VOCABULARY
interlanguage, n.:
Add:
2. Linguistics. A linguistic system typically developed by a student
before acquiring fluency in a foreign language, and containing elements of both
his or her native tongue and of the target language. (oed)
NOUN:
1. The type of
language produced by nonnative speakers in the process of learning a second
language or foreign language.
2. A lingua
franca.
The American
Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.
Unattested:
ADJECTIVE: Not attested: a series of unattested
quotations.
The American
Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.
Implicature:
NOUN:
1. The aspect of
meaning that a speaker conveys, implies, or suggests without directly
expressing. Although the utterance “Can you pass the salt?” is literally a
request for information about one's ability to pass salt, the understood
implicature is a request for salt.
2. The process by
which such a meaning is conveyed, implied, or suggested. In saying “Some dogs
are mammals,” the speaker conveys by implicature that not all dogs are mammals.
Protolanguage:
NOUN:
A language that
is the recorded or hypothetical ancestor of another language or group of
languages. Also called Ursprache.
Ablaut:
NOUN:
A vowel change,
characteristic of Indo-European languages, that accompanies a change in
grammatical function; for example, i, a, u in sing, sang, sung. Also called
gradation.
Vowel permutation;
systematic passage of the root vowel into others in derivation, as in sing,
sang, song, sung, apart from the phonetic influence of a succeeding vowel as in
umlaut. (ablaut- oed)
Theft:
NOUN:
1. The act or an
instance of stealing; larceny.
2. Obsolete
Something stolen.
Etymology:
Middle English,
from Old English th efth.
Diachronic:
2. Linguistics.
[tr. F. diachronique (F. de Saussure a 1913, in Cours
de linguistique générale (1916) iii. 120).] Pertaining to or designating a method of
linguistic study concerned with the historical development of a language;
historical, as opposed to descriptive or synchronic. Also transf., in
Anthropology, etc. Hence dia chronically adv.; di achrony.
Synchronic :
3. Linguistics. [tr. F. synchronique
(F. de Saussure a 1913, in Cours de linguistique générale (1916) iii. 117).] Pertaining to or designating a method of linguistic study concerned with
the state of a language at one time, past or present; descriptive, as opposed
to historical or diachronic. Also transf. in Anthropology, etc.
1922 L. BLOOMFIELDin Classical Weekly 13 Mar. 142/1 One
is glad to see, therefore, that Dr. Sapir deals with synchronic matters (to use
De Saussure's terminology) before he deals with diachronic. 1927, etc. [see DIACHRONIC a. 2]. 1937
[see SAUSSUREAN a.]. 1946
[see ONOMATOPY]. 1954 [see PROCESS n. 5b]. 1968
Jrnl. Assoc. Teachers of Russian XVII. 8 A synchronic study of a language
studies the language of a particular period without reference to what went
before or came after, and in practice the period in question is generally our
own. 1975 Listener 20 Mar. 367/3 Though the ‘synchronic’ approach of the
semiologists is for the moment more fashionable, it is impossible not to be
interested in the history of social myths.
Diachronic and synchronic:
Contrasting
terms in LINGUISTICS, which make a distinction between the study of the history
of language (diachronic linguistics) and the study of a state of language at
any given time (synchronic linguistics).
Language
study in the 19c was largely diachronic, but in the 20c emphasis has been on
synchronic analysis. The terms were first employed by the Swiss linguist
Ferdinand de Saussure, who used the analogy of a tree-trunk to describe them: a
vertical cut was diachronic, a horizontal cut synchronic.
(From Concise
Transitional:
Of a word
or words: indicating a change from one state, place, etc. to another. This is
not a widely used grammatical term, but is sometimes applied to conjuncts that
semantically bridge a gap from the subject-matter of one statement to that of
another; e.g.
Meanwhile, in the meantime, incidentally
It is also
applied to the meaning of a verbal form that indicates little or no duration, with a change of state about to result (e.g. The
bus was stopping).
(From The
Saussure, Ferdinand de /s'sj/,
French /sosyR/
(1857–1913), Swiss linguistics scholar. He was one of the founders of modern
linguistics and his work is fundamental to the development of structuralism.
Saussure made a distinction between langue and parole, and stressed that
linguistic study should focus on the former.
(From The
Language family:
A group of
languages which are assumed to have arisen from a single source: ENGLISH,
FRENCH, GERMAN, GREEK, PERSIAN, RUSSIAN, SANSKRIT, and WELSH are all members of
the INDO-EUROPEAN language family, and are considered to have descended from a
common ancestor.
Common
ancestry is established by finding systematic correspondences between
languages: English repeatedly has /f/ where Latin has /p/ in words with similar
meaning, as in father/pater, fish/piscis,
flow/pluo rain. It also
often has /s/ where Greek has /h/, as in six/héx,
seven/heptá, serpent/hérpein to creep. In addition, English and German compare
adjectives in similar ways, as in rich, richer, richest: reich, reicher, reichste. These and other correspondences indicate that the
languages are cognate (genetically related).
Various
related words can be compared in order to reconstruct sections of a
hypothetical ancestor language. The process of comparison and reconstruction is
traditionally known as comparative PHILOLOGY, more recently as comparative
historical linguistics. This process formed the backbone of 19c language study,
though in the 20c it has become one branch among many.
A ‘family
tree’ diagram (not unlike a genealogy) is commonly used to represent the
relationships between the members of a linguistic family, in which an initial
parent language ‘gives birth’ to a number of ‘daughters’, which in turn give
birth to others. This can be useful, but is rarely an accurate representation
of how languages develop, since it suggests clean cuts between ‘generations’
and between ‘sister’ languages, and implies that languages always become more
divergent. In fact, languages generally change gradually, and there is often
considerable intermixing among those which remain geographically adjacent. See
LANGUAGE CHANGE, LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY.
(From Concise