case
Case is a grammatical function that marks nouns, pronouns and adjectives. It is determined and assigned by the syntactic or semantic function of a phrasal head. Case is most easily observed in highly inflective languages such as German, and includes subjective, objective, causative, dative, etc.
categorical perception
Categorical perception refers to how sounds are perceived and categorized based on features, e.g. place or manner of articulation, aspiration, etc. Studies have shown that when sounds are presented along a continuum in which phonemic features are altered at the unconscious level, listeners perceive a change in sound when one feature is altered, thus recognizing a new category.
causation
This is an event expressed, often marked by the usage of a causative verb, in which a contributing factor results in the causation of a particular state. ‘My neighbors made me pay to have their lawn cut.’
causative case
Causative case marks a noun phrase that is the cause of an action of a verb affecting an entity in the phrase. Mrs. Superman made Batman wash the dishes.
causative syntactic structure
A causative syntactic structure is a phrase in which a subject NP causes someone or something to be affected by the action of the verb. ex: Captain Hook caused his sailors to abandon ship. Languages have various forms for expressing causatives.
Central Executive
The Central Executive is the ‘master mind’ of working memory, incorporating information from the two slave systems (visuo-spacial sketch pad & phonological loop), the episodic buffer, and Long Term Memory. Even though it is one of the most important components of Working Memory, little is known about how it truly functions. Cognitive tasks such as mental arithmetic and problem solving are believed to be directed by the Central Executive.
cerebral hemisphere
This term refers to the left and the right sides of the brain, each specialized for different functions.
child directed speech
This term refers to exaggerated speech that adults use with children, characterized by higher pitch, simplified vocabulary, and repetition. Also referred to as ‘motherese’ or ‘parentese’.
circumfix
A circumfix is a type of affixation in which a bound morpheme consisting of two affixes surround a root or stem. ex: ‘ge’- root-‘t’ as a past tense marker in German. ‘spielen’ becomes ‘gespielt’.
classifier
Classifiers are morphemes that mark semantic classes of nouns in many languages. Bantu marks all nouns with classifiers indicating specific information such as mass or count noun, animacy (animate or inanimate), artifact, as well as gender and number.
click
A click is a speech sound that occurs as an ingressive obstruent in many African languages. These sounds are produced by creating two points of closure in the oral tract and releasing pressure inward. They are similar to sounds American English speakers use to call an animal, sucking air in through closed lips (kissing sound), or showing disapproval, ‘tsk, tsk’.
clipping
Clippings are a type of word formation in which a segment of a word is deleted to create a shortened version. ex: ‘phone’ from ‘telephone’; ‘prof’ from ‘professor’
closed lexical category
This term refers to a category of words to which new lexical items are rarely/never added. ex: function words such as conjunctions, pronouns, and prepositions.
cluster reduction
Cluster reduction is the simplification of consonant clusters found in particular phonological environments, such that one is omitted. ex: The reduction of word-final /st/ to /t/ in some English dialects. /fæst/ ‘fast’ becomes [fæs] ‘fas’
co-articulation
Co-articulatin occurs when the pronunciation of a phoneme is adjusted to facilitate the articulation of an adjacent phoneme thus features of both will overlap. This process is particularly salient in Standard English for nasals due to the fact that the place of articulation of subsequent consonants will alter the place of articulation of the preceding nasal. ex: in ‘tenth’ the nasal becomes interdental preceding /θ/; in ‘inflatable’ the nasal becomes labio-dental preceding the /f/.
co-morbidity
Co-morbidity refers to the presence of one or more additional disorders (or diseases) co-occurring with a primary disease or disorder. (This information is directed towards speech pathologists.)
coalescence
Coalescence is a phonological process in which two or more distinct phonemes fuse into one. ex: in most dialects of Standard English, /ŋ, g/ are reduced to [n] word finally: ‘sing’ /sɪŋg/ becomes [sɪŋ] The features of nasal from /n/ and velar from /g/ form [ŋ].
code-switching
This term refers to the alternation of words, phrases, or syntactic structures from two different languages that are exchanged between two or more speakers of each language in conversation. ex: French/English bilinguals may utter a sentence such as, “Could you put your clothes in the ‘linge sale’?” (‘linge sale’ means dirty clothes)
cognate
Cognates are two words that share the same linguistic ancestors and are close in meaning and form. ex: French ‘propre’ English ‘proper’
coinage
Coinage is a process by which a new word (neologism) is formed without undergoing any morphological process. For example, the word ‘motel’ was created from sounds of ‘motor’ and ‘hotel’. There is no morphological process involved.
Comparative Method
This is a process of comparing words from different languages that seem to be related in order to trace and establish an historical relationship between the two.
comparative reconstruction
See Comparative Method
complement
Complements are constituents in a syntactic phrase that bring meaning to the phrasal unit and are headed by the same phrasal category. They may also be referred to as ‘complement sisters’ due to the fact they are both branching from an immediately dominating node. Furthermore, these constituents are obligatory components to the extent that their removal incurs an ungrammatical phrase.
ex: VP
/
V’ NP
ate pizza
complementary distribution
This term can be used when two linguistic forms are in a mutually exclusive relationship such that one will never surface in the location of the other. This is primarily observed in phonology where one phoneme is represented by two (or more) surface forms that are never found in the same phonological environment.
complementizer
A complementizer is a lexical category, i.e., complementizer phrase (CP) that introduces an embedded clause as the complement of a verb. ex: Peter knew [that he needed to apologize].
complex lexeme
A complex lexeme is a lexical entry that is composed of two or more morphological components, i.e., root +affix(es). ex: unhappiness – un+happy+ness
complex span
Short term memory tasks are created by adding a demanding secondary cognitive task to a simple span task, such as solving mathematical operations (in operation span tasks) or deciding whether a sentence is syntactically or semantically correct (in reading span tasks).
compounding
Compounding is a morphological process of word formation in which the adjunction of two words forms creates a separate lexical item. ex: flashlight derived from flash + light
computational component
According to Chomsky, this part of the brain stores all linguistic information concerning rules, constraints, and usage of one’s language.
computational linguistics
Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field concerned with modeling natural language from a statistical and rule-based perspective.
concatenation
Concatenation is a morphological process by which words are formed by combining morphemes linearly, or by stringing them together. Affixation shows this process. ex: English: happy – un+happy, fill – fill+er Turkish: ev dʒɪk de house little in ‘In the little house’
conjunction
A conjunction is a function word that is used to join words or phrases within a syntactic category, as well as sentences. ex: and, if, but, or
connotation
The connotation is the idea or concept elicited by a word that goes beyond it’s literal meaning. These are generally formed through personal experiences within the universe.
constituent
A constituent is a phrase, such as an NP or VP that forms a syntactic unit.
content question
A content question is an interrogative sentence in which information is being elicited. These questions include ‘question/wh’ words such as: how, why, who, what, where, and cannot be answered with ‘yes’ or ‘no’. ex: Who did you visit in Honolulu?
contradiction
In the study of semantics, the term contradiction refers to a sentence that is always false, regardless of context. This is due to the fact that the semantic properties linked to words in a specific syntactic structure (in the example below, the copula) are mutually exclusive. ex: My sister is a bachelor. A bachelor by definition is male thus a female can never be a bachelor.
contrast
This term is used when two (or more) linguistic forms differ systematically in one or more ways which distinguishes one form from the other. ex: Standard English /t/ and /d/ are contrastive in voicing. /t/- [- voice] /d/ [+voice] This contrast is observable in minimal pairs: /tin/ ‘teen’ vs /din/ ‘dean’
conversion (morphology)
Conversion is a morphological process by which a word changes category without undergoing any affixation. This type of word formation is also referred to as ‘identical shift’ or ‘zero-derivation.’ ex: to ‘clear’ (v.) as in “Please clear the table” becomes ‘clear’ (adj.) as in “The roads are clear”
cooing
The term cooing refers to sonorous, vowel-like sounds that infants make during an intermediate stage of early language development.
copula
The copula is a type of verb, often in predicate form, that relates a subject to a descriptor (either an adjective, an NP, or an appositive). In English, the copula ‘to be’, is sometimes referred to as a linking verb. ex: Cinderella was gorgeous last night at the ball. Charles became an allergist.
corpus
A corpus is a body or collection of some type of linguistic element, e.g., nouns, indirect questions, gathered from various sources, e.g., texts, recordings, for the purpose of linguistic analysis.
creole
A creole is a stable language that emerges due to contact between speakers of two or more languages and becomes nativized by a first generation of children. ex: Haitian Creole developed from contact between African slaves and French Settlers.
critical period hypothesis
This hypothesis, which is widely debated, claims that native-like language acquisition is biologically linked to age such that after the period from birth to puberty, individuals begin to lose the ability to become fully competent in any given language.
