GLOBAL FOREIGN ACCENT

1. (Sociolinguistics; Acquisition) Or, global accent. Usually refers to ways in which a person's speech differs from that of a local or standard variety. It is referred to as "global" because it subsumes (at least) segmental and supra-segmental phonological features. | Anika Lloyd-Smith, Henrik Gyllstad, and Tanja Kupisch, 2017
2. (Sociolinguistics; Acquisition) Refers to the degree to which an L2 speaker's productions are perceived to differ from those of a native speaker. Global foreign accent has been found to be related to a number of variables, perhaps the most influential of which is age at exposure to an environment providing target language input (Flege, Munro, and MacKay 1995), followed by L1 (Purcell and Suter 1980). | Timothy J. Riney, Mari Takada, and Mitsuhiko Ota, 2012

GLOMMING

1. (Morphology) Particular affixes or phrases (sometimes representing non-constituents in syntax) may be interpreted as part of a prosodic word without being members of a complex X₀. | Máire Noonan, 2023
2. (Morphology) If, as I assume, word formation is not determined by mapping X₀-structures formed in the syntactic component onto the prosodic category of a word, then other processes must be responsible for determining wordhood post-syntactically. Processes such as squishing and glomming, terms invented during the Exploring the Interfaces 1 workshop at McGill University in 2012, can provide such mechanisms, although there is as yet no well-understood definition of such processes. | Máire B. Noonan, 2017
3. (Morphology) May be treated as a variety of slot-filling parallel to a theory of compensatory lengthening like Kay and Lowenstamm (1986), that claims that an empty position is filled automatically by the spreading of features (segments). It is given in their theory that all syllable positions are obligatory represented by x's, though not always filled. Applying this approach to Malay blends, glomming is represented as the filling of empty coda slot material by the R-L spreading of a permissible [sonorant] segment (or root node). | Michael Dobrovolsky, 2001

GLOTTALIZATION
(Phonetics) Several studies have reported systematic differences across speakers in the rate and type of intermittent irregular vocal fold vibration (glottalization). We define glottalization as perceivably irregular vocal fold vibration. | Tamás Böhm and Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel, 2007

GLOTTALIZED

1. (Phonetics) Produced with a secondary articulation of the vocal cords. | Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics, 2003
2. (Phonetics) It is well known that a very large number of American Indian languages number among their phonemes glottalized stops and affricates. In most of these languages the glottalized consonants are fortes, as in Chinookan and Athapaskan; in others, as in Chitimacha and Taos (Tanoan), they are lenes. In the overwhelming majority of cases the glottal release is posterior to the oral release, precisely as in Georgian and other Caucasic languages. These glottalized consonants are sometimes known as ejectives. In some languages, however, the oral and glottal releases are synchronous. An example of a language having glottalized consonants of this type is Southern Paiute (Shoshonean), where they are not true phonemes, however, as they may always be analyzed into stop (or affricate) + ʔ. | Edward Sapir, 1938

GLOTTOCHRONOLOGY

1. (Diachronic) Method proposed by M. Swadesh (1949) for determining the time when two related languages became independent. It's a method of lexicostatistics for determining degrees of relationship between languages, based on counting the number of cognates in a particular set of vocabulary items.
   1. Assumption: The common words in languages are maintained at a definite rate, i.e., some parts of the vocabulary are much less subject to change than other parts.
    The basic (core) vocabulary consists of words for concepts assumed to be a necessary part of all human cultures. The semantic field represented by the lexical items includes pronouns, numerals, adjectives (e.g. 'big', 'long', 'small'), kinship terms ('mother', 'father'), living beings ('dog', 'louse'), body parts ('head', 'ear', 'eye'), events and objects in nature ('rain', 'stone', 'star'), and common activities ('see', 'hear', 'come', 'give'). There exist several versions of Swadesh's list: the two of them that are most commonly used are the 100-word list and the 200-word list.
    Swadesh made several further assumptions:
   2. The rate of retention of vocabulary items in the basic core is constant through time.
   3. The rate of loss of basic vocabulary is approximately the same in all languages.
   4. The rate of loss was arrived at by testing lexical loss in languages with a long series of texts (e.g., Latin and the Romance languages). On the basis of these tests, there is a 80-85% loss over one thousand years.
   5. If the percentage of cognates within the core vocabulary is known for any pair of languages, the length of time that has elapsed, since the two languages began to diverge from a single language, can be computed by a formula.
    | Zita McRobbie, 2006
2. (Diachronic) A method of lexicostatistics to compute not only the degrees of lexical similarities between two languages but also to find relationship between languages in terms of when they diverged from each other. The method of Glottochronology proposed by Swadesh (1955) assumes that common words in languages are maintained at a definite rate.

   Time Depth Formula
   t = log c ÷ 2 log r
   where
   t = time of separation
   c = percentage of shared vocabulary
   r = the glottochronological constant = 81%

    | Sirisha Yalamanchili and Kirti Singh Keleron, 2020
3. (Diachronic) From Attic Greek γλῶττα 'tongue, language' and χρόνος 'time'. The part of lexicostatistics which involves comparative linguistics and deals with the chronological relationship between languages (Embleton 1992). 
    The idea was developed by Morris Swadesh in the 1950s in his article on Salish internal relationships (1950). He developed the idea under two assumptions: there indeed exists a relatively stable basic vocabulary (referred to as Swadesh lists) in all languages of the world; and, any replacements happen in a way analogous to radioactive decay in a constant percentage per time elapsed. Using mathematics and statistics, Swadesh developed an equation to determine when languages separated and give an approximate time of when the separation occurred. His methods aimed to aid linguistic anthropologists by giving them a definitive way to determine a separation date between two languages. The formula provides an approximate number of centuries since two languages were supposed to have separated from a singular common ancestor. His methods also purported to provide information on when ancient languages may have existed (Ottenheimer 2006). | Wikipedia, 2024

GNOMIC
(Grammar) Abbreviated GNO. Or, universal, or, neutral, or, generic. A grammatical feature—which may refer to aspect, mood, or tense—that expresses general truths or aphorisms.

1. Used to describe an aspect, the gnomic is considered neutral by not limiting the flow of time to any particular conception (for example, the conceptions of time as continuous, habitual, perfective, etc.).
2. Used to describe a mood, the gnomic is considered neutral by not limiting the expression of words to the speaker's attitude toward them (e.g. as indicative, subjunctive, potential, etc.).
3. Used to describe a tense, the gnomic is considered neutral by not limiting action, in particular, to the past, present, or future.

1. Birds fly.
2. Sugar is sweet.
3. A mother can always tell.

4. Episodic
   estar enfermo (Spanish)
   estar doente (Portuguese)
   estar malalt (Catalan)
   'to be sick'
5. Gnomic
   ser enfermo (Spanish)
   ser doente (Portuguese)
   ésser malalt (Catalan)
   'to be sickly'

GOLDEN AGE PRINCIPLE
(Sociolinguistics) Or, Golden Age Theory. One of Labov's most quoted contributions to theories of language change is his Golden Age Principle. It claims that any changes in the sounds or the grammar that have come to conscious awareness in a speech community trigger a uniformly negative reaction (Anderwald 2016):

Communities differ in the extent to which they stigmatize the newer forms of language, but I have never yet met anyone who greeted them with applause. Some older citizens welcome the new music and dances, the new electronic devices and computers. But no one has ever been heard to say, "It's wonderful the way young people talk today. It's so much better than the way we talked when I was a kid." ...
 The most general and most deeply held belief about language is the Golden Age Principle: At some time in the past, language was in a state of perfection. It is understood that in such a state, every sound was correct and beautiful, and every word and expression was proper, accurate, and appropriate. Furthermore, the decline from that state has been regular and persistent, so that every change represents a falling away from the golden age, rather than a return to it. Every new sound will be heard as ugly, and every new expression will be heard as improper, inaccurate, and inappropriate. Given this principle it is obvious that language change must be interpreted as nonconformity to established norms, and that people will reject changes in the structure of language when they become aware of them. (Labov 2001)

GOVERNING CATEGORY
See MINIMAL GOVERNING CATEGORY.

GOVERNMENT PHONOLOGY

1. (Phonology) A theoretical framework of linguistics and more specifically of phonology. The framework aims to provide a non-arbitrary account for phonological phenomena by replacing the rule component of phonology with a restricted set of universal principles and parameters. As in Noam Chomsky's principles and parameters approach to syntax, the differences in phonological systems across languages are captured through different combinations of parametric settings.
    In GP, phonological representations consist of zero (e.g. vowel-zero in French) or more combinations of elements. These elements are the primitives of the theory and are deemed to be universally present in all human phonological systems. They are assumed to correspond to characteristic acoustic signatures in the signal, or hot features.
    There are 6 elements believed to be existent across all languages. They are (A), (I), (U), (ʔ), (L) and (H). These represent backness, frontness, roundness, stopness, voicing/nasality and frication/aspiration respectively. | Wikipedia, 2008
2. (Phonology) GP disposes of phonological transformations via ordered rules and absolute neutralization—as found in The Sound Pattern of English (Chomsky and Halle 1968) or Lexical Phonology (Kiparsky 1982, see also Rubach 1984)—to the benefit of phonological representations. What crucially distinguishes GP from SPE or LP is that phonological features used in GP are privative, as opposed to binary. GP representations consist of a skeleton, a syllabic tier,and a melodic tier. Consider the example in (1) below.
   1. wiatr [v^jatr̥] 'wind'

           O        N          O         N
           |        |         / \        |
           |        |        /   \       |
           x        x       x     x      x
           |        |       |     |
           |        |       |     |
           v        a       t     r
      

    The topmost tier in (1) is the syllabic tier. It consists of alternating onsets ("O") and nuclei ("N"). The middle tier is a standard autosegmental skeleton with x-slots. The remaining tier is the melodic tier. At each x-slot, the syllabic constituent and the melody form a phonological expression—GP's counterpart to structuralist and SPE-like speech segments. Actually, (1) is shorthand for a more complex representation, which is given in (2).
   2. wiatr [v^jatr̥] 'wind'

                   R                   R
                   |                   |
                   |                   |
           O       N         O         N
           |       |        / \        |
           |       |       /   \       |
           x       x      x     x      x
           |       |      |     |
           |       |      |     |
       {L•h•U•I}  {A}  {ʔ•h•A} {A}
      

    In comparison with (1), (2) has more syllabic constituents, and the melodic tier shows GP elements instead of IPA transcription. On the syllabic tier, a constituent above each nucleus is shown. It is the rhyme ("R"). Apart from nuclei, rhymes may also contain consonantal rhymal adjuncts; in such cases, the nucleus is marked by the intermediate constituent "N", while the adjunct belongs directly under the "R".
    A thing of interest is the rightmost slot in (1) and (2). It is a labelled skeletal slot—a nucleus—but its melody is not present. This is a so-called empty nucleus, a sort of a trademark of GP. Its presence in the word-final position is connected with an assumption practised in GP that every representation begins with an onset (an "O" slot) and terminates with a rhyme, which—in case it is phonetically null—takes the form of a final empty nucleus.
    The elements shown on the melodic tier in (2) are the heart of phonological features recognized in GP. They are all privative—monovalent—melodic primes. Their number and role is still under debate in GP, but the ones used in Gussmann's (2007) analysis are given in (3) below (verbatim after Gussmann).
   3. {I} denotes frontness in vowels and palatality in consonants;
      {A} denotes openness of vowels and coronality in consonants;
      {U} denotes rounding of vowels and labiality of consonants;
      {ʔ} denotes occlusion in consonants;
      {h} denotes noise in consonants;
      {N} denotes nasality in vowels and consonants;
      {H} denotes high tone and voicelessness in consonants;
      {L} denotes low tone and voicedness in consonants.
    | Grzegorz Michalski, 2009

GRAMMATICALIZATION

1. (Diachronic) Most of the time, it's quite easy to distinguish the content words from the function words. Words that refer to an object, an abstract idea, an action, an attribute, and a manner are said to be content words. Words that don't refer to any meaning but must be there to make a grammatical sentence are function words. But some words appear to be both! For example, will as a noun (content) means a motivation to do something, while as an auxiliary (function) it conveys the futurity of an action. In this case, we say that the word will is in the process of grammaticalization.
    Grammaticalization is a process of language change whereby a content word (or a cluster of content words) becomes a function word. This process takes place when a content word is used so frequently that it starts losing its core meaning over time.
    Grammaticalization is characterized by the following processes:
   1. Semantic bleaching (desemanticization): a word loses its semantic content. As a content word is frequently used, it establishes a structure with surrounding words and becomes a partial function word. As its functionality strengthens, the semantic content gradually disappears.
   2. Morphological reduction (decategorization): a word changes its content-bearing category to a grammatical structure. This process is a result of semantic bleaching.
   3. Phonetic erosion: a word loses its phonological properties as a free morpheme to become a bound morpheme, such as I'm going to > I'm gonna > I'mma. Heine and Kuteva (2002, 2007) propose four kinds of phonetic erosion: the loss of phonetic segments (being a full syllable), the loss of suprasegmentals (stress, tones, or intonation), the loss of phonetic autonomy (being an independent syllable), and phonetic simplification.
    In the process of grammaticalization, a content word transforms itself into a function word over time. Hopper and Traugott (2003) propose the cline of grammaticalization as follows.

   content word ⇒ function word ⇒ clitic (contraction of full word) ⇒ inflectional affix

    For example, in Old English, the verb willan means 'to want' or 'to desire'. The verb was then grammaticalized to become the auxiliary will in Middle English and Present Day English. Later due to its frequent use, it becomes contracted into clitic 'll. It's assumed that it may become an inflectional affix indicating the future tense some time in the future. | Prachya Boonkwan, 2018
2. (Diachronic) A type of semantic change by which
   1. a lexical item or construction changes into one that serves a grammatical function, or
   2. a grammatical item develops a new grammatical function.
    The editors of The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar (2014) offer as a "typical example of grammaticalization ... the development of be + going + to into an auxiliary-like item be going to."
    The term grammaticalization was introduced by French linguist Antoine Meillet in his 1912 study "L'evolution des formes grammaticales." | Richard Nordquist, 2019
3. (Diachronic) The change whereby in certain linguistic contexts speakers use parts of a construction with a grammatical function. Over time the resulting grammatical item may become more grammatical by acquiring more grammatical functions and expanding its host-classes. | Laurel J. Brinton and Elizabeth Closs Traugott, 2007

GREENBERG'S UNIVERSALS

1. (General) Greenberg (1963) observed a number of cross-linguistic generalizations concerning the clustering of features, describing, e.g., the dependence of gender on number (Universal 32: "Whenever a verb agrees with a nominal subject or object in gender it also agrees in number."), and the dependence of dual number on plural number (Universal 34: "No language has a dual [number] unless it has a plural.") | Heidi Harley and Elizabeth Ritter, 2002
2. (Syntax) 

   Greenberg's Universal 20 (1963)
   When any or all of the items (demonstrative, numeral, and descriptive adjective) precede the noun, they are always found in that order. If they follow, the order is either the same or its exact opposite.

    | One-Soon Her, 2017

HAGIOLECT

1. (Sociolinguistics) A specific variety of language used for religious purposes, e.g. High German among the Amish population in Pennsylvania or Latin in Europe before the introduction of vernaculars for religious services. The term derives from Greek ἅγιος 'saint'. | Marie Y. Qvarnström, 2015
2. (Examples) 
   • The introduction of Christianity placed Latin in a privileged relationship with respect to the metropolitan Germanic languages, if only in specific domains, as hagiolect, the language of literacy, and as a quasi-official language of state. The period of Latin superposition commenced with the Christianization of Anglo-Saxon England, from the beginning of the seventh century, and the establishment of monastic culture. | Paul Roberge, 2020
   • Sometimes, however, groups that no longer actively use their heritage language still possess aspects of identity that are informed by their multilingual pasts—these communities, in turn, are termed postvernacular (Shandler 2008). For the Beachy Amish-Mennonites in these congregations, using German as a hagiolect (the language for religious purposes) and Pennsylvania Dutch as the in-group linguistic marker has changed throughout their histories. | Joshua Brown, 2019
   • Somalia is a country on the eastern coast of Africa in the Horn of Africa. Somalis speak Somali, an Afro-Asiatic language, alongside their hagiolect, Arabic. | Joshua R. Brown and Benjamin Carpenter, 2018
   • Only when a non-Hutterite is present during worship in progressive colonies will ministers preach in English. In other colonies, English's role in the worship service is occasionally one of underscoring a point or "keeping people awake" (Janzen and Stanton 2010). Some spoken parts are either in Hutterisch or in a higher register of Hutterisch, as an attempt to retain the appearance of Early New High German as the hagiolect. | Joshua Brown, 2017
   • Because of the importance attached to the preservation of High German as a hagiolect, many Old Order Amish (OOA) communities have institutionalized standard German language classes one or two hours a week in their own schools. Interestingly, the German school books are still, like the version of the Bible the OOA use, written in the Gothic script (Fraktur), and in most cases the schoolteachers themselves are unaware of the fact that the Gothic script is no longer used in modern-day Germany. | Marie Y. Qvarnström, 2015
   • Furthermore, the Amish do not use variants .of one language but of three. Their linguistic repertoire comprises English, Pennsylvania German, and a kind of Standard German, frequently referred to as Amish High German, which is prototypically used in the form of reproducing pre-coded religious texts sanctified by tradition. Both this hagiolect High German and English, with English functioning as the only standardized and productive language in their repertoire, enjoy prestige, while Pennsylvania German does not. | Silke Van Ness, 1999

HAPAX LEGOMENON

1. (Morphology) Quantifying and predicting morphological productivity is a long-standing challenge in corpus linguistics and psycholinguistics. The same challenge reappears in natural language processing in the context of handling words that were not seen in the training set (out-of vocabulary, or OOV, words). Prior research showed that a good indicator of the productivity of a morpheme is the number of words involving it that occur exactly once (the hapax legomena). | Janet B. Pierrehumbert and Ramon Granell, 2018
2. (Diachronic) The term hapax legomenon is of Greek origin and means literally 'once said'. It was first used by early Homeric scholars at Alexandria in their marginal notes to the Homeric epics, in order to classify words used only once. | Harold Robert Cohen, 1975
3. (Typology) Counting word forms one obtains more hapax legomena in highly synthetic languages than in highly analytic ones. | Ioan-Iovitz Popescu and Gabriel Altmann, 2008
4. (Biblical Studies) Authors disagree as to whether the term hapax legomenon should point to (a) a word found only once in a specific biblical corpus or to (b) a word occurring more than once as well as unique grammatical forms of a word as well as unique meanings. | Hellen Mardaga, 2012
5. (Biblical Studies) First of all, we would like to make it clear what the expression hapax legomenon / legomena means. The singular form of the Greek noun is hapax legomenon and the plural form is hapax legomena. Both mean the same, namely, singular occurrence of words in the Greek NT.
    The difference between the linguistic and the theological usages also needs to be clarified. In linguistic terms, the analysis works with the so-called "tokens," which means group of signs. This group can become word in that case when it is spoken, and the meaning differentiated by the verbal communication. For this understanding, the grammatical variant and the corpus of texts are important.
    Apart from the above usage, in theology we respect words as hapax legomena only in lexicalized form and avoid the grammatical variants. The "only-once-occurrence," that is, by "hapax legomena" one means when a word can be found in the New Testament once, a form which can, however, be different from the Septuagint occurrences. At the same time, a single occurrence may mean a special instance of occurrence, such as some cases specific to the Pauline corpus, which, however, taken in the immediate context of the occurrence, may display the same meaning as that of a hapax legomenon in the rest of the NT. | Eri Kormos, 2022

HAPLOLOGY
(Morphology) Process by which a segment or a sequence of segments is deleted if it immediately precedes or follows the same segment or sequence of segments.
 Example: The English possessive 's is not pronounced after the plural morpheme -s (e.g. John's reaction vs. the two cats' reactions). In Dutch, the noun-forming suffix -eling may attach to nouns, verbs and adjectives (dorpeling 'villager', zuigeling 'infant', stommeling 'idiot'). If the base ends in the sequence -el, one of the -el-sequences is haplologically deleted (edel 'noble', edeling 'nobleman'). (de Haas and Trommelen 1992, Spencer 1991) | Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics, 2001

HARMONY SYSTEMS
(Phonology) A term which encompasses consonant harmony, vowel harmony, and vowel-consonant harmony. Harmony refers to phonological assimilation for harmonic feature(s) that may operate over a string of multiple segments. This can be construed in one of two ways. Two segments may interact "at a distance" across at least one (apparently) unaffected segment, as shown for consonant harmony below. Or, a continuous string of segments may be involved in the assimilation, as shown for vowel-consonant harmony.
 The subscripts refer to features or feature sets.

1. distance harmony
   consonant harmony C_x V_y C_z ⟶ C_z V_y C_z
2. continuous harmony
   vowel-consonant harmony C_x V_y C_z ⟶ C_z V_z C_z

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