Glossary

In semantics, this term refers to a process by which the meaning of a word more specific over time. Example: 'hound' a word of German origin, at one point referred to all dogs, whereas currently, this word refers to a specific breed.

In phonetics, a nasal sound is one that is is produced as the velum lowers and the dorsum raises, such that airflow into the oral cavity is cut off, thus forced it into the nasal cavity. Example: /m, n/

A native language is that which is acquired as a child's first language (L1) or mother tongue.

A natural class is a set of of sounds that all share one or more phonetic features, setting them apart from all other sounds in any given language. Example: Standard American English [m, p, b, w] are all bilabials. There are no other sounds which may be added to this set.

A natural language is any language that develops in human beings' brains during the first few years of life, and without any explicit planning or premeditation. This is as opposed to constructed (or formal) language that is used to program computers or study logic and mathematics.

NLP is a field of computational linguistics and computer sciences concerned with the interaction between computers and human languages with the primary goals of programming a computer to analyze, understand and generate human language.

In sociolinguistics, network integration refers to the interface or overlap of kinship, work, territory-based activities(teams), social groups, physical proximity in various social environments.

Neutralization is a phonological rule which eliminates phonemic contrast in a specific phonological environment., or in other words, an all-to-one process. Example: In Standard American English, all vowels in non-stressed syllables in English become schwa.

Natural Language Toolkit is a large set of freeware linguistics analysis tools used for symbolic and statistical natural language processing (NLP). It is written and is available to edit in the Python programming language.

A node is the end of any branch on a syntactic tree or the point where two (or more) branches are joined. ex. VP, V, NP, N, PP, etc.

Nominative is a grammatical case marking of the subject of finite clauses.

A non-continuant phoneme is produced with complete occlusion of airflow in the oral cavity during some point in articulation. Example: nasal and oral stops

A non-terminal node on a syntactic tree will have lower nodes branching from it.

A noun is a part of speech (lexical or syntactic category) which refers to a person, place, thing or idea. There are various types of nouns such as proper (Dr. Strange), common (house), countable (marbles), mass (sand).

The nucleus of a syllable is the peak of sonority, and carries pitch, tone. Example: /o/ in the word 'coat' /kot/.