Sank's Glossary of Linguistics 
Con-Coni

CONCATENATION

  1. (Syntax) The minimalist device Merge. | Tobias Scheer, 2013
  2. (Formal) Consider α and β words over the A alphabet, namely words constructed from symbols of the alphabet. The result of αβ is the concatenation of the two words, so that γ = αβ, where |γ| = |α| + |β|, so the length of the new word is the sum of the length of the two components. | Házy Attila, 2022
  3. (Computation) 
    Concatenation of Languages
    Given languages L1 and L2, we define their concatenation to be the language
    L1 ○ L2 = {xy | xL1, yL2}
     Examples:
     
    i. L1 = {hello} and L2 = {world}
      L1 ○ L2 = {helloworld}
    ii. L1 = {00, 10} and L2 = {0, 1}
       L1 ○ L2 = {000, 001, 100, 101}
    iii. L1 = set of strings ending in 0
       and L2 = set of strings beginning with 01
      L1 ○ L2 = set of strings containing 001 as a substring
    iv. L ○ {ε} = L
    v. L ○ ∅ = ∅
     
     | Grainger College of Engineering, 2013

CONCEPTUAL-INTENTIONAL SYSTEM

  1. (Cognition) Within the generative, modular paradigm, Chomsky (1995) distinguishes two interface levels: the level of phonetic form (PF) is the interface with sensorimotor systems, the level of logical form (LF) is the interface with systems of conceptual structure and language use. The two performance systems involved are the articulatory-perceptual system and the conceptual-intentional system. | Roeland van Hout, Aafke Hulk, and Folkert Kuiken, 2003
  2. (Cognition) The language faculty interacts with various performance systems, principal among them being the articulatory/perceptual system, which controls the production and reception of linguistic events, and the conceptual/intentional system (or belief system), which determines the content of interpretations and what is said. | Michael O'Rourke, 2007

CONCEPTUAL ORALITY

  1. (Discourse) Linguists recognize that there is a lot of variation within discourse modes. As Halliday (1989) explains, "'written' and 'spoken' do not form a simple dichotomy; there are all sorts of writing and all sorts of speech, many of which display features characteristic of the other medium."
     This variation within discourse modes was termed conceptual orality or literacy by Koch and Oesterreicher (1985), and it can come in handy, if the historical development of certain linguistic phenomena related to discourse mode should be investigated. For historical time periods, obviously, only written language data is available. Hence, in order to gain knowledge about historical spoken discourse, it is necessary to identify written texts that are close to the oral mode, i.e. conceptually oral or spoken-like texts. | Katrin Ortmann and Stefanie Dipper, 2020
  2. (Example) One linguistic characteristic of letters (and other types of egodocument) is:
     
     | Alan Scott, 2014
  3. (Discourse) The interjection is indeed the purest verbal implementation of conceptual orality. | Daniel C O'Connell, Sabine Kowal, and Carie Ageneau, 2005

CONCEPTUAL SEMANTICS
(Semantics) CS takes the meanings of words and sentences to be structures in the minds of language users, and it takes phrases to refer not to the world per se, but rather to the world as conceptualized by language users. It therefore takes seriously constraints on a theory of meaning coming from the cognitive structure of human concepts, from the need to learn words, and from the connection between meaning, perception, action, and nonlinguistic thought.
 The theory treats meanings, like phonological structures, as articulated into substructures or tiers: a division into an algebraic Conceptual Structure and a geometric/topological Spatial Structure; a division of the former into Propositional Structure and Information Structure; and possibly a division of Propositional Structure into a descriptive tier and a referential tier. All of these structures contribute to word, phrase, and sentence meanings.
 The ontology of Conceptual Semantics is richer than in most approaches, including not only individuals and events but also locations, trajectories, manners, distances, and other basic categories. Word meanings are decomposed into functions and features, but some of the features and connectives among them do not lend themselves to standard definitions in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. Phrase and sentence meanings are compositional, but not in the strict Fregean sense: many aspects of meaning are conveyed through coercion, ellipsis, and constructional meaning. | Ray Jackendoff, 2019

CONCESSIVE

  1. (Grammar) It is a well-known fact that among the set of circumstantial ("adverbial") relations usually distinguished in grammars for natural languages there is a subset whose members are related to each other in interesting ways: Conditional, causal, concessive conditional and concessive are the labels traditionally used for these relations as well as the connectives (i.e. prepositions, conjunctions, adverbs) expressing these relations. The following sentences are instances of these relations:
    1.  If people smoke, they will damage their health. (conditional)
    2.  Even if you smoke, you may become very old. (concessive conditional)
    3.  John's lungs are not in good shape because he smokes. (causal)
    4.  Even though John smokes, he is still in good health. (concessive)
     If we arrange these four relations in a two-dimensional diagram we can describe some of the properties shared and some of the oppositions as follows:
      hypothetical factual
    harmony conditional causal
    dissonance concessive conditional concessive
     | Ekkehard König and Peter Siemund, 2000
  2. (Grammar) Or, concessive connective. A subordinating word or phrase that signals a contrast, qualification, or concession in relation to the idea expressed in the main clause.
     A word group introduced by a concessive is called a concessive phrase, a concessive clause, or (more generally) a concessive construction. "Concessive clauses indicate that the situation in the matrix clause is contrary to expectation in the light of what is said in the concessive clause" (A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language 1985).
    1. "Although she was broke, she took a suite at the Waldorf, and began strewing bad checks like confetti." (John Bainbridge, "S. Hurok." Life, August 28, 1944)
    2. "No matter how brilliantly an idea is stated, we will not really be moved unless we have already half thought of it ourselves." (Mignon McLaughlin, The Complete Neurotic's Notebook. Castle Books, 1981)
    3. "Your government does not exist, and should not exist, in order to keep you or anybody else—no matter what color, no matter what race, no matter what religion—from getting your damn fool feelings hurt." (Kurt Vonnegut, "Why You Can't Stop Me From Speaking Ill of Thomas Jefferson." If This Isn't Nice, What Is? Advice to the Young, ed. by Dan Wakefield. Seven Stories Press, 2014)
    4. "Octavian, though only 19, demanded the consulship (both consuls had been killed in battle)." (D.H. Berry, Introduction to Political Speeches by Cicero. Oxford University Press, 2006)
    5. "James sighed and mentioned how a warm personality, especially of the American sort, had a way of cooling one's appreciation of ancient beauty, irrespective of how grand the palazzo of which this personality was in possession, indeed irrespective of how fine or fast-moving her gondola." (Colm Toibin, The Empty Family. Scribner, 2011)
    6. "He was rehearsing his address: ' ... the gift of citizenship carries great responsibility ... the time has come when delay can no longer be tolerated ... therefore let there no longer be doubt, either at home or abroad ... whatever the cost, whatever the sacrifice, whatever the hardship, whatever the struggle ... we will rebuild...'". (Richard Doyle, Executive Action. Random House, 1998)
    7. "Regardless of what the mayor did, regardless of what civil rights leaders did, regardless of what planners of the demonstration did, the riot was going to happen. The authorities had been indifferent to the community's demand for justice; now the community was going to be indifferent to the authorities' demand for order." (Tom Hayden, New York Review of Books, August 24, 1967)
    8. "Patagonia, poor as she is in some respects, can, however, boast of a greater stock of small rodents than perhaps any other country in the world." (Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle, 1839)
     | Richard Nordquist, 2020

CONCRETE MORPHEME
(Morphology) In Distributed Morphology, morphemes are defined as complex symbols relating an identifying index to a set of grammatical markers. These grammatical markers include information about the morpheme's meaning and its grammatical and syntactic idiosyncrasies.
 Furthermore, we have to distinguish two types of morphemes with respect to their identifying index, namely concrete vs. abstract morphemes (cf. Halle 1990, 1994). For many morphemes the identifying index is a sequence of phonemes whose realization is phonologically invariant; these are termed concrete morphemes. We will take a concrete morpheme to be one whose phonological form is invariantly filled by the sequential or simultaneous appearance of properties which are clearly phonological.
 For a minor set of morphemes the identifying index is marked as "Q". These are the so-called abstract morphemes, which are characterized by the lack of a fixed phonological representation in their Vocabulary entries. | Susanne Glück and Roland Pfau, 1999

CONDITION C

  1. (Syntax) Basically, Condition C says that a referential expression cannot be c-commanded by a pronoun that bears the same intended reference. | Howard Lasnik and Terje Lohndal, 2010
  2. (Syntax) Condition C of Chomsky's Binding Theory specifies that a definite description or a proper name cannot appear in the scope of (i.e. cannot be c-commanded by) a coreferring expression, as is illustrated in (1)-(2). (Chomsky calls proper names and definite descriptions R-expressions.)
    1. a. ?? John loves people who admire John
      a′. * Hei loves people who admire Johni
      b. John's mother loves people who admire John.
      b′. Hisi mother loves people who admire Johni
    2. a. *? The director loves people who admire the director
      a′. * Hei loves people who admire the directori
      b. The director's mother loves people who admire the director.
      b′. Hisi mother loves people who admire the directori
     Violations are particularly severe when the R-expression is c-commanded by a coreferential pronoun, as is shown in the a′-examples. When the R-expression is not c-commanded by the other expression, no ungrammaticality ensues, as shown in the b-b′ examples. | Philippe Schlenker, 2005

See Also BINDING PRINCIPLES.

CONDITION ON EXTRACTION DOMAINS

  1. (Syntax) As defined by Huang (1982):
    Condition on Extraction Domain (CED)
    A phrase A may be extracted out of a domain B only if B is properly governed.
     | Hideshi Sato, 2018
  2. (Syntax) 
    The Condition on Extraction Domains (CED) (Huang 1982, Chomsky 1986, Cinque 1990, Manzini 1992)
    Movement may not cross a barrier XP, unless XP is a complement.
     In particular, extraction out of adjuncts is (usually) banned:
    1. a. Whoi were you surprised [ CP ti that you saw ti ]?
      b. * Whoi were you surprised [ CP ti after you saw ti ]?
     It is not the case that all adjuncts block all syntactic dependencies. | Sandhya Sundaresan, 2023

CONDITIONAL CONJUNCTION

  1. (Grammar) Is found in sentences with two clauses where one clause describes something that did or will happen, if the condition of the other clause was or is satisfied. Conditional conjunctions can be a single word like if or several words like so long as placed at the beginning of the clause to describe the condition that needs to be met. | YourDictionary, 2016
  2. (Grammar) We use conjunctions to link other words, phrases, and clauses together. When it comes to conditional conjunctions, we use them as an alternative to the word if in any type of conditional sentence without changing the meaning of a sentence.
     Some of the most common conditional conjunctions in English include provided that, providing that, as long as, unless, supposing, on condition that.
    1. a. Provided that you know the area, you won't get lost.
      b. This dress will be delivered in a couple of days provided that it is in stock at the moment.
      c. You will pass this exam as long as you do your best to prepare for it.
      d. Unless you forget your invitation, you will be allowed to the party without a problem.
      e. Supposing I am late, will I be allowed to the class?
     | Langster, 2024

CONDITIONAL INTERPRETATION
(Semantics) To account for the influences of context on interpretation, while preserving compositionality to the extent possible, we introduce a representational device, conditional interpretations, and a rule system for constructing them. Conditional interpretations represent the potential contributions of phrases to the interpretation of an utterance. The rules specify how phrase interpretations are combined and how they are elaborated with respect to context. The control structure defined by the rules determines the points in the interpretation process at which sufficient information becomes available to carry out specific inferential interpretation steps, such as determining the plausibility of particular referential connections or modifier attachments.
 In our interpretation system, the contribution of a phrase is represented by a conditional interpretation, which has two parts:

  1. A sense, which participates compositionally in the interpretation of larger phrases.
  2. A set of assumptions, which represent constraints on how the sense may be further connected to its context.
 Incremental interpretation involves two interleaved processes: building conditional interpretations for phrases, and elaborating conditional interpretations with respect to context by discharging interpretation assumptions. | Fernando C.N. Pereira and Martha E. Pollack, 1991

CONDITIONAL INVERSION

  1. (Syntax) A case of I-to-C movement that has to this point not received a great deal of attention is what we will call conditional inversion. It is found in both counterfactual and indicative conditionals.  Examples of conditional inversion are given for the English counterfactual conditional (1) and the German indicative conditional (2). Corresponding uninverted forms are also given:
    1. a. If John had eaten the calamari, he might be better now.
      b. Had John eaten the calamari, he might be better now.
    2. a.
      Wenn
      if
      Hans
      Hans
      kommt
      comes
      dann
      then
      geht
      goes
      Susanne.
      Susan
        'If Hans comes, Susan goes'
      b.
      Kommt
      comes
      Hans
      Hans
      dann
      them
      geht
      goes
      Susanne.
      Susanne
        'If Hans comes, Susan goes'
     | Sabine Iatridou and David Embick, 1994
  2. (Diachronic) The central aspect of English conditional inversion (CI) has arguably not changed since Old English (OE), in that it involves movement of T-to-C where C has a feature marking the clause as irrealis. We take this to be one possible instantiation of a clause-type feature associated with C, along with interrogative, imperative, exclamative and perhaps others. What has changed since OE is the range of elements affected by this operation, and how it relates to other forms of head-movement into the C-field.
     In OE, CI was part of a general set of operations raising inflected verbs into the C-system, the verb-second (V2) system. It is usually thought that English lost V2 in the 15th century (Fischer, van Kemenade, Koopman and van der Wurff 2000), but various forms of "residual V2" in marked clause types survived. Of course the best-known case of this kind is interrogative inversion, but CI clearly also survived the loss of general V2. In the Early Modern period, movement of lexical verbs to T was lost (see Roberts 1985, 1993), and we find that from this period on, only auxiliaries undergo CI, again in line with interrogative and other kinds of inversion.
     The most interesting change to affect CI has taken place quite recently, though. According to the data presented by Denison (1998), CI applied to all modal auxiliaries, have, be, and do until the mid-19th century. In contemporary English, on the other hand, CI is restricted to had, should, and were, the last of these only in certain contexts. | Theresa Biberauer and Ian Roberts, 2017

CONDITIONAL PLUPERFECT
(Grammar) Conditional clauses with pluperfect tense. These clauses are the unreal/hypothetical conditional clauses with past time reference. The pluperfect used in the English conditional clause is not there to express the hypothetical/unreal condition but it is used to express the correct order of the events.
 Conditional clauses with pluperfect are mostly used in the unreal/hypothetical conditions referring to the past when the matrix clause also has a past time reference. From the view of pedagogical grammar this kind of sentence is called the third conditional. There's the pluperfect used in the subordinate clause and a modal verb, auxiliary verb to have, and the past participle of a lexical verb in the matrix clause.

  1. He'd probably have been longer if I hadn't kept after it.
  2. But if she had gone to a doctor at the beginning she could have had a radical mastectomy—that's removal of the breast.
 In mixed conditional sentences, the subordinate clause includes the pluperfect of the lexical verb and the matrix clause contains a modal verb with the lexical verb in its present form.
  1. It had been luck, too, that had freed him from pity’s adhesive plaster; if Catchpole had been a different sort of man, he, Dixon, would still be wrapped up as firmly as ever.
  2. I mean, if there had never been an accident Marion would still be difficult.
 | Jiřina Dunková, 2011

CONDITIONAL RELATION
(Pragmatics) A logical relation in which the illocutionary act employing one of a pair of propositions is expressed or implied to be true or in force if the other proposition is true.

  1. If you give her the ring, you are married to her.
 (Johnson-Laird 1986) | Alphabetical Glossary of Linguistic Terms

Page Last Modified July 28, 2024

 
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