SIMPLER SYNTAX HYPOTHESIS
(Syntax) Culicover and Jackendoff (2005, 2006) put forward the Simpler Syntax Hypothesis, which calls for an alternative view of fragments and response particles as bare nonsentential constituents that relate to their antecedent semantically rather than syntactically:

The Simpler Syntax Hypothesis (Culicover and Jackendoff 2005)
The most explanatory syntactic theory is one that imputes the minimum structure necessary to mediate between phonology and meaning.

SLOPPY IDENTITY
(Semantics) An interpretive phenomenon found in deletion contexts. If part of a syntactic structure is not overtly realized, and has its interpretation determined as a copy of the interpretation of a constituent elsewhere in the structure or in the discourse, and if the structure whose interpretation is copied into the covert constituent contains an anaphoric element whose interpretation depends on an element not contained in the copied material, then the anaphor's counterpart in the copy may either have the same reference as the original, or pick up an (anaphoric) reference independently. The former case is called strict identity, the latter case "sloppy identity". Consider (1):

1. John_i [_VP likes his_i mother ], and Peter too.

2. a. John_i [_VP likes his_i mother ], and Peter_j too [_VP likes his_i mother ]
   b. John_i [_VP likes his_i mother ], and Peter_j too [_VP likes his_j mother ]

SLUICING

1. (Syntax) Sluicing is reducing a wh-question to its wh-phrase(s) in a context where the omitted part can be reconstructed from the preceding sentence.
    In (1) the content of the complement clause of know is understood as which sonatas Susan has played.
   1. Susan has played some sonatas, but I don't know which sonatas __.
    Sentences like (1) raise the question whether there is an empty category following which sonatas, and if so, how it is licensed. (Ross 1969) | Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics, 2001
2. (Syntax) The name given by Ross (1969) to the ellipsis construction bracketed in (1) and (2):
   1. Somebody just left—guess [who].
   2. They claimed they had settled on something, but it wasn't clear [what].
    In this construction, a displaced wh-phrase occurs in isolation in a syntactic environment where one might have expected to find a complete constituent question. Compare the sluices in (1) and (2), for instance, with the corresponding complete embedded questions in (3) and (4):
   3. Somebody just left—guess [who t just left].
   4. They claimed they had settled on something, but it wasn't clear [what they had settled on t].
    | Sandra Chung, William Ladusaw, and James McCloskey, 1994
3. (Syntax) In English, a type of ellipsis introduced by a wh-expression, whereby everything except the wh-expression is elided from the clause and its interpretation is supplied by the surrounding context (see Ross 1969; Chung et al. 1995, 2010; Ginzburg and Sag 2000; [a.o.]). | Jong-Bok Kim, 2015
4. (Syntax) A form of wh-stranding ellipsis (Ross 1969, Chung et al. 1995, Merchant 2001):
   1. a. Sally punched me in the face, but I don't know why.
      b. Sally punched me in the face, but I don't know why Sally punched me in the face.
    In (1a), we see a sentence in which a lone wh element seems to occupy a position in which we would expect to find a full CP. (1b) illustrates the standard theory of what is going on in (1a): the sentence is interpreted as if the wh element were followed by the crossed out material; the ability to make the inference that the wh element should be interpreted as scoping over that material (and therefore the well-formedness of the entire sluicing construction) is determined by the presence of a suitable antecedent clause.
    I will assume here, following the seminal work of Merchant (2001), that the crossed-out material in (1b) represents unpronounced syntactic structure. This unpronounced constituent is present in the narrow syntax, but is eliminated from the phonological realization of that string; for this reason, I will refer to the crossed-out content as elided material or as the ellipsis site. I assume, still following Merchant (2001), that sluicing is always deletion of a full TP. Sluicing is restricted to clauses headed by null [+wh, +Q] Cs. | Deniz Rudin, 2017

SLUICING IN ADJUNCT CONSTRUCTION
(Syntax) There seem to be cases where the antecedent for the elided IP in sluicing is smaller than an IP. Something similar has been observed by Merchant (2001, 2002). I argue that the "sluicing in adjunct construction" exemplified by (1) and (2) is one such case.

1. a. John does not love anyone without knowing who [_IP Δ ].
   b. [_IP John does not [_VP t_John love anyone] [_PP without [_CP [_IP PRO [_VP knowing [_CP who [_IP Δ ] ] ] ] ] ] ]
2. a. John must love someone without knowing who [_IP Δ ].
   b. [_IP John must [_VP [_VP love someone] [_PP without [_CP [_IP PRO [_VP knowing [_CP who [_IP Δ ] ] ] ] ] ] ] ]

SMALL CLAUSE

1. (Syntax) A part of a sentence that often has a subject and predicate, but may lack a verb or includes a verb without tense. This can be seen in a sentence like The jury found the man guilty, as the section, the man guilty. In this sentence, the main clause has a subject of The jury and a predicate that includes the verb found and the "small clause" the man guilty. There is no verb in this section, though it can be considered to include an implied verb in the form of to be since it can be rewritten as the man to be guilty. | G. Wiesen, 2023
2. (Syntax) The syntactic equivalent of the basic proposition. Some examples are shown below. The "small clauses" are enclosed in square brackets. A small clause is usually the complement of a lexical verb (a cognitive verb):
   1. John considers [ Mary intelligent ].
   2. Bob thinks [ Sal an exceptional person ].
   3. Mary found [ syntax an exceptionally hard subject ].
   4. Egbert believes [ Letitia a fool ].
   5. Pauline prefers [ her steaks rare ].
   6. Zachary discovered [ his son proud of his parents ] after all.
   7. Bill saw [ Jacqueline play the piano ].
   8. Polly saw [ a deer in the park ].
   9. Mabel heard [ Sally scream at her kids ].
   10. Kyle felt [ an arachnid climb up his arm ].
   11. Someone smelled [ the toast burn in the toaster ].
   12. Edith tasted [ ice cream melt in her mouth ].
   13. George remembers [ Agnes burning the stew ].
   14. Reid noticed [ Carmen throwing a memorable fit ].
    | Richard C. DeArmond, 1999
3. (Syntax) A well-known problem in syntax is what structure to assign to "small clauses", where a small clause is an [NP XP] construction, as in the following:
   1. a. Mayor Shinn found [ Harold difficult to pin down ].
      b. Marcellus considered [ Harold a great con man ].
      c. The people of River City thought [ Harold in the wrong ].
    Small clauses are widespread. In English alone, they are the complements of verbs, complements of prepositions as in (2a), subjects of sentences as in (2b), or even subjects of small clauses as in (2c):
   2. a. With [ Charlie Cowell intent on ruining him ], Harold wasn't safe.
      b. [ Tommy and Zaneeta in a relationship ] wasn't/*weren't good for Mayor Shinn's blood pressure.
      c. Eulalie considered [ [ Tommy and Zaneeta in a relationship ] bad for Mayor Shinn's blood pressure ].
    | Julie Elizabeth Balazs, 2012

SMUGGLING

1. (Syntax) Suppose a constituent YP contains XP. Furthermore, suppose that XP is inaccessible to Z because of the presence of W (a barrier, phase boundary, or an intervener for the Minimal Link Condition and/or Relativized Minimality), which blocks a syntactic relation between Z and XP (e.g., movement, Case checking, agreement, binding). If YP moves to a position c-commanding W, we say that YP smuggles XP past W. | Chris Collins, 2005
2. (Syntax) A special kind of movement interaction. Refers particularly to a situation where the DP is smuggled over the external argument by the movement of a larger constituent, invariably referred to as a verbal chunk (Collins 2005). | Yihan Wang and Yong Zhou, 2023

SOCIOLECT

1. (Sociolinguistics) Or, social dialect. A dialect spoken by a particular social class, e.g. Cockney English, that is perpetuated by the integrity of the social class. | TESL Glossary
2. (Sociolinguistics) A socially distinct variety. | Joan Swann, Ana Deumert, Theresa Lillis and Rajend Mesthrie, 2004
3. (Sociolinguistics) The relationship between linguistic features (e.g. the way a vowel is realized or the use of a particular syntactic structure) and the speaker's social background has been perceived for some time. Often, however, members of a speech community who were aware of such relationships had a prescriptive attitude towards them. They used such expressions as bad speech, sloppy speech, lazy speech as opposed to nice speech, educated speech, a refined way of speaking. Linguists were inclined to shy away from investigating "sociolects" as it is a mammoth task full of problems and complexities, not least of which is the attitude of speakers being investigated, who may feel that the linguist is adversely judging their speech.
    The term "sociolect" seems preferable to the term social dialect. It is better to keep the concept of dialect for regional variation only. Of course, it is not uncommon for a dialect to feature as a sociolect, often a low sociolect, in a speech community. There are cases in Germany where in factories in smaller towns, the speech variety spoken by the workers commuting from the surrounding rural areas is considered a "lower" speech variety by workers from the town than their own variety (e.g. Hofmann 1963).
    There are instances of this phenomenon in Australia, where rural speech is often allotted lower social status by certain sections of the city population.
    Social variation in speech could be of a phonetic, lexical, or syntactic nature. | John T. Platt, 1978

SOCIOLINGUISTIC INTERVIEW
(Sociolinguistics) The foundational method of collecting data for sociolinguistic studies. It allows the researcher to collect large amounts of speech from speakers of the language or dialect being studied. The interview takes the form of a long, loosely-structured conversation between the researcher and the interview subject; the researcher's primary goal is to elicit the vernacular style of speech—i.e., the register associated with everyday, casual conversation. This goal is complicated by the Observer's Paradox: the researcher is trying to elicit the style of speech that would be used if the interviewer were not present. To this end, a variety of techniques may be used to reduce the subject's attention to the formality and artificiality of the interview setting. | Wikipedia, 2021

SONORANT
(Phonetics) Sonorant consonants are like vowels in a number of respects.

1. Like vowels, sonorants are pronounced with a relatively free escape of the airstream through the oral or nasal cavity.
2. They are normally voiced, just like vowels.
3. They are pronounced without friction, again like vowels. As a result of these similarities, we can sing or hum sonorants much as we can vowels.

SOUTHERN VOWEL SHIFT
(Phonology) A complicated pattern of vowel changes is found in the American South. Dubbed the Southern Shift, these changes affect seven vowels.

• Probably the best known is the pronunciation of the "long i" sound as "ah," so that sighed sounds like sod, time like Tom, etc.
• Another element of the Southern Shift affects the vowel of tame, which comes to sound like that of time, and the apparently related change of the team vowel to resemble that of tame.
• The vowels of sit and set are also affected, becoming more like see it and say it.
• The other pieces in the Southern shift change the vowels of boot and boat. These vowels are traditionally pronounced with the tongue placed in the back of the mouth, but here they are made with the tongue more toward the front.

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