Word Glossary
There are currently 20 names in this directory beginning with the letter E.
Ebonics
Ebonics is the term used for various African American English dialects, or 'black speech'. The name is blend of the words 'ebony' and 'phonics'.
efficacy
The ability to produce a desired or intended result, often used in research articles describing therapy sessions.
egressive
This term refers to the outward direction of airflow through the oral or nasal cavities. There are three types of egressive sounds: pulmonic, glottal, and velar.
All sounds (non-allophinc) in Standard English are pulmonic egressive.
ejective
An ejective phoneme is produced when air flow builds up behind a closed glottis and is suddenly released. The diacritic for this feature is
/ʼ/ as in /pʼ/. They can be found in approximately 20% of the world's languages, e.g., African, indigenous Mexican, etc. ).
embedded (sentence or phrase)
An embedded sentence or phrase is one that occurs within another sentence or phrase.
ex: The box 'that I put on the table' is full of chocolates.
Harriet believes 'that her cousins are coming to visit tomorrow'.
emphatic pronoun
An emphatic pronoun is used to emphasize the noun phrase to which it is referring.
ex: 'Me', I have no idea what he is talking about.
entailment
Entailment is the term used to describe the relationship between two sentences in which the truth value of one implies the truth value of the other.
A sentence (S) entails a proposition (P) if and only if P is true whenever S is true.
ex: (S) 'Dogs bark and Rover is a dog' entails (P) 'Rover barks'
epenthesis
Epenthesis is a phonological process in which a speech sound is inserted into a morpheme or word.
ex: /sɛns/ is articulated as [sɛnts] 'sense' in Standard English.
Episodic Buffer
The Episodic Buffer (Baddeley, 2000) is the third and most recent component of Working Memory that acts as a 'back-up' storage place, able to access and communicate between Long Term and Working Memory. It is referred to as 'multi-modal' in that it incorporates phonological, visual, and spatial information. The Episodic Buffer is believed to be limited in terms of its capacity to hold information.
eponym
An eponym is a word that is derived from a proper noun such as the name of an individual.
ex: 'sandwich' from 'The Earl of Sandwich'
'bandaid' from the trademark 'Band-Aid'
equipollent
This term is used to describe an opposition in which the contrast between two phonemes cannot be measured or described.
ex: /t/ and /s/: /t/ cannot be described as [-sibilant] and /s/ cannot be described as [- stop]. These two phonemes are equal in the sense that they display neither privative nor gradual opposition.
ergative
Ergative is a term that refers to a grammatical case used in some languages to mark the subject of a transitive verb in ergative–absolutive languages.
ex: Basque
Nekane -k Miren eta Jon ikusi ditu.
Nekane -Ergative marker Miren and Jons seen AUX.3pA.3sE
'Nekane saw Miren and Jon. '
Rezac et al. 2014
euphemism
A euphemism is a word or phrase that is used to replace a pejorative or taboo word or phrase.
ex: 'Pass away' instead of dying.
'Bathroom' instead of toilet.
excrescence
Excrescence is a type of epenthesis in which a consonant is inserted between two successive consonants; thought to ease pronunciation.
ex: /p/ inserted between /m/ and /θ/ in 'warmth'
/wɔɹmθ/ becomes [wɔɹmpθ]
Exhaustive Access
This term refers to the fact that in lexical retrieval, multiple meanings of ambiguous or novel words are continually activated and searched for, even when context is provided.
experiencer
Experiencer is a thematic role of a verb assigned to a subject that undergoes some type of perceptual experience.
ex: Harriet was embarrassed by her behavior at the party.
expletive
An expletive is type of pronoun (in English 'it' and 'there') does not have referent in the world, is not assigned a theta role, and is often found in subject position.
ex: 'It' is raining.
'There' is too much salt in the soup.
Extended Projection Principle
This principle is universal and states that all clauses must have a subject.