed the dynamic result, that certain groups of people with particular qualities resisted conforming to BKK Thai pressure. Thus, the [h] variant may receive a social meaning as a covert prestige form (Labov 2006, Trudgill 1972) rather than a stigmatized form in this dialect competition. | Ko Panyaatisin, 2016
○ The subsequent reduction in the frequency of mais [in 13th-century French] is not accompanied by a reduction in the basic types of verbal construction it can occur in. The possibility remains that dialect competition may have been a factor. As stated above, however, I have found no indication in the literature of different preferences for either plus or mais in different langue d'oïl dialects. | Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen, 2013
○ In focussing this was / weren't pattern (of English past tense be), a number of the processes typical of koinéization can be observed:

• Diffusion: The geographical and/or social spread of a linguistic form from another socio-geographic place.
• Levelling: The eradication of marked or minority forms in situations of dialect competition, where the number of variants in the output is dramatically reduced from the number in the input.
• Simplification: A relative diminution of grammatical irregularity and redundance.
• Reallocation: Where two or more ingredient variants of the of the dialect mix are refunctionalized to serve new social, stylistic, or grammatical roles.

• Ah set me dahn e-milking / On Chrestmas-tide at neet, / When t' warld semm'd still an quiet / An gooan war t' waning leet; / All t' beeasts i' booist an' stanning / Contented ate their hay, ... By Douglas Charlesworth.
• Aw like owd stuff; / Mi ancient coit, an' seeasoned pipe; / T'owd walking stick 'at t' wife wunce bowt, / When we wor young an' ripe. ... By A. Farnell.
• Aye! bonny flaar, tha'rt t' first aw've seen, / Who cud a thowt that tha'd a been / Wakken bi naah, an' t' wind ser keen! / Aw felt fair capp'd / As soon as ivver aw had me een / Upon tha clapp'd. ... By the Rev. Harry Shaw.

DIALECT LEVELING

1. (Sociolinguistics) An overall reduction in the variation or diversity of a dialect's features when in contact with one or more other dialects (Hickey 2013). This can come about through assimilation, mixture, and merging of certain dialects, often amidst a process of language codification, which can be a precursor to standardization. One possible result is a koine language, in which various specific dialects mix together and simplify, settling into a new and more widely embraced form of the language. Another is a speech community increasingly adopting or exclusively preserving features with widespread social currency at the expense of their more local or traditional dialect features (Britain 2010).
    Dialect leveling has been observed in most languages with large numbers of speakers after industrialization and modernization of the areas in which they are spoken. However, while less common, it could be observed in pre-industrial times too, especially in colonial dialects like American and Australian English or when sustained linguistic contact between different dialects over a large geographical area continues for long enough as in the Hellenistic world that produced Koine Greek as a result of dialect leveling from Ancient Greek dialects. | Wikipedia, 2024
2. (Sociolinguistics) Contact-induced linguistic accommodation commonly involves several well-defined linguistic processes and outcomes. First and foremost is leveling, the reduction in either the number of linguistic variants or the magnitude of variation among variants. The competition between two forms that mean the same thing, such as two lexical items, often results in the loss of one form and the retention of the other. In many but not all cases, the "winning" variant is more frequent in the initial population of speakers; for example, Trudgill et al. (2000) propose that the survival of [h] (rather than its deletion), as in hammer in New Zealand English, is due to the fact that it was more common than [h] deletion overall in the contributing dialects. A related tendency is for the "losing" variant(s) to be marked in some way, that is, associated with a particular geographic area or social group (Moag 1977, Trudgill 1986, Kerswill and Williams 2000). Perceptual salience may also boost a variant's chances of surviving the leveling process in the absence of an initial majority variant (Kerswill and Williams 2002). | Robin Dodsworth, 2017

DIALECTAL COLORING
(Examples)
○ All dialogs are in Standard German, with dialectal coloring for some speakers of Swabian origin. All subjects were females between 20 and 30 years of age, mostly students. They were paid for each dialog they participated in. | Antje Schweitzer, Natalie Lewandowski, Daniel Duran, Grzegorz Dogil, 2015
○ Like those epigrams, the Anacreontic carmina were composed over many centuries by different authors with different goals and, inevitably, conceptions of the form. Moreover, they seem to have reached the manuscripts in which they are ultimately preserved via a series of now-lost syllogae organized according to different editorial practices and goals, and there are objective grounds for suspecting that some aspects of their dialectal coloring has been altered in the course of transmission. | Alexander Sens, 2014
○ A fundamental difference between the two western productions lies in the quality of secondary long vowels, which—in accordance with the Syracusan dialect —are closed (ει, ου) in Archimedes, but open (η, ω) in Philolaus and Archytas (Thumb and Kieckers 1932). As is often the case, we cannot be sure of whether the dialectal coloring of such texts is authentic or due to later editing (not an unlikely event in the case of Pythagorean literature). | Olga Tribulato, 2010
○ I would like to show that the poet of Job incorporates Aramaic linguistic elements not only for dialectal coloring but also for more acute and specific rhetorical effects and that the Aramaizing of the poet can be discerned not only in the lexicon, but in the phonology, morphology, and syntax of the language as well. | Edward Greenstein, 2004
○ 70 speakers were selected from the RVGI corpus. The selection procedure was the following: First all speakers were excluded which had judged their own variant as "Standard German". 10 speakers (5 male, 5 female) of each region were selected from the remaining subset which showed strong dialectal coloring of their pronunciation. This judgement was performed by one of the authors by listening to the monologues. | Felix Schaeffler and Robert Summers, 1999
○ Among the factors influential in the formulation of a standard [language] was the printing press. It has been assumed in the past that printers were particularly concerned to avoid dialectal coloring in order to have the widest possible market for their books. This assumption is refuted by Arno Schirokauer in his article, "Der Anteil des Buchdrucks an der Bildung des Gemeindeutschen" (1951), where he points out, first, that printers concentrated largely on the local market and were not interested in taking the risks involved in export; and second, that readers of the day were not disturbed by dialectal peculiarities. | Marion Lois Huffines, 1974

DIALECTAL COMPETENCE
(Examples)
○ The goal of our research was to analyze self-assessment of dialectal competence and external assessment of dialectal competence (both subjective measures), and to identify patterns in the interaction of the two. | Astrid Adler, Karolina Hansen, and Maria Ribeiro Silveira, 2022
○ Then the results of the survey are presented as they relate to the dialectal competence of the respondents and their everyday language use[.] ... The map shows the expected regional differences between North and South (the darker an area is colored, the higher the average dialectal competence indicated). | Albrecht Plewnia, 2022
○ This event-related potential (ERP) study examines the influence of dialectal competence differences (merged vs. unmerged dialect group) on cross-dialectal comprehension between Southern German dialects. ... The results reveal first ERP evidence for cross-dialectal misunderstanding when speakers from the merged area use the /o͡a/-diphthong stemming from MHG ô. No similar effects could be detected for the phonetically related /o͡ʊ/-phoneme. The empirically observable change of /o͡a/ to either /o͡ʊ/ or /oː/ in the Bavarian-Alemannic transition zone can thus be interpreted as a strategy to avoid costly communication difficulties in close dialect contact settings. Insofar, dialectal competence differences resulting in enhanced neural processing costs can indeed trigger dialect change in order to facilitate successful cross-dialectal communication. | Manuela Lanwermeyer, Karen Henrich, Marie J. Rocholl, et al., 2016
○ The highly localized communicative relations that originally dominated have given way to a regionalization of communication, especially in rural areas, a trend which accelerated in the 20th century. From a linguistic point of view, this has led and continues to lead to a constant recalibration of differences in dialectal competence in regionally shaped speech acts (i.e., mesosynchronization). Whilst the use of locally specific forms in communication with speakers of neighboring dialects leads to negative feedback and thus to individual modifications of competence, the regionally dominant forms are understood without difficulty (receive positive feedback) and lead to stabilization of the individual's competence. | Jürgen Erich Schmidt, 2011

DIASTRATIC

1. (Lexicography) Concerned with or relating to the ways in which language varies across social, cultural or educational factors. | Wiktionary, 2024
2. (Sociolinguistics) Refers to variation in language between social classes. | Raymond Hickey, ?
3. (Sociolinguistics; Text) Diastratic variation is variation according to the social class or to the social group to which the authors and recipients of the text feel they belong. | Vanya Micheva, 2018

DIASYSTEM

1. (Dialectology) Or, polylectal grammar. A linguistic analysis set up to encode or represent a range of related varieties in a way that displays their structural differences (Trask 1996, Crystal 2011).
    The term diasystem was coined by linguist and dialectologist Uriel Weinreich in a 1954 paper as part of an initiative in exploring how to extend advances in structuralist linguistic theory to dialectology to explain linguistic variation across dialects. Weinreich's paper inspired research in the late 1950s to test the proposal. However, the investigations soon showed it to be generally untenable, at least under structuralist theory. | Wikipedia, 2023
2. (Diasystematic Construction Grammar) Consisting of interconnected language-specific idioconstructions and language-unspecific diaconstructions.
    The term diasystem was introduced by Weinreich (1954) in his strictly structuralist approach to dialectology in order to account for regular correspondences between different structures in closely related dialects, mostly in the domain of phonology. It is, however, easily extensible so as to apply to other systematic crosslinguistic correspondences as well. | Steffen Höder, 2014
3. (Sociolinguistics) Research in sociolinguistics assumes five dimensions of language variation, the so-called diasystem, that are mutually influential: diaphasic (situation), diamesic (medium), diastratic (social group), diachronic (time), and diatopic (space). | Melis Çelikkol, Lydia Körber, and Wei Zhao, 2024
4. (Sociolinguistics) In order to describe this complex structure of our modern languages, linguists have proposed the model of the diasystem. This model goes back to dialectologist Uriel Weinreich (1926–1967) who originally thought of some linguistic construct which would make it possible to describe different dialects in a uniform way (Weinreich 1954). According to the modern form of the model, a language is a complex aggregate of different linguistic systems, "which coexist and mutually influence each other" (Coseriu 1973, my translation from the German).
    An important aspect for determining a linguistic diasystem is the presence of a Dachsprache ('roof language'). This is a linguistics variety that serves as a standard for interdialectal communication (Goossens 1973). The different linguistic varieties (dialects, but also sociolects) that are connected by such a standard constitute the variety space of a language (Oesterreicher 2001).
    There are different "dimensions" according to which the varieties of a language can differ:
   1. Diatopic varieties, which point to the division of a language into different dialects (varying regarding the place where they are spoken).
   2. Diastratic varieties, pointing to different social layers in which the varieties are used. Compare, for example, the language of a football player with that of a politician, which are similar in their tendency to say nothing in many words (especially after hard defeats or before unpopular decisions to be told to the public), but which differ a lot regarding their choice of words.
   3. Diaphasic varieties, which are varieties depending on the situation in which people speak. Compare, for example, the way our politician speaks when giving a speech to the public with the speech when discussing big politics behind closed doors.
   4. We can further identify different speech habits when looking at the medium that is used to produce language; and there are significant differences in many respects when writing or reading something, or when speaking and listening. This dimension is commonly called diamesic (varying in dependency of the "medium").
   5. We should also note that we do not necessarily speak and understand the language from only one time. Think of modern German kids in school who are forced to read Goethe's Faust, bitterly lamenting the old-fashioned style of the language, but think also about different generations of speakers living in the same speech society. This last dimension of language variety is usually called the diachronic dimension.
   
    | Johann-Matiss List, 2015

DIASYSTEMATIC CONSTRUCTION GRAMMAR
(Grammar) Abbreviated DCxG. In mainstream 20th-century linguistic and grammar theory, multilingualism is usually seen as an exceptional case as opposed to monolingualism, which is seen as the prototypical case. Consequently, language systems are described as monolingual, largely variation-free, and static. On the other hand, contact linguistic research shows that, on a historic and global scale, multilingualism is clearly the rule rather than an exception. While language contact is the normal state of languages, speaker groups, and individual speakers, monolingualism in a narrow sense (i.e. monolectalism) does not even exist: all speakers are multilingual or at least multilectal to some extent, meaning that they use several different (standard) languages or various varieties / dialects productively or receptively to some degree—in other words, speakers utilize a range of linguistic resources in a way that is communicatively adequate.
 Based on these insights, this project aims at developing a socio-cognitively realistic construction grammar approach to multlilingualism and language contact (Diasystematic Construction Grammar). DCxG is normal usage-based construction grammar as applied to language contact situations and works without any additional assumptions. In particular, DCxG assumes that

1. Linguistic knowledge is cognitively stored and processed as constructions.
2. Constructions are pairings of form and function.
3. Linguistic knowledge is organized through domain-general cognitive processes.

DIATHESIS

1. (Grammar) From Greek διάθεσις 'grammatical voice, disposition' (Wikipedia 2020). The sense is that of the role or "placing" of a subject, e.g. as agent in relation to an active V, or as patient or "undergoer" in relation to a passive. | Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics, 2007
2. (Grammar) Or, valency alternation. A sentence structure that reshapes the roles of a verb. The prototypical example of such a diathesis is the well-known passive. However, there are very many other such role-remappings, like antipassives, applicatives, causatives, etc. | Michael Cysouw, 2023
3. (Grammar) Since antiquity, diathesis has been analyzed in linguistic theories as a morphological category of the verb. Consulting the earliest papers, there could be noticed that Greek tradition makes mention of active, passive and middle verbs, whereas in Latin papers we find active and passive verb forms. (There must be said that during this linguistic period the term diathesis could hardly be found. The above mentioned terms referred to the classification of verbs). During the Medieval Age linguists defined the same concept of diathesis. Most of the traditional grammars of many contemporary languages hold the same view, without any significant differences. In traditional Albanian papers diathesis or voice is defined as a morphological category that expresses relations between the verb (the traditional predicate) and the subject. There has been made a division between active and non-active voice. Non-active voice verbs are further divided into: passive, reflexive and middle voice. | Albana Deda and Leonora Lumezi, 2015
4. (Grammar) A grammatical category that shows the relationship between the participant or subject and the action stated by the verb in the clause. In general, the languages of the world have an active-passive diathesis strategy. | Purwanto Siwi and Susi Ekalestari, 2021

DIATHESIS ALTERNATION

1. (Syntax) Regular alternations of the syntactic expression of verbal arguments, sometimes accompanied by a change in meaning. For example:
   1. The man broke the window ↔ The window broke
   
    The syntactic phenomena are triggered by the underlying semantics of the participating verbs. Levin's seminal book (1993) provides a manual inventory both of diathesis alternations (DA) and verb classes where membership is determined according to participation in these alternations. For example, most of the COOK verbs (e.g. bake, cook, fry ... ) can all take various DAs, such as the causative alternation, middle alternation and instrument subject alternation. | Lin Sun, Diana McCarthy, and Anna Korhonen, 2013
2. (Syntax) Examples of diathesis alternation include the following pairs:
   1. a. John loaded the truck with hay.
      b. John loaded hay on the truck.
   2. a. Ann threw the ball to Beth.
      b. Ann threw Beth the ball.
   3. a. John opened the door.
      b. The door opened.
   
    | B.H. Partee, 2005
3. (Syntax) A change in the realization of the argument structure of a verb that is sometimes accompanied by changes in meaning (Levin 1993). The phenomenon in English is illustrated in (1)-(2) below.
   1. a. John offers shares to his employees.
      b. John offers his employees shares.
   2. a. Leave a note for her.
      b. Leave her a note.
   
    Example (1) illustrates the dative alternation, which is characterized by an alternation between the prepositional frame 'V NP1 to NP2' and the double object frame 'V NP1 NP2'. The benefactive alternation (cf. (2)) is structurally similar to the dative, the difference being that it involves the preposition for rather than to.
    Levin (1993) assumes that the syntactic realization of a verb's arguments is directly correlated with its meaning (cf. also Pinker 1989 for a similar proposal). Thus one would expect verbs that undergo the same alternations to form a semantically coherent class. Levin's study on diathesis alternations has influenced recent work on word sense disambiguation (Dorr and Jones 1996), machine translation (Dang et al. 1998), and automatic lexical acquisition (McCarthy and Korhonen 1998, Schulte im Walde 1998). | Maria Lapata, 1999
4. (Syntax) For the purposes of this paper, I take the notion of diathesis alternation in a broad sense, including both familiar alternations of syntactic patterns as in examples (1a-b) and alternations of case assignment, as in the Russian examples (2a-b) and (3a-b).
   1. a.  The farmers loaded the truck with ( *? the / *? some ) hay.
      b.  The farmers loaded (the / some) hay on the truck.
   2. a.
       

      On
      He

      ždet
      waits

      podrugu.
      girlfriend-ACC

        'He's waiting for his girlfriend.' (Neidle 1988)
      b.
       

      On
      He

      ždet
      waits

      otveta
      answer-GEN

      na
      to

      vopros.
      question

        'He's waiting for an answer to the question.'
   3. a.
       

      On
      he

      ne
      NEG

      polučil
      received

      pis'mo.
      letter-ACC.N.SG

        'He didn't receive the letter.'
      b.
       

      On
      he

      ne
      NEG

      polučil
      received

      pis'ma.
      letter-GEN.N.SG

        'He didn't receive any letter.'
   
    | Barbara H. Partee, 2005

DIATOPIC
(Dialectology) Variation or study of variation from one part to another of the area covered by a speech community. | Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics, 2007

DIFFERENTIAL OBJECT MARKING
(Syntax) The phenomenon in which certain objects of verbs are marked to reflect various syntactic and semantic factors. One form of the more general phenomenon of differential argument marking, DOM is present in more than 300 languages. The term differential object marking was coined by Georg Bossong (1985, 1991).
 In languages where DOM is active, direct objects are partitioned into two classes. In most such DOM languages, only the members of one of the classes receive a marker (the others being unmarked), but in some languages, like Finnish, objects of both classes are marked (with different endings). In some DOM languages where only pronominal direct objects are marked, such as English, direct objects have distinct allomorphs rather than an affix (e.g., the English first person subject I has the form me when a direct object). In non-DOM languages, by contrast, direct objects are uniformly marked in a single way. For instance, Quechua marks all direct objects with the direct-object ending -ta.
 A well-known DOM language is Spanish, where direct objects that are both human and specific require a special marker, the preposition a 'to' (Fernández Ramírez 1986, Pensado 1995, Rodríguez-Mondoñedo 2007, Torrego 1998):

1. Pedro
   Peter

   besó
   kissed

   a
   DOM

   Lucía.
   Lucy.

   Lit. 'Peter kissed to Lucy.'

2. Pedro
   Peter

   besó
   kissed

   el
   the

   retrato.
   picture

3. Pedro
   Peter

   vio
   saw

   (a)
   (DOM)

   la
   the

   gata.
   cat-FEM

DIFFUSION

1. (Sociolinguistics) Models of linguistic diffusion commonly track how an observed linguistic innovation spreads from a relatively narrow area or relatively narrow social group to wider areas and groups. | Marie Maegaard, Torben Juel Jensen, Tore Kristiansen, and Jens Normann Jørgensen, 2013
2. (Sociolinguistics) In the seventies of the last century, sociolinguists applied tools and theories from human geography to analyze geographical distribution patterns of linguistic phenomena, including variation between dialects. The concept of diffusion turned out to be pivotal in connecting linguistic and geographical patterns.
    In diffusion models, linguistic innovations are transmitted through space.
    A diffusionist approach emphasizes external, social sources for explaining language variation (Chambers 1995), which does not mean that internal, linguistic factors do not play a prohibiting or fostering role.
    Gravity models were applied in sociolinguistics to analyze spatial diffusion patterns of linguistic features. | Marinel Gerritsen and Roeland van Hout, 2006

DIGLOSSIA

1. (Sociolinguistics) In many speech communities two or more varieties of the same language are used by some speakers under different conditions. Perhaps the most familiar example is the standard language and regional dialect as used, say, in Italian or Persian, where many speakers speak their local dialect at home or among family or friends of the same dialect area but use the standard language in communicating with speakers of other dialects or on public occasions. There are, however, quite different examples of the use of two varieties of a language in the same speech community. In Baghdad the Christian Arabs speak a "Christian Arabic" dialect when talking among themselves but speak the general Baghdad dialect, "Muslim Arabic", when talking in a mixed group. In recent years there has been a renewed interest in studying the development and characteristics of standardized languages (see especially Kloss 1952 with its valuable introduction on standardization in general), and it is in following this line of interest that the present study seeks to examine carefully one particular kind of standardization where two varieties of a language exist side by side throughout the community, with each having a definite role to play. The term diglossia is introduced here, modeled on the French diglossie, which has been applied to this situation.
    It must be pointed out that diglossia is not assumed to be a stage which occurs always and only at a certain point in some kind of evolution, e.g., in the standardization process. Diglossia may develop from various origins and eventuate in different language situations. Of the four defining languages, Arabic diglossia seems to reach as far back as our knowledge of Arabic goes, and the superposed "Classical" language has remained relatively stable, while Greek diglossia has roots going back many centuries, but it became fully developed only at the beginning of the nineteenth century with the renaissance of Greek literature and the creation of a literary language based in large part on previous forms of literary Greek. Swiss German diglossia developed as a result of long religious and political isolation from the centers of German linguistic standardization, while Haitian Creole arose from a creolization of a pidgin French, with standard French later coming to play the role of the superposed variety. | Charles A. Ferguson, 1959
2. (Sociolinguistics) Although the French term diglossie was introduced by the Arabist William Marçais in 1930, it is the late Charles A. Ferguson who is most often credited as the first to introduce the notion of a "high"(H) and a "low" (L) variety or register of a language in a classic (1959) article in the journal Word with the now famous one-word title,"Diglossia". The gist of his widely influential essay, which has been reprinted several times, was to demonstrate that the idea of H and L registers best explained the pervasive linguistic distinctions observable in a few speech communities concerning the strict complementary distribution of formal vs. informal usage. For Ferguson, who calqued the term from the French, there were only four "defining" languages that he considered representative: Arabic, Swiss German, Haitian Creole, and Modern Greek. Since then, many other languages (in actuality, the speech communities that speak them) have been reevaluated as diglossic. | Alan S. Kaye, 2001
3. (Sociolinguistics) In 1959 I published an article called "Diglossia" in the journal Word in which I tried to characterize a certain type of language situation. ... I could have chosen as my "clear case" the creole continuum, or the standard-with-dialects, or any of a number of other recognizable, widely instantiated types of language situation. What I chose, however, was what I called diglossia, taking a term already in use for Arabic, in a situation similar to that of Swiss German. In addition to whatever ordinary ways of talking there were in the community, there was one superposed variety to be used for written purposes and for many formal spoken purposes, but not spoken by anyone as the ordinary medium of conversation.
    It is important to make it clear that this situation differs from the standard-with-dialect variation, such as Italy, for example, where there are those who essentially speak standard Italian as their mother tongue and use it in everyday conversation. It is also clear that diglossia differs from a creole continuum such as Jamaica, where many people control and use the acrolect in ordinary conversation and where the extreme "basilectal" varieties, as they are called, are clearly the outcome of a pidginization process at some earlier time. Also, the boundary between the high variety and the vernacular ("low" variety) in diglossia is behaviorally and attitudinally sharper than in creole continua, although intermediate varieties always do occur in diglossia situations. Finally, diglossia in the sense I was defining was not the same as the situation in which two different (related or unrelated) languages have a functional distribution similar to that of diglossia (i.e. a "high" language and a "low" language).
    I wanted to describe the kind of situation in which the ordinary formal language of the community is one that no one speaks without special effort and no one uses in ordinary conversation: it is acquisitionally and functionally superposed to the primary variety of the language. | Charles A. Ferguson, 1996

DIRECT BORROWING

1. (Sociolinguistics) Direct borrowing happens when one language adopts a word from a foreign language in a straight line, like an English omelette, which has been taken over from French without any large phonological or orthographical changes. On the contrary, indirect borrowing happens when a lexical unit is borrowed from the source language to another language, as a direct borrowing. Then, the same item is re-borrowed yet to another language and further even to another language, this time, however, as an indirect borrowing. It is worth mentioning that the process of indirect borrowing is unlimited in terms of the number of languages that can adopt it. The said lexical unit can be re-borrowed many times, but only the adoption form of the source language can be called a direct one. Finally, adopting the item each time to another language, some orthographical and phonological adjustments can be made to fit it into the recipient language.
    For example, let us take the word feast, which can be easily traced back to the Latin form festum. However, the word was borrowed into English from French. So, it can serve as an example of direct borrowing from French, but at the same time, it is also an example of indirect borrowing from Latin. | Bila Ievgeniia Sergiivna, Bondarenko Ievheniia Volodymyrivna, and Maslova Svitlana Yakivna, 2021
2. (Sociolinguistics) Basically we have two types of borrowing, i.e., direct borrowing and indirect / less direct borrowing. Direct borrowing sub-types:
   1. Cultural borrowing: Also called loanwords by necessity, cultural borrowings are words that fill gaps in the recipient language's store of words because they stand for objects or concepts new to the language's culture. Most common cultural borrowings around the world are versions of English automobile or car, because most cultures did not have such motorized vehicles before contact with Western cultures. Words related to computers are another example.
   2. Core borrowing: Core borrowings are words that duplicate elements that the recipient language already has in its word store. They are unnecessary—by definition, another layer on the cake, because the recipient language always has viable equivalents. Then why are they borrowed? Cultural pressure, language of prestige, etc.
   3. Therapeutic borrowing: Borrowing has also been said to occur for therapeutic reasons, when the original word has become unavailable. Two subcases:
      1. Borrowing due to word taboo: In some cultures, there are strict word taboo rules, e.g., rules that prohibit a certain word that occurs in a deceased person's name, or a word that occurs in the name of a taboo relative.
      2. Borrowing for reasons of homonymy avoidance: If a word becomes too similar to another word due to sound change, the homonymy clash might be avoided by borrowing. Thus, it has been suggested that the homonymy of earlier English bread (from Old English bræde) 'roast meat' and bread (from Old English bread) led to the replacement of the first by a French loan (roast, from Old French rost).
   
    | Sid Eusaphxai, 2016

DIRECT SCALAR IMPLICATURE
(Pragmatics) Inferences like (1) arise when a weak scalar term like sometimes appears in an upward entailing context. The sentences in (2a) and (3a), which contain the scalar terms some and or, respectively, give rise to the implicatures in (2b) and (3b).

1. a. John sometimes went to the movies.
    → b. John didn't always go.
2. a. Some of the students went to the movies.
    → b. Not all of them went.
3. a. John went to the movies or to the beach.
    → b. John didn't go both to the movies and to the beach.

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