Sank's Glossary of Linguistics
Ton-Tz |
TONAL ACCENT
See PITCH ACCENT.
TONAL CENTER OF GRAVITY
(Phonetics) Abbreviated TCoG. A gestalt or global measure of F0 event localization that succeeds in accounting both for the demonstrated contributions of F0 TP-alignment, and for the strength of global F0 contour shape as cues to intonational contrasts, while referring directly to neither of these things. The TCoG model lies at the heart of a research program whose goal, broadly expressed, is to develop a more robust and perceptually realistic model of tonal timing and scaling patterns than currently exists; one that captures key configurationist insights (i.e., the relevance of contour shape in tonal implementation), but nonetheless maintains the core advantages of a level-based AM phonology. | Jonathan Barnes, Nanette Veilleux, Alejna Brugos and Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel, 2012
TONE CONTOUR
(Phonology) Or, contour tone. A tone in a tonal language which shifts from one pitch to another over the course of the syllable or word. Tone contours are especially common in East, Southeast Asia, West Africa, Nilo-Saharan languages, Khoisan languages, Oto-Manguean languages and some languages of South America.
When the pitch descends, the contour is called a falling tone; when it ascends, a rising tone; when it descends and then returns, a dipping or falling-rising tone; and when it ascends and then returns, it is called a peaking or rising-falling tone. A tone in a contour-tone language which remains at approximately an even pitch is called a level tone. Tones which are too short to exhibit much of a contour, typically because of a final plosive consonant, may be called checked, abrupt, clipped, or stopped tones. | Wikipedia, 2021
TONE LANGUAGE
(Phonology) A language in which differences in meaning can be signaled by differences in pitch. E.g. Nupe (spoken in Nigeria):
TONE SANDHI
(Phonology) From the Sanskrit word for 'joining'. A phonological change occurring in tonal languages, in which the tones assigned to individual words or morphemes change based on the pronunciation of adjacent words or morphemes (Yip 2002). It usually simplifies a bidirectional tone into a one-direction tone (Wang 1967). It is a type of sandhi, or fusional change.
Tone sandhi occurs to some extent in nearly all tonal languages, manifesting itself in different ways (Gandour 1978).
Tone sandhi is compulsory as long as the environmental conditions that trigger it are met. It is not to be confused with tone changes that are due to derivational or inflectional morphology. Such a change is not triggered by the phonological environment of the tone, and therefore is not an example of sandhi. Changes of morphemes in Mandarin into its neutral-tone are also not examples of tone sandhi. | Wikipedia, 2022
TONOGENESIS
(Phonology) The historical orgin of tone. A process in which a language that lacks tones gains them. E.g.:
TOPIC
TOPIC ACCESSIBILITY SCALE
(Syntax) Lambrecht (1994) noted that it is likely that the more accessible the topic referent of an utterance is, the less processing effort to interpret that utterance is needed. This correlation is summarized as the Topic Accessibility Scale below. Chafe (1987) also states that it requires low cognitive effort to interpret a discourse-active referent.
Topic Accessibility Scale| Robert Van Valin, 1997
Active Most accessible Accessible Inactive Brand-new anchored Brand-new unanchored Least accessible
TOPIC PERSISTENCE
(Discourse) As Givón has demonstrated, one way to identify topics is to measure persistence, or the number of recurrences of a referent in the following text. The more highly topical a referent, the more frequently it should be mentioned again after it is first introduced in a section of the discourse. In several studies, Givón argues that a topic persistence measurement of less than two should be considered low; greater than two is considered high (Wright and Givón 1987, 1995). In other words, a referent that recurs more than twice in the ten clauses following its appearance in a passage should be considered highly persistent, which is an indication of high topicality. A referent that recurs only once or twice, or never again, is not highly persistent and thus, not a topic. | Richard Epstein, 2011
TOPICAL/FOCAL
(Information Structure) Givón states that discourse is made up of a combination of new and old information. We shall refer to the new information as focal, and the old information as presupposed or topical. Presupposed, topical information is "assumed by the speaker to be accessible to the hearer" either from the preceding text, or from a general knowledge of the world; focal information is "assumed by the speaker to be inaccessible to the hearer" (Givón 1992). Presupposed information serves as the "grounding point" or framework within which the focal information is processed (Givón 1992). By definition, the focal information is the most important part of the utterance, with the presupposed information grounding it to the context. | Steven E Runge, 2012
TOPICALIZATION
(Syntax) A mechanism that establishes an expression as the sentence or clause topic; in English, by having it appear at the front of the sentence or clause (as opposed to in a canonical position further to the right). Topicalization often results in a discontinuity and is thus one of a number of established discontinuity types (the other three being wh-fronting, scrambling, and extraposition). Topicalization is also used as a constituency test; an expression that can be topicalized is deemed a constituent. The topicalization of arguments in English is rare, whereas circumstantial adjuncts are often topicalized. Most languages allow topicalization, and in some languages, topicalization occurs much more frequently than in English. | Wikipedia, 2016
TOPONYM
A word that is the name of a place.
Examples:
TP
TP ELLIPSIS
TRACE
(Syntax) A phonetically null element said by Chomsky and his followers to occupy the position from which a syntactic element has been moved.
TRACE THEORY
(Syntax) Theory about traces left by movement. This theory assumes that if an element X has been moved in the course of a derivation, it has left a trace in its original position.
In (1) the NP John is moved while leaving a trace t, indicating its d-structure position.
TRADITIONAL TRANSMISSION
(Diachronic) The process by which language is passed down from one generation to the next. In this manner, it is often also referred to as cultural transmission where it is a mechanism of iterated learning. Common processes would include imitation or teaching. The model purports that present learners acquire the cultural behavior, that is language in this instance, by observing similar behaviors in others who acquired the language the same way (Thompson, Smith, and Wright 2015). | Wikipedia, 2021
TRANSITIVITY-CHANGING OPERATIONS
(Grammar)
| Christian Lehmann and Elisabeth Verhoeven, 2006
Macrorole Operation Actor Undergoer Installation actor-focused
transitivization:
causativeundergoer-focused
transitivization:
applicative, extraversiveSuppression actor-focused
detransitivization:
passive, anticausativeundergoer-focused
detransitivization:
antipassive, introversive
TRANSLANGUAGING
TRANSLOCATIVE
See VENITIVE.
TRANSPARENCY
(Grammar) We consider an alternative categorization of idioms. More precisely, we cross-classify idioms according to two dimensions: figuration and "transparency". Figuration reflects the degree to which the idiom can be assigned a literal meaning. Transparency (or opacity) relates to how easy it is to recover the motivation for an idiom's use, or, in other words, to explain the relationship between its literal meaning and its idiomatic one. Idioms are figurative if their literal meaning can conjure up a vivid picture in the speaker's mind.
Within the figurative idioms we distinguish between two types. In transparent figurative idioms the relationship between the literal picture and the idiomatic meaning is perceived to be motivated. English examples include saw logs ('snore') and the cat's out of the bag ('previously hidden facts were revealed'). Conversely, opaque figurative idioms portray a picture whose relationship to the idiomatic meaning is not perceptible. English examples include shoot the breeze ('chat') and chew the fat ('talk socially, gossip').
Idioms which are not figurative do not have a comprehensible literal meaning, and as such are necessarily opaque. Among these idioms we find what are referred to as cranberry idioms (Moon 1998, Trawinski et al. 2008), which, similarly to "cranberry morphemes", have parts which have no meanings (e.g., run amok 'behave in an unrestrained manner' and take umbrage 'take offense'). These idioms may have been figurative and transparent once, but synchronically they contain a word whose meaning is not accessible to contemporary speakers. | Livnat Herzig Sheinfux, Tali Arad Greshler, Nurit Melnik, and Shuly Wintner, 2019
TREE
(Syntax) A two-dimensional diagram used in generative grammar as a convenient means of displaying the internal hierarchical structure of sentences as generated by a set of rules. The root of the "tree" diagram is at the top, consisting of the initial symbol S. From this topmost point or node, branches descend corresponding to the categories specified by the rules (e.g. NP, VP). The internal relationships of parts of the tree are described using "family tree" terminology: if two categories both derive from a single node, they are said to be sisters, and daughters of the mother node from which they derive. | David Crystal, 2008
TREEBANK
TRIPLE-AGREEMENT LANGUAGE
(Typology) A language in which the verb agrees with all arguments present in a clause (Rosen 1990). | Fabian Heck and Mark Richards, 2007
TRIVALENT SEMANTICS
(Semantics) I'll define a trivalent language, L, and describe how we can assign values analogous to probabilities to it. The language, L formed in the usual way, with an extra operator ‖:
α ‖ β is undefined for every member of W where β is not T (i.e. where β is false or undefined) and otherwise has the same truth-value as α.Graphically, its truth table is as follows:
| Daniel Rothschild, 2011
A B A ‖ B T T T F T F T F U F F U T/F U U U T/F U
TRUNCATED CLAUSE
(Syntax) Clauses that lack some otherwise expected layers have been described in the literature as truncated (see Rizzi 1993 and subsequent work on root infinitives and language acquisition). While in everyday usage truncation may suggest the removal of some existing material, this is not the sense in which it has been used in the linguistic literature: "truncated clauses" are typically ones that lack some layers because those layers were never built up in the first place. | Tamás Halm, 2021
TRUNCATED CLEFT
(Syntax) Or, hidden cleft, or, reduced cleft.
TRUTH CONDITION
(Semantics, Pragmatics) The condition under which a sentence is true. For example, It is snowing in Nebraska is true precisely when it is snowing in Nebraska. Truth conditions of a sentence do not necessarily reflect current reality. They are merely the conditions under which the statement would be true (Birner 2013).
More formally, a truth condition makes for the truth of a sentence in an inductive definition of truth. Understood this way, truth conditions are theoretical entities.
To illustrate with an example: Suppose that, in a particular truth theory (Field 1972) which is a theory of truth where truth is somehow made acceptable despite semantic terms as close as possible, the word Nixon refers to Richard M. Nixon, and is alive is associated with the set of currently living things. Then one way of representing the truth condition of Nixon is alive is as the ordered pair in (1).
TYPE
Page Last Modified January 20, 2024
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