Glossary of lexicological and related terms

A

Abbreviation – the process and the result of forming a word out of the initial elements (letters, morphemes) of a word. As. fall into several types:

• acronyms – q.v.

• awkward cases – abbreviations which do not fall clearly into the above groups (UFO can be used either as initialism or an acronym (you-foe); CDROM – see-dee-rom). Some can form part of a larger word, using affixes (ex-JP; pro-BBC; ICBMs).

• blends /portmanteau words – words which are made out of the shortened forms of two other words (brunch = breakfast + lunch; heliport = helicopter + port; smog = smoke +fog; Eurovision = European + television). – See Blending

• clipping – a word clipped (cut) from a full form to one or two, usually initial, syllables (universityuni, municipalmuni). – See Clipping

• facetious forms – jocular or accidental distortions, e.g. TGIF – 'Thank God It's Friday', KCMG 'Kindly Call Me God' (properly, 'Knight Companion of St Michael and St George'); three R's – reading, (w)riting and 'rithmetic; jeep (a small military motor vehicle for general purpose = g.p.); OK; AAAAAA – 'Association for the Alleviation of Asinine Abbreviations and Absurd Acronyms'.

• journalistic abbreviations – are often occasioned by a desire to economize head-line space ('Feds eye engine crash'  federals). – See Jargon, Journalese

• initialisms (alphabetisms) – items which are spoken as individual letters (BBC, DJ, MP, PhD, GI – Government Issue); unlike acronyms is. can have punctuation marks separating the letters (esp. in older styles of English – e.g. B.A. for Bachelor of Arts).

• Latin abbreviations: ad lib, e.g., i.e., q.v. – See Latinisms; Assimilation

• shortening – a shortened form of a written word or a phrase used in a text in place of the whole for economy of space and effort (abbr. – for abbreviation, doz/dz for dozen, ltd for limited). S. can be used as a term synonymous to abbreviation. – See Shortening

Ablaut /gradation – one of the causes of sound interchange, characteristic of Indo-European languages and consisting in a change from one to another vowel accompanying a change of stress. The phenomenon is best known as a series of relations between vowels by which the stems of strong verbs are differentiated in grammar (drink-drank-drunk). However, it is of great importance in lexicology, because ablaut furnishes distinctive features for differentiating words. E.g. abide v – abode n; bear v – burden n; bite v – bit n; ride v – road n.

Ablaut combination – a type of compounding – twin forms consisting of one basic morpheme (usually the second), sometimes a pseudo morpheme which is repeated in the other constituent with a different vowel. The typical changes are [i]–[æ] (chit-chat, dilly-dally, shilly-shally) and [i]-[o] (ding-dong, ping-pong, singsong, tiptop). – See Compound

Acceptability – the degree of acceptance of a derived lexical item by the lexicon. – See Derivation; Word, occasional w., potential w., dictionary w.

• actual a. – characteristic of derived items which make dictionary entries because they have attained institutional acceptance (e.g. palpable, helpless, troublesome);

• potential a. – characteristic of words which in principle can be generated on the basis of a given lexical rule (houseless, joysome);

• unacceptability – characteristic of the form as not being allowed for by the lexical rule (e.g. *sheepable, *growthless, *vanitysome).

Acronyms (from Gr. 'acros-' – 'end' + 'onym' – 'name') – a type of abbreviation which lends itself to be read as though it were an ordinary English word and sounds like an English word: e.g. UNO, NATO, laser. – See Abbreviation

Addition – a principle of combinatory semantics (q.v.), applies to explicational combinations (q.v.) if the explicant (q.v.) denotes a feature belonging to either strong or weak implication of the explicandum (q.v.); when compatible semantic features of the components are added to form the meaning of the whole combination.

Adjectivization – a case of conversion (q.v.) of NAdj type, when a noun becomes to be used in an attributive function as is typical for adjectives. E.g. stone// adj. – 1. made of stone; 2. of a brownish-grey colour. – See Substantivization; 'Stone-wall' problem

Affix – a type of morpheme as distinct from the root. According to their position affixes can be subdivided into suffixes, prefixes and infixes; according to their function and meaning into derivational (word-building) which help to build up new words and are dealt by lexical morphology, and functional (form-building) affixes, otherwise called endings, inflexions or outer formatives which help to build up new morphological forms of the word and are dealt by grammatical morphology.

• productive vs. non-productive a. – the distinction refers to derivational (word-building) affixes only and deals with the frequency of the affix use in the synchronic derivational processes. – See Productivity

Affixation – a word formation type when a derivative is created by means of adding a derivational affix to a derivational stem (derivation base).

• suffixation – affixation by means of suffixes (development, popularize);

• prefixation – affixation by means of prefixes (enrich, regain)

Allo-emic theory – treatment of all elements in language as being sets of variants ('allo'-terms) of some invariants ('eme'-terms). Invariants are morphemes, phonemes, lexemes, which belong to the systemic level (language) while allomorphs, allophones, allolexes are their positional variants respectively and belong to the level of actualization (speech). – See Allolex; Allomorph

Allolex (allo- from Greek allos 'other') – 1). a word as a unit of speech, i.e. a variant of a lexeme in a given morphological form with a given meaning actualized in a given speech event/verbal context. 2). different words in different contexts expressing a single semantic prime. E.g. else and don't are allolexes of other and not, respectively. – See Allo-emic theory

Allomorph (allo- from Greek allos 'other') – a positional variant of a morpheme occurring in a specific environment and characterized by complementary distribution. E.g. –ion/-sion/-tion/-ation are all allomorphs of one and the same derivational suffix as they do not differ in function or meaning but have a slight difference in sound form depending on the final phoneme of the preceding stem. Prof. I.V. Arnold: "Allomorphs are phonetically conditioned positional variants of one and the same derivational or functional morpheme (suffix, root or prefix) identical in meaning and function and differing in sound only inasmuch, as their complementary distribution produces various phonetic assimilation effects". – See Allo-emic theory; Distribution

Allonym – See Variation, allonymic v.

Amalgamation/conjunction – a principle of combinatory semantics (q.v.) which applies when an explicational combination (q.v.) is semantically pleonastic (if the explicant (q.v.) denotes a feature already predetermined by the intentional of the explicandum (q.v.)). A. means absorption of the identical semantic component.

Amelioration – a type of semantic shift (attitudinal shift) (q.v.) under which the following cases fall: 1) a change depending on the social attitude to the object named, connected with the change in denotation (q.v.) – when the referents come up the social scale (e.g. OE cwen 'a woman' > ModE queen); 2) a change connected with connotation, when evaluation becomes that of approval and emotional tone changes to positive (e.g. revolutionary, once associated in the capitalist mind with an undesirable overthrowing of the status quo, is now widely used by advertisers as a signal of desirable novelty; lean no longer brings to mind emaciation but athleticism and good looks). Opp. to pejoration (q.v.). – See Semantic changes

American English – a regional variety of the English language characterized by some specific features in lexis, phonetics and grammar. – See Variants of language, regional

Analysability – the extent to which speakers are aware of the components within a complex structure, an important factor in establishing the nature of a given formation. The greater a. suggests novelty and originality of a composite structure, while lack of a. presupposes its permanence and staleness. – See Divisibility, morphological; Deetymologization

Anglicism – an English word which is borrowed into other linguistic cultures in its original shape (e.g. week-end, cocktail, computer, know-how, rating, brainring, western, killer, etc.) – See Borrowing

Anthroponym – a word, denoting a human being (postman, friend, husband, Peter).

Antonymy – semantic opposition/oppositeness, contrast. – See Antonyms, Contrastives, Converseness, Conversives

Antonyms – a subset of contrastives (q.v.), words which have in their meaning a qualitative feature and can therefore be regarded as semantically opposite. In terms of componential analysis (q.v.) semantic structures of antonymically opposed words share all semes (q.v.) but one which makes the opposition possible. Unlike synonyms a. do not differ stylistically. Typology of as.:

• contrary/graded/proper a. – regularly gradable; their semantic polarity is relative (e.g. big – small).

• contradictory/ungraded/complementary – characterized by the lack of any gradability as they express contradictory notions (e.g. single – married, boy – girl); their semantic polarity is absolute.

• absolute a. – a., which root word forms are semantically opposed (e.g. right – wrong)

• derivational a. – a. created by means of negative affixes (e.g. happy - unhappy).

• marked/unmarked a. – the unmarked member of the opposition can be more widely used and very often can include the referents of the marked member, but not v.v. E.g. in opposition old – young the unmarked member would be old, for it's possible to ask: How old is she? without implying that she is no longer young. Not all antonymic pairs show this 'marked-unmarked' distinction (e.g. love – hate).

Apheresis/aphesis – See Shortening

Apteronym – a word coined to designate a proper name that is thematically or otherwise appropriate, as 'Mr. Graves' for funeral director.

Archaism – words which were once common but are now replaced by synonyms (e.g. save 'except', hapless 'unlucky', betwixt 'between', etc.). The predilection of a. in vocabulary and syntax is the main feature of the extreme varieties of written English – the language of law, the language of religion and poetic diction. In this respect, religious, legal and poetic English are the only varieties, which allow a. to such an extent. Unlike the case with historisms (q.v.) the thing or notion denoted does not go into disuse.

Argot – the jargon, the special language of a secretive social group or class, formerly esp. of criminals. A. is merely the combined cant and jargon of thieves, criminals, or any other underworld group. E.g. hit used by armed robbers; scam by corporate confidence men. "Our pockets were full of deng, so there was no real need from the point of view of crasting any more pretty polly to tolchok some old veck in an alley an viddy him swim in his blood while we counted the takings and divided by four…" (A. Burgess, A Clockwork Orange, 1962, Ch.1).

Argotisms – words belonging to the special language of a secretive social group. – See Argot

Assimilation – a partial or total conformation of a borrowed/loan word unit to the phonetic, graphical and morphological standards of the receiving language and its semantics. According to the degree of a. loan words can be classified as:

• completely assimilated (mostly older borrowings) – e.g. cheese, street, husband, table, face, finish, etc.;

• partially assimilated loan words:

1. loan words not assimilated semantically (e.g. mantilla, toreador, sherbet, rouble);

2. loan words not assimilated grammatically (e.g. crisis – crises; phenomenon – phenomena);

3. loan words not completely assimilated phonetically (e.g. machine, regime, memoir);

4. loan words not completely assimilated graphically (café, cliché).

• barbarisms – words from other languages used by English people in conversation or in writing but not assimilated in any way, and for which there are no corresponding English equivalents. E.g. addio, ciao (It.), ad libitum (Lat.), etc. - See Latinism; Anglicism

Asymmetric dualism of the linguistic sign – the basic law of a linguistic sign which postulates the asymmetry of the signifier and the signified, i.e. absence of rigid and long-standing one-to-one correspondence between the plane of content and the plane of expression of the sign. As S. Kartzevsky formulated, any linguistic sign is at one and the same time a homonym and synonym. The natural consequences of this law are the existence of polysemy, homonymy and synonymy (q.v.).

Attitudinal shift – See Semantic changes; Semantic shift; Amelioration; Pejoration

B

Back-formation/back-derivation/regression – forming the allegedly original stem from a supposed derivative on the analogy of the existing pairs, i.e. the singling-out of a stem from a word which is wrongly regarded as a derivative; deriving a new word which morphologically simpler from a more complex form (combustion > to combust, baby-sitter > to baby-sit, television > to televise, liaison > to liaise).

Background₁ (in cognitive semantics) – as opposed to figure (q.v.) the remaining part of cognitive domain which serves as a setting and creates the foundation for featuring (figuring) the actual semantics of a word, explanatory or contributory information for semanticisation/semantic priming of a word. E.g. the background for the semantics of the word nose would be face (without knowing what a face is one is incapable to grasp the meaning of nose); for arc  circle; for root  word. Terminological synonyms – base, frame, domain. – See Domain

Background₂ (of a word) – a notion of linguocultural theory of the word, postulating that a word apart from its dictionary meaning involves in its semantics to this or that extent some culturally-bound associative meanings which complexity creates the so-called cultural background of the word (e.g. privacy, pioneering).

Bahuvrihi (from Sanskrit 'much-riced') – a compound noun, used to designate possessive exocentric formations in which a person, animal or thing are metonymically named after some striking feature they possess, chiefly a striking feature in their appearance. The formula of the b. compound nouns is 'adjective stem + noun stem': bigwig ('a person of importance'), black-shirt ('an Italian fascist'), highbrow ('a person who claims to be superior in intellect and culture'), lazy-bones ('a lazy person'). – See Compound

Barbarism – See Assimilation

Base – a notion of cognitive semantics, similar to (back)ground, frame, scene, domain. Opp. to profile. – See Domain; Background₁