Glossary

A palatal sound is one that is produced by placing the front part of the tongue (blade) against the hard palate (roof of the mouth). Example: Standard American English - /j/

A pangram is a sentence that contains all 26 letters of the alphabet. Two of the more well known examples are: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." and "Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs."

In semantic terms a paradox is a sentence whose terms contradict themselves thus the truth value of the sentence cannot be understood. ex: I never tell the truth. If the speaker never tells the truth, then the statement is false. Then does the speaker always tell the truth?

A paragoge is a type of sound change in which a sound, often a vowel, is inserted at the end of a word. Example: Italian: /fantasî/ becomes [fantasîje]

This is a type of lexical retrieval model that posits that several linguistic elements (phonemes, words, etc.) on separate levels (lexical, semantic, phonological) can be processed simultaneously.

Paronyms are two words that are derived from the same root, similar to cognates. They will often but not always be related in meaning, sometimes but rarely synonymous, and related in spelling and pronunciation. Example: farther, further dubious, doubtful folly, foolish

The term parsing refers to the process of separating a linguistic element into its constituent parts. This can also refer to processing 'chunks' of information, e.g., of a sentence, in comprehension tasks.

A verb form which occurs with an auxiliary verb. ex: present participle - is reading past participle - has eaten

A sentence in which has undergone the following transformations: 1. the subject has been omitted or moved to the end of the sentence into aprepositional phrase 2. the object has moved to subject position 3. the verb to be occurs with the past participle of the main verb. ex: The trees were trimmed by the gardener.

A French doctor who discovered the speech production center of the brain in the late 1800's.

The area of the vocal tract above the glottis through which air passes during sound production.

Speech relating to language used for general purposes of social interaction rather than for communicating information or asking questions.

A speech sound.

A distinctive speech sound of which a speaker is aware and for which the speaker has an abstract concept. In transcription, these sounds are enclosed in slashes. Sometimes used synonymously with 'phone'. ex: /p/

This term refers to the phenomenon of hearing, and thus restoring, a phoneme to a word though it has been replaced by a noise in the original signal.

Properties of air passing through the vocal tract which distinguish one set of sounds from another. ex: alveolar, voice, nasal

The representation of words, phrases, and sentences after phonological rules have been applied.

The study of the production (articulatory), perception (auditory), and physical properties (acoustic) of speech sounds

Refers to an individual's sensitivity to, or explicit awareness of, the sound structure of language.

A symptom of some language disorders characterized by a delay/disturbance in acquisition of the phonology of a language that cannot be traced to a structural problem. Children have difficulty with representation or organization of the sounds of their language.

The Phonological Loop is a component Working Memory that processes auditory information and is composed of two parts. The phonological store is a temporary holding place for input, remembering it in temporal order. It processes the phonological form of a word whether input is received visually or audibly. The articulatory rehearsal component holds traces of information for a matter of seconds, during which they decay, unless rehearsed, or repeated, so that they are maintained.

Language specific rules that are applied to the phonemic or underlying representation of sounds in order to derive the phonetic or surface forms .

The study of sound systems and how they are derived.

Language specific rules which permit certain strings of phonemes. ex: words in English cannot begin or end in tl .

Language specific rules which specify grammatical syntactic structures. ex: NP --> PP

A pictogram is a graphic symbol that conveys meaning through a picture-like representation of an idea.

A simplistic language which develops when two or more people groups speaking mutually unintelligible languages need to communicate, usually for business purposes.

The fundamental frequency of a speech sound.

The place in the vocal tract in which air constriction occurs during the production of speech sounds. ex: labial, labiodental, interdental, alveolar, palatal, velar, uvular, glottal

The idea that the brain in not exactly a static organism. It can refer to changes in neural pathways and synapses due to changes in behavior, environment, neural processes, thinking, and emotions. It can also result in bodily injury. This is especially important in language acquisition allowing the brain to properly create neural pathways for the new language.

A plosive is a sound segment which is articulated by the airstream originating in the lungs, blocked in the oral cavity and then released. They are also known as pulmonic egressive oral stops. ex: [t, d, p, b, k, g]

A polar question is an interrogative sentence which can be answered by “yes/no.” Polar quesitons are also referred to as “yes/no” questions. ex: Are you taking the train to Boston?

A word composed of two or more morphemes. ex: un-happi-ly

A word which has several (usually related) meanings. ex: a bird flies, an airplane flies, time flies, a car flies

A portmanteau (a word of French origin) is the term used to descibe a word which has been formed by combining the sounds and meanings of two words. This process may also be referred to as a 'blend.'

This occurs when a single morpheme represents simultaneously two or more grammatical functions. ex: In French the ‘s’ attached to the root ‘prend’ to take represents first or second person, singular, present tense.

The thematic role of a noun phrase whose referent possesses an entity. ex: Mary's cat ran away.

The matching of the correct item from the lexicon to the auditory word after the lexicon has been accessed; especially in cases of ambiguity when the word has multiple meanings.

Poverty of the stimulus (POS) is the assertion that grammar is unlearnable to children during their early childhood language development period due to the lack of explicit and implicit information available to them; Therefor their knowledge of grammar must be complimented by an innate linguistic capacity. See impoverished data.

The study of words, phrases, and sentences in the context of discourse.

A affix (bound morpheme) which is attached to the beginning of a word. ex: unhealthy

A word which indicates a temporal, spacial, or logical relationship between its object (a noun) and another part of the sentence. ex: She found her keys under the chair. My parents ate dinner at their favorite restaurant.

A syntactic category consisting of a preposition as its head and a noun phrase. ex: in the closet, from Africa, through the doorway

A grammar taught as the correct way to speak a language. Prescriptive grammars are taught in schools.

Prestige is the level of respect commanded by a dialect; Typically the prestige dialect is the dialect or manner of speech spoken by the most powerful and/or the highest class members of the speech community.

A linguistic component which sets up a listener to hear a specific form.

A semantic principle which states that meaning of a word, phrase, or sentence is derived from its parts. Idioms do not follow this principle.

This term is used to describe a binary opposition in which one phoneme in a set displays markedness by bearing a feature which is absent in the other phoneme. ex: /t/ [-voice] unmarked /d/ [+voice] marked This type of opposition is in contrast to gradual and equipollent. determiner which modifies a noun phrase in terms of number or amount; ex: all, some, many, few

Privative antonyms are a type of overlapping or 'gradable' antonyms whose meaning is relative to context. ex: dirty/clean

A pro-drop language is one in which certain pronouns may be omitted when theirantecedent may be inferred. An example from English would be. "(I) havent' seen her all day." Other pro-drop languages include Japanese, Italian, and Modern Persian.

A part of long-term memory that is responsible for habitual actions and processes (e.g. motor skills). Procedural memory operates on a subconscious level of awareness.

A proposition is a meaningful unit of a clause or sentence that is constant, regardless of changes in the linguistic voice or illocutionary force.

From the Greek prosthesis 'addition.' This is a phonological process by which a sound segment is attached to the beginning of a word without altering or changing meaning. Loanwords in Modern Persian with a complex codas undergo the addition of a prosthetic vowel attached in order to comply with phonotactic constraints. /skan/ becomes [eskan] 'scan' or /stejdium/ becomes [estejdium] 'stadium' This also occurs across closely related languages. Compare [okno] 'window' in Russian with Belarusian [vakno].