Sank's Glossary of Linguistics 
Em-Ep

EMBEDDED ROOT PHENOMENA

  1. (Syntax) Syntactic configurations that are restricted to root clauses and a subset of embedded environments. | Caroline Heycock, 2017
  2. (Syntax) Since the work of Emonds (1970), root transformations are defined as transformations that can only apply in root clauses, that is, non-embedded clauses. For example, topicalization of the direct object is possible in the following root clause:
    1. This book, you should read.
     However, as observed by Hooper and Thompson (1973) in their influential paper, root transformations are also available in a subset of embedded contexts. In the following example, the complement clause, which is embedded by the main clause predicate believe, admits topicalization of the direct object:
    1. John believes that this book Mary read.
     Besides topicalization, Hooper and Thompson (1973) mention a wide range of other transformations, for the most part preposing transformations, that are possible in a subset of embedded contexts. Another phenomenon which can be subsumed under the notion of Embedded Root Phenomena (ERP) is V2 movement in German. | Mailin Antomo, 2012
  3. (Syntax) Embedded root phenomena (ERPs) in Korean and Japanese that are compared to Germanic languages include:
    1. Unintegrated (Reis 1997 for free dass‐clauses in German) or peripheral (Haegeman 2004) adjunct clauses and adverbs.
    2. Appositive (non‐restrictive) relatives (Ross 1967, Emonds 1979, Fabb 1990, de Vries 2006, Citko 2008).
    3. Subordinate clauses with matrix verbs that typically embed indicative mood in Romance.
    4. Germanic EV2 constructions (Reis 1997, Bentzen et al. 2007) in subjunctive in German.
    5. Topic phrases with non‐contrastive topic markers nun and wa in Korean and Japanese (Whitman 1989, Poltner and Yabushita 1998).
     Here I further identify two cases of embedded root phenomena in Korean and Japanese:
    1. Embedded clauses in subjunctive mood.
    2. Embedded clauses with evaluative negation which is also a subspecies of subjunctive clauses (Yoon 2010).
     | Suwon Yoon, 2001

EMOTIVE COLOR TERMS
(Pragmatics) In Korean, a subcase of expressive elements, analyzed as Conventional Implicature (Potts 2005). What is particularly noteworthy about Korean color terms, however, is the fact that many of the possible variants can convey the speaker's positive or negative emotional attitude that is reflected in a particular derivation of the color term, in addition to the regular meaning of the color term concerning quality/quantity of the color (Kennedy and McNally 2010). | Suwon Yoon, 2018

EMOTIVE FACTIVE

  1. (Pragmatics) Or, evaluative. Emotive-factive predicates convey a speaker's evaluation of a particular event (Becker 2010, Portner 2018). They include expressions such as be happy (that), be sad (that), and regret. They are an intriguing class of predicates since they exhibit extensive cross-linguistic variation in their selection of mood (Quer 1998, Portner 2018). For instance, whereas Romanian and Greek require the indicative, French, Catalan, and Spanish call for the subjunctive (Farkas 1992, Giannakidou 2015, Quer 1998, 2009). | Tris Faulkner, 2021
  2. (Pragmatics) There is a difference between two types of factives: cognitive factives like discover and find out on the one hand, which convey a relation between a proposition and states or events relating to the subject's doxastic state, and emotive factives like regret and be happy on the other hand, which communicate a relation between a proposition and the subject's emotive affect towards it.
     It was already noted by Karttunen (1971) that what he called semi-factives (such as discover and find out) can easily lose their presuppositional status. For example, they do not necessarily project from the antecedents of conditionals, in contrast to other factives such as regret, as illustrated in (1).
    1. a. If I discover later that the proposal offended them, I will apologize.
       (Does not presuppose the proposal offended them.)
      b. If I regret later that the proposal offended them, I will apologize.
       (Presupposes the proposal offended them.)
     (1a) conveys no commitment on part of the speaker to the proposition the proposal offended them, despite the fact that discover typically conveys the truth of its complement at a global level. Furthermore, cognitive factives can be used "parenthetically" (e.g. Hooper and Thompson 1973, Simons 2007) by having the embedded clause answer a question, as shown in (2) from Simons (2007), whereas emotive factives typically cannot be used this way (3).
    1. A: Where was Harriet yesterday?
      B: Henry discovered that she had a job interview at Princeton.
    2. A: Where was Harriet yesterday?
      B: ?? Henry is happy that she had a job interview at Princeton.
     | Kajsa Djarv, Jérémy Zehr, and Florian Schwarz, 2018
  3. (Pragmatics) Giannakidou (2006) had argued that any can be "rescued" after an affective predicate if the latter makes a non-veridical inference available in the global context of the sentence with which the polarity item can be associated, as is the case in (1):
    1. Larry regrets that he said anything. → Larry would prefer it if he had not said anything.
     In contrast to negative emotive predicates like regret, "a positive emotive verb (...) is not affective and does not admit PIs [Polarity Items]" (Giannakidou 2006), as shown in (2):
    1. * Larry is glad that he said anything.
     Giannakidou observes in addition that "factivity in general is not a sufficient condition for PIs: factive verbs that are not emotive, such as know, do not allow any":
    1. * John knows that Bill said anything.
    Giannakidou (2006) goes on however to mention the fact that PIs such as any can occasionally be found with positive emotive factives, as illustrated by (4):
    1. Bill is glad that we got any tickets at all.
     This is said to occur only if "context inferencing makes salient somehow a quasi-negative proposition," in this case the implication that it was almost impossible to get tickets and so Bill had not expected that he would be able to purchase any at all. | Patrick Duffley and Pierre Larrivée, 2019

EMOTIVITY
(Grammar) Webster’s Online Dictionary defines emotivity as emotiveness, i.e. "susceptibility to emotion". Collins Dictionary also defines emotivity through emotiveness only interpreting the latter as "qualities that tend or are designed to arouse emotion". According to the English-language Wiktionary, emotivity is the condition of being emotive, i.e. 1) appealing to one's emotions or 2) of, or relating to emotion.
 Linguistically speaking, emotivity is understood as an immanently inherent in the language semantic property of expressing, with its own means, emotionality as a fact of state of mind; it [emotivity] has two planes: the plane of expression and the plane of content through which emotional conditions/states are reflected in the language (Shakhovsky 2008).
 Emotivity in a literary text is achieved through an array of text components, so-called emotivity indicators, i.e. emotionally loaded words, phrases, sentences explicitly or implicitly indicating the speaker's emotional intentions and as a result modeling the reader's possible response to the text reality (Gladyo 2000).
 Since emotional coloring can be imparted to the text on various levels of the language system (phonetics, morphology, syntax, lexicology, etc), it seems reasonable enough to assume that emotivity indicators vary from level to level.
 When studying phonetic emotivity indicators, attention should be paid to the fact that emotivity can exist both on the segmental and the suprasegmental levels. For instance, on the segmental level emotions cause lengthening of vowels, change of the sound quality, etc; while on the suprasegmental level the emotional condition and reactions can be characterized by emotive-prosodic coloring of what is said with emotive expressions being always marked by intonation and pace change, decrease or increase in loudness, pause-making, stress or tone modulation. Interacting with the lexico-grammatical components of the expression, they introduce additional semantic shades to its meaning. | Tatyana Verenko, 2013

EMPHATIC JUNCTURE
(Prosody) In American English, the Intonational Phrase (IP) is the largest prosodic phrase. The right edge of an IP is marked with a boundary tone (e.g. H%, L%), final lengthening, and a large juncture after the final word of the IP that may include a pause (Pierrehumbert 1980, Beckman and Ayers-Elam 1997, Beckman, Hirschberg, and Shattuck-Hufnagel 2005). In many cases, IP boundaries align with the edges of syntactic constituents (Selkirk 1986, 2011, a.o.). In some cases, however, speakers insert additional IP boundaries for information structural reasons, such as adding a pause before and/or after narrow focus or adding a pause after a contrastive topic item.
 I present evidence for a new nonsyntactic use of the IP boundary, the emphatic juncture (EJ), annotated on the Breaks tier in MAE_ToBI (Beckman, Hirschberg, and Shattuck-Hufnagel, 2005) as 4e. The EJ is found in various constructions such as transparent free relatives (e.g. in what some folks call a % silver tsunami), partial quotation (e.g. Larry challenged an % "alarming rule" % at the board meeting), and in various speech styles, such as sermon speech or news speech. | Bethany Sturman, 2019

ENDOCENTRIC COMPOUND

  1. (Morphology) 
    Subordinative Attributive Coordinative
    Endocentric water bottle blackbird bittersweet
    Exocentric pickpocket greybeard Austria-Hungary
     (Guevara and Scalise 2005, Scalise and Vogel 2010)
     Endocentric compounds are typically compositional and productive. Exocentric compounds are typically idiosyncratic and unproductive, as in (1) and (2).
    1. beer bottle, whiskey bottle, wine bottleCBD beer bottle, bubble tea bottle, probiotic soda bottle
    2. pickpocket → ?pickbag, ?pickjacket, ?pickwallet, ?pickbackpack
     | Frane Malenica, 2023
  2. (Morphology) At the most general level, compounds are divided into endocentric and exocentric, based on the broad relationship between the two constituents. Endocentric compounds are characterized by the "presence of a head constituent" (Scalise and Bisetto 2009). The head carries both the grammatical and semantic functions of the compound while it is further specified by the first constituent, i.e. the modifier; hence straw in straw hat specifies a particular type of hat (Olsen 2000). | Frane Malenica and Lucija Žinić, 2019
  3. (Morphology) Consists of a head, i.e. the categorical part that contains the basic meaning of the whole compound, and modifiers, which restrict this meaning. For example, the English compound doghouse, where house is the head and dog is the modifier, is understood as a house intended for a dog. Endocentric compounds tend to be of the same part of speech (word class) as their head, as in the case of doghouse. (Such compounds were called tatpuruṣa in the Sanskrit tradition.) | Wikipedia, 2022

ENDOCENTRICITY
(Syntax) A constraint that imposes asymmetry on syntactic representations. Requires that a complex category must be projected from exactly one of its daughters, as in (1). Any other daughters are syntactically subordinate. Endocentricity is in effect a ban on two types of symmetric structure: categories with multiple heads, as in (2), and categories without a head, as in (3). In neither of these structures has one daughter been subordinated to the other.

 
   1.        X'
            / \
           /   \
          X     Y

   2. *      X'
            / \
           /   \
          X     X
       
   3. *      -
            / \
           /   \
          Z     Y
 | Ad Neeleman, Joy Philip, Misako Tanaka, and Hans van de Koot, 2022

ENDOCLISIS
(Morphology) Refers to the situation where a clitic appears neither as a proclitic at the beginning of a word nor an enclitic at the end, but in fact appears internal to the word itself. As a phenomenon, it is found in remarkably few languages around the world. In fact, as Alice Harris (2002) points out, in various frameworks it is considered to be impossible. However, as further shown by Harris, there do exist cases where it seems undeniable that clitics appear internal to a word. Harris makes this claim based on data from Udi (Northeast Caucasian) and she goes through in detail that the relevant elements under consideration are in fact clitics, and moreover that they clearly appear word-internally.

  1. pasčaɣ-un
    king-GEN
    ɣar-en
    boy-ERG
    gölö
    much
    be-ne-ɣ-sa
    look1-3SG-look2-PRES
    met'a-laxo
    this.GEN-on
    'The prince looks at this for a long time.'
  2. pasčaɣ-on
    king-GEN
    ɣar-muɣ-on
    boy-PL-ERG
    lašk'o-q'un-b-esa
    wedding-3PL-DO-PRES
    'The king's son's married.'
 | Peter W. Smith, 2013

ENDONYM
(Semantics) A name used by a group or category of people to refer to themselves or their language, as opposed to a name given to them by other groups. For example, Deutschen is the "endonym" of a people known in English as German, and Mapuche is the endonym for the people referred to by outsiders as Araucanos. | Wiktionary, 2023

ENTAILMENT
(Semantics) The relationship between two sentences where the truth of one (A) requires the truth of the other (B). For example, the sentence (A) The president was assassinated. entails (B) The president is dead.
 Entailment is a concept that refers to a specific kind of relationship between two sentences. More specifically, entailment means that if one sentence is true, then another sentence would also have to be true: the second sentence would be entailed by the first sentence.
 Another way to prove entailment between two sentences is to demonstrate that if the one sentence is false, then the other sentence must also be false. Entailment is closely related to the concept of logical consequence. Within logic, the idea that if A is true, then B must be true too is nothing other than a form of entailment.
 An example of entailment can be found in the following pair of sentences.

  1. I will turn 28 this year.
  2. I am currently living.
 Entailment is present here because the truth of A requires the truth of B: If I am not currently living, then I cannot age, and therefore I will not turn 28 this year. The truth of A requires the truth of B, and this is the very definition of the concept of entailment.
 By the same token, entailment also means that if B is false, then A is also false. If it is in fact the case that I am currently dead, then A must be false, because then I cannot reach the age of 28. Again, then, entailment is present in the relationship between A and B. | Ultius, 2023

ENTAILMENT-SCALARITY PRINCIPLE
(Semantics) 

The Entailment-Scalarity Principle (L. Crnič, 2011, 2019):
For any propositions p, q, if pq, then plikely q.
 | Zhuo Chen, 2022

ENTROPY
(General Science) Measure of a system's energy that is unavailable for work, or of the degree of a system's disorder. | Encyclopædia Britannica, 2023

EPENTHESIS
(Phonology) The phenomenon that a segment is inserted between two other segments within a word. For example, in the Dutch word melk 'milk' a schwa is inserted between [l] and [k], yielding [melək]. | Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics, 2001

EPIPHENOMENON
(General) A by-product or secondary phenomenon. Thus in accounts of syntax that became standard in the 1960s it is the individual rules that are primary; constructions, as they have usually been conceived, were by implication secondary or epiphenomenal. | Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics, 2014

EPISTEMIC INDEFINITE

  1. Signifies an ignorance on the part of the speaker (usually) about the witness of the existential claim (Kratzer and Shimoyama 2002, Alonso-Ovalle and Menéndez-Benito 2003, 2010, a.o.). We term this effect as pure ignorance, given that in all reported cases of EIs, the speaker has never known what the witness of the claim is.
     The Bengali EI in (1), in brackets, shows pure ignorance, while the addition of the particle jyano in (2) to the DP containing the EI immediately signals derived ignorance:
    1. Pure ignorance: the speaker doesn't know which boy.
      [Kon
      WH
      ek-ta]
      one-CL
      chele
      boy
      gailo.
      sang
      'Some boy sang.'
    2. Derived ignorance: the speaker knew in the past which boy, but can't recall now.
      [Kon
      WH
      ek-ta]
      one-CL
      chele
      boy
      jyano
      JYANO
      gailo.
      sang
      'Some boy sang.' (closest translation)
     | Diti Bhadra, 2022
  2. (Pragmatics) Indefinites in which an ignorance implicature is conventionalized. Examples of epistemic indefinite determiners are German irgendein and Italian un qualche.
     Sentences (1) and (2) make an existential claim, and additionally convey that the speaker does not know who the witness of this claim is. Hence, adding the continuation 'Guess who?' results in oddity. In contrast, the plain indefinite somebody allows for this type of continuation, as illustrated in (3).
    1. German
      Irgendein
      Some
      Student
      student
      hat
      has
      angerufen.
      called.
      # Rat
       Guess
      mal
      PRT
      wer?
      who?
      Conventional meaning:
      Some student called, speaker doesn't know who.
    2. Italian
      Anna
      Anna
      ha
      has
      sposato
      married
      un
      a
      qualche
      some
      dottore.
      doctor.
      # Indovina
       Guess
      chi?
      who?
      Conventional meaning:
      Anna married some doctor, speaker doesn't know who.
    3. English
      Somebody arrived late. Guess who?
     | Maria Aloni and Angelika Port, 2011

EPISTEMIC MARKER
(Semantics) According to Zuczkowski et al. (2021), epistemic stances are conveyed by lexical markers and are further classified into macro-markers and micro-markers, and morphosyntactic markers, pointing to three positions—Knowing / Certain position, Not Knowing Whether and Believing / Uncertain position, and Unknowing / Neither Certain nor Uncertain position—each having two sides, one evidential (source, access) denoting the left of the slash and the other epistemic (commitment), pointing to the right of the slash. The macro-marker is a general label and a hypernym, encompassing all the micro-markers that specify access to information or refer to a particular commitment to the truth of information in the here and now of communication. The morphosyntactic markers refer to syntactic structures communicating speakers' epistemic status.

 | Fang Xu and Rongping Cao, 2023

EPISTEMIC MODALITY

  1. (Semantics) Refers to the conveyance of the speaker's attitude toward the factualness of a proposition. Sentences such as John may be in his office or Mary could be at school by now (Palmer 2001) are examples of the expression of epistemic modality. (Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca, 1994) | Glottopedia, 2009
  2. (Semantics) Particularly deals with the interactive dimensions of various discourses. Epistemic modality in broad terms can be defined as any modal system that indicates the degree of assurance of what a speaker says. | Ayesha Bashir, Irfan Ullah, and Liaqat Iqbal, 2023

EPISTOLARY FORM, ANCIENT GREEK
The ancient Greek letter had three highly identifiable sections: the opening, the body, and the closing (Aune 1987). The formula for the opening is most commonly: A— to B— χαίρειν, "A" representing the writer of the letter, and "B", the addressee (Exler 1976). "A," appears in the nominative case, and "B" in the dative (Aune 1987). Several different forms occur, the most common being: to B— from A—, without χαίρειν (Exler 1976). In this formula, "B" is in the dative and "A" in the genitive (Aune 1987). The first formula appears mostly in familiar letters, business letters, and official letters, while the second is found in petitions, complaints, and applications (Exler 1976).
 The formula for the closing consists of either ἔρρωσο, ἔρρωσθε, or some modification, εὐτύχει or διεὐτύχει, or, the omission of the final greeting altogether (Exler 1976). In general, familiar letters use some form of ἔρρωσο, petitions and formal complaints use either εὐτύχει or διεὐτύχει, business letters omit the final salutation, and official letters are mixed between using ἔρρωσο or omitting the final greeting (Exler 1976). The combinations of the opening and closing formulas within the various letters are diverse and also help to reveal function and date (Exler 1976).
 As for the body of the letter, three different phrases are used in the opening of the body: the ἐρρ'σθαι wish, the ὑγιαίνειν wish, and the ἀσπάσασθαι wish (Exler 1976). These phrases could either be joined to the openings or begin the body of the letter (Aune 1987). Also, depending upon the primary purpose of the letter to either inform or request something, distinctive informational formulas and request formulas are present (White 1986). The final body phrase, the ἐπιμέλου clause, is closely related to the ἐρρ'σθαι wish, for both appear together in letter writing and disappear about the same time (during the first hundred years of the Christian era) (Exler 1976). The ἀσπάσασθαι phrase began to be employed around the beginning of Augustus' reign and is most frequent in familiar letters (Exler 1976). This phrase originally occurred in place of the ὑγιαίνειν wish at the beginning of the body, yet eventually was placed at the end of the body (Aune 1987). Also appearing, usually in connection with the opening and closing formulas, are prayers of supplication and thanksgiving (White 1981).
 Though this overview of Greek epistolary form has been brief, it has sought to show that the parts of the ancient Greek letter followed definite formulas. These epistolary conventions survived for centuries, being ingrained into the procedures of letter writing. | Tom Campbell, 1994

EPISTOLARY FORMULAE
The language of private letters is characterized by a large number of so-called epistolary formulae, that is recurrent expressions mainly or exclusively found in letters.
 Epistolary formulae may fulfil various functions and are used throughout letters, though most formulae occur in the opening and closing passages. Some formulae cover intersubjective domains such as greeting and health.

  1. Een Vryendelijcke groetenysse sy gescheuen aen
    a friendly greeting be written to
    'a friendly greeting be written to'
(1) presents an opening formula widely used in seventeenth-century letters. Example (2) includes the formulaic expression fris en gesond 'fresh and healthy, in good health', repeatedly found in eighteenth-century letters.
  1. dese diend om UEd te Laten Weten dat ik Nog fris en gesond zyn
    this serves to you to let know that I still fresh and healthy am
    'this [letter] serves to let you know that I am still fresh and healthy/in good health'
 Other formulae do not fulfil a concrete intersubjective function, but rather make the structure of the discourse explicit, for instance by announcing a new topic (3) or by preparing the reader to the closure (4).
  1. Verder heb ik u, myn hertie lief te melden, dat
    further have I you my heart love to inform that
    'furthermore, I must inform you, my dear love, that'
  2. Verders niets sonderling meer te melden hebbende als
    further nothing special more to inform having than
    'furthermore, having/I have nothing special/other to say but/than'
 | Gijsbert Rutten and Marijke van der Wal, 2014

EPP
See EXTENDED PROJECTION PRINCIPLE.

 

Page Last Modified March 13, 2024

 
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