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Grammar and linguistics terms glossary page 5

Grammar and linguistics terms explained in plain English. 1,075 words and meanings, most familiar first.

Word	Meaning
initialism noun	A term formed from the initial letters of several words or parts of words, which is itself pronounced letter by letter.
injunctive noun	A verbal mood in Sanskrit characterized by secondary endings but no augment, and usually resembling an augmentless aorist or imperfect.
intensifier noun	A word or particle that heightens the intensity of meaning of a term.
interjection noun	An exclamation or filled pause; a word or phrase with no particular grammatical relation to a sentence, often an expression of emotion.
internationalism noun	A loanword that occurs in several languages with the same or similar meaning and etymology.
interrogative adjective	Asking or denoting a question: as, an interrogative phrase, pronoun, or point.
intonation noun	The rise and fall of the voice in speaking.
intransitive adjective	Not transitive: not having, or not taking, a direct object.
invariable adjective	That cannot undergo inflection, conjugation or declension.
isogloss noun	A line on a map indicating the geographical boundaries of a linguistic feature.
iterative adjective	Expressive of an action that is repeated with frequency.
juxtaposition noun	An absence of linking elements in a group of words that are listed together.
labial adjective	Articulated by the lips, as the consonants b, m and w.
labile adjective	Able to change valency without changing its form; especially, able to be used both transitively and intransitively without changing its form.
labiodental adjective	Articulated with the lower lip and upper teeth.
laryngeal adjective	(of a speech sound) Made by or with constriction of the larynx with only the front part of the vocal cords vibrating, giving a very low frequency and producing what is known as "creaky voice."
latching noun	The situation where one speaker's utterance immediately follows another speaker's utterance, without pause or overlap.
lemma noun	The canonical form of an inflected word; i.e., the form usually found as the headword in a dictionary, such as the nominative singular of a noun, the bare infinitive of a verb, etc.
lexeme noun	A lexical item corresponding to the set of all words (or of all multi-word expressions) that are semantically related through inflection of a particular shared basic form.
lexical adjective	Concerning the vocabulary, words, sentences or morphemes of a language
lexis noun	The set of all words and phrases in a language; any unified subset of words from a particular language.
lingual adjective	Articulated with the tongue.
linker noun	A word or short expression that links clauses or other syntactic elements.
listenership noun	The act of paying attention to a conversation or speech; listening.
litotes noun	An ironic figure of speech whereby something is stated by denying its opposite, particularly the negation of a negative quality to say something positive.
localism noun	A linguistic feature that is unique to a locality.
localist noun	One who subscribes to localism, the belief that language functions are localized to various parts of the brain.
locative adjective	Indicating place, or the place where, or wherein.
lumper noun	A scientist in one of various fields who prefers to keep categories such as species or dialects together in larger groups.
medially adverb	Inside a word; neither initially nor finally.
meiosis noun	A figure of speech whereby something is made to seem smaller or less important than it actually is.
metastasis noun	Denying adversaries' arguments and turning the arguments back on them.
metathesis noun	The transposition of letters, syllables or sounds within a word, such as in ask as /æks/.
metonym noun	A word that names an object from a single characteristic of it or of a closely related object; a word used in metonymy.
mimesis noun	The rhetorical pedagogy of imitation.
miosis noun	Litotes; diminution.
misconstruction noun	An ungrammatical phrase.
modal adjective	Of, relating to, or describing the mood of a clause.
modality noun	The inflection of a verb that shows how its action is conceived by the speaker; mood
modifier noun	A word, phrase, or clause that limits or qualifies the sense of another word or phrase.
monogenesis noun	The theory that all languages, or a particular set of languages, originated from a single source.
morphology noun	The study of the internal structure of morphemes (words and their semantic building blocks).
motivative adjective	In, marked by or pertaining to the motivative case.
multiplicative noun	A grammatical adverbial case in Finnish.
multiplier noun	An adjective indicating the number of times something is to be multiplied.
multivalent adjective	Able to bind to different parts of speech.
nasalize verb	To lower the soft palate so that air flows through the nose during the articulation of a speech sound.
nativism noun	A theory that some knowledge of grammar is innate.
naturalize verb	To make (a word) a natural part of the language, using the native homologue of each phoneme (and often for each morpheme) of the imported word (e.g., native inflections).
neoclassical adjective	Being a recent construction based on older, classical elements.
neologism noun	A word or phrase which has recently been coined; a new word or phrase, or an existing one which has gained a new meaning.
nominative adjective	Being in that case or form of a noun which stands as the subject of a finite verb.
nonstandard adjective	Not conforming to the standard variety, or to the language as used by the majority of its speakers.
notional adjective	Having descriptive value as opposed to a syntactic category.
numeral noun	A number word, a simple or compound word for a number often having particular grammatical attributes depending on the language.
occlusion noun	A closure within the vocal tract that produces an oral stop or nasal stop.
occlusive noun	A phoneme produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract, but not necessarily in the nasal tract.
onomatopoeia noun	The use of language whose sound imitates that which it names.
optative adjective	Related or pertaining to the optative mood.
orthographically adverb	Regarding or relating to orthography (the way in which languages, usually natural languages, are written).
orthography noun	(countable) A method of representing a language or the sounds of language by written symbols; spelling.
overextend verb	To apply (a term) to too many referents, by overextension.
palatal adjective	Articulated at the hard palate.
palatalize verb	To pronounce a sound with the tongue against the palate of the mouth when that sound normally would not be so pronounced.
parallelism noun	The juxtaposition of two or more identical or equivalent syntactic constructions, especially those expressing the same sentiment with slight modifications, introduced for rhetorical effect.
parenthesis noun	A digression; the use of such digressions.
paronomasia noun	A pun or play on words.
parse verb	To resolve (a sentence, etc.) into its elements, pointing out the several parts of speech, and their relation to each other by agreement or government; to analyze and describe grammatically.
participial adjective	Of, relating to, or being a participle
partitive adjective	Indicating a part rather than the whole of something.
passively adverb	In the passive voice; having a passive construction.
pendent adjective	Incomplete in some sense, such as lacking a finite verb.
penultimate adjective	Of or pertaining to a penult.
percept noun	A perceived object as it exists in the mind of someone perceiving it; the mental impression that is the result of perceiving something.
perfective adjective	Of, or relative to, the perfect tense or perfective aspect.

Word	Meaning
performative adjective	Being enacted as it is said.
periphrasis noun	Expressing a grammatical meaning (such as a tense) using a syntactic construction rather than morphological marking.
periphrastic adjective	Characterized by periphrasis.
pharyngeal noun	A sound that is articulated with the pharynx; ellipsis of pharyngeal consonant.
phonemic adjective	Relating to phonemes.
phonetic adjective	Relating to phones (as opposed to phonemes).
phonetician noun	A person who specializes in the study of speech sounds and their representation by written symbols.
phonology noun	The study of the way sounds function in languages, including phonemes, syllable structure, stress, accent, intonation, and which sounds are distinctive units within a language.
phrasal adjective	Consisting of multiple words, but behaving as a single part of speech.
phylum noun	A large division of possibly related languages, or a major language family which is not subordinate to another.
pleonasm noun	Redundancy in wording.
pleonastic adjective	Redundant.
plosive noun	Sound produced from opening a previously closed oral passage.
pluperfect adjective	Pertaining to action completed before another action or event in the past, past perfect.
pluralize verb	To make plural.
portmanteau noun	A portmanteau word.
pragmatist noun	One who studies pragmatics.
predicate noun	The part of the sentence (or clause) which states a property that a subject has or is characterized by.
predicative adjective	Modifying a noun while in a predicate phrase, which predicate phrase is other than the noun phrase and occurs after a verb, as a predicate; contrasted with attributive.
prefix noun	A morpheme added to the beginning of a word to modify its meaning, for example as, pre- in prefix, con- in conjure, re- in reheat, etc.
preform noun	A word that is no longer in use, but has been reconstructed from current ones.
preposition noun	An adposition.
presupposition noun	An assumption or belief implicit in an utterance or other use of language.
preterite adjective	Showing an action at a determined moment in the past.
prohibitive noun	A negative imperative.
projective noun	A statement about a conditional or potential state of affairs, as opposed to one about a situation that actually exists or existed.
prolepsis noun	The assignment of something to a period of time that precedes it.
pronominal adjective	Of, pertaining to, resembling, or functioning as a pronoun.
prosody noun	The study of rhythm, intonation, stress, and related attributes in speech.
protraction noun	The lengthening of a short syllable
provincialism noun	A word or locution characteristic of a region or district.
proximate noun	A grammatical marker that distinguishes a relatively salient referent in a given context from a relatively non-salient (obviative) one.
purism noun	The desire to use words and forms derived from what is considered the native element in a given language instead of elements considered borrowed or foreign.
purposive adjective	Of a clause or conjunction: expressing purpose.
qualifier noun	A word or phrase, such as an adjective or adverb, that describes or characterizes another word or phrase, such as a noun or verb; a modifier; that adds or subtracts attributes to another.
quantifier noun	A word, such as all or many, that expresses the quantity of a related noun.
radix noun	A primitive word, from which other words may be derived.
reanalyze verb	To analyze a lexeme with a different structure from its original, often by misunderstanding.
reciprocity noun	A reciprocal construction involves two noun phrases where each of the participants occupies both the role of agent and patient with respect to the other. see: Wikipedia:Reciprocal pronoun.
reduplicate verb	To repeat (a word or part of a word) in order to form a new word or phrase, possibly with modification of one of the repetitions.
reduplication noun	The act of, or an instance of, reduplicating.
referential adjective	Of or relating to a referent.
reflexive adjective	Referring back to the subject, or having an object equal to the subject.
regionalism noun	A word or phrase originating in, characteristic of, or limited to a region.
reification noun	The transformation of a natural-language statement into a form in which its actions and events are quantifiable variables.
relict noun	A survival of an archaic word, language or other form.
retroflex adjective	Of pronunciation in which the tip of the tongue is raised and bent backwards, so that the underside of the tongue approaches or touches the palate.
rhymeless adjective	Not rhymable; having no perfect rhymes.
rime noun	The second part of a syllable, from the vowel on, as opposed to the onset.
salience noun	Relative importance based on context.
scalar adjective	Pertaining to the dimension on which something is measured.
schwa noun	An indeterminate central vowel sound as the "a" in "about", represented as /ə/ in IPA.
semantic noun	In such writing systems as the Chinese writing system, the portion of a phono-semantic character that provides an indication of its meaning; contrasted with phonetic.
sibilant noun	A consonant having a hissing or hushing sound such as the s or sh in sack or shack.
signified noun	The concept or idea evoked by a sign.
signifier noun	The sound of a spoken word or string of letters on a page that a person recognizes as a sign.
simplex noun	A monomorphemic word, one without affixes.
sluicing noun	A kind of ellipsis, introduced by an interrogative, where (usually) everything except the interrogative is elided from the clause, as in "I like him, but I don't know why".
solecism noun	Error in the use of language.
sonorous adjective	Produced with a relatively open vocal tract and relatively little obstruction of airflow.
stemmer noun	Software used to produce the stem from the inflected form of words.
stricture noun	The degree of contact, in consonants.
strident noun	One of a class of s-like fricatives produced by an airstream directed at the upper teeth.
structuralism noun	The theory that a human language is a self-contained structure related to other elements which make up its existence.
subjunctive adjective	Inflected to indicate that an act or state of being is possible, contingent or hypothetical, and not a fact.
subordinative adjective	Used to introduce a subordinate sentence.
substantival adjective	Of or pertaining to a substantive.
substantive adjective	Of or pertaining to a substantive.
substrate noun	A language that is replaced in a population by another language and that influences the language imposed on its speakers.
substratum noun	A substrate.
suffix noun	A morpheme added at the end of a word to modify the word's meaning.
superlative adjective	Of or relating to a superlative.
superordinate adjective	Hypernymic
superstratum noun	A language imposed upon a population that previously spoke another language
supine noun	In Latin and other languages: a type of verbal noun used in the ablative and accusative cases, which shares the same stem as the passive participle.

Meanings from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0). Sources