DIATHESIS

1. (Grammar) From Greek διάθεσις 'grammatical voice, disposition' (Wikipedia 2020). The sense is that of the role or "placing" of a subject, e.g. as agent in relation to an active V, or as patient or "undergoer" in relation to a passive. | Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics, 2007
2. (Grammar) Or, valency alternation. A sentence structure that reshapes the roles of a verb. The prototypical example of such a diathesis is the well-known passive. However, there are very many other such role-remappings, like antipassives, applicatives, causatives, etc. | Michael Cysouw, 2023
3. (Grammar) Since antiquity, diathesis has been analyzed in linguistic theories as a morphological category of the verb. Consulting the earliest papers, there could be noticed that Greek tradition makes mention of active, passive and middle verbs, whereas in Latin papers we find active and passive verb forms. (There must be said that during this linguistic period the term diathesis could hardly be found. The above mentioned terms referred to the classification of verbs). During the Medieval Age linguists defined the same concept of diathesis. Most of the traditional grammars of many contemporary languages hold the same view, without any significant differences. In traditional Albanian papers diathesis or voice is defined as a morphological category that expresses relations between the verb (the traditional predicate) and the subject. There has been made a division between active and non-active voice. Non-active voice verbs are further divided into: passive, reflexive and middle voice. | Albana Deda and Leonora Lumezi, 2015
4. (Grammar) A grammatical category that shows the relationship between the participant or subject and the action stated by the verb in the clause. In general, the languages of the world have an active-passive diathesis strategy. | Purwanto Siwi and Susi Ekalestari, 2021

DIATHESIS ALTERNATION

1. (Syntax) Regular alternations of the syntactic expression of verbal arguments, sometimes accompanied by a change in meaning. For example:
   1. The man broke the window ↔ The window broke
   
    The syntactic phenomena are triggered by the underlying semantics of the participating verbs. Levin's seminal book (1993) provides a manual inventory both of diathesis alternations (DA) and verb classes where membership is determined according to participation in these alternations. For example, most of the COOK verbs (e.g. bake, cook, fry ... ) can all take various DAs, such as the causative alternation, middle alternation and instrument subject alternation. | Lin Sun, Diana McCarthy, and Anna Korhonen, 2013
2. (Syntax) Examples of diathesis alternation include the following pairs:
   1. a. John loaded the truck with hay.
      b. John loaded hay on the truck.
   2. a. Ann threw the ball to Beth.
      b. Ann threw Beth the ball.
   3. a. John opened the door.
      b. The door opened.
   
    | B.H. Partee, 2005
3. (Syntax) A change in the realization of the argument structure of a verb that is sometimes accompanied by changes in meaning (Levin 1993). The phenomenon in English is illustrated in (1)-(2) below.
   1. a. John offers shares to his employees.
      b. John offers his employees shares.
   2. a. Leave a note for her.
      b. Leave her a note.
   
    Example (1) illustrates the dative alternation, which is characterized by an alternation between the prepositional frame 'V NP1 to NP2' and the double object frame 'V NP1 NP2'. The benefactive alternation (cf. (2)) is structurally similar to the dative, the difference being that it involves the preposition for rather than to.
    Levin (1993) assumes that the syntactic realization of a verb's arguments is directly correlated with its meaning (cf. also Pinker 1989 for a similar proposal). Thus one would expect verbs that undergo the same alternations to form a semantically coherent class. Levin's study on diathesis alternations has influenced recent work on word sense disambiguation (Dorr and Jones 1996), machine translation (Dang et al. 1998), and automatic lexical acquisition (McCarthy and Korhonen 1998, Schulte im Walde 1998). | Maria Lapata, 1999
4. (Syntax) For the purposes of this paper, I take the notion of diathesis alternation in a broad sense, including both familiar alternations of syntactic patterns as in examples (1a-b) and alternations of case assignment, as in the Russian examples (2a-b) and (3a-b).
   1. a.  The farmers loaded the truck with ( *? the / *? some ) hay.
      b.  The farmers loaded (the / some) hay on the truck.
   2. a.
       

      On
      He

      ždet
      waits

      podrugu.
      girlfriend-ACC

        'He's waiting for his girlfriend.' (Neidle 1988)
      b.
       

      On
      He

      ždet
      waits

      otveta
      answer-GEN

      na
      to

      vopros.
      question

        'He's waiting for an answer to the question.'
   3. a.
       

      On
      he

      ne
      NEG

      polučil
      received

      pis'mo.
      letter-ACC.N.SG

        'He didn't receive the letter.'
      b.
       

      On
      he

      ne
      NEG

      polučil
      received

      pis'ma.
      letter-GEN.N.SG

        'He didn't receive any letter.'
   
    | Barbara H. Partee, 2005

DIATOPIC
(Dialectology) Variation or study of variation from one part to another of the area covered by a speech community. | Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics, 2007

DIFFERENTIAL OBJECT MARKING
(Syntax) The phenomenon in which certain objects of verbs are marked to reflect various syntactic and semantic factors. One form of the more general phenomenon of differential argument marking, DOM is present in more than 300 languages. The term differential object marking was coined by Georg Bossong (1985, 1991).
 In languages where DOM is active, direct objects are partitioned into two classes. In most such DOM languages, only the members of one of the classes receive a marker (the others being unmarked), but in some languages, like Finnish, objects of both classes are marked (with different endings). In some DOM languages where only pronominal direct objects are marked, such as English, direct objects have distinct allomorphs rather than an affix (e.g., the English first person subject I has the form me when a direct object). In non-DOM languages, by contrast, direct objects are uniformly marked in a single way. For instance, Quechua marks all direct objects with the direct-object ending -ta.
 A well-known DOM language is Spanish, where direct objects that are both human and specific require a special marker, the preposition a 'to' (Fernández Ramírez 1986, Pensado 1995, Rodríguez-Mondoñedo 2007, Torrego 1998):

1. Pedro
   Peter

   besó
   kissed

   a
   DOM

   Lucía.
   Lucy.

   Lit. 'Peter kissed to Lucy.'

2. Pedro
   Peter

   besó
   kissed

   el
   the

   retrato.
   picture

3. Pedro
   Peter

   vio
   saw

   (a)
   (DOM)

   la
   the

   gata.
   cat-FEM

DIFFUSION

1. (Sociolinguistics) Models of linguistic diffusion commonly track how an observed linguistic innovation spreads from a relatively narrow area or relatively narrow social group to wider areas and groups. | Marie Maegaard, Torben Juel Jensen, Tore Kristiansen, and Jens Normann Jørgensen, 2013
2. (Sociolinguistics) In the seventies of the last century, sociolinguists applied tools and theories from human geography to analyze geographical distribution patterns of linguistic phenomena, including variation between dialects. The concept of diffusion turned out to be pivotal in connecting linguistic and geographical patterns.
    In diffusion models, linguistic innovations are transmitted through space.
    A diffusionist approach emphasizes external, social sources for explaining language variation (Chambers 1995), which does not mean that internal, linguistic factors do not play a prohibiting or fostering role.
    Gravity models were applied in sociolinguistics to analyze spatial diffusion patterns of linguistic features. | Marinel Gerritsen and Roeland van Hout, 2006

DIGLOSSIA

1. (Sociolinguistics) In many speech communities two or more varieties of the same language are used by some speakers under different conditions. Perhaps the most familiar example is the standard language and regional dialect as used, say, in Italian or Persian, where many speakers speak their local dialect at home or among family or friends of the same dialect area but use the standard language in communicating with speakers of other dialects or on public occasions. There are, however, quite different examples of the use of two varieties of a language in the same speech community. In Baghdad the Christian Arabs speak a "Christian Arabic" dialect when talking among themselves but speak the general Baghdad dialect, "Muslim Arabic", when talking in a mixed group. In recent years there has been a renewed interest in studying the development and characteristics of standardized languages (see especially Kloss 1952 with its valuable introduction on standardization in general), and it is in following this line of interest that the present study seeks to examine carefully one particular kind of standardization where two varieties of a language exist side by side throughout the community, with each having a definite role to play. The term diglossia is introduced here, modeled on the French diglossie, which has been applied to this situation.
    It must be pointed out that diglossia is not assumed to be a stage which occurs always and only at a certain point in some kind of evolution, e.g., in the standardization process. Diglossia may develop from various origins and eventuate in different language situations. Of the four defining languages, Arabic diglossia seems to reach as far back as our knowledge of Arabic goes, and the superposed "Classical" language has remained relatively stable, while Greek diglossia has roots going back many centuries, but it became fully developed only at the beginning of the nineteenth century with the renaissance of Greek literature and the creation of a literary language based in large part on previous forms of literary Greek. Swiss German diglossia developed as a result of long religious and political isolation from the centers of German linguistic standardization, while Haitian Creole arose from a creolization of a pidgin French, with standard French later coming to play the role of the superposed variety. | Charles A. Ferguson, 1959
2. (Sociolinguistics) Although the French term diglossie was introduced by the Arabist William Marçais in 1930, it is the late Charles A. Ferguson who is most often credited as the first to introduce the notion of a "high"(H) and a "low" (L) variety or register of a language in a classic (1959) article in the journal Word with the now famous one-word title,"Diglossia". The gist of his widely influential essay, which has been reprinted several times, was to demonstrate that the idea of H and L registers best explained the pervasive linguistic distinctions observable in a few speech communities concerning the strict complementary distribution of formal vs. informal usage. For Ferguson, who calqued the term from the French, there were only four "defining" languages that he considered representative: Arabic, Swiss German, Haitian Creole, and Modern Greek. Since then, many other languages (in actuality, the speech communities that speak them) have been reevaluated as diglossic. | Alan S. Kaye, 2001
3. (Sociolinguistics) In 1959 I published an article called "Diglossia" in the journal Word in which I tried to characterize a certain type of language situation. ... I could have chosen as my "clear case" the creole continuum, or the standard-with-dialects, or any of a number of other recognizable, widely instantiated types of language situation. What I chose, however, was what I called diglossia, taking a term already in use for Arabic, in a situation similar to that of Swiss German. In addition to whatever ordinary ways of talking there were in the community, there was one superposed variety to be used for written purposes and for many formal spoken purposes, but not spoken by anyone as the ordinary medium of conversation.
    It is important to make it clear that this situation differs from the standard-with-dialect variation, such as Italy, for example, where there are those who essentially speak standard Italian as their mother tongue and use it in everyday conversation. It is also clear that diglossia differs from a creole continuum such as Jamaica, where many people control and use the acrolect in ordinary conversation and where the extreme "basilectal" varieties, as they are called, are clearly the outcome of a pidginization process at some earlier time. Also, the boundary between the high variety and the vernacular ("low" variety) in diglossia is behaviorally and attitudinally sharper than in creole continua, although intermediate varieties always do occur in diglossia situations. Finally, diglossia in the sense I was defining was not the same as the situation in which two different (related or unrelated) languages have a functional distribution similar to that of diglossia (i.e. a "high" language and a "low" language).
    I wanted to describe the kind of situation in which the ordinary formal language of the community is one that no one speaks without special effort and no one uses in ordinary conversation: it is acquisitionally and functionally superposed to the primary variety of the language. | Charles A. Ferguson, 1996

DIRECT BORROWING

1. (Sociolinguistics) Direct borrowing happens when one language adopts a word from a foreign language in a straight line, like an English omelette, which has been taken over from French without any large phonological or orthographical changes. On the contrary, indirect borrowing happens when a lexical unit is borrowed from the source language to another language, as a direct borrowing. Then, the same item is re-borrowed yet to another language and further even to another language, this time, however, as an indirect borrowing. It is worth mentioning that the process of indirect borrowing is unlimited in terms of the number of languages that can adopt it. The said lexical unit can be re-borrowed many times, but only the adoption form of the source language can be called a direct one. Finally, adopting the item each time to another language, some orthographical and phonological adjustments can be made to fit it into the recipient language.
    For example, let us take the word feast, which can be easily traced back to the Latin form festum. However, the word was borrowed into English from French. So, it can serve as an example of direct borrowing from French, but at the same time, it is also an example of indirect borrowing from Latin. | Bila Ievgeniia Sergiivna, Bondarenko Ievheniia Volodymyrivna, and Maslova Svitlana Yakivna, 2021
2. (Sociolinguistics) Basically we have two types of borrowing, i.e., direct borrowing and indirect / less direct borrowing. Direct borrowing sub-types:
   1. Cultural borrowing: Also called loanwords by necessity, cultural borrowings are words that fill gaps in the recipient language's store of words because they stand for objects or concepts new to the language's culture. Most common cultural borrowings around the world are versions of English automobile or car, because most cultures did not have such motorized vehicles before contact with Western cultures. Words related to computers are another example.
   2. Core borrowing: Core borrowings are words that duplicate elements that the recipient language already has in its word store. They are unnecessary—by definition, another layer on the cake, because the recipient language always has viable equivalents. Then why are they borrowed? Cultural pressure, language of prestige, etc.
   3. Therapeutic borrowing: Borrowing has also been said to occur for therapeutic reasons, when the original word has become unavailable. Two subcases:
      1. Borrowing due to word taboo: In some cultures, there are strict word taboo rules, e.g., rules that prohibit a certain word that occurs in a deceased person's name, or a word that occurs in the name of a taboo relative.
      2. Borrowing for reasons of homonymy avoidance: If a word becomes too similar to another word due to sound change, the homonymy clash might be avoided by borrowing. Thus, it has been suggested that the homonymy of earlier English bread (from Old English bræde) 'roast meat' and bread (from Old English bread) led to the replacement of the first by a French loan (roast, from Old French rost).
   
    | Sid Eusaphxai, 2016

DIRECT SCALAR IMPLICATURE
(Pragmatics) Inferences like (1) arise when a weak scalar term like sometimes appears in an upward entailing context. The sentences in (2a) and (3a), which contain the scalar terms some and or, respectively, give rise to the implicatures in (2b) and (3b).

1. a. John sometimes went to the movies.
    → b. John didn't always go.
2. a. Some of the students went to the movies.
    → b. Not all of them went.
3. a. John went to the movies or to the beach.
    → b. John didn't go both to the movies and to the beach.

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