CONTENT
(Semantics) Plane of the text comprised by the totality of signifieds. | A Little Glossary of Semantics, 2001
See Also SEMANTIC CONTENT.

CONTEXTUAL ALLOMORPHY
(Morphology) In the best of all morphosyntactically possible worlds, one might well suppose the pieces of syntax and the pieces of morphology would be a one-to-one correspondence. In the real world, many factors impinge on this maximally simple relationship: allomorphy, accidental homophony, principled syncretism, non-cumulative exponence, ...
 What we mean by allomorphy is most simply expressed graphically. As a preliminary, the exponence relation between a feature set and an exponent is represented as:

1. [F] ⇔ φ
   '[F] has exponent φ'

2. 
   
    
   [F]
    

    
   ⇔
    

   ⎧
   ⎨
   ⎩

   φ₁
   φ₂
    ⋮

   Context₁
   Context₂
    ⋮

CONTIGUITY THEORY

1. (Grammar) A theory based on the assumption that prosodic structure and syntactic structure are built cyclically and in parallel. Certain kinds of phonological information are visible to the narrow syntax and can effect displacement and other operations where required to derive a well-formed prosodic representation. (Richards 2016) | Dennis Ott, 2017
2. (Grammar) Languages differ in the types of overt movement they display. For example, some languages (including English) require subjects to move to a preverbal position, while others (including Italian) allow subjects to remain postverbal. In its current form, Minimalism offers no real answer to the question of why these different types of movements are distributed among languages as they are. In Contiguity Theory, Norvin Richards argues that there are universal conditions on morphology and phonology, particularly in how the prosodic structures of language can be built, and that these universal structures interact with language-specific properties of phonology and morphology. He argues that the grammar begins the construction of phonological structure earlier in the derivation than previously thought, and that the distribution of overt movement operations is largely determined by the grammar's efforts to construct this structure. Rather than appealing to diacritic features, the explanations will generally be rooted in observable phenomena.
    Richards posits a different kind of relation between syntax and morphology than is usually found in Minimalism. According to his Contiguity Theory, if we know, for example, what inflectional morphology is attached to the verb in a given language, and what the rules are for where stress is placed in the verb, then we will know where the verb goes in the sentence. Ultimately, the goal is to construct a theory in which a complete description of the phonology and morphology of a given language is also a description of its syntax. | MIT Press, 2016

CONTINUATION RISE
(Prosody) The most distinctive feature of French intonation is the continuation pattern. While many languages, such as English and Spanish, place stress on a particular syllable of each word, and while many speakers of languages such as English may accompany this stress with a rising intonation, French has neither stress nor distinctive intonation on a given syllable. Instead, on the final syllable of every rhythm group except the last one in a sentence, there is placed a rising pitch. For example (Lian 1980), with the pitch change arrows ↗ and ↘ applying to the syllable immediately following the arrow):

1. Hier ↗soir, il m'a off↗ert une ciga↘rette.
   'Last ↗evening, he ↗offered me a ciga↘rette (BrE) / ↘cigarette (AmE)'.
2. Le lendemain ma↗tin, après avoir changé le pansement du ma↗lade, l'infir↗mier est ren↗tré chez ↘lui.
   'The next morning, after changing the patient's dressing, the nurse went home.'

CONTINUATIVE

1. (Syntax) Or, progressive aspect. The continuitive aspect marks dynamic verbs describing actions that are ongoing at the referenced point in time. | Conlang Wiki, ?
2. (Semantics) Examples of the keep V-ing construction:
   1. a. Mary kept winning (again and again).
      b. John kept running (for another ten minutes).
    On the basis of a systematic study of combinations of keep with predicates of different aktionsarts, it is shown that keep can give rise to two different readings which share the overall meaning of 'continued activity'. It is argued that the two readings of keep V-ing arise from different aspectual properties of the predicate in the complement clause. Under the first reading, labelled the continuative-iterative reading, (1a), the event in the complement clause is telic, and the interpretation is an iterative reading. Under the second reading, labelled the continuative reading, (1b), the event in the complement clause is atelic, and the interpretation is a reading of nonstop continuation. | Hanna Glad, 2016

CONTOUR
(Phonetics) Describes speech sounds which behave as single segments, but which make an internal transition from one quality, place, or manner to another. These sounds may be tones, vowels, or consonants.
 Many tone languages have contour tones, which move from one level to another. For example, Mandarin Chinese has four lexical tones. The high tone is level, without contour; the falling tone is a contour from high pitch to low; the rising tone a contour from mid pitch to high, and, when spoken in isolation, the low tone takes on a dipping contour, mid to low and then to high pitch.
 In the case of vowels, the word diphthong is used instead of "contour". The most common contour consonants by far are the affricates. Other types of transition are attested in consonants, such as prenasalized stops in many African languages and nasal release in Slavic languages. | Wikipedia, 2015

CONTOUR TONE

1. (Phonology) A tone whose pitch changes during the syllable. | Wiktionary, 2017
2. (Phonology) In the simplest cases of tone, each syllable of a language with tones will have its own characteristic tonal pattern, which may be a relatively flat pitch at a particular level, or it may involve the pitch rising or falling over the duration of the syllable. When the pitch has a moving pattern of this sort, the tone is described as a contour tone.
    Many of the languages of East and Southeast Asia, including all varieties of Chinese as well as Vietnamese and Thai, have tone systems that include contour tones. Languages in which it is only necessary to speak of level tones are more common. Contour tones are generally found in languages which have a larger number of tone contrasts. When the language makes only two or three tone distinctions, the tones are usually all level. | Ian Maddieson, 2013

CONTRASTIVE DISTRIBUTION
(General) As opposed to complementary distribution or free variation, the relationship between two different elements, where both elements are found in the same environment with a change in meaning. | Natalia Stolashchuk, 2015
See Also CONTRASTIVE PHONEMES.

CONTRASTIVE FOCUS

1. (Pragmatics) The coding of information that is contrary to the presuppositions of the interlocutor. (Givon 2001, Lambrecht 1994, Camacho et al. 2010) | Wikipedia, 2023
2. (Pragmatics) For example, in the corrective exchange below, the subject of (2) is contrastively focused. Focus evokes a set of alternative propositions of the type wants(x,coffee) with x ranging over people known to A and B as in (3). Contrast entails that one of the alternative propositions evoked by focalization is denied. In corrective exchanges like this, the denied proposition is the one being corrected, namely the proposition that John wants coffee.
   1. John wants coffee.
   2. No. Ede_F wants coffee.
   3. Focus value of (2): {wants(John,coffee), wants(Ede,coffee), wants(Bill,coffee), etc.}
    Contrastive foci are described as able to front while non-contrastive foci remain in-situ (Rizzi, 1997, 2004; Belletti 2001, 2004; a.o.). | Vieri Samek-Lodovici, 2019

CONTRASTIVE PHONEMES
(Phonology) Refers to the different phonemes which will create a difference in word meaning if they are replaced with each other, providing evidence for minimal pairs (Zsiga 2013). For example, in English, the words fan and van differ by only one phoneme (sound), /f/ and /v/ respectively; this provides evidence that /f/ and /v/ are contrastive phonemes in English.
 Sounds which are contrastive are said to be members of different phonemes, and their distribution is unpredictable (Zsiga 2013). Sounds which are contrastive in one language may not be contrastive in a different language. | INLP Linguistic Glossary, 2021

CONTRASTIVE POLARITY
(Grammar) By their nature, morphosyntactically dependent reversing assertions involve contrastive polarity. In English, this involves a pitch accent (underscored below) expressing contrastive focus associated with some expression of polarity—one that is the reverse of the antecedent assertion’s polarity:

1. He actually has(n't) (left).
2. But he has(n't) (left)!
3. On the contrary, he has(n't) (left).

CONTRASTIVE POLARITY ELLIPSIS
(Syntax) A type of obligatory TP ellipsis (Kazenin 2006, Gribanova 2017). It strands a polarity particle in the higher polarity head (Pol). It involves contrast in polarity (yes/no; no/yes). It involves fronting of a phrasal remnant, also contrastive, to just before the polarity particle. In Russian (1):

1. Mašu
   Masha.ACC

   ona
   she.NOM

   vstretila,
   met.PST.SG.F

   a
   but

   Pašu
   Pasha.ACC

   –
   –

   net.
   no

   'Masha she met, but Pasha, no.'

CONTROL

1. (Syntax) Refers to the mechanism whereby an unexpressed notional subject, especially of a nonfinite verb such as an infinitive, gets its reference.
    E.g., in a sentence like Masha asked Jorge to help him, the unexpressed subject of to help him is interpreted as being coreferential with the object Jorge. It is said to be controlled by the object noun phrase.
    Subtypes:
   • subject control, object control
   • obligatory control, optional control
   • backward control
    (Manzini 1983) | Glottopedia, 2007
2. (Syntax) A quick typology of control
   1. Obligatory Control (OC):
      • Exhaustive, e.g., He_i managed [PRO_i to finish the job].
      • Partial, e.g., He_i decided [PRO_i+ to meet later].
      • Split, e.g., He_i offered her_j [PRO_i+j to become partners].
      • Implicit, e.g., It was fun ____i [PRO_i to play in the snow].
   2. Non-Obligatory Control (NOC):
      • Arbitrary, e.g., [PRO_arb offering him_i a role] might make Bill_i feel a lot better.
      • Long-distance, e.g., Linda_i was certain that it was time for people to realize that [PRO_i standing up for her_i ideas] is just the beginning.
      • Deictic, e.g., [After PRO_speaker introducing myself], everybody was less puzzled.
    | Idan Landau, 2016
3. (Syntax) A construction in which the understood subject of a given predicate is determined by some expression in context. Stereotypical instances of control involve verbs. A superordinate verb "controls" the arguments of a subordinate, nonfinite verb.
    Control was intensively studied in the Government and Binding framework in the 1980s, and much of the terminology from that era is still used today (van Riemsdijk and Williams 1986, Cowper 1992, Borsley 1996, et al). In the days of Transformational Grammar, control phenomena were discussed in terms of Equi-NP deletion (Bach 1974, Emonds 1976, Culocover 1982, et al).
    Control is often analyzed in terms of a null pronoun called PRO. Control is also related to raising, although there are important differences between control and raising. Most if not all languages have control constructions, and these constructions tend to occur frequently. | Wikipedia, 2016
4. (Semantics) The notion of control has been part of the Salishan linguistic tradition for more than 30 years. It has been described as the "degree of control an agent has over an event" (Thompson 1979). It has been described as having one of two values: in control or limited control.
   • An agent who is in control, is understood to initiate an event on purpose, to have control over the process of the event and to bring the event to culmination.
   • An agent who has limited control may unintentionally initiate an event, or have difficulty in the process of the event and thus only managed to bring the event to completion.
    | Peter William Jacobs, 2011

CONTROL PREDICATE
(Syntax) Intutively, to say that a verbal/predicative complement is controlled by the matrix subject (object) is to say that it is semantically interpreted as if it had a subject which is "identical" (in a sense which remains to be made precise) with the matrix subject (object). Predicates with such complements are called "control predicates", and the matrix argument (subject or object)* on which the understood subject of the complement depends for its interpretation is called the controller.
* For certain predicates, the controller can be a nonpredicative PP complement (e.g. appeal to). | ?

CONTROL VERB
(Syntax) Control verbs have semantic content; they semantically select their arguments, that is, their appearance strongly influences the nature of the arguments they take. In this regard, they are very different from auxiliary verbs, which lack semantic content and do not semantically select arguments. Compare the following pairs of sentences:

1. a. Sam will go. (auxiliary verb)
   b. Sam yearns to go. (subject control verb)
2. a. Jim has to do it. (modal auxiliary verb)
   b. Jim refuses to do it. (subject control verb)
3. a. Jill would lie and cheat. (modal auxiliary)
   b. Jill attempted to lie and cheat. (subject control verb)

CONVERGENCE, LANGUAGE
(Socio/Historical) A type of contact-induced change whereby languages with many bilingual speakers mutually borrow morphological and syntactic features, making their typology more similar.
 A presently occurring example of this is with the Maltese language, where almost all the population of Malta is bilingual in Maltese and English, and often mix the two languages in speech. In addition to this, 66% of the population speaks Italian, and the language is also continuing to influence Maltese. | Wikipedia, 2015

Page Last Modified March 3, 2024

 

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