EQUALITY COMPARATIVE
(Syntax) In English, there is just one form of equality comparative for all adjectives, and the structure is as follows:

• as + adjective + as
  Example: She is as intelligent as her mother.

EQUIPOLLENT FRAMING
See VERB-FRAMING.

ERGATIVE LANGUAGE

1. (Typology) A language, such as Georgian, in which the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb are expressed by one grammatical case, and the subject of a transitive verb is expressed by another. | American Heritage Dictionary, 5th Ed.
2. (Typology) Languages show ergativity when they treat transitive subjects distinctly from intransitive ones, treat objects like intransitive subjects, or treat unaccusative subjects unlike unergative and transitive subjects. Ergativity plays a central role in the study of case, agreement, and non-finite clauses. It casts light in addition on the constraints at play in A’ extraction. | Amy Rose Deal, 2015

ERGATIVITY

1. (Grammar) Refers to a system of marking grammatical relations in which intransitive subjects pattern together with transitive objects (absolutives), and differently from transitive subjects (ergatives). This ergative alignment pattern may be manifest, for example, in terms of morphological case marking on nominals, or patterns of agreement on the predicate. This contrasts with the more commonly discussed nominative-accusative–type alignment, in which both transitive and intransitive subjects pattern alike (nominative), and differently from transitive objects (accusative). | Coon and Abenina-Adar, 2017
2. (Grammar) Languages show ergativity when they treat transitive subjects distinctly from intransitive ones, treat objects like intransitive subjects, or treat unaccusative subjects unlike unergative and transitive subjects. Ergativity plays a central role in the study of case, agreement, and non-finite clauses. It casts light in addition on the constraints at play in A' extraction. | Amy Rose Deal, 2015
3. (Grammar) Syntactic ergativity is broadly defined as the sensitivity of syntactic rules to the distinction between subjects of transitive verbs (= ergative) on the one hand and objects of transitive verbs and subjects of intransitive verbs (= absolutive) on the other hand. The defining property of syntactically ergative languages is taken to be the ergative extraction constraint: while absolutive arguments are accessible for extraction, A'-movement of the ergative argument is ungrammatical (Deal 2016; Polinsky 2017, et al.). | Ksenia Ershova, 2022

ESSIVE CASE

1. (Grammar) A case that expresses the temporary state of the referent specified by a noun. The case has the meaning of 'while' or 'in the capacity of'.
     The term is used especially in Finnish and Hungarian grammatical studies. | SIL Glossary of Linguistic Terms, 2003
2. (Grammar) Skolt Saami is one of a number of Uralic languages which makes use of the essive case. The essive case appears to be exclusively used by Uralic languages and is thus a typologically rare case.
     The form of the essive case in Skolt Saami is –n or –Vn (where V is a vowel which depends on the inflectional class of the stem). This is similar, therefore, to the Finnish essive marker –na/–nä.
     With regard to its function, the essive case in Skolt Saami is used to indicate a state or mode of existence, as observed in other Uralic languages. In addition to being used to mark nouns, the essive can be used on predicate adjectives.
     In addition to indicating a state or mode of existence (essive), the Skolt Saami essive is used to indicate a change of state, which in other Uralic languages (such as Finnish) are marked with a separate translative case. | Timothy Feist, 2013

ETHNOLINGUISTIC REPERTOIRE
(Sociolinguistics) A fluid set of linguistic resources that members of an ethnic group may use variably as they index their ethnic identities. This construct shifts the analytic focus from ethnic "language varieties" to individuals, ethnic groups, and their distinctive linguistic features. It addresses problems of inter-group, inter-speaker, and intra-speaker variation, as well as debates about who should be considered a speaker of a dialect. | Sarah Bunin Benor, 2010

ETHNOPHAULISM
Coined by psychologist Abraham Aaron Roback (1944) from Greek ἔθνος 'a national group' and φαύλισμα 'to disparage'. A word used as an ethnic slur to refer to an outgroup in hate speech. These are distinct from ethnonyms (Levin and Potapov 1964; from ἔθνος and ὄνυμα 'name'), which are the names an ingroup gives itself to distinguish itself from outgroups. Antilocutions (Allport, 1954, 1979; from Greek ἀντι 'against' and Latin loquor 'to speak') are prejudiced speech, which include ethnophaulisms as well as other linguistic factors in hostile prejudice, such as derogatory outgroup jokes. | Brian Mullen and Tirza Leader, 2005

EVENT LOCATION
(Semantics) Davidson's (1980) semantics of action sentences starts with the assumption that an event is a first-order individual, e, participating in the argument structure of a predicate, P(x₁, ..., x_n, e), Davidson identifies the location of an event as a relation between the event variable and an introduced location argument, l, e.g., loc(e, l). For example, consider the sentence and logical form in (1), ignoring for now, issues of tense.

1. John sang in a field.
   ∃e∃l [sing(j, e) ∧ in(e, l) ∧ field(l)]

2. Mary ate her lunch under a bridge.
   ∃e ∃l [eat_lunch (m, e) ∧ under (e, l) ∧ bridge (l)]
3. The robbery happened behind the building.
   ∃e ∃l [robbery (e) ∧ behind (e, l) ∧ building (l)]

EVENT-RELATED POTENTIAL

1. An ERP is the measured brain response that is the direct result of a specific sensory, cognitive, or motor event (Luck, 2005). More formally, it is any stereotyped electrophysiological response to a stimulus. | Wikipedia, 2016
2. Scalp recordings of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) provide a means to assess semantic and syntactic processing and have been shown to be sensitive to linguistic expertise and bilingualism. | Sylvain Moreno, Ellen Bialystok, Zofia Wodniecka, and Claude Alain, 2010

EVENT SCHEMA
(Semantics) The structural component of meaning, representing an event type; it comes from a limited inventory encompassing the event types encodable in language; often defined in terms of primitive predicates (see Carter 1978, Levin and Rappaport Hovav 2011, Wilks 1987).
 The most important distinction is whether an event schema is complex, consisting of two subevents, or simple, consisting of a single subevent (Levin and Rappaport Hovav 1999).

1. Complex event schema
   [ [ X ACT_<MANNER> ] CAUSE [ BECOME [ y <RES-STATE> ] ] ]
2. Simple event schema
   [ X ACT_<MANNER> ]
   [ X <STATE> ]
   [ BECOME [ X <STATE> ] ]

EVENT SEGMENTATION

1. (Cognitive) Event segmentation theory states that our brains segment continuous actions into a series of discrete, meaningful events. | Ana Serrano, Vincent Sitzmann, Jaime Ruiz-Borau, Gordon Wetzstein, Diego Gutierrez, and Belen Masia, 2017
2. (Cognitive) People make sense of continuous streams of observed behavior in part by segmenting them into events. Event segmentation seems to be an ongoing component of everyday perception. Events are segmented simultaneously at multiple timescales, and are grouped hierarchically. Activity in brain regions including the posterior temporal and parietal cortex and lateral frontal cortex increases transiently at event boundaries. The parsing of ongoing activity into events is related to the updating of working memory, to the contents of long-term memory, and to the learning of new procedures. Event segmentation might arise as a side effect of an adaptive mechanism that integrates information over the recent past to improve predictions about the near future. | Christopher A. Kurby and Jeffrey M. Zacks, 2007

EVENT SEMANTICS
(Semantics) Event descriptions are formulas like (1). Here e is a variable over events and P stands in for a predicate that is either simple or complex.

1. ∃e [ P(e) ]

2. Event Semantics (ES)
   The clauses of natural languages have a core that is a description of events.

3. Jo yelled 'Yo'.
4. ∃e [ (R(Yo)(Jo)) (e) ]

EVENTIVE VERBS
(Semantics) Verbs that express events, which occur at some point in time. They contrast with stative verbs, which express states that are true during spans of time. | Japanese With Anime, 2020

EVENTUALITY DESCRIPTION
(Semantics) I assume that aspectual class is determined at the level of predicate-argument structure, which I identify as the level of the eventuality description. According to Comrie (1976), "tense relates the time of the situation referred to some other time, whereas aspects are different ways of viewing the internal temporal constituency of a situation". Accordingly, I assume that grammatical aspect applies to eventuality descriptions to provide a perspective on the situation. Tense operates after all the aspectual operators have done their work. Under these assumptions, the syntactic structure of the sentence is as follows:

1. [ Tense [ Aspect ∗ [ eventuality description ] ] ]

EVOLUTIONARY PHONOLOGY
(Diachronic; Phonology; Phonetics) A theory of sound patterns which synthesizes results in historical linguistics, phonetics and phonological theory. The leading ideas and results of Evolutionary Phonology are summarized below:

1. Central premise of Evolutionary Phonology
   Principled diachronic explanations for sound patterns have priority over competing synchronic explanations unless independent evidence demonstrates, beyond reasonable doubt, that a synchronic account is warranted.
2. Hypotheses Supported by Empirical Investigations
   1. Common sound patterns typically result from common phonetically motivated sound change.
   2. Rare sound patterns are not the result of common phonetically motivated sound change.
   3. Synchronic properties of particular sound patterns are better explained in diachronic terms than in terms of synchronic phonological universals.
   4. Sound change is not goal-directed.
   5. Rare sound patterns may be rare as a consequence of sound change, or may reflect accidental gaps in sound pattern distribution.
3. Some Consequences of the Approach
   1. New phonetic explanations are proposed for previously problematic instances of sound change and sound patterns.
   2. Markedness constraints are excised from synchronic grammars.
   3. Distinctive features and prosodic categories may be innate, but their combinatory possibilities in synchronic grammars and their precise phonetic realizations are learned.
   4. Phonetically based sound change is typically regular at the level of the individual.

EXCLUSIVE FOCUS
(Grammar) It is claimed (e.g. Koenig 1991) that in every language there is at least one exclusive particle, such as nur, lediglich, ausschliesslich in German; solo, unico, soltanto in Italian; or tylko, jedynie, wylacznie in Polish. We consider the semantics of three English exclusive particles: only, merely, and exclusively. Only is the most frequently used exclusive in English.
 The function of exclusive particles (as their name shows) is to exclude the potential alternatives to the focal element satisfying the relevant open sentence. For illustration, let us consider the following example:

1. John invited [Mary]_F.

John invited x
where x = {Mary, John, Bill, Mary and John, Mary and John and Bill, ...}

2. John only invited [Mary]_F.

EXCORPORATION
(Morphology) A class of prefixes that were well integrated into the verb word from the perspective of phonology have become less well integrated in the Fort Good Hope variety of the Dene (North Slavey) language—they are becoming phonologically "unglued" from the rest of the verb word, a process that I will refer to as excorporation or dismantling. | Keren Rice, 2016

Page Last Modified March 1, 2024

 

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