Glossary

alliteration: A figure of speech involving the repetition of a letter or sound at the beginning of words that are close together or of stressed syllables within such words.

allusion: Reference to another person, object, event, a work of literature etc. outside the text itself that the reader/listener is supposed to recognize; often made in an indirect way.

ambiguity: The state that a word, phrase, or sentence can be interpreted as having multiple meanings.

anti-proverb (also called “proverb parody” or proverb manipulation”): An intentionally changed proverb with a new meaning.

antonym: A word that means the opposite of another word (e.g. poor and rich).

autosemantic word (also called “lexical word” or “content word”): A word that establishes a relation between language and the world by denoting a person or object (noun), an action (verb) or a property (adjective). In contrast to a synsemantic word (also called “function word” or “grammatical word”), which has a language-internal meaning.

causative : A verb or clause expressing causation. A causative verb expresses that the subject of the verb causes an action to be performed.

chiasm/chiasmus: A figure of speech involving the inversion of the order of elements in second of two parallel words, phrases or clauses.

collocation: The frequent and habitual co-occurrence of words in a language. A natural-sounding combination of words, e.g. a hard frost (a strong frost).Frost can be called the base of the collocation and hard the collocate.

compound: A linguistic unit composed of two or more morphemes, i.e. of elements that can function separately elsewhere, e.g. bedroom, computer freak, roll-call.

connotation/connotation meanings: The person or emotional aroused by a word or expression in addition to its mean meaning. These may involve expressive features, such as the derogatory nature of slum or bluestocking, or stylistic aspects, such as the difference in formality between pass away and be pushing up the daisies.

cuneiform: An ancient form of writing that used wedge-shaped characters.

denotation/denotative (also called “referential meaning” or “cognitive meaning”):

The objective relationship between a word or expression and the reality to which it refers.

determiner: A grammatical element that co-occurs with nouns to express concepts like number, quantity, definiteness/indefiniteness etc., e.g. the, a, some, my.

dialect: A regionally restricted language variety.

durative: Implying duration or continuance.

euphemism: A vague or indirect word or phrase that is used in place of one that is embarrassing or unpleasant, e.g. pass away for die.

false friends (also faus amis): Words or expressions that seem similar in two languages, but have different meanings.

figure of speech (also called “rhetorical/stylistic device”): A method or technique used to produce a particular effect. A figure of speech may relate to sound (e.g. alliteration), structural (e.g. parallelism) or meaning (e.g. metaphor).

filler: Words or phrases that carry little meaning (e.g. you know, sort of ) but have a function, for example, that of emphasizing, qualifying meaning or, especially in spontaneous speech, allowing the speaker time to think.

Hausa: A language spoken in Nigeria, Niger, and nearby areas.

homophones: Words with the same pronunciation but different meaning.

hyperbole: A figure of speech involving emphatic exaggeration.

hyperonym/hypernym (also called the “superordinate”) A term of more general meaning (e.g. fruit) which includes several categories (hyponyms) (e.g. apple, orange, plum, banana).

inchoative: denoting the beginning of an action or state.

institutionalisation: When a novel expression (ad-hoc construction) is also used by other members of the language community, it becomes a conventional expression.

intertextuality: The way in which one text refers to another text.

juxtaposed: The distinction between a language as an abstract system and the concrete utterances of speakers of the language.

lexeme: A basic lexical unit which corresponds roughly to the everyday use of the term ‘word’. By convention a lexeme is the form that is used as a headword in dictionaries. The term refers to simple and complex words as well as to phrases (fixed multi-word expressions).

lexicography: The theory and practice of dictionary-making.

lexicology: The systematic study of all aspects of words and vocabularies.

lingua franca: A language that is widely used by people who do not have a native language in common. For example, Latin in the Middle Ages or English today.

loan translation: (also called “calque”) : A word or phraseological unit whose parts are translated literally into a new language; word-for-word translation.

metacommunicative: Connected with the function of talking about the use of language in order to guarantee communicative adequacy. The phrase so to speak is a typical metacommunicative signal to introduce a phraseological unit.

metaphor: A classical figure of speech. A figurative (i.e. non-literal) expression is used to describe somebody or something in terms usually associated with another notion in order to show that the two things have the same features and to make the description more powerful. A metaphor involves a relation of resemblance or analogy, although this is not explicitly stated (e.i. without using the words as or like).

metonymy: A classical figure of speech. A word is substituted for another word or expression with which it is closely associated. The sorts of associative relation which support metonymy are varied. They include, for example, PART for WHOLE (pars pro toto-also called “synecdoche”) (e.g. I saw familiar faces), CONTAINER for CONTAINER ENTITY (e.g. He drank the whole ), INSTITUTION for PEOPLE (e.g. The college was upset ).

morpheme: The smallest unit of linguistic meaning or function, e.g. dog, un-,-s.

obstruency: The situation in which the windpipe is fully or partly obstructed in the articulation of speech sounds.

onomasiology: The study of words and expressions having similar or associated concepts and a basis for being grouped. An onomasiologcal approach proceeds from given meaning and inquires in the forms that are used to express it. (In contrast to semasiology, which starts out from a given form and investigates its meaning).

onymic unit: A proper name.

parallelism: A figure of speech involving the repetition of identical or similar words, phrases, or constructions.

paremiology: The study of proverbs.

part of speech: (also called “word class”): A traditional class of words (such as noun, verb, adjective, etc.) distinguished according to their grammar and kind of idea they denote.

personification: A figure of speech involving the attributing of human qualities to animals, objects, etc.

phatic: Used to establish or maintain social contract.

phrasal verb: A combination of a verb and particle(s) or preposition(s). It forms a single unit of meaning (e.g. put up with= ‘tolerate’).

phrasicon: The inventory of idioms and phrases; the set of phraseological units in the lexicon of a language community.