Calques – See Borrowing, loan translation
exact calque
approximate calque
Cant - language peculiar to a class, profession, sect, etc.; comprises the restricted, non-technical words and expressions of any particular group, as an occupational, age, ethnic, hobby, or special-interest group. E.g. cool, uptight, do your thing were youth cant of the late 1960s before they became slang; jargon (q.v.).
Categorematic word – See Word
Categories – concepts that slice reality into relevant units and represent entities as sets. Cs. are structured (into genera, basic, specific levels which form a hierarchical taxonomy) and characterized by prototypicality (salience) effects, links, fuzziness (q.v.) – See Conceptual categories, Categorization, Prototype, Basic Level Term
Categorization – natural process of slicing the outward experience, the flow of events and the sum total of objects into categories while perceiving, conceptualizing and cognizing the world. – See Conceptual world; Lexical categories; Linguistic categorization; Prototype; Taxonomy
Cliché – phrases that have become hackneyed and stale. Being constantly and mechanically repeated they have lost their expressiveness and so are better avoided: astronomical figures, to break the ice, consigned to oblivion, the irony of fate, to sleep the sleep of the just. – See Jargon, journalese
colloquial cliché
conversational cliché
Clipping – the process and the result of curtailing (the cutting off of a part) off a word to one or two, usually initial, syllables. C. is a part of a word which serves as a whole. C. can be of three types: a) when the first part is kept – the commoner type (ad, demo, exam); b) when the second part is left (bus, phone, plane); c) when a middle part is kept (flu, fridge). Accepted by the majority of the linguistic community, clippings acquire grammatical categories (holidayhol; pl. hols). – See Shortening; Abbreviation
Cockney – a) a native of East London, esp. one born within hearing of Bow Bells; b) the dialect or accent typical of this area – low colloquial, substandard variety of English.
Cognition, linguocreative cognition – human cognition in relation to language; cognitive-linguistic processes and mechanisms of conceptualization, verbalization, nomination, reference, categorization, etc.
Cognitive background of the utterance – contextual and general information not directly expressed in the utterance the speaker believes the listener shares; common informational thesaurus of the communicants.
Cognitive linguistics – marks cognitive approach to the study of linguistic phenomena; not a single theory but is rather best characterized as a paradigm within linguistics, subsuming a number of distinct theories and research programs. It is characterized by an emphasis on explicating the intimate interrelationship between language and other cognitive faculties (memory, perception, categorization, reasoning, etc.). Cognitive linguistics began in the 1970s, and since the mid-1980s has expanded to include research across the full range of subject areas within linguistics: syntax, semantics, phonology, discourse, etc. The International Cognitive Linguistics Association holds bi-annual meetings and publishes the journal Cognitive Linguistics.
Cognitive/conceptual metaphor – a cognitive mapping between two different domains. Ultimate grounding of the process of cross-domain mapping is provided by repeated patterns of bodily experience called image schema (schemata) (q.v.). These patterns provide the fundamental structure upon which conceptual metaphors are based. Metaphorical expressions (e.g. foot of the mountain) are viewed as an interaction of two conceptual domains: restructuring one conceptual domain – target domain – (e.g. mountains) in terms of another conceptual domain – source domain (e.g. human body foot). The directions of restructuring follow basic cognitive processes of reasoning and are represented in corresponding image schemas. C.m. is a powerful means of human reasoning and basic structure of comprehension, not only a stylistic device applicable for linguistic purposes only. – See Metaphorization
Cognitive/conceptual metonymy – analysis of metonymical expressions in terms of cognitive semantics, resorting to the notion of conceptual domain (q.v.). C.m. names one aspect or element in a conceptual domain while referring to some other element which is in contiguity relation with it. Basic instances of conceptual metonymy: person for his name (I'm not in the telephone book), possessor for possessed (My tyre is flat), container for contained (This is an excellent dish), producer for produced (My new Macintosh is superb), etc.
Cognitive semantics – study of natural language semantics in relation to human cognition, via human cognition and as means of getting access to human cognition and other cognitive faculties: perception, memory, attention, (creative) reasoning, analysis, categorization, storing information, etc.
Colligation – morphosyntactically conditioned combinability of words as means of realizing their polysemy.
Collocation – a) such a combination of words which conditions the realization of certain meaning; b) the habitual co-occurrence range of separate words as a realisation of their polysemy: e.g. 'auspicious' collocates with 'occasion', 'event', 'sign', etc.; and 'letter' collocates with 'alphabet', 'graphic', etc, on the one hand, and 'postman', 'pillar-box', etc., on the other. Cs. can be habitual (realisation of typical syntagmatic relations between words) and restricted (idioms and phraseological units).
Colloquial words/ colloquialisms – words or expressions appropriate to informal conversation but not usually suitable for academic or business writing. E.g. They wanted to get even (instead of They wanted to retaliate).
Combinability (collocability, co-occurrence-range) – the syntagmatic ability of linguistic elements to combine in speech. – See Valency. The correlative set of terms is colligation and collocation. The co-occurrence range of separate words is also described as their combinability pattern/model or collocational profile. Combinations which come as the realisation of typical syntagmatic relations between words are to be distinguished from 'idioms' proper and 'phraseological units'. The following sets of restrictions govern the combinability potential of lexemes:
objective-logical restrictions – the c. is governed by the nature of the denotata and corresponds to natural relationships between properties and objects in the reality;
collocational-linguistic restrictions – the c. is governed by the usage-fixed realisation of lexemes which leads to the boundedness of their meanings; these restrictions further subdivide c. into:
lexico-phraseological c. (semantically free and phraseologically bound c.) – on the basis of their semantics;
morphosyntactic c. – reflecting the combinability of morphemes into words and words into phrases on the basis of their categorial meaning.
Combinations, phraseological – phraseological units (q.v.) which semantics is not only motivated by the meanings of the components, but contains one component used in its direct meaning while the other is used figuratively: e.g. meet the demand, meet the necessity, meet the requirement. The mobility of this type of phraseological units is much greater, the substitutions are not necessarily synonymous. – See Idiom proper, transparent i.
Combinatory semantics – the study of semantic rules and principles of combining lexical units into phrases. – See Addition; Amalgamation; Contraction; Disjunction; Semantic restructuring
Combining power – See Combinability; Valency
Communication – information exchange in social intercourse.
Compatibility of semes – a principle of combinatory semantics, postulates the requirement for at least one seme (q.v.) of a combining unit to be compatible with at least one seme of the other combining unit for the combination to be comprehensible.
Complementary distribution – See Distribution
Component (semantic component) – See Seme
Componential analysis of meaning – linguistic analysis of the semantic structure of a word (a monosemantic word or a lexico-semantic variant of a polysemantic unit) as constituted by a set of minimal elements of sense – semes. – See Distinguisher; Marker; Seme
Composite – See Compound
Composition – a type of word-formation where the target word is formed by combining two or more stems. Same as compounding (q.v.).
Compound – a lexical unit produced by means of compounding – joining of two or more stems. Cs. may be classified on the basis of the following parameters:
according to the type of composition and linking element:
juxtaposition without connecting element: heart-break, heartache;
c. with a vowel or consonant as a linking element: speedometer, Afro-Asian;
c. with linking elements represented by preposition or conjunction stem: down-and-out, matter-of-fact, son-in-law;
according to the structure of immediate constituents:
c. consisting of simple stems: film-star;
c. where at least one stem is a derived one: chain-smoker;
clipped stem: maths-mistress, H-bag (handbag), Xmas (Christmas),
c. where at least one of the constituents is a compound stem: wastepaper basket;
according to the part of speech to which the compound belongs: compound nouns, compound adjectives, compound verbs;
according to the principle of semantic motivation (motivated/transparent/non-idiomatic vs. idiomatic c.);
according to structural peculiarities: (a) endocentric vs. exocentric c., including bahuvrihi; (b) syntactic vs. asyntactic c.;
according to the type of syntactic phrase with which the compound is correlated: phrase compounds, reduplicative compounds, pseudo-compounds, quotation compounds (holophrasis);
according to the stability of the compound formation: loose (unstable) and stable compounds (compounds proper.)
Typology of cs.:
asyntactic/syntactic cs. – which either preserve or violate the norms of syntactic combination of units in parallel free-word combinations; conform or do not conform to grammatical patterns current in present-day English: e.g. bread winner – asyntactic; blackboard – syntactic;
bahuvrihi – q.v.;
derivational c. (compound derivative) – the result of parasynthetic word-formation, i.e. a word which is formed by a simultaneous process of derivation and composition: the structural integrity of the two free stems is ensured by a suffix referring to the combination as a whole: kind-hearted, long-legged, teenager, braintruster;
endocentric c. (within a group of noun-compounds) – the referent is named by one of the elements and given further characteristic by the other (sunbeam, maidservant, looking-glass, searchlight);
exocentric c. (within a group of noun-compounds) – only the combination of both elements names the referent (pickpocket, dare-devil, cut-throat, turncoat);
idiomatic c. – which meaning is different from the corresponding free phrase, not motivated by meaning of the components (e.g. greenhouse is not equal to green house);
loose c. – cs. like stone wall, speech sound. The difficulty here is due to the vague categorial nature of the first component. If it is to be treated as an adjective formed by means of conversion from the corresponding noun, the whole complex should be analyses as a word-combination both elements of which are grammatically independent, i.e. possess grammatical formedness if the first component is a noun, the whole of the N+N construction should be regarded as a compound word because two nouns in common case can be combined in English only by means of a preposition. It follows that the first element in this case is a nominal stem as part of a compound word. – See 'Stone-wall problem'
motivated/transparent/non-idiomatic c.– when the meaning of the constituents is either direct or figurative and motivates the meaning of the resulting compound; can be easily transformed into a free phrase (e.g. night flight – flying at night);
pseudo-c. – a) c., which are created as verbs not by the process of composition, but by conversion and back formation: to proof-read< to read proofs, to vacuum clean < vacuum-cleaner, hence they are not compounds proper. However this is only diachronically, synchronically they fit into the group of compound words; b) cases of false etymology (q.v.), an attempt to find motivation for a borrowed word: gillyflower < OFr giroflé; crayfish < OFr crevice; sparrow-grass < Lat asparagus;
quotation c. (holophrasis) – when elements of a phrase united by their attributive function become further united phonemically by stress and graphically by a hyphen, or even solid spelling: common sense – common-sense advice; the records are out of date – out-of-date records; Let sleeping dogs lie (a proverb) – the let-sleeping-dogs-lie approach. Other syntactical functions can also provide structural cohesion; e.g. working class is a noun phrase, but when used predicatively it is turned into a compound noun – He wasn't working-class enough;
reduplicative c.
r.c. proper – a mixed group, containing usual free forms (pretty-pretty, goody-goody, never-never), onomatopoeic stems (hush-hush, pooh-pooh) and pseudo-morphemes (blah-blah – 'idle talk', 'nonsense');
ablaut combinations (q.v.) – twin forms consisting of one basic morpheme (usu. the second), stms. a pseudo-morpheme which is repeated in the other constituent with a different vowel (chit-chat);
rhyme c. – twin forms consisting of two elements (most often two pseudo-morphemes) which are joined to rhyme (boogie-woogie, hurry-scurry);
string c. – present the use of well-formed syntagms as a single (global) word. Multi-word sequences are functionally equated with a separate word and thus simulate a single lexical item. These are complexes of the parts-of-speech type which serve as a model for various kinds of word-simulation, e.g.: what-do-you-call-it; what's her/his name; his go-and-be-hanged look; let-George-do-it attitude; "there is a sort of oh-what-a-wicked-world-this-is-and-how-I-wish-I-could-do-something-to-make-it-better-and-nobler expression about Montmorency (Jerome K. Jerome). Idiomatic multi-item compounds: forget-me-not, merry-go-round, know-nothing, know-all, stay-at-home, sit-by-the-fire, etc. – See Lexicalization;
unstable c. – same as loose – tend to fall apart and turn into attributive word-combinations. If hair-cut, speed-bump, let alone, speedway are pronounced with a strong unifying stress and present lexical combinations, i.e. compound words, autumn rain, picture gallery or blood pressure carry two stresses (on both words) and are regarded as syntactic combinations. Much depends on how lexical units are apprehended in terms of globality of nomination: if the two items within a combination refer to easily distinguishable bits of information, it remains a syntactic structure. But when the elements are 'rolled into one whole' under the urge of expressing a complex notion, the process of word simulation sets in and the multi-structural unit acquires the globality of a single word. Prosodically this is expressed by means of the accentual patterns with a unifying stress (lexical combinations) or two stresses showing the pitch movement (syntactic combinations): 'blackboard (a board used in class) vs. a 'black `board (a board of black colour), 'greenhouse (used for growing vegatables and plants) vs. a 'green `house (house painted green), 'English teacher (teacher of English) vs, 'English `teacher (teacher of English origin). However, there is no general pattern or stereotype in treating loose compounds as lexical or syntactic combinations, especially as dictionaries are not consistent in giving information about their spelling (with or without a hyphen), and the same word can form different kinds of combinations depending on the noun it collocates with. – See 'Stone-wall' problem
Compound derivative – See Compound, derivational c.
Compounding – process of word formation by means of joining two or more word stems. – See Compound
Concatenation – a type of networking the semantic structure of a polysemantic word, when the first lexico-semantic variant gives rise to the second, the second – to the third, etc. thus representing a linear chain structure. Opp. to irradiation (radial network) (q.v.)
Concept –an operational contensive unit of cognition or quantum of structured knowledge; a generalized reverberation in the human consciousness of the properties of the objective reality learned in the process of the latter's cognition; a person's idea of what something in the world is like. Cs. are ideal, abstract units, minimal senses with which we operate in the process of cognition. They reflect human knowledge, experience, results of practical activity and perception. Cs. are formed linguistically, many of them having a name (a word) attached to it. However, it would be wrong to consider that all concepts are verbalized by means of lexical nomination. Some cs. can be expressed via grammatical or discourse structures or implicitly, or not being rendered linguistically at all. Cs. can relate to single entities such as a concept I have of my mother or they can relate to a whole set of entities (e.g. concept 'vegetable'). Cs. are the elements from which propositional thought is constructed, thus providing a means of understanding the world, cs. are used to interpret our current experience by classifying it as being of a particular kind, and hence relating it to prior knowledge. The concept of "c." is central to many of the cognitive sciences. In cognitive psychology, conceptual or semantic encoding effects occur in a wide range of phenomena in perception, attention, language comprehension, and memory. Cs. are also fundamental to reasoning in both machine systems and people. In artificial intelligence, cs. are the symbolic elements from which knowledge representation systems are built in order to provide machine-based expertise. Cs. are also often assumed to form the basis for the meaning of nouns, verbs and adjectives. Cs. can be culture specific. – See Cultural concepts
Typology of cs. (according to their structure and content):
percept – q.v.
mental image – See Image, mental
scheme – See Scheme 3)
notion – See Notion 2)
prototype– q.v.
propositional structure– q.v.
frame– q.v.
scenario (script) – q.v.
gestalt – q.v.
Conceptual category – a concept of a set of entities as a whole. C.cs. which are laid down in a language are linguistic categories, or, linguistic signs. C.cs. may show up as lexical categories and grammatical categories (cf. rain; Look at this rain!; It's raining again; And the rain, it raineth every day.) – See Lexical categories
Conceptual core – See Semantic field
Conceptual domain – any coherent area of conceptualization, such as meals, space, smell, colour, articles of dress, the human body, the rules of football, etc. Similar to conceptual category (q.v.). – See Domain
Conceptual metaphor – See Cognitive metaphor
Conceptual space – a whole network of conceptual domains stored and functioning in human mind; conceptual sphere, reflected in language. Similar to conceptual world (picture of the world) (q.v.)
Conceptual world (picture of the world) – an image of the outward reality represented in human mind as a result of perception, conceptualization, categorization and memory processes. A more comprehensive view of language as a system of signs includes the human 'conceptualizer' and the world as it is experienced by him. The human conceptualizer, conceptual categories and linguistic signs are interlinked as shown in Table 2, representing the model of the c.w. (from: R.Dirven, M.Verspoor, 1998):
human conceptualizer
↓
experienced world
↓
concepts/categories
concepts pure thoughts in language
↓
form ↔meaning
sign
Signs reflect conceptual categories, which are ultimately based on a human conceptualizer and his experience of the world. This model of the conceptual and linguistic worlds also accounts for the possibility that different people may categorize the same thing in the world differently and even the same person may do so at different times. One person may describe a half-filled glass of wine as half full and another person describe the same thing as half empty. Each person's choice between various alternatives is called contrual. The notion of construal becomes even more evident if we compare the names for the same object in various languages.
Connotation (connotative/connotational meaning) – supplementary meaning or commentary (overtone), semantic and/or stylistic shade which is added to the word's main meaning and serves to express all sorts of emotive, expressive, evaluative, stylistic overtones which accompany the realization of its basic primary meaning; the meaning suggested by a word as distinguished from what it explicitly names (or denotes), as "cobra" denotes a particular kind of snake but connotes "danger", "deadliness", and so on. Some critics employ connotation to include also the emotional force of a word as well as all the feelings which the image of "cobra" might arouse. Others distinguish these as the emotive meaning. The alternative terminology includes 'affective / emotional / attitudinal meaning'. D.Crystal refers the term connotative meaning "to the emotional associations (personal or communal) which are part of the meaning of a … lexical item". Typology of cs.:
emotive/emotional c. – q.v.;
evaluative c. – q.v.;
expressive c. – q.v.;
stylistic c. – q.v.
Content – as opposed to form (q.v.), meaning as opposite to linguistic expression. Any sign is bilateral which means it comprises the plane of form and the plane of c. However, the relationship between the two planes is not necessarily rigid. – See Sign; Signified
Contensive (minimal c.) nucleus of the word – See Denotation
Content (referential c., emotive c.) – See Denotation, Connotation
Context – a) the linguistic environment of a unit of language which reveals the conditions and the characteristic features of its usage in speech; b) the semantically complete passage of written speech sufficient to establish the meaning of a given word (phrase).
c. of situation – involves the factors essential to the current situation of communication, which are both linguistic and extralinguistic;
extralinguistic c. – purely extralinguistic factors (conversational background, communicants, etc,) influencing the process of communication and comprehension;
cognitive context – cognitive domain or background. – See Domain
Contextual analysis – the analysis of lexical units, their meaning and functioning as well as semantic and functional transpositions on the basis of their contextual environment.
Contraction – a principle of combinatory semantics (q.v.), connected with semantic restructuring (q.v.) of explicational combinations (q.v.); applies to cases like metonymy (e.g. mourning house) which are semanticized if restructured (transformed) into initial semantic form which preserves logical sequence and subordination of elements (mourning house mourning family's house). C. is a case of semantic compression, hypersemantization.
Contrastive distribution – See Distribution
Contrastives – a class of semantically opposed lexical items including as subsets antonyms and conversives (q.v.).
Consubstantionalism – the phenomenon of a word of the general language and a term having the same material form.
Conversion (also internal derivation, derivation without affixation, functional change, zero derivation, transposition, root formation) – a special type of derivation where the word paradigm serves as means of word-formation, i.e. derivation which is achieved by bringing a stem into a different formal paradigm. Most popular lines of conversion are: NV (to clerk), VN (a take-off). Conceptually, each c. process implies metonymical extension from one element in an event to the whole event: thus in to bank the place where transaction takes place, e.g. the bank, comes to stand for the whole of the transaction. C. is linked with specialization (narrowing – q.v.) of meaning as well (though not always): in to author the meaning in AmE is limited to 'writing movie scripts'.
Converseness – a type of semantic opposition, contrast, based on denoting one and the same referent or situation as viewed from different points of view, with a reversal of the order of participants and their roles (e.g. buy – sell; left – right; parent – child, amusing – amused). C. can be realised a) within the semantics of one and the same lexeme (e.g. wear, burn, smell, glad, sad, lucky, etc.); b) morphologically (lexemes of the same root but otherwise morphologically different) – e.g. saddening – saddened; c) with different lexemes, which semantics is conversely opposed (e.g. give – receive; ancestor – descendant), d) grammatically – the opposition between active and passive forms of the verb. – See Conversives, Contrastives, Antonyms
Conversives/conversive pairs (also relational opposites) – semantically opposed words, a subset of contrastives. C. denote one and the same referent or situation but viewed from different points of view (e.g. contemptible – contemptuous, marry ('to become a husband') – marry ('to become a wife'). Unlike antonyms c. are not interchangeable. The substitution of a conversive requires appropriate morphological and syntactic changes (e.g. from active to passive). – See Conversiveness
Co-occurrence range (collocational profile) – See Combinability
Creole – pidgin language that has become established as the native language of a speech community. E.g. derived from English: Gullah, spoken in the Sea Islands of South Carolina, U.S., Krio, spoken in Sierra Leone, Melanesian Pidgin. Typically, a c. arises when the speakers of one language become economically or politically dominant over speakers of another language or languages, particularly if the latter are illiterate. At first, a simplified or otherwise modified form of the language of the dominant group comes to be used for communication between members of the different groups. At this stage the communicating language is a lingua franca and, if simplified in its forms, a pidgin; when the lingua franca becomes the standard or native language of a community, usually of the less dominant group, the language has become a c.
Cultural attitudes/stereotypes – culture-specific conceptual configurations which influence the process of intercultural communication and may block it if misinterpreted. Related to culture-specific concepts – elements of conceptual sphere of a certain language-speaking community, which find reflection both in lexicon and grammar. – See Cultural concepts
Cultural concepts (culture-specific concepts) – conceptual entities bearing particular cultural flavour, peculiar to a cultural-linguistic community and reflecting cultural traditions, value systems, ethnic stereotypes and historical background of a nation. Ccs. result from culture-specific conceptualization of reality and are reflected in national languages, which prevents translation and intercultural communication. E.g. concepts of privacy, freedom, friendship are all culture-specific as they bear specific colouring of national value systems, habitual folk interpretations as well as patterns of behaviour according.
Curtailment – See Shortening
D
De-etymologisation – the loss of etymological motivation of a word. – See De-motivation
Degradation of meaning – See Pejoration
Degree of idiomaticity – See Idiom; Phraseological unit
Definition – interpretation of a word's semantics in different purposes:
dictionary d.;
scientific d.;
specialised d.;
naive d.
Deformation of idiom – the violation of semantic integrity of a phraseological unit or idiom proper by actualizing the actual or potential meanings of its elements, often for stylistic purposes.
Demotivation/de-etymologization – etymological isolation when the word loses its ties with other words with which it was formerly connected and associated, ceases to be understood as belonging to its original word-family.
Denotation (denotational/denotative meaning) – 1) the part of lexical semantics which involves the relationship between a linguistic unit (a lexical item) and the non-linguistic entities to which it refers. It is thus equivalent to referential meaning-1; 2) the type of meaning which reflects the concept of a class and is actualised by lexical items in situations when they denote a class of referents/denotata, is supported by the generalising and classifying function of the articles; 3) the expression of the core/main/central/cognitive meaning, meaning proper of a linguistic unit in contrast to its connotation (q.v.). E.g. the denotation of dog is the animal characterized by certain features discriminating it from cats, whales, elephants, its connotation might include helper, friend, etc.
Denotational meaning – See Denotation-2
Denotative meaning – See Denotation
Denotatum – See Referent
Derivation – 1) the point or origin from which something comes: What is the derivation of this word? 2) the process and the result of deriving new words from the existing linguistic material 3) = word-formation (q.v.) where the target word is formed by combining a stem and affixes (hence the term derivation is wider than the term word-formation as it involves both formal (=explicit) and semantic (=implicit) derivation.
semantic d. – semantic change of different types leading to the appearance of a new lexico-semantic variant of a lexeme;
dephraseological d. – a process leading to the split of a phraseological unit (deformation of an idiom – q.v.);
explicit d. – derivation with outward markers of derivation (derivation proper – affixation – q.v.);
implicit d. – derivation without the use of outward markers (semantic derivation, conversion – q.v.);
phraseological d. – derivation which leads to the appearance of a set expression/phraseological unit.
Derivational/word-building affix – See Affixation; Affix
Derivational compound – See Compound, derivational c.
Derivational morpheme/word-building morpheme – an affixal morpheme which, when added to the stem, modifies lexical meaning of the root and forms a new word. – See Affix
Derivative (word) – a product of derivation:
creative d.– when a neologism/nonce-word is produced (word-building process);
lexical d. – when a new lexeme is produced;
syntactic d. – when a new grammatical form is produced.
Descriptor – a central term describing a whole set of synonyms; when differencies between synonyms are reduced to a word or a word-combination to stand for the whole set. When ds. are introduced the finer distinctions between terms are disregarded for the sake of the clarity of the system. The general principles of the choice of the d. include: definability, lucidity of the inner structure, derivational capacity, frequency of occurrence, etc.
Determinant/explicant – the modifier, the determining part of a compound or an explicational phrase/combination (q.v.): e.g. in a compound suntan 'sun' will be the determinant.
Determinatum/explicandum – the modified, the determined element of a compound or of an explicational phrase/combination (q.v.): e.g. in a compound suntan 'tan' will be the determinant.
Diachrony – historical development of the system of language as object of linguistic investigation.
Diachronic – historical, pertaining to the history of language.
Dialect – a local variant of the language, peculiar in lexicon (dialectal words), grammar, phonology; a form of speech peculiar to a particular region; a subordinate variety of a language with non-standard vocabulary, pronunciation, or grammar.
Dialectology – linguistic study of dialects.