Course Handout - Psycholinguistics
Glossary
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First published online 13:30 GMT 3rd November 2003,
Copyright Derek J. Smith (Chartered Engineer). This
version [2.0 - copyright] dated 09:00 BST 14th June 2018
Although it is reasonably self-contained, this glossary is best read as extending and supporting our e-papers on "Speech Errors, Speech Production Models, and Speech Pathology" and "Dyslexia and the Cognitive Science of Reading and Writing" |
1 - The Glossary
Accommodation: [See firstly speech
production stages.] A class of speech error in which syntactic and
morphological processing is correctly carried out on an emerging word
sequence already containing an earlier error. This curious, but not uncommon,
phenomenon is usually taken as strong evidence for the modularity of the
underlying processing stages, because it indicates that late modules are not
checking the accuracy of what early modules are passing to them, but are just
acting on it. [In fact, they are typically unable to check it because
the whole point of having "gone modular" in the first place is that
processing should not be duplicated from one stage to the next.] Accusative: [See firstly case and
inflection.] The form taken by a case-inflected noun or pronoun
when used as the object of a transitive verb. Activation Threshold: [See firstly lexicon
(psycholinguistic definition).] Hypothetically, the amount of neural
excitation needed to activate a particular entry in a particular word store. Examples:
Both Dell's (1986) spreading activation theory and Coltheart, Curtis, Atkins, and Haller's (1993) dual route cascaded model of reading out
loud subscribe to the activation threshold concept. Active: One of the two main types of voice. "A
term used in the grammatical analysis of voice, referring to a sentence,
clause, or verb form where, from a semantic point of view, the grammatical
subject is typically the actor, in relation to the verb, e.g. The boy
wrote a letter" (Crystal, 2003, p8). [Contrast passive.] Adjectival: Short for adjectival phrase. Adjectival
Phrase: A phrase serving as
an adjective. Example: "The bedroom was full
of toys" (source). Adjective: A category of word which often denotes the state of
a noun [e.g. "sad", "happy"], which typically has
an associated adverb ["sadly", "happily"] and
associated comparatives and superlatives [e.g. "sadder-saddest",
"happier-happiest"], can often be negativised
["unhappy"], and can generate an abstract noun by adding the suffix
"-ness" ["sadness", "happiness"] (after
Radford, 2003 online). Adposition: An adposition is "a member of a closed set of items
that occur before or after a complement [.....] and
form a single structure with the complement to express its grammatical and
semantic relation to another unit within a clause" (Lingualinks,
2003 online).
If the adposition comes before its complement, then
it is known as a preposition, if after it, it is known as a postposition. Adverb: "..... a heterogenous group of items whose most frequent function
is to specify the mode of action of the verb" ( Adverbial: Short for adverbial phrase. Adverbial
Phrase: An "element of clause
structure", whose syntactic role is to modify the verb element in
terms of manner, place, or time (after Agent: This term "typically denotes a person who
deliberately causes some state of affairs to come about" (source).
Therefore, "in active constructions in English, the agent is
usually the grammatical subject" ( Agency: "The ability to alter at will
one's perceptual inputs" either (a) by overt movement, or (b) by shift
of attention (Russell, 1996, p3), without which there can be no object
permanence nor theory of mind. Allograph:
A small set of optional
sub-variants of one of the letters available within a given orthography.
The mid-point on the three-way hierarchy of organisation of orthographic
resources, below the level of the single conceptual letter - i.e. the grapheme
- but above the level of the many physical variants of that letter -
the graphs. Example: The grapheme /s/ can officially
exist as the allographs s S s
S s S s S in the Times New Roman font alone, and when handwritten will probably never occur
twice the same way! Allophone: A small set of optional sub-variants of one of the
sounds available within a given phonology. The mid-point on the
three-way hierarchy of organisation of phonological resources, below the
level of the single conceptual sound - i.e. the phoneme - but
above the level of the many physical variants of that sound - the phones.
Example: The phoneme /s/ can officially exist as the allophones
/s/ and /z/. [CAUTION: The phone-allophone-phoneme distinction regularly
attracts deep theoretical discussion - see, for example, Linguist List, 12th December 1999.] Ambiguous
Sentence: A sentence which, by
accident or design, is difficult to parse syntactically, and which
therefore supports no fixed and final semantic or pragmatic interpretation.
Within this category, we often encounter sentences which appear to parse
successfully until the last few words, whereupon an earlier error becomes
apparent. These are known as "garden path" sentences (because they
"lead you up the garden path") [for examples, see journalese].
Another common cause of ambiguity arises from difficulties with pronoun
resolution, and another from the deliberate use of double entendres
by comedians. American
Prisoner Argument: John Searle's
(1969) illustration of the difference between an illocutionary act, a locutionary act, and perlocutionary
effect. He asks you to imagine (a) that you are an American soldier taken
prisoner by Italian forces during the Second World War, (b) that there are
German special forces operating in American uniform in the locality, whom the
Italians - their allies at the time - have been told not to detain, (c) that
you will therefore be released if only you can persuade your captors that you
are in fact German, (d) that you know no German besides a line from a poem
which you learned parrot fashion while at school, and (e) that your Italian
captors know so little German themselves that they will probably not notice
your shortcomings. You therefore resolve to give it a try, and come out with
your bit of poetry: Kennst du das Land wo
die Zitronen blühen.
Searle then summarises the pragmatics of this encounter. The illocutionary
act is the decision to behave linguistically in a certain way to produce a
certain effect, namely to persuade the Italians to believe you are a German
spy in American uniform, and accordingly let you go free. The locutionary act is the uttering of the words themselves,
and although the sentence as uttered does not "say" or
"mean" "I am a German soldier", that is its effect nonetheless.
The perlocutionary effect would be for the ploy to
succeed or not, as the case might be (Searle leaves us up in the air on this
point). Anaphora: [Greek anaphora = to carry back/down/again.]
Originally, a figure of speech involving reference back to an antecedent
using "the repetition of the same word or phrase in several successive
clauses" (OED). Example: "This royal
throne of kings, this sceptred isle, this
earth of majesty, this seat of Mars," etc., 17 times in all
(Shakespeare, Richard II) [full
text]. To students of literature,
therefore, the topic of anaphora begins as a simple matter of style, but soon
becomes a matter of high semantics because repetitions which are strictly
speaking unnecessary start to acquire additional emphasis. Your ear soon
starts to become increasingly interested in what all these thisses are talking about, until the 17th - "this Antecedent: [See firstly anaphora.] In a discourse
of perhaps many sentences, any noun subsequently referred to by
a pronoun or a reflexive. [See now binding theory.] Argument: Will usually be seen in its everyday sense. If it
has a specific theoretical meaning at all, it will probably be as a verb
argument. Article: "..... a subclass of determiners
which displays a primary role in differentiating the uses of nouns,
e.g. the/a in English" ( Attributive
Adjective: An adjective used in the
usual way to qualify its noun. Example: "The big
man". [This usage contrasts with that of the predicative adjective.] Auditory
Input Lexicon: [See firstly lexicon.]
Ellis and Young's (1988) term for the hypothetical mental store for whole
known heard words and common phrases. Functionally and conceptually, the
auditory input lexicon is one of the mind's four main "surface
form" word storage modules [the others being the speech output
lexicon, the visual input lexicon, and the graphemic
output lexicon]. Its main role within the broader spread of cognition as
a whole is to help the processes of auditory perception segment the
stream of speech sounds falling on our ears into recognisable units. But
beware, because different theorists adopt marginally different names for the
same concept. The auditory input lexicon is exactly the same as the
"sound image centre" seen in Kussmaul
(1878), the Klangbild
seen in Freud (1891),
the "auditory input logogen system" seen in Ellis (1982), and the
"phonological input lexicon" seen in Kay, Lesser, and Coltheart (1992). Austin,
John Langshaw (1911-1960): [selected Internet biography] John Austin was the philosopher whose theory of speech
acts ( Auxiliary
Verb: See verb (auxiliary). Backchannel: Used as an adjective (e.g. "backchannel
traffic"), this term describes communication from audience to speaker,
specifically designed to give feedback on the speaker's success (or
otherwise) at getting their message across in terms of appropriacy of content
and pace of delivery. Used as a noun (e.g. "the backchannel"), it
describes the physical pathways used during this type of communication. [See
the fuller discussion in our e-paper on "The Relevance of Shannonian Communication Theory to Biological
Communication".] Background
Knowledge: A catch-all term for
everything you know about a topic of narrative or discourse.
Background knowledge is important because it accounts for context effects
and inference in language processing. Backwards
Anaphora: [See firstly anaphora.]
Variant of pronoun usage in which the noun follows (rather than
precedes) its pronoun. Example: "The woman who is
to marry him will visit Ralph tomorrow" (Carden, 1982, p361). [Avoid. Anaphora is naturally
backwards, referring as it does to an antecedent. Backwards anaphora,
as in the example just given, therefore points forwards, and such unnecessary
complications we can do without.] Berelson, Bernard, R. (1912-1979):
Linguistic philosopher, famous for formalising the practice of content
analysis as a research method in linguistics (Berelson,
1952). Binding: [See firstly government and binding theory.]
The hypothetical relationship between a noun concept in the mind's semantic
network memory [glossary],
selected to be the subject or object of a given clause,
and all the words and supporting nonverbal deictics
used in that clause, subsequent clauses, or generally elsewhere in the discourse
as a whole. Binding
Theory: See government and
binding theory. Box-and-Arrow
Model: As used in the various
branches of cognitive science, box-and-arrow models are diagrammatically
expressed theoretical statements of information flow and
processing modularity, either (a) of a cognitive process in general, or (b)
of some subsector of communication in particular [see a fuller history]. They are thus an attempt to bring to
psycholinguistics the not inconsiderable benefits of modelling as an aid to
scientific theorising. There are, however, many technicalities of modelling
best practice which fail to be incorporated into psychological models,
sometimes because the theory itself is too vaguely specified to be so
precisely modelled, and sometimes because the theoreticians lack this or that
finer point of modelling skill. [For a detailed list of these finer points,
see Sections 6 and 7 of our e-tutorial on "How to Draw Cognitive
Diagrams".] Bracketing: See labelled bracketing. Bubble
Lexicon: Term coined by Liu (2003/2003 online)
to describe a lexico-semantic network structure
capable of representing (as most such networks do not) nuance and context
effects. Case: The usual method of inflection for nouns,
and reflecting "such contrasts as nominative, accusative,
etc." ( Case
Marking Morphology: [See firstly case
and morphology.] Morphological changes arising solely from the
need to convey case. Common in Latin and the Slavic languages, present
but rudimentary in German, and rare in French and English, where it is only
still seen in the nominative-accusative-genitive pronouns he/him/his
and she/her/hers. [For a clinical instance of case marking morphology
failing, see McCarthy and Warrington (1985).] Chomsky,
Avram Noam (1928-): [Wikipedia
biography] Linguistic philosopher,
famous for more or less single-handedly inventing transformational grammar
(and the two primary elements thereof, deep structure and surface
structure). Also for having drawn attention to the problems of deixis with his theories of government and binding. Also
for popularising phrase structure grammar. Clause
(Grammatical): A clause is the
shortest subunit of a sentence to come complete with a verb
[unlike a phrase, which lacks a verb]. It is "a grammatical unit
that includes, at minimum, a predicate and an explicit or implied subject
and expresses a proposition" (Lingualinks,
2003 online).
[Now see clause (phonemic), relative clause, and subordinate
clause.] Clause
(Phonemic): It is also possible to
identify a clause by sound factors alone - see the Key Concept entry at the
beginning of Section 2 in our e-paper on "Speech Errors, Speech Production
Models, and Speech Pathology". Closed
Class Words: "One of two
postulated major word-classes in language, the other being open. A
closed class is one whose membership is fixed or limited. New items are not
regularly added [.....] Pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions,
articles, etc., are all closed class [.....] items." ( Coarticulation: The
fusing and corrupting of sounds whenever speech is produced at speed. Usually
taken as evidence that the processes of articulation are not in direct
contact with the processes of planning and sequencing which have gone before.
[For a gentle introduction to this rather technical topic, click here.] Cognitive
Deficit: There is a half page
introductory inset on this topic in Section 4.4 of our e-paper on "Dyslexia". Cohesion: The general usage of this term within linguistics
and psycholinguistics is as a measure of the continuity of a multi-segment sentence
or paragraph across the segment boundaries. It is the quality
of discourse construction which makes a discourse "hang
together" (Hellman, 1992/2004 online). Cohesion is
improved by the use of devices such as repetitions, synonyms, and co-reference,
and is one of the characteristics of children's language which may suffer in semantic-pragmatic
disorder [see, for example, Adams and Bishop (1989/2004
online)]. Comparative:
See adjective. Complement: A complement "is a constituent of a clause,
such as a noun phrase or adjective phrase, that is used to predicate
a description of the subject or object of the clause" (Lingualinks, 2003 online).
Often involves the use of the copular "is" or similar complementiser. Complementiser: A word,
like the copular "is", which serves to render the following word
or phrase a grammatical complement. Examples:
"seem(s)", "if", "whether". Computational
Linguistics: The study of
linguistics for the purposes of simulating natural language processing
on a computer. Conjunction: A conjunction is a word which links two related clauses.
Examples: "and", "but",
"while", "because". Connectives: A class of words, typically conjunctions but
sometimes adverbs, which links two related clauses. Examples:
conjunctions = as above; adverbs = "therefore",
"however", "nevertheless". Connectivity: [See firstly segmentation.] A measure of how
well successive segments of a discourse fit together to build an
overall narrative. Example: See Hellman's (1992/2004 online) story of
additional linking material being added during the translation of Swift's Gulliver's
Travels into Swedish, because the translator felt that it improved the
connectivity of the original. Constative: [See firstly pragmatics.] One of the two
basic types of speech act (the other being performatives). Construction: The framework resulting from the application of the
rules of grammar to a phrase, clause, or sentence. Content
Analysis: "A research
technique for the objective, systematic, and quantitative description of the
manifest content of communication" (Berelson,
1952, p18). [Compare conversational analysis and discourse analysis.] Content
Words: (See firstly function
words.) These are the semantically important parts of a sentence,
that is to say, the nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
They are often described as an "open class" of words because new
ones are constantly being invented and there seems to be no limit to how many
of them there can be. Taken together, they "slot into" the
underlying sentence structure to give it its propositional precision. Thus
the sentences "Tommy fondly feeds the black cat" and "Tommy
hesitantly feeds the black cat" are structurally identical but make
totally different propositions, especially as to the nature and size of the
black cat. Context: The word "context" is used within
psycholinguistics more or less in its everyday sense, that is to say, to
indicate the general circumstances prevailing at a given time. However it
then acquires a particular technical importance because it recognises the
role played by background knowledge in influencing the judgements and
identifications being made by the perceptual and motor pathways further down
the processing hierarchy, and that, of course, includes
the judgements and identifications being made in phrasing linguistic output
and interpreting linguistic input. Hence a source of context effects
in general, and the cause of half a century of
problems for the science of machine translation in particular. The role
of shared context in children's acquisition of mental verbs has
been discussed by Montgomery (2002). Context
Effect: An improvement in perceptual
speed or accuracy due to the prevailing state of the cognitive system. This
may show itself as an ability to guess at poorly heard or unclearly written
words, when they would otherwise be to a greater or lesser extent
indecipherable. Example: The incomplete word in the
following: "We're not out of the w..ds
yet". Where an input (i.e. perceptual) pathway is facilitated in this
way, it is known as a "top down", or "expectancy",
effect. A context effect may be deliberately induced (by a speech and language
therapist, for example) by some sort of semantic cueing, in an attempt
to facilitate the naming process. Contrafactive: See
mental verbs (non-factive). Contrastive: An important form of usage of a mental verb
in order to signal "that the speaker has unambiguously distinguished a
mental state from an observable reality (Montgomery, 2002, p360). Example: "I thought my
socks were in the drawer, but they weren't" (Ibid.). Conversational
Analysis: The qualitative and
quantitative analysis of a transcripted
conversation (and similar, therefore, to discourse analysis, but
allowing for more than one person to be immediately involved). A valuable
research tool in a wide number of areas, from linguistics [example]
and speech pathology [example; Cooperative
Principle: See Grice. Copular
"Is": Use of is/was/will
be/etc. (i.e. all the tenses, persons, and moods of
the verb "to be", or similar complementisers
such as "to seem") to introduce the complement in sentences
of the form "the man is big". A linguistic refinement which is
frequently lost in the telegraphic speech [glossary]
characteristic of cases of agrammatism [glossary]. Co-Reference: For practitioners of discourse analysis,
co-reference is a rhetorical device for improving cohesion within discourse. As
such, it may on occasions resort to classical anaphora. In Chomskyan linguistics, co-reference is used with binding
theory to describe the state of affairs in which two words or phrases
share a semantic referent. The simplest example of this is in the use
of pronouns and nouns to co-refer to the same entity/ies. Pronoun-noun co-reference requires the process of pronoun
resolution to decode. Cybernetics: The science of control [see separate dedicated handout]. Dative: [See firstly case and inflection.]
The form taken by a case-inflected noun or pronoun when
associated with a "movement towards" preposition. Example:
"To whom" is, we believe, the last
remaining instance of the dative in English. Deep
Structure: [See firstly transformational
grammar.] Noam Chomsky's proposal for a primitive sentence code,
functionally later than, but not too far removed from, the ideation
which is prompting the utterance in question in the first place. Once
it has been coded, the deep structure is then progressively turned into a surface
structure ready for final motor production. The mechanisms which support
this staged transformation are the rules and transformations of
transformational grammar. Example: The deep structure
[[o'clock][be][what]] might end up as the surface
structure "what's the time?". Deictic: The adjectival form of deixis;
hence words of that particular function. Deictic
Deixis: [Greek deiktikos = able to show.] Deixis
(adjectival form "deictic") refers to any use of language to
point in some way at a referent. However, as that referent
might have been mentioned many words beforehand, or
even established without specific mention, it follows that the success of a
given deictic intent will often depend upon context. Fillmore dates
the formal study of deixis as "deictics" to Frei (1944),
and as "indexicals" to Bar-Hillel (1954).
Put in formal linguistic terms, deixis is "the
phenomenon that elements in a language may have a reference which is
dependent on the immediate context of their utterance. EXAMPLE:
personal pronouns (I, you, he, etc.),
demonstratives (this, that, etc.), spatial expressions like
here and there, temporal expressions like yesterday
and now, and tense (past, present) are deictic expressions" (source). It follows that there are as many subtypes of deixis as there are types of adverbial phrase, so
see the separate entries for discourse deixis,
person deixis, place deixis,
social deixis, and time deixis. Example: Fillmore
(1971/1997) gives a wonderful example of a sentence lacking all subtypes of deixis - imagine how useless it would be to find a
shipwrecked sailor's message washed up on a beach one day, which read:
"Meet me here at noon tomorrow with a stick about this long" (p60)! Dell,
Gary S.: [biography].
Psycholinguist and connectionist modeller, responsible for the spreading
activation theory (Dell, 1986). Dependent
Clause: See subordinate clause. De
Saussure, Ferdinand (1857-1913):
Swiss linguist, known by some as the "father of modern
linguistics"[selected Internet biography]. Determiner: "..... a class of
items whose main role is to co-occur with nouns to express a wide
range of semantic contrasts, such as quantity or number. The articles,
when they occur in a language, are the main subset of determiners (e.g. the/a in English); other words which can have a determiner
function in English include each/every, this/that, some/any
....." ( Direct
Object: See object (direct). Discourse: "Extended verbal expression in speech or
writing" (TheFreeDictionary.com). Communication "beyond the
sentence", and accordingly also beyond the ability of traditional
linguistic methods (such as grammatical analysis) to comment on (Tannen, 2004 online),
and requiring instead some form of discourse analysis. A sustained
verbal communication in which a series of separate propositions build
upon each other to deliver a more complex higher-order proposition or
narrative theme. [See now rhetorical structure theory.] Discourse
Analysis: The systematic analysis
of a spoken or written discourse, and thus an important source of
objective research data for the study of higher-order cognition. The
academic study of discourse structure was popularised by workers such
as Charles Fillmore, and requires firstly the segmentation of
the message in question. [Compare content analysis and conversational
analysis.] Discourse
Comprehension: The cognitive
processes - whatever they turn out to be - of understanding discourse. The
processes of activating and, if necessary, extending one's background
knowledge, during communication, and of directing one's behaviour
accordingly. For a more detailed introduction to this issue, we recommend
Hellman, (1992/2004 online). Discourse
Deixis:
One of the five types of deixis identified
by Fillmore (1971/1997). Specifically, anything which helps us shift
attention within, or impose an organising structure upon, a conversation,
narrative, or text. "The choice of lexical or grammatical elements which
indicate or otherwise refer to some portion or aspect of the ongoing
discourse" (Fillmore, 1971/1997, p103). Examples:
"the former", "this", "in the last paragraph we saw". Discourse
Marker: [See firstly discourse
analysis.] "A Discourse Marker (DM) is a word or phrase
that functions primarily as a structuring unit of spoken language. To the
listener, a DM signals the speaker's intention to mark a boundary in
discourse. DMs are active contributions to the discourse and signal such
activities as change in speaker, taking or holding control of the floor,
relinquishing control of the floor, or the beginning of a new topic." (source.) Examples: Such words as
"anyway", "so", "okay", "I mean",
"let's see", and "well". Discourse
Structure: [See firstly discourse
analysis.] "All aspects of the internal organisational structure of
a discourse [including] segmentation, relations between
segments (informational and intentional), anaphoric relations, modal
subordination, discourse topic, thematic progression, etc." (source). Dual
Route Cascaded Model: Version of dual
route theory by Coltheart, Curtis, Atkins, and Haller (1993). Dual
Route Theory: [See firstly transcoding
models.] The theoretical assertion by dyslexia theorists that there are
two optional routes through the cognitive system when reading out loud,
namely the lexical route and the nonlexical
route. [See the fuller discussion in Coltheart, Curtis, Atkins, and Haller (1993).] Dyspraxia: See this entry in our Neuropsychology Glossary. Ellipsis: "The omission of one or more words in a sentence,
which would be needed to complete the grammatical construction or fully to
express the sense" (OED). Alternatively, sentences "where, for
reasons of economy, emphasis, or style, a part of the structure has been
omitted, which is recoverable from a scrutiny of the context" ( Explicature: [See
firstly implicature.] "The propositions
that are explicitly communicated" ( Expositive: A class of speech act suggested by Factive: See mental verbs (factive). Feedback: In general terms, information designed to give
knowledge of results, but more specifically one of the basic concepts of the
science of cybernetics. In fact, two types of feedback need to be
identified, namely negative and positive. Negative feedback is where
corrective action is taken to reduce, or "damp", the
amount of an error. This is the sort of feedback which gives us the classic
"closed loop" control system, the feedback we are already familiar
with in biology under the name "homeostasis" (Cannon, 1927). Examples:
The thermostat (non biological and biological) and the alpha-gamma spinal
reflex [glossary].
Positive Feedback, by contrast, is where the correction is made in the
same direction as that of the original displacement. Each pass around
the feedback cycle thus magnifies the displacement instead of
diminishing it. This means that we can no longer refer to the displacement as
an "error", because not only do we want it to be there for some
reason, but we also want it to be bigger than it already is. Positive
feedback is only needed in control systems if the amplification of a
signal is needed. Figures
of Speech: Rhetorical devices. Ways
of using language for poetic or enhanced effect in narrative or discourse,
first analysed by Aristotle ("Rhetoric", ca. 350BC [details]),
and including such instances as hyperbole, irony, metaphor, simile, etc.
Expressions "deviating from the normal arrangement or use of words"
(EOD). Dr. Gideon Burton, of Fillmore,
Charles J: [biography]
Professor of Linguistics at the Floor: Used within psycholinguistics in the sense of
"to take the floor" - see turn-taking. Frame: "A term used in some models of grammatical
description to refer to the structural context within which a class of items
can be used. For example, the frame She saw - box provides an
environment for the use of determiners (the, a, my, etc.)"
( Frame
Analysis: Erving Goffman's
(1974) method of discourse analysis (from the book of the same name),
in which the term frame is used in the sense of a memory schema, that
is to say, as a unit of supranodal conceptual
order. Frame
Semantics: A variation on semantic
network theory devised by Fillmore (1976, et seq.), in which
conceptual structures known as "semantic frames" are created
alongside the individual nodes of the network, and act to impose a
superordinate order upon them. A variant of a memory schema, in other
words, very much in the Schank and Abelson (1975)
tradition. Example: The concept of the everyday
commercial transaction between a buyer and a seller, which helps to make
sense of the individual nodes for "to buy", "to sell",
"money", "value", "trade", etc. Framework: Will usually be seen in its everyday sense. If it
has a specific theoretical meaning at all, it will probably be as a synonym
for frame. Function
Words: These are the syntactically
important parts of a sentence, that is to say, the prepositions, conjunctions,
articles, and pronouns. Unlike content words, they are
often described as a "closed class" of words because there are
comparatively few of them to start with and new ones are only rarely added.
Taken together, they provide a precise syntactic framework to express a given
type of idea in a particular way. Thus the sentences "Tommy will eat and
die" and "Tommy will eat or die" are structurally identical
but make totally different propositions, especially as to the nature of what
is being eaten. Functor: Same as function word. "Garden
Path" Sentence: See ambiguous
sentence. Garrett,
Merrill F.: [homepage] Generative
Grammar: Any grammar which
focuses on the progressive development of the surface structure of a
sentence, but especially Chomsky's phrase structure grammar. [See
now generative phonology.] Generative
Phonology: The branch of generative
grammar which studies the production of sounds in terms of the
progressive application of rules, and thus attempts to record the sometimes
surprising differences between phonemes and the phones by which
they are transmitted. Example: The observation that /n/
actually comes out as /m/ when it occurs before /b/ or /p/,
hence "input" is said as "imput". Genitive: [See firstly case and inflection.]
The form taken by a case-inflected noun or pronoun when used as
a possessive. Example: The English his/hers/its
pronouns are the genitive variants of the nominatives he/she/it. Gist:
"The substance or pith of a
matter, the essence or main part" (OED). [See now the entries for Goffman,
Erving (1922-1982): [biography] Sociologist, responsible for the frame analysis
approach to sentence analysis (Goffman, 1957). Government: [See firstly government and binding theory]
The ability of a noun concept in the mind's semantic network
memory [glossary],
selected at deep structure level to be the subject or object
of a given clause, to direct the fine detail processes of generative
grammar which follow. The logical prerequisite for binding. Government
and Binding Theory: Noam Chomsky's
theory of the relationship between words and their referents (Chomsky,
1981), and particularly of "the syntactic restrictions on the
distribution of referentially dependent items and their antecedents"
( Grammar: "[Grammar is] the science which treats of the
principles of language; the study of forms of speech, and their relations to
one another; the art concerned with the right use and application of the
rules of a language, in speaking or writing" (Google Free Dictionary, 2003
online). In practice, grammar has
two sub-sciences, namely the studies of syntax and morphology,
and may be regarded as a collection of phrase structure rules
capable of generating a sentence (Monaghan, 1999/2003 online). Graph: See this entry in our Writing Systems Glossary. Grapheme: See this entry in our Writing Systems Glossary. [Contrast lexeme, morpheme, phoneme,
and sememe.] Grapheme-Phoneme
Conversion: [See firstly grapheme-phoneme
correspondence.] Hypothetical mental process for allocating phonemes
to graphemes by learned rule. Examples: When
reading "i" as /i/
or /I/ depending on the presence of a terminal "e"
("bit">/bit/ but "bite">/bIt/),
or when sounding out unknown words or nonwords.
[See the detailed discussion in Coltheart, Curtis, Atkins, and Haller (1993).] Grapheme-Phoneme
Correspondence: The defining
property of an alphabetic orthography, as opposed to either a logographic
orthography or a syllabary. The property of allocating individual
sounds or sound clusters to individual letters or letter strings. Graphemic Output Lexicon: [See firstly lexicon.] Ellis and Young's (1988) term for the hypothetical mental store for whole
known written words and common phrases. Functionally and conceptually, the graphemic output lexicon is one of the mind's four main
"surface form" word storage modules [the others being the auditory
input lexicon, the visual input lexicon, and the speech output
lexicon]. Its main role within the broader spread of cognition is to help
the processes of writing turn ideas into grammatically appropriate word
strings. But beware, because different theorists adopt marginally different
names for the same concept. The graphemic output
lexicon is exactly the same as the "written word motor centre" seen
in Kussmaul (1878),
the Schriftbild seen in Freud (1891), the "graphemic output logogen system" seen in Ellis (1982), and the
"orthographic output lexicon" seen in Kay, Lesser, and Coltheart (1992). Grice,
Herbert P. (1913-1988): [selected Internet biography] Herbert Grice was the Oxford philosopher whose
1957 monograph on "Meaning" did much to shape the modern science of
pragmatics, helping to focus theoretical attention on the utterance
and the processes of implicature. Grice
noted that successful communication requires cooperation between speaker and
listener. He called this the "cooperative principle", and
subdivided it, in turn into a number of general rules, now known as Grice's
maxims. Gricean Inference: [See firstly Grice's
maxims and inference in general.] "Our robust abilities to reason
about other agents' actions, choices, and motivations" (Stone, 2003/2004 online).
Alternatively, the ability to anticipate whether an utterance will be
understood as intended (Ibid.), and therefore the basis (a) of
phrasing it for maximum effect in the first place, and (b) of monitoring its
success or otherwise thereafter. Grice's
Maxims: [See firstly Grice,
Herbert P.] The standard ways in which Grice's cooperative principle
expresses itself in conversation. Usually presented under four subheadings,
namely (1) Maxims of Quantity, to the effect that you should speak
neither more nor less than is necessary for maximal understanding, (2) Maxims
of Quality, to the effect that you should speak neither more nor less
than you have evidence to support, (3) Maxims of Relevance, to the
effect that you should not wander from the topic of discussion, and (4) Maxims
of Manner, exhorting you to avoid obscurity and ambiguity of expression,
be suitably brief, and generally orderly [see full list].
[See now Gricean inference.] Head: The single most important word in a phrase. Homophone: Two (or more) real (ie.
"lexical") words which, though written
differently, sound the same. Examples: to/two/too;
whine/wine. [But see also pseudohomophone
and lexical decision test.] Ideation: A catch-all term for the higher mental processes
(whatever they are) which create ideas (whatever they are). In the specific
context of speech production, ideation is as good a name as any for what goes
on at the top of the speech production processing hierarchy. Illocutionary
Act: [See firstly pragmatics and
speech act.] Illocutionary
Force: [See firstly illocutionary
act.] The relative success of an illocutionary act in linking the locutionary act and the perlocutionary
effect on a given occasion. How a particular utterance worked,
given what was meant (whether as a suggestion or an order, perhaps). Its
particular thrust, on the occasion in question. Imperative: One of the three basic verb moods (the
others being indicative and subjunctive). "Verb forms or sentence/clause
types typically used in the expression of commands,
e.g. Go away!" ( Implicature: "The
drawing of a conclusion from known or assumed facts or statements; [.....] reasoning from something known or assumed to something
else which follows from it" (OED). Grice's term for the final total
interpretation of an utterance, given (a) everything the listener
knows both about language (e.g. the cooperative principle and Grice's
maxims), and (b) the context of speaker and world in general.
[Compare explicature.] Indexical: Charles Peirce's term for elements of a discourse
which point in some way at a referent [the
study area we now know as deictics, before
that alternative name was popularised by Fillmore (1971/1997)]. Peirce's term
was adopted by Bar-Hillel (1954), who saw indexicals
as part of the broader problem of context. The referential decoding of
some sentences, he points out, will be the same for everyone (e.g. "Ice
floats on water"), whilst others will require
knowledge of the place and time of production to decode properly (e.g.
"It's raining"). It follows that coping with indexicals
is one of the barriers to the development of effective machine translation
systems. Indicative: One of the three basic verb moods (the
others being imperative and subjunctive). "Verb
forms or sentence/clause types used in the expression of
statements and questions, e.g. "The horse is walking" ( Indirect
Object: See object (indirect). Inference: In its everyday usage, inference is "the
drawing of a conclusion from known or assumed facts or statements"
(OED). Within cognitive science generally, it is "a conclusion that a
person can draw from certain observed or supposed facts" (Watson and
Glaser, 1991, p6), and within pragmatics in particular, it is the
principal enabling mechanism of both Grice's cooperative principle
and Sperber and Wilson's relevance theory.
[Compare ostension.] Inflection: The use of particular affixes to "signal
grammatical relationships, such as plural, past tense, and possession [but
not to] change the grammatical class of the stems to which they are
attached" ( Initiation: This everyday word is often used in
psycholinguistics to describe the point at which a given willed act is
released for speech production. It is thus the process whereby an act of praxis
(willed behaviour) is put into motion, which makes it, in turn, the process
most likely to have failed in some way in a dyspraxia. Input
Lexicon: [See firstly lexicon
(psycholinguistic definition).] A lexicon serving one of the perceptual
pathways. These will normally be the visual input lexicon (for textual
input) and the auditory input lexicon (for spoken input), although one
should suspect there might be others at work in persons capable of reading
Braille (a "tactile" input lexicon, perhaps). [Compare output
lexicon.] Instrumental: [See firstly case and inflection.]
The form taken by a case-inflected noun when used in an adverbial
phrase in the "with, by, or using" subsense
of manner. Example: In the sentence "The
major killed Fred with the dagger", the dagger is the instrumental noun,
but, in English, remains in the uninflected form. In Slavic languages,
however, the instrumental case-ending is applied, as in Czech "-im", "-em", etc. Intransitive
Verb: See verb (intransitive). Jackendoff, Ray: [homepage] Professor of Linguistics at Brandeis University,
responsible for helping to extend the boundaries of the study of semantics to
include the full range of higher cognitive processes. See, for example
"Consciousness and the Computational Mind" (Jackendoff,
1990). "Journalese": English as written by journalists. A form of
"telegraphic" language used in newspapers and the like, which is
particularly distinctive when used for short headlines for long and
complicated stories, because many ambiguous sentences result, as per
the examples now listed ..... "German
peas plan to blow up Palace" (ITV Teletext, 14th November 2003;
ambiguous - in fact, we have a three-word subject, and "plan" is
not the main verb; not truly a garden path sentence, though, because you
pause as soon as you get to "plan", this not being something peas
usually do) "Spleen
cells hope for diabetes cure" ( ITV Teletext, 14th November 2003;
ambiguous subject - in fact, we have a three-word subject, and "hope"
is not the main verb; again not truly a garden path sentence because you
pause as soon as you get to "hope") "Isolated
bus shelters to get lights" (ITV Teletext, 14th November 2003; ambiguous
subject - in fact, we have a three-word subject, and "shelters"
is not the main verb) "Child
cough attacks linked to roads" (ITV Teletext, 3rd December 2003;
ambiguous subject - in fact, we have a three-word subject with a missing
"are", and "attacks" is not the main verb) "Aids
drug brain claims disputed" (BBC Teletext, 17th November 2003; garden
path - in fact we have a four-word subject, and "claims" is
not the main verb) "Feeding
square's pigeons illegal" (BBC Teletext, 17th November 2003; difficult -
omitted copular "is" before final word) "Pair
fast hanging over a river" (BBC Teletext, 20th November 2003; difficult
- "fast" is the main verb not an adjective) "Minister
against "It's
important research into the cause of cancer receives funding" (ITV
Teletext, 1st November 2004; false copular is followed by a very late transitive
verb - good garden path example) Labelled
Bracketing: Systems of notation for
recording a sentence structure on a single line rather than in a tree.
This is achieved by representing all nodes and branches in a nested bracket
arrangement of some sort. Examples: [s[np[det the [n dog]][vp [v eats]]] <S><np><DT>the</DT><NN>dog</NN></np><vp><VBZ>eats</VBZ></vp></s> [[people]N[ran]V]S where
the outer [s.....] or [..........................]S
indicates the outer level sentence structure, and N and V indicate noun and
verb as in tree notation. Notation 2 is similar to the structure of the HTML
used in building up this webpage, with each <instruction> being
cancelled eventually by a matching </instruction>. [See also Penn
TREEBANK.] [One of the reason these linear
notations have become popular is that they are significantly easier than
trees to program from in natural language processing computer
applications. Lemma: [Greek = "something taken for granted"
(O.E.D.); Latin = "the theme or title of a composition" (Cassell's Latin Dictionary).] A word which has evolved to
have a number of highly distinct meanings within highly diverse sciences. (1)
As coined by 16th century mathematicians (and still used as such within
modern formal logic), the word stayed close to its Greek derivation as
"a proposition assumed or demonstrated which is subordinate to some
other" (O.E.D.). (2) As then developed by 17th century literary scholars
it relied more on the Latin usage, and became "the argument or subject
of a literary composition, prefixed as a heading or title" (O.E.D.). It
thus describes any sort of "contents page" indexing material intended
to indicate the nature of the ensuing chapters in a book. (3) This usage then
influenced modern linguistics, where the word has come to signify the
"headword" (or "citation form") of an entry in a glossary
[the example given by the WordReference.com Dictionary - check it out
- is that "the lemma go consists of go together with goes,
going, went, and gone"]. (4) For botanists,
meanwhile, it became the outermost of two bracts. (5) We deal here
primarily with the word's use in psycholinguistics, where it refers "to
the syntactic and semantic properties of a word", but NOT that word's
"phonetic shape", which is believed to be represented separately ( Levelt, Willem J.M. (): [university homepage] Dutch psycholinguist, responsible for the "Levelt model" of speech production (Levelt, 1989), and currently Director of the Max Planck
Institute for Psycholinguistics, Lexeme: "A lexeme is the minimal unit of language
which has a semantic interpretation and embodies a distinct cultural
concept" (Lingualinks, 2003 online).
Alternatively, it is "a part of the sentence with no internal
syntactic structure" (Hyperdictionary, 2003 online).
Lexemes are therefore the stuff dictionaries are made of, although the formal
definition strictly includes all the morphemes in a language even
though most of these would not normally warrant a dictionary definition in
their own right. [Contrast grapheme, morpheme, phoneme,
and sememe.] Lexical
Decision Test: [This definition
presumes familiarity with four-lexicon transcoding models such as that
by Ellis and Young (1988), and uses the psycholinguistic definition of lexicon.]
The lexical decision test is a simple test of the integrity of the auditory
or visual language input pathways. The test is commonly included in psycholinguistic
test batteries, and measures a subject's ability to state whether a probe
word is a real word or not [that is to say, to decide whether it is lexical
or not]. Example: "Is plood
a real word, or not?" Successful judgements indicate an intact
input lexicon (auditory or visual as appropriate), and failures indicate a
defective one. Lexicalisation: The overall process of converting a thought into
expressive language (spoken or inner). There are many theories about how
lexicalisation takes place, in terms of its internal stages. [But see lexicalise,
to, which conveys a subtly different meaning.] Lexicalise,
To: To guess at the nearest regular
word when presented with a nonword. Example:
reading "pool" when faced with the nonword
"plood". This form of error is commonly
taken as indicating failure in the non-lexical processing routes - real words
can be processed successfully in this way, but non-words, for which no prior
lexical entry can exist, will fail the normal lexical matching process.
[But see lexicalisation, which conveys a subtly different meaning.] Lexicon
(Linguistic Definition): Within
linguistics, the lexicon is "the knowledge that a native speaker has
about a language" (Lingualinks, 2003 online).
Alternatively, "the total number of meaningful units (such as words and
affixes) of a language" (Hyperdictionary, 2003 online).
This includes information about the form and meaning of words and phrases,
and their appropriate usage. [But compare lexicon (psycholinguistic
definition), where the concept is more restricted in scope because
form and meaning have been deliberately separated.] Lexicon
(Psycholinguistic Definition):
Within psycholinguistics, the term lexicon refers to a discrete surface-form
(that is to say, non-semantic) word store. This separates it from, but
requires that it be linked to, a separate semantic memory containing
the corresponding word meanings (or "referents"). Words are
seen as "units" in lexicons containing many such units. To use a
word from this mental dictionary, you simply have to "look it up"
somehow, just as you would with a real dictionary. This means activating that
particular word unit beyond its hypothetical activation threshold,
whilst at the same time ensuring that no other word unit is allowed to
approach its threshold. Four discrete lexicons may be seen in 19th century
psycholinguistic diagrams by Kussmaul
(1878), Charcot (1883), and Freud (1891),
and these four lexicons are now standard equipment on modern transcoding
models such as Kay, Lesser, and Coltheart (1992). [But compare lexicon (linguistic definition),
where the concept is broader in scope.] Listenership: The listener's role in maintaining a conversation
or discourse, often subtly, using backchannel signals of one
sort or another. Local
Tree: The first level (or
"depth one") expansion of the root of a sentence structure tree. Locative: [See firstly case and inflection.]
The form taken by a case-inflected noun when associated with a preposition
which indicates location. Example: In the sentence
"The major killed Fred in the library", the library is the locative
noun in an adverbial of place, but, in English, remains in the
uninflected form. In Slavic languages, however, the locative case-ending is
applied, as in Czech škola
("school") > na škole ("at school"). Locutionary Act: The
physical act of delivering an utterance. [Now see illocutionary act
and perlocutionary effect.] Logogen: [Greek logos = "word" + genus
= "birth".] Morton's (1979) term for a memory store capable of generating whole known words or
phrases in response to a semantically coded input. More or less synonymous
with the modern psycholinguistic notion of output lexicon. Logographic
Stage: The first of the three
stages of reading development. Specifically, the one at which words come
to be recognised by sight as wholes. It is the ability promoted by
"look and say" or "flashcard" methods of teaching
reading, and implies the development of the sort of visual input lexicon
- or sight vocabulary. Normal children achieve this stage at around 5
- 6 years of age. Errors at this stage are typically visually based, often as
a result of a common characteristic (for example, "lorry" being
misread for "yellow" because of the shared "y"). However,
logographic reading becomes increasingly inefficient as the total number of
words in the vocabulary grows, and it soon becomes advantageous to learn the grapheme-phoneme
correspondences as well, thus ushering in the phonological stage. Machine
Translation (MT): The use of
computers for automated translation purposes. [We have included a full and
progressive history of this subject in our e-paper on "Short-Term Memory
Subtypes in Computing and Artificial Intelligence" - see Section 4.1 of Part 4 and Section 1.9 of Part 5.] Manner:
In syntactic analysis, any word
or phrase indicating how something took place. Hence one of the
three main types of adverbial phrase. [Compare place and time.] Maxims
of Manner: See Grice's maxims. Maxims
of Quality: See Grice's maxims. Maxims
of Quantity: See Grice's maxims. Maxims
of Relevance: See Grice's maxims. Mental
Verbs: A relatively small class of verbs
describing the basic metacognitive states and operations of the mind,
whose study is central both to modern cognitive philosophy and many branches
of paediatric and adult clinical psychology. [For examples, see the separate
entries for mental verbs (factive) and mental
verbs (non-factive). See then mental verbs,
acquisition of.] Mental
Verbs, Acquisition Of: [See firstly
mental verbs.] Montgomery (2002)
reviews how processes of ostension need to
be complemented by a Wittgensteinian emphasis on
the importance of context in determining a person's reference structures, if
mental verbs are to acquire their proper meaning during language development.
Such verbs appear in normal development at around four years of age (see Geisser,
2004 online, for details of
supporting studies here). Mental
Verbs (Factive): "A term used in the classification of verbs, referring
to a verb which takes a complement clause, and where the speaker
presupposes the truth of the proposition expressed in that clause. For
example, know, agree, realise, etc. are 'factive
verbs' (or 'factives'): in She knows that the
cat is in the garden, the speaker presupposes that the cat is in the
garden" ( Mental
Verbs (Non-Factive): [Sometimes "contrafactive".]
[See firstly mental verbs (factive).] As
classified by Kiparsky and Kiparsky
(1970), the non-factives are one of the two main
types of mental verbs (the other being mental verbs (factive)). They are mental verbs describing
indefinite states of mind such as "to suspect", "to
doubt", "to wish", "to pretend", and "to
imagine". Metacognition:
[For metacognition as a factor in
attitude change, see the parallel entry in our Rational Argument Glossary.] In its broadest sense, "metacognition" is
the act of turning the focus of one's mental faculties onto those mental
faculties themselves. It is thus "thinking about thinking", or
"knowing about knowing", as when we say "I am certain of my
facts", or "It's taking me longer to remember things nowadays".
The term was popularised by Flavell (1979), and the
whole process is central to the satisfactory development (a) of mental
verbs (where cognitive deficits are the explanation of choice for
the clinical phenomena making up mindblindness),
and (b) of linguistic competence (where cognitive deficits resulting in poor metalinguistic
awareness are heavily implicated in developmental dyslexia). Metalinguistic
Awareness: Metalinguistic awareness
is the ability to use words to describe and comment upon other words. Thus,
if you know only that the word "sun" refers to the sun, and that
the word "bun" is a type of cake, then you
have linguistic but not metalinguistic awareness. If, on the
other hand, you know also that "they rhyme", then you have
commented upon the words themselves (rather than their referents), and you
have begun to develop metalinguistic awareness as well; similarly, if you
know that "carpet" can be divided into "car" and
"pet", or that final "-s", "-ed",
"-ing", or "-ish"
are syntactically significant morphemes. Metalinguistic skills are important,
because they have long been recognised as correlating with reading ability
[for more on this, see Section 5.1 of our e-paper on "Dyslexia"]. Mindblindness: This is
Baron-Cohen's (1995) generic description for problems in the processing of
the self in a social world. Model:
"A model is an alternate, and
usually simplified, representation of something. [Modelling] is the means we
use to ignore what we cannot understand and to consider what we do
understand. The use of models allows us to simulate unfamiliar problems by
replacing the unfamiliar with the familiar." (Steidel
and Henderson, 1983, p345.) Note, however, that a model "need not
resemble the real object pictorially [provided] it works in the same way in
certain essential respects" (Craik, 1943). [See now box-and-arrow
model.] Mood: "A set of syntactic and semantic contrasts
signalled by alternative paradigms of the verb, e.g. indicative [.....],
subjunctive, imperative" ( Morpheme: "A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in
the grammar of a language" (Lingualinks, 2003 online).
[Contrast grapheme, lexeme, phoneme, and sememe.] Morphology: "Morphology is the study of the internal
structure of words [and] can be thought of as a system of adjustments
in the shapes of words that contribute to adjustments in the way speakers intend
their utterances to be interpreted" (Lingualinks,
2003 online). MT:
See machine translation. Myth: See Campsall (2004 online)
on this; also the entry in our Rational Argument Glossary. Narrative: "A recapitulation of past experience in which
language is used to structure a sequence of (real or fictitious) events"
( Narrative
Structure: The structure of a narrative
according to a particular scheme of analysis. An important class of memory schema.
Example: See Thorndike (1977) on the hierarchy of components in story telling
and story memory. Natural
Language Processing (NLP): A
catch-all name for language simulation software. [Compare computational
linguistics.] Negative
Feedback: See feedback. NLP:
See natural language processing.
(Avoid using this abbreviation, it has a number of
competing uses.) Nominative: [See firstly case and inflection.]
The form taken by a case-inflected noun or pronoun when used as
the subject of a clause. Non-Factive:
[Sometimes contrafactive.] See mental
verbs (non-factive). Noun: "A category of word which typically denotes an
entity (person/place/thing)" (Galasso, 2003 online). The usual
sign of a noun is that it can successfully be put into the plural. Noun
Phrase (NP): A phrase
capable of acting as a noun. Example: "The
man with the white hat boarded the train". Noun
Referent: Same thing as referent. NP:
See noun phrase. Object
(Direct): The direct object of verb
is the "patient" of a typically transitive verb which can
become subject by passivation (after Lingualinks, 2003 online).
Thus "I kicked the dog" (where the dog is the direct object of the
verb "kick") can be passivised to
"The dog was kicked by me" (where the dog has become the
grammatical subject of the clause, but remains the semantic object of the
verb in that clause). Object
(Indirect): The indirect object of
a verb is "a grammatical relation that is one means of expressing the
semantic role of goal and other similar roles" (Lingualinks,
2003 online). Open
Class Words: "One of two
postulated major word-classes in language, the other being closed. An
open class is one whose membership is in principle indefinite or unlimited.
New items are continually being added, as new ideas, inventions, etc.,
emerge. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are
open-class items, whereas conjunctions, pronouns, etc., are closed."
( Orthographic
Input Lexicon: [See firstly lexicon.]
Kay, Lesser, and Coltheart's (1992) term for the hypothetical mental store for whole
known read words and common phrases, and therefore synonymous with visual
input lexicon. Orthographic
Output Lexicon: [See firstly lexicon.]
Kay, Lesser, and Coltheart's (1992) term for the hypothetical mental store for whole
known written words and common phrases, and therefore synonymous with graphemic output lexicon. Orthographic
Stage: The third of the three
stages of reading development. Specifically, the one at which the child
has acquired the full repertoire of processes and processing routes to cope
with all the irregularities of the written language. It is also characterised
by increasingly efficient movement of the eyes across the page as the
transitional probabilities between letters are learned and information is
gradually processed in adult-sized chunks. Snowling
and Frith (1981, p87) describe this as learning "the letter-by-letter
structure of words", and normal children achieve this stage at around 8 - 10
years of age. Orthography:
See this entry in our Writing Systems Glossary. Ostension:
"The action of showing; exhibition, display; manifestation" (OED).
Obsolete term resurrected by Sperber and Wilson
(e.g. 1995) to convey the concept of the provision of evidence of one's
thoughts during communication, which activity they regard as an essential
partner to the processes of inference. [See now relevance theory
and the discussion of mental verb acquisition in Montgomery (2002).] Output
Lexicon: [See firstly lexicon
(psycholinguistic definition).] A lexicon serving one of the motor
language pathways. These will normally be the graphemic
output lexicon (for writing and typing) and the speech output lexicon
(for spoken output). [Compare input lexicon.] Parse,
To: To analyse a sentence
structure down into its constituent grammatical parts, and then to
summarise said structure using one of the available graphical techniques,
typically a bracketing or a tree. Parsing: From parse, to. Parts
of Speech: The standard dictionary
classification of words as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs,
etc. Passive: One of the two main types of voice. "A
term used in the grammatical analysis of voice, referring to a sentence,
clause, or verb form where the grammatical subject is typically the recipient
or 'goal' of the action denoted by the verb, e.g. The letter was written
by a doctor" (Crystal, 2003, p339). [Contrast active.] Peirce,
Charles S. (1839-1914): [selected
Internet biography] Logician,
mathematician, and early communication theorist, responsible amongst other
things for the study of indexicals. Penn
TREEBANK: [See firstly labelled
bracketing.] A system of syntactic notation which combines bracketing and
indenting. Derives from a project undertaken by the Performative:
Same thing as performative utterance. Performative
Utterance: [Or
"performative", for short.] [See firstly pragmatics.] Perlocutionary Effect:
[See firstly pragmatics.] The actual, rather than the intended, result
of a speech act. Person: "A category used in grammatical description to
indicate the number and nature of the participants in a situation" ( Person
Deixis:
One of the five types of deixis identified
by Fillmore (1971/1997). Specifically, anything which
defines the participants within a conversation, narrative, or text. Phone: [See firstly segment.] "The
smallest perceptible discrete unit [of sound] is referred to as a phone."
( Phoneme: "A phoneme is the smallest contrastive unit in
the sound system of a language" (Lingualinks, 2003 online).
[Compare phone, and contrast grapheme, lexeme, morpheme,
and sememe.] Phonetics: The scientific study of the sound systems used in
human communication from a generally anatomical and physical point of view
(and thus covering the articulatory and phonatory
systems). [Contrast phonology.] Phonological
Stage: The second of the three
stages of reading development. Specifically, the one at which grapheme-phoneme
correspondences are being
learned, and is the ability promoted by "phonics"
methods of teaching reading. What is important is that unfamiliar words can
now be "sounded out", enabling them to be recognised as if they had
been heard rather than seen. This implies the development of the sort of
alternative processing routes described in modern transcoding models.
Normal children achieve this stage at around 6 - 7 years of age. Phonology: The scientific study of the sound systems used in
human communication from a generally linguistic point of view (and thus
making regular reference to the lexical and conceptual systems). "The
patterns into which [sounds] fall" (Coates, 1987, p30). [Contrast phonetics.] Phrase: A phrase consists of several words, but is not
grammatically complete enough to constitute a clause. Alternatively,
it is "a syntactic structure that consists of more than one word but
lacks the subject-predicate organisation of a clause"
(Lingualinks, 2003 online). Phrase
Structure Grammar: "A type of grammar
discussed by Noam Chomsky in his book Syntactic Structures
(1957) as an illustration of a generative device. Phrase-structure grammars
contain rules (PS-rules) which are capable [of] generating strings of
linguistic elements." ( Phrase
Structure Rules: [See firstly phrase
structure grammar.] Many of the rules of language which make up a grammar
are concerned with the position words may take within a phrase, and
the conditions under which this positioning may alter. These rules are known
as "PS rules". Place:
In syntactic analysis, any word
or phrase indicating where something took place. Hence one of
the three main types of adverbial phrase. [Compare manner
and time.] Place
Deixis:
One of the five types of deixis identified
by Fillmore (1971/1997). Specifically, anything which
defines location or location change within a conversation, narrative, or
text. Examples: "The most obvious
place-deictic terms in English are the adverbs 'here' and 'there' and the
demonstratives 'this' and 'that'" (Fillmore, 1971/1997, p62). Positive
Feedback: See feedback. Possessive
Pronoun: A subclass of pronouns,
indicating possession. Examples: "My/Mine",
"Your/Yours". Pragmatics: Pragmatics is the science of communicational
motivation, that is to say, "of the aspects of meaning and language use that
are dependent on the speaker, the addressee, and other features of the context
of utterance" (Lingualinks, 2003 online).
The study of pragmatics grew out of the works of John Austin, Herbert Grice,
and John Searle, and looks in particular at the effect that immediate
motive, context, and custom have on discourse. Praxis:
Serial motor praxis - or praxis,
for short - means the initiation of sequential voluntary (i.e. willed)
movement. This can be for any purpose, including locomotion or communication,
as long as it is willed. Reflex movements or instinctive vocalisations are
not praxis, even though they end up using the same motor pathways and
muscles. Praxis and pragmatics actually share the same linguistic
root, namely the Greek word prassein =
"to do", via its derivations praxis ("doing") and pragma
("deed"). Defects of praxis are known as "dyspraxias". Predicate
(1 - Noun): A predicate is "the portion of a clause, excluding
the subject, that expresses something about the subject. [For
example:] 'The book is on the table'." (Lingualinks, 2003 online;
italics original). Alternatively, it is "what is affirmed (or denied) of
the subject" (source).
[See also predication, copular
"is", and the difference between attributive adjectives
and predicative adjectives.] [There is another example in the
entry on argument.] Predicate
(2 - Verb): To predicate is
(amongst other things) "to affirm (a statement or the like) on
some given grounds; hence [.....] to found or base
(anything) on or upon stated facts or conditions" (OED;
italics original). Hence the modern usage "predicated upon" as
indicating the earlier items in an argument or causal line [glossary]. Predication: [See
firstly predicate (1 - noun).] The
joining of two ideas by the copular
"is" to make a proposition.
The idea is explained in detail in James Mill's "Analysis of the
Phenomena of the Human Mind" (Mill, 1829, 1869a), of which the following
is an extract ..... “The purposes of language are two. We have occasion
to mark sensations or ideas singly; and we have occasion to mark them in
trains; in other words, we have need of contrivances to mark not only
sensations and ideas; but also the order of them. The contrivances which are necessary to
mark this order are the main cause of the complexity of language. [….. One
problem is that] communication requires names of different degrees of
comprehensiveness; names of individuals, names of classes [….. so that] there
is perpetual need of the substitution of one name for another. When I have
used the names, James and John, Thomas and William, […..] I may proceed to
speak of them in general, as included in a class. When this happens, I have
occasion for the name of the class, and to substitute the name of the class,
for the names of the individuals. [I therefore] invent a mark, which, placed
between my marks, John and man, fixes the idea I mean to
convey, that man is another mark to that idea which John is a
mark [and] for this purpose, we use in English, the mark ‘is’ [and] say John
‘is’ a man” (Op. cit.,
pp159-161; italics original). Predicative
Adjective: An adjective used
as a complement. Example: "The man is big".
[This usage contrasts with that of the attributive adjective.] Preposition: A preposition is an adposition
which precedes its complement. Common English prepositions are
"to", "with", "by", as in "He went to the
races". In noun-inflected languages, prepositions typically require a
special case ending morpheme on the noun(s) to which they relate. Many
adverbial phrases are prepositional, thanks to the ability of the
different prepositions to comment upon time, manner, and place.
Example: Consider the following bit of Cluedospeak: "The major hit Fred on the head,
in the study, by the window, with the hammer". Pronoun: "A functional word that serves in place of a noun"
(Galasso, 2003 online). Pronoun
Resolution: The act of identifying
the true noun referent of a pronoun. Unfortunately, with
sentences which have been carelessly constructed in the first place,
it is not always possible to resolve some of the pronouns. Example:
"Earl and Ted were working together when suddenly he fell into
the threshing machine." Pronoun resolution problems of this sort account
for many ambiguous sentences. Proposition
(1 - Linguistics Definition):
Within linguistics, a proposition is "that part of the meaning of a clause
or sentence that is constant, despite changes in such things as the voice
or illocutionary force of the clause" (Lingualinks,
2003 online). Proposition
(2 - Psycholinguistics Definition):
Within psycholinguistics, a proposition is the smallest possible unit of
truth (indeed this is the definition in common usage within the broader
spread of cognitive science). [See now propositional knowledge.] Propositional
Knowledge: See this entry in our Memory Glossary. Propositional
Network: [See firstly proposition
(2).] See the more detailed introduction to this topic in Section 10 of
our e-paper on "An Introduction to Data Modelling
for Semantic Network Designers". PS-Rules: See phrase structure rules. Pseudohomophone: [See
firstly homophone.] A non-word which is nevertheless homophonic to a
real word in a language, rendering it nonlexical in
the visual input lexicon, but lexical in the auditory input lexicon.
Example: troo. [See
also lexical decision test.] Pseudohomophone Reading Test: A simple test of the integrity of the nonlexical
route in reading out loud. The test is commonly found in psycholinguistic
test batteries, and measures a subject's ability to pronounce pseudohomophones like troo,
a task which requires no access to the visual input lexicon or the semantic
system, but which may benefit from the fact that the speech output
lexicon will already be well practised at producing the sounds of the
homophone true. Psycholinguistics: That area of cognitive science which attempts to
reconcile the theories of cognitive psychologists with those of linguistic
scientists. Here are some further definitions from the literature: (1)
"..... psycholinguistics studies those
processes whereby the intentions of speakers are transformed into signals in
the culturally accepted code and whereby these signals are transformed into
the interpretations of hearers. In other words, psycholinguistics deals
directly with the processes of encoding and decoding as they relate states of
messages to states of communicators" (Osgood and Sebeok,
1965, p4; italics original). (2) "the
experimental study of the psychological processes through which a human
subject acquires and implements the system of a natural language"
(Caron, 1992, p1), whose central task is "to describe the psychological
processes that go on when people use sentences" (Miller, 1964, p29). Psycholinguistic
Test Referent: Literally, the thing referred to [hence often seen
as "noun referent"]. "A term used in philosophical linguistics
and semantics for the entity (object, state of affairs, etc.) in the external
world to which a linguistic expression relates" ( Referring
Expressions: One of the three types
of noun phrase recognised in government and binding theory (the
other two being anaphors and pronominals
( Reflexive: "A term used in grammatical description to
refer to a verb or construction where the subject and the object
relate to the same entity" ( Register: ENTRY TO FOLLOW. Relative
Clause: [See firstly clause
(grammatical).] A clause introduced into a sentence by a relative
pronoun. Relative
Pronoun: A pronoun such as
"that", "which", or "who(m)"
which is coreferential to, and thus capable
of extending the specification of, a noun from a (usually adjacent and
preceding) clause. Example: "This is the woman,
whom I married". In English, relative pronouns can often be omitted and
left implicit, as happens three times in "the dog I own bit the cat I
didn't in the house I did" (which would make more sense as "the dog
which I own bit the cat which I didn't own in the house which I did
own". Alternatively, "in a sentence such as 'He's someone [who you
can trust]', the bracketed clause is said to be a relative clause because it
'relates to' (ie. modifies, or restricts the
reference of) the pronoun someone" (Radford, 2003 online). Relevance
Theory: Sperber
and Rhetoric: "The study of effective or persuasive speaking
and writing" ( Rhetorical
Structure Theory: [See firstly discourse.]
A paragraph-level system for the analysis of the structure of textual
discourse, developed by Mann and Thompson (1988) and making much of the role
of coherence. For further details, see Mann, (1999/2004 online). Schema: See this entry in our Memory Glossary. Scientific
model: See model. Searle,
John R. (1932-): John Searle is the Mills Professor of Philosophy at the Segment: "A term used in phonetics and linguistics
primarily to refer to any discrete unit that can be identified, either
physically or auditorily, in the stream of speech
[.....] The term is especially used in phonetics, where the smallest
perceptible discrete unit is referred to as a phone." ( Segmental
Phonology: "Segmental
phonology analyses the speech into distinctive units, or phonemes (= 'segmental
phonemes'), which have a fairly direct correspondence with phonetic
segments" ( Segmentation: The initial stage of discourse analysis, in
which the building blocks of the discourse in question are tentatively
identified, and the mechanisms by which they are connected are identified.
[See next connectivity.] Semantic
Cueing: See this entry in our Neuropsychology Glossary. [Compare semantic priming.] Semantic
Frame: See frame semantics. Semantic
Lexicon: That part of the lexicon
(linguistic definition) which would remain if the four lexicons
(psycholinguistic definition) were removed. The meanings of the
words known to the mind, but not the words themselves. That which you
would be left with if you got a dictionary and tippexed
out all the word tags! Usually treated either (a) as a semantic network,
or (b) as an unanalysed black box. [See now semantic system.] Semantic
Memory: See this entry in our Memory Glossary. Semantic
Network: See this entry in our Memory Glossary. Semantic-Pragmatic
Disorder: Class of paediatric
language problems characterised not by problems with vocabulary,
grammar, or phonology, but by "problems with semantics and
pragmatics" (Adams and Bishop, 1989a/2004
online). Children suffering from
this disorder may thus exhibit "fluent and grammatically well
formed" speech (Ibid.) which is, upon closer inspection, socially
inappropriate. They are language impaired, in other words, rather than
speech impaired. Examples: See the many carefully
categorised examples in Adams and Bishop (1989b/2004
online). Semantic
Priming: [See firstly context
effect and semantic cueing.] The same general concept as semantic
cueing, namely the pre-excitation of some categorial
domain in semantic memory. However, whilst "to cue" and "to
prime" are largely synonymous, the former tends to be used for the
clinical practice whilst the latter tends to be reserved for the experimental
manipulation. Example: For an example of the use of
semantic priming in a research investigation, see Nation (2001). Semantic
System: [See firstly semantic
lexicon.] The mind's higher cognitive system,
and the central box on most transcoding models (see, for example, Ellis and Young, 1988). Semantic
Web: See this entry in our Memory Glossary. Sememe: "A term used in some
semantic theories to refer to a minimal unit of meaning" ( Sentence: A sentence is "a unit of language which makes
sense" (Crystal, 1996, p2), which has been constructed "using the
rules of grammar" (Ibid.), and which contains one or more
clauses. Sentence
Structure: The sentence as a parsed
sequence of words, phrases, and clauses. Its surface structure. Serial
Motor Praxis: See praxis. Sight
Vocabulary: The words which are
known as wholes to the visual system, and which require no subsidiary
analysis of constituent graphemes. The term is roughly synonymous with
the idea of the visual input lexicon. Slot: "A term used in grammatical analysis to refer
to a place in a construction into which a class of items can be
inserted. For example, in the sentence The children - home, the 'slot'
marked by the dash can be 'filled' by came, are, went, etc., - a
subclass of verbs. Approaches characterised by this emphasis are
sometimes referred to as slot-and-filler models." ( Slot-and-Filler
Model: Model devised by Stephanie
Shattuck-Hufnagel to explain errors in the
phonological construction of spoken words. The model proposes a separate
representation of (a) segments (the "fillers"), and (b) a
framework (or "frame") of slots to lock those
segments into position. Small
Clause: "A clause that neither
involves (i) nominative case nor (ii) a finite
verb - e.g. I saw him swimming in the lake" (Galasso, 2003 online), or "John
considers Mary intelligent" (Radford, 2003 online). Social
Deixis:
One of the five types of deixis identified
by Fillmore (1971/1997) (although in fact it largely "absorbs"
(p112) person deixis as well). Specifically,
anything which helps identify person and immediate
role within a conversation, narrative, or text. "The study of that
aspect of sentences which reflect or establish or are determined by certain
realities of the social situation in which the speech act occurs"
(Fillmore, 1971/1997, pp111-112). Example: Deictics such as "Go and wake Grandpa". Sounding
Out Test: [This definition presumes
familiarity with four-lexicon transcoding models such as that by Ellis and Young (1988).] The sounding out test is a simple test of the
integrity of the grapheme-phoneme conversion process. It is commonly
included in psycholinguistic test batteries, and measures a subject's
ability to identify a word which fails lexical look-up. Successful sounding
out indicates an intact grapheme-phoneme conversion process, and failures
indicate a defective one. Specific
Language Impairment (SLI): "A
paradigmatic example of a specific developmental disorder [where] there is
impairment in a single domain of functioning (in this case language), and the
development in this domain is delayed rather than qualitatively
abnormal" (Bishop, 2000, p105). For further details, see the website of
the Merrill Advanced Studies Centre. Speech
Act: [See firstly pragmatics.]
"A speech act is an act that a speaker performs when making an utterance"
(Lingualinks, 2003 online
- for the full definition, click on the link given and follow the onward
expansion). The term comes from Austin (1962), who, when discussing
utterances which were being made for effect (e.g. lies, insults, etc.),
argued that "the more we consider a statement not as a sentence (or
proposition) but as an act of speech [.....] the
more we are studying the whole thing as an act" (p20). [See also illocutionary
force and perlocutionary effect.] Speech
Output Lexicon: [See firstly lexicon.]
Ellis and Young's (1988) term for the hypothetical mental store for whole
known spoken words and common phrases. Functionally and conceptually, the
speech output lexicon is one of the mind's four main "surface form"
word storage modules [the others being the auditory input lexicon, the
visual input lexicon, and the graphemic
output lexicon]. Its main role within the broader spread of cognition is
to help the processes of speech production turn ideas into grammatically
appropriate word strings [for a full account of which, see our e-paper on "Speech Production, Speech
Production Models, and Speech Pathology"]. But beware, because different theorists adopt
marginally different names for the same concept. The speech output lexicon is
exactly the same as the "spoken word motor centre" seen in Kussmaul
(1878), the Bewegungsbild
seen in Freud (1891),
the "speech output logogen system" seen in Ellis (1982), and the
"phonological output lexicon" seen in Kay, Lesser, and Coltheart (1992). Speech
Production Stages: The notion,
going back at least to Lordat
(1843), that lexicalisation
involves the successive activation of a number of cognitive modules [for a
full account of which, see our e-paper on "Speech Production, Speech
Production Models, and Speech Pathology"]. Sperber and Wilson (1995): See
relevance theory. Spreading
Activation Theory: Gary S. Dell's
(1986) theoretical assertion that the nodes of a physically stable semantic
network are progressively excitable by the neural equivalent of a ripple
in a pool. The initial activation might come, perhaps, from a particular
perception or thought, but secondary excitation would then spread outwards
through the associations to activate ever more distant nodes. And if the node
in question was a word-form node (rather than a conceptual one) then that
spreading activation could reasonably be regarded as part of the naming
process. For a fuller discussion, see Section 3.1 of our e-paper on "Speech Errors, Speech Production
Models, and Speech Pathology"
if interested. Stylistics: ENTRY TO FOLLOW. Subject
(of Verb): "A subject is a
grammatical relation that exhibits certain independent syntactic properties,
such as: the grammatical characteristics of the agent of typically transitive
verbs, the grammatical characteristics of the single argument of intransitive
verbs [etc]" (Lingualinks,
2003 online). Subjunctive: One of the three basic verb moods (the
others being imperative and indicative). "Verb forms or
sentence/clause types used in the expression of many kinds of subordinate
clause, for a range of attitudes including tentativeness, vagueness,
uncertainty" ( Subordinate
Clause: [See firstly clause
(grammatical).] A subordinate (or "dependent") clause is "a clause with an adjectival, adverbial, or nominal function,
rather than one that functions as a separate sentence in its own right"
(Collins English Dictionary). In other words, it depends upon its relation to
another clause to complete its meaning. Example: "I
missed the start of the show because the train was late"
(Crystal, 1996, p152). Subordinating
Conjunction: A conjunction
which subordinates the clause following it. Examples:
"if", "because". Superlative:
See adjective. Suprasegmental Phonology:
"Suprasegmental or non-segmental phonology
analyses those features of speech which extend over more than one segment,
such as intonation" ( Surface
Structure: [See firstly transformational
grammar and deep structure.] Noam Chomsky's name for the
sentence code as it emerges phrase by phrase from the phrase structuring
phase of speech (or text) production. The sentence as ready for delivery (but
also, upon receipt, ready for parsing). Syllabary: See this entry in our Writing Systems Glossary. Syllable: "A syllable is a unit of sound composed of a
central peak of sonority (usually a vowel) and the consonants that cluster
around this central peak" (Lingualinks, 2003 online). Synonym
Judgement Test: A simple test of
the integrity of the semantic system. The test is commonly found in psycholinguistic
test batteries, and measures a subject's ability to state whether two
words are synonymous, a task which requires access to their meanings. Examples:
lie/falsehood. Syntax: "Syntax is the study of how words are put
together to phrases and sentences" (Monaghan, 1999/2003 online). Tense: The use of grammar to mark the time "at which
the action denoted by the verb took place" ( Theme: The broader, non-literal, meaning of a sentence,
paragraph, or larger unit of narrative or discourse. Thematic
Role: "The semantic
relationship between the verb and the noun phrases of a sentence,
such as agent, theme, location, instrument, goal, source" (Université Laval, 2004 online). Theory
of Mind: TO FOLLOW. Three-Stage
View of Reading Development: The
introduction of choice to the complexities of learning to read, based upon
the observation that the cognitive system has to adjust itself gradually to
what it is being asked to do. The three stages are (1) learning to recognise
words as unanalysed wholes (as when presented on "flash cards"),
(2) putting sounds to the individual letters, and (3) learning to deal with
all the irregularities. The stage names adopted by authors such as Seymour
and MacGregor (1984) and Frith (1985) are the logographic stage, the phonological
stage, and the orthographic stage [see the separate entries for
these]. Other authors use more sophisticated analyses [see, for example,
Stackhouse (1988)] which advanced students should not overlook. Time:
In syntactic analysis, any word
or phrase indicating when something took place. Hence one of
the three main types of adverbial phrase. [Compare manner
and place.] Time
Deixis:
One of the five types of deixis identified
by Fillmore (1971/1997). Specifically, anything which
defines time or time change within a conversation, narrative, or text.
Examples: "The most obvious time-deictic words are
adverbs like 'now' or 'today'" (Fillmore, 1971/1997, p62). Transcoding
Model: A box-and-arrow model
of the end-to-end cognitive system for communication, and necessarily showing
inputs separate from outputs and spoken language separate from written. The
use of complex block diagrams as an explanatory aid grew out of the early
models of attention and memory. One influential early worker was the British
psychologist John Morton, whose 1964 model consisted of a single mental
dictionary, activated by one or other of two main input routes, but also
strongly influenced by context effects and conscious selection. During the
following fifteen years, Morton continued to develop this type of model, and
in 1979 he allocated the name logogen (from the Greek words logos
= "word" and genus = "birth") to the processes
which called forth whole words in response to stimuli [see Morton (1979) model]. In the meantime, Marshall and Newcombe
(1966, 1973) explained a number of clinical observations by proposing that
multiple processing routes operated during reading, each responsible for a
different aspect of the process - form, sound, meaning, etc - and each
operating "in parallel" (that is to say, simultaneously) [see Marshall and Newcombe
(1973) model]. By 1981 Morton had
gone to even greater levels of complexity in a 21-box supermodel [see Morton (1981) model], and it is at about this level of complexity that
things have now stabilised. The best known of the current transcoding models
are those by Ellis and Young (1988) and Kay, Lesser, and Coltheart's (1992) PALPA. The clinical relevance of transcoding models is
grounded in the fact that they force us to regard language as a set of
complex cognitive processes mapped onto an equally complex set of brain
structures. It follows that the better we get to know the rules of this
mapping the better we shall be able to diagnose faults when they occur.
Faults help us understand the workings of intact systems, in other words, and
our understanding of intact systems renders us better able to repair them
when they go wrong. [See fuller history.] Transformational
Grammar: A grammar which
recognises both the deep structure and surface structure of a sentence,
and which proposes a portfolio of phrase structuring rules, or
"transformations", capable of turning the one into the other.
Transformational grammars became popular in the late 1950s thanks to the
writings of Noam Chomsky. Transitive
Verb: See verb (transitive). Tree: "A two-dimensional diagram used [.....] as a convenient means of displaying the internal
hierarchical structure of sentences as generated by a set of rules" ( Turn-Taking: The exchange of turns, or "floors",
during conversation, as signalled by discourse markers such as intonation,
pausing, verbal tags, or nonverbal signs (Linguistic Society of America). Utterance: A unit of speech production perhaps less than a sentence,
perhaps more. "In principle, it is a physically definable behavioural
unit [or] a stretch of speech preceded and followed by silence or a change of
speaker" ( Verb: " A term used in the grammatical
classification of words, to refer to a class traditionally defined as
'doing' or 'action' words (a description which has been criticised in linguistics,
largely on the grounds that many verbs do not 'act' in any obvious sense,
e.g. seem, be). The formal definition of a verb refers to an element
which can display morphological contrasts of tense, aspect, voice,
mood, person, and number. Functionally, it is the element which, singly or in
combination with other verbs (ie. as a 'verb
phrase'), is used as the minimal predicate of a sentence."
( Verb
Argument: "The role played by
a particular type of expression in the semantic structure of sentences"
(Radford, 2003 online),
and specifically to the number and nature of the word-word links required by
that structure. Example: In a sentence such as 'John hit
Fred', the overall sentence is said to be a proposition, and consists
of the subject John and the predicate hit Fred.
The verb in this case may be described as having two arguments, John
and Fred, representing the two participants in the act of hitting
(after Radford, 2003 online).
Linguists thus uses the word "argument" in much the same way that
chemists use the word "valency", that is
to say, as a guide to how their atoms (words) can be fused together into
stable molecules (sentences). What is important about hit, note, is that it is a transitive verb. This forces it to have a subject and a direct
object argument, but leaves optional the indirect object, and the
lexical entry for hit would have to reflect this. Verb
(Auxiliary): A small subset of verbs
with closed class characteristics, capable of setting the tense or
mood of associated open class verbs. Example: "to be" and "to
have", as in "I was sitting" and "I had
eaten". Verb
(Intransitive): A verb such
as "think", "wait", "hope", "laugh",
etc., whose argument structure does not allow a compulsory direct
object. Example: "David thought for a
while" [where "for a while" is an adverbial of manner,
not an object]. [Compare verb (transitive).] Verb
Phrase (VP): A phrase capable of
acting as a verb. Example: "He ought to
be coming". Verb
(Transitive): A verb such as
"hit", "meet", "greet", etc., whose argument
structure requires a compulsory direct object. Example:
"David met Goliath". [Compare verb (intransitive).] Visual
Input Lexicon: [See firstly lexicon.]
Ellis and Young's (1988) term for the hypothetical mental store for whole
known read words and common phrases. Functionally and conceptually, the
visual input lexicon is one of the mind's four main "surface form"
word storage modules [the others being the auditory input lexicon, the
speech output lexicon, and the graphemic
output lexicon]. Its main role within the broader spread of cognition is
to help the processes of visual perception segment the stream of visual
symbols falling on our retinas into recognisable units of text. But beware,
because different theorists adopt marginally different names for the same
concept. The visual input lexicon is exactly the same as the "text image
centre" seen in Kussmaul
(1878), the Lesebild
seen in Freud (1891),
the "visual input logogen system" seen in Ellis (1982), and the
"orthographic input lexicon" seen in seen in Kay, Lesser, and Coltheart (1992). Vocative: [See firstly case and inflection.]
The form taken by a case-inflected noun when directly addressed. Example:
Note how Brutus takes a different case ending when spoken to, as in Et tu Brute. There is no spoken vocative in English, but
the convention is to precede the addressee by a comma in written English, as
in "That, my dear Watson, is elementary". Voice: "Voice is a grammatical category that
expresses the semantic functions attributed to the referents of a clause. It
indicates whether the subject is an actor, patient, or recipient"
(Lingualinks, 2003 online).
"The way sentences may alter the relationship between the subject and object
of a verb, without changing the meaning of a sentence" ( Word: "A unit of expression which has universal
intuitive recognition by native speakers, in both spoken and written
language" ( |
2 - References and
Other Glossaries
See the
Master References List
History of
Human Writing Systems Glossary
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Methods and Psychometrics Glossary
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