PROTASIS
(Grammar) A complete conditional sentence consists of two clauses, the "protasis" and the apodosis. The clause containing the condition is called the protasis; the clause containing the conclusion is called the apodosis. In Latin:

1. [ sī quī exīre volunt ]_PROTASIS ,  [ cōnīvēre possum ]_APODOSIS (Cat. 2.27)
   'If any wish to depart, I can keep my eyes shut.'
2. [ Sī est in exsiliō ]_PROTASIS , [ quid amplius postulātis ]_APODOSIS (Lig. 13)
   'If he is in exile, what more do you ask?'

PROTO-PROPERTIES

1. (Semantics) Event roles are often analyzed in terms of "proto-Properties": for example, being intentional and playing a causative role are properties of proto-Agents whereas being affected is a property of proto-Patients (Dowty 1991). Others of Dowty's proto-Properties are movement, change of state, and being stationary. | Lilia Rissman, Sebastian Sauppe, Arrate Isasi-Isasmendi, Susan Goldin-Meadow, and Balthasar Bickel, 2023
2. (Semantics) Instead of appealing to atomic semantic roles, Dowty (1991) proposes a cluster of "Proto-Properties" that define the proto-type categories Proto-Agent and Proto-Patient. Proto-Agent properties include volitional involvement, sentience, causing an event or change of state. Proto-Patient properties include undergoes change of state, causally affected, incremental theme. The proto-types are linked to the grammatical function of subject and direct object of an active transitive clause respectively. Hence, the argument with the highest number of Proto-Agent properties will be realized as the subject, in line with the so-called Syntagmatic Argument Selection Principle (Dowty 1991). | Peter de Swart, 2014

PROTO-ROLE
(Semantics) Dowty (1991) introduces a revised conception of semantic roles by focusing on a key problem in argument realization: given a transitive verb, what determines which argument is its subject and which its object? To answer this question, Dowty reenvisions the notions of agent and patient, the two traditional semantic roles most closely tied to subject and object, as collections of semantic properties which contribute to subjecthood and objecthood, respectively. Dowty calls each property cluster a "proto-role", a name purposefully evoking the notion of prototype.
 A verb imposes entailments on each of its arguments by virtue of the part that argument plays in the event that it describes. These are lexical entailments in that they follow from the meaning of the verb alone; that is, they hold of all its uses and are not influenced by context. Dowty is interested in those lexical entailments which recur across many verbs and, among these, those that figure in subject and object selection. This goal leads him to identify the two clusters of properties in (1) and (2), which he claims are comprised of precisely such lexical entailments. Dowty refers to the clusters as Agent Proto-role and Patient Proto-role properties—or, for short, Proto-Agent and Proto-Patient properties—since each cluster includes properties that commonly figure in definitions of the traditional agent and patient roles, respectively.

1. Contributing properties for the Agent Proto-Role
   • volitional involvement in the event or state
   • sentience (and/or perception)
   • causing an event or change of state in another participant
   • movement (relative to the position of another participant)
   • (exists independently of the event named by the verb)
2. Contributing properties for the Patient Proto-Role
   • undergoes change of state
   • incremental theme
   • causally affected by another participant
   • stationary relative to movement of another participant
   • (does not exist independently of the event, or not at all)

PROTOTYPE SEMANTICS
(Philosophy of Language) Our prototype view of word meaning attempts to account for the obvious pretheoretical intuition that semantic categories frequently have blurry edges and allow degrees of membership. On this view, applicability of a word to a thing is in general not a matter of 'yes or no', but rather of 'more or less'. This has been shown experimentally in the domain of color (e.g. Berlin and Kay 1969, Kay and McDaniel 1978) and in several other lexical domains (Kempton 1977, Rosch 1975, Labov 1973). It has also been supported by a variety of linguistic arguments; cf. Kay 1978, Fillmore 1975, and Lakoff 1972.
 In the philosophy of language, Putnam has recently (1975) advocated a view in which word meanings are determined in part by stereotypes, a position with antecedents in Black. Mathematicians such as Zadeh (1965) have developed a theory of fuzzy sets to model such phenomena formally.
 The particular prototype schema which we propose for English lie has the following (semi)formal characteristics:

1. It contains a finite list of properties. In this respect it is like a checklist definition, but in other respects it is not.
2. The individual properties on the list are each treated as dichotomous, i.e. as either satisfied or not. We envisage, however, that prototype schemata may in general contain gradient properties, whose satisfaction is a matter of degree. We leave open the possibility that an investigation conducted at a more detailed empirical level might find this to be true with lie.
3. Membership in the category lie is a gradient phenomenon.
4. Satisfaction of each property on the list contributes to the over-all degree of membership of an individual in the category.
5. Satisfaction of each property on the list does not necessarily contribute equally to the degree of membership of an individual in the category. That is, properties may be of differential importance in constituting the prototype.
6. In this gradient framework, the bivalent concepts of the "necessity" and "sufficiency" of properties do not apply.

PROTOTYPICALITY

1. (Semantics) Core, frequent items define the construction's meaning, while marginal, rare items extend its use beyond this expected use (Geeraerts 1997). | Quentin Feltgen, 2023
2. (Semantics) "Prototypicality" is itself, in the words of Posner (1986), a prototypical concept. Four characteristics are frequently mentioned (in various combinations) as typical of prototypicality. In each case, a quotation from early prototype studies is added to illustrate the point.
   1. Prototypical categories cannot be defined by means of a single set of criterial (necessary and sufficient) attributes:

      We have argued that many words ... have as their meanings not a list of necessary and sufficient conditions that a thing or event must satisfy to count as a member of the category denoted by the word, but rather a psychological object or process which we have called a prototype (Coleman and Kay 1981).

   2. Prototypical categories exhibit a family resemblance structure, or more generally, their semantic structure takes the form of a radial set of clustered and overlapping meanings:

      The purpose of the present research was to explore one of the major structural principles which, we believe, may govern the formation of the prototype structure of semantic categories. This principle was first suggested in philosophy; Wittgenstein (1953) argued that the referents of a word need not have common elements to be understood and used in the normal functioning of language. He suggested that, rather, a family resemblance might be what linked the various referents of a word. A family resemblance relationship takes the form AB, BC, CD, DE. That is, each item has at least one, and probably several, elements in common with one or more items, but no, or few, elements are common to all items (Rosch 1975).

   3. Prototypical categories exhibit degrees of category membership; not every member is equally representative for a category:

      By prototypes of categories we have generally meant the clearest cases of category membership defined operationally by people's judgments of goodness of membership in the category ... we can judge how clear a case something is and deal with categories on the basis of clear cases in the total absence of information about boundaries (Rosch 1978).

   4. Prototypical categories are blurred at the edges:

      New trends in categorization research have brought into investigation and debate some of the major issues in conception and learning whose solution had been unquestioned in earlier approaches. Empirical findings have established that ... category boundaries are not necessarily definite (Mervis and Rosch 1981).

    | Dirk Geeraerts, 2016

PSEUDO-CLEFT CONSTRUCTION

1. (Grammar) A pseudo-cleft sentence is a kind of cleft sentence in which the subordinated clause is a relative clause headed by an interrogative pro-form. In English they are of the form:
   1. wh-relative clause + be + X
      where X can be a constituent of one of many varieties.
    The so-called inverted pseudo-cleft sentence reverses the order of the two constituents:
   2. X + be + wh-relative clause
    | SIL Glossary of Linguistic Terms, 2003
2. (Grammar) Pseudo-clefts are "divisions of the sentence into two clauses, each with its own verb" (Quirk et al. 1985), and "all the elements of the clause as a message are organized into two constituents ... linked by a relationship of identity, a kind of 'equals sign', expressed by some form of the verb be" (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004). Pseudo-clefts are "tools for presenting and highlighting new information" (Bondi 2017). | Hui Zhou and Ming Chen, 2021
3. (Grammar) There are two features which are by many authors taken as defining features of pseudo-clefts:
   1. A semantic kinship to cleft sentences, and a consequent semi-formal requirement that pseudo-cleft sentences should have a bipartite form, looking like a broken-up form of a simple sentence, with a "focal" constituent which in some sense is being emphasized, and a remainder.
   2. A formal requirement that the sentence is a copular sentence with a subject that consists of a clause introduced by a wh-item, usually what, this subject clause constituting the remainder of the simple sentence, and a portion which follows the copula and constitutes the focal constituent, the constituent which is being emphasized.
    Examples such as the following would typically be called pseudo-cleft sentences:
   1. What he bought was a donkey.
   2. What they are is silly.
   3. What appeals to them most is a go on the swings.
   4. What he did then was cut his finger.
   5. What proves that you are wrong is that they weren't even there.
    | Francis Roger Higgins, 1973

PSEUDO-COPULA

1. (Grammar) Besides copular verbs, Spanish has a wide set of verbs usually called pseudo-copular verbs. Generally, these are verbs that have lost all or at least a large part of their lexical meaning, which has been grammaticalized such that they are at present closer to auxiliary verbs than real lexical verbs, and in particular to copular verbs. | Rafael Marin, 2009
2. (Grammar) Or, semi-copular verb. In many analyses a distinction is made between the copula in English, the verb be, and all other verbs which serve to link the subject and the predicate such as appear, seem, look, grow and so on which are referred to as pseudo-copular verbs.
    The pseudo-copular verbs fall into two categories:
   1. Verbs which indicate the current state of something:
      She felt unwell.
   2. Verbs which indicate a change in state which are known as inchoate verbs (the term inchoate means 'not fully formed'). You may also see them described as inceptive verbs:
      She became unwell.
    | ELT Concourse, ?

PSEUDO-INCORPORATION

1. (Syntax) Or, pseudo noun incorporation. One of the main and most notable differences between noun incorporation (NI) and pseudo-incorporation (PI) is that a pseudo-incorporated noun has more syntactic freedom than a strictly incorporated one. This relates to the fact that in PI, not only nouns but also nominal phrases (NPs or, arguably, even larger constituents) can incorporate; this is evident from the fact that the nouns in PI sometimes retain case marking and sometimes allow modification, though they always lack definiteness marking (and usually also explicit number marking).
    In PI constructions a constituent that incorporates is larger than a noun and should rather be treated as a phrase. Consider, for instance, example (1) from Niuean (Austronesian; Niue).
   1. Ne
      PAST

      inu
      drink

      kofe
      bitter

      kono
      coffee

      a
      ABS

      Mele
      Mele

      'Mary drank bitter coffee.' (Massam 2001)
    In this particular case, the incorporated constituent is a modified noun phrase bitter coffee, where the presence of a modifier clearly indicates the phrasal status of the nominal constituent. Massam discusses material other than adjectival modifiers that can appear with the PI-ed nominals, such as comitatives, absolutives, and subjunctives. | Olga Borik and Berit Gehrke, 2015
2. (Examples)
    ○ Pseudo-incorporation (PI) features a cluster of morphosyntactic properties that distinguish it from canonical argumentation. For example, in Turkish, the theme NP receives accusative case when interpreted as a definite singular, as shown in (1a), but lacks an overt case marker when PI'ed, as in (1b) (Taylan 1984, Öztürk 2005).
   1. a.
       

      Ali
      Ali

      kitab-ı
      book-ACC

      oku-du.
      read-PST

        'Ali read the book.'
        Not: 'Ali read one or more books / the books.' canonical transitive
      b.
       

      Ali
      Ali

      kitap
      book

      oku-du.
      read-PST

        'Ali read one or more books. / Ali did book-reading.'
        Not: 'Ali read the book / the books.'
   
    | Yağmur Sağ, Ömer Demirok, and Muhammet Bal, 2025
    ○ Hindi incorporated nominals are phrasal and enjoy a great deal of syntactic freedom. That is, Hindi exemplifies a very liberal kind of pseudo-incorporation. | Veneeta Dayal, 2011
    ○ Defining a subset of NI constructions in semantic terms opens the door to the inclusion of constructions without the morphology of noun incorporation (NI), but with the same or similar semantics. Spanning the gap between purely semantic and purely morphological definitions of NI, are cases falling under the juxtaposition category of Mithun (1984). These cases have recently been termed pseudo-noun-incorporation (PNI) (e.g. Massam 2001) or discord or semitransitive structures, as in Margetts (2008) and Sugita (1973), or noun stripping (Miner 1986, 1989, Gerdts and Hukari 2008). In such cases, there is no true morphological incorporation, but there is a reduced or stripped nominal object phrase that forms a closer-than-usual relation with the verb. Recently discussed examples are found in Turkish (Öztürk 2004, Kamali unpublished), Hindi (Mohanan 1995, Dayal 1999, 2007/2011), Hungarian (Koopman and Szabolsci 2000, Farkas and de Swart 2003) and in Oceanic languages (e.g. Fijian by Dixon 1988, Aranovich 2008, and Niuean and Tongan by Seiter 1980, Massam 2001, Asudeh and Ball 2005, Ball 2005). In Chung and Ladusaw (2004), we see another situation intermediate between purely semantic and truly morphological definitions of NI in their account of Māori, where a morphologically special determiner is used, signaling that the object combines with the verb via Restrict, also operative in NI. | Diane Massam, 2009

PSEUDO-PASSIVE
(Grammar) Or, prepositional passive. In English, the "pseudo-passive" is a verb construction that has a passive form but either an active meaning or no grammatically active equivalent.

 "It has been well recognized in the literature that not all pseudo-passive sentences are acceptable." (Kuno and Takami 2004)

1. The high-priced concert-and-dinner tickets were selling well, but seats in the house were selling slowly. (Rena Fruchter, Dudley Moore: An Intimate Portrait. Ebury Press, 2005)
2. Gita felt that she no longer existed except as a sodden, aching huddle under the rock, waiting to be rained on, a creature utterly isolated from the rest of the human race. (Terry Morris, "The Life-Giving Power of Love." Good Housekeeping, December 1969)
3. I came to the station meaning to tell you everything then. But we had started with a lie, and I got frightened. (E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread, 1905)
4. Juliet's bed was empty, too, though it had been slept in. (Linda Winstead Jones, The Sun Witch. Berkley Sensation, 2004)

PSEUDO-SLUICING

1. (Syntax) 
   1. Sluicing
      John saw someone, but I don't know [who_i [John saw t_i]].
      John will buy something; but I don't know what.
   2. Pseudo-sluicing
      John saw someone, but I don't know [who it is].
      John will buy something; but I don't know what it is.
    | Audrey Li and Tingchi Wei, 2023
2. (Syntax) Sentence (1) is an example of the Japanese pseudo-sluicing construction. Japanese "pseudo-sluicing" is apparently very similar to the English sluicing exemplified in (2).
   1. Taro-ga
      Taro-NOM

      nanika-o
      something-ACC

      kat-ta
      buy-PAST

      ga,
      but

      watasi-wa
      I-TOP

      nani
      what

      ka
      Q

      sira-nai.
      know-NOT

      'Taro bought something, but I don’t know what.'
   2. Taro bought something, but I don't know what.
      Taro bought something, but I don't know [_CP what_i C⁰ [_IP Taro bought t_i ]].
    | Chizuru Nakao, 2005
3. (Syntax) One proposal in analyzing elliptical structures considers the source of the ellipsis not to consist necessarily of full sentential material, but rather to have the structure of a cleft whose pivot is an extracted wh-phrase, as in (1). This type of ellipsis I will call "pseudosluicing", as it gives rise to structures seemingly indistinguishable from sluicing as in (2).
   1. Pseudosluicing
      I don't know who [it was __ (that Abby saw) ].
   2. Sluicing
      I don't know who [Abby saw {someone / __} ].
    | Jason Merchant, 1998

PSEUDOGAPPING
(Syntax) A somewhat odd instance of ellipsis in which a lexical verb under an auxiliary is deleted, leaving behind its own complement(s). There are clear family resemblances between pseudogapping on the one hand and Gapping and VP ellipsis on the other:

1. Pseudogapping
   Mary hasn't dated Bill, but she has Ø Harry.
2. Gapping
   Smoke bothers Fred, and loud music, Ø Fred's parents.
3. VP ellipsis
   Smoke might have bothered Fred, but it didn't Ø.

PSI (Greek letter ψ)
(Phonology) Symbol for a vocalic mora. | ?

PSYCH-PREDICATE
(Grammar) We take the position that a psych-predicate describes an event or eventuality such that it has the beginning, duration, end and result of a psychological state involved. It is argued that there must be distinctions between emotional verbs, sensory/perceptual verbs, and cognitive verbs, on one hand, and between those verbs and psych-verbs turned accomplishment verbs, on the other. Thus, it takes issue with van Voorst (1992) for failing to recognize those distinctions and treating all of them uniformaly as achievement verbs. Emotion verbs, with no telic end-points in aspect, behave more like states (with the flavor of process/activity). Psychological achievements are "resultatives", as states implying previous "mental" events. Particularly in Korean, the sense of state continuation is becoming stronger even in the case of psychological achievements (cognition), not only emotions/sensations. | Chungmin Lee, 1999

PSYCH VERB
(Grammar) Any verb that carries psychological entailments with respect to one of its arguments (the experiencer). A psychological entailment involves an individual being in a certain mental state (Landau 2010). | Lisa Lai-Shen Cheng and Rint Sybesma, 2015

PURPOSE CLAUSE
(Syntax) Expresses the purpose or intended use of a particular object which the main clause is in some sense "about". It is attached as a daughter of VP and is fixed in VP final position. It has the following variants, distinguished trivially by the position of the gap [which is represented by e]:

1. I bought the shelf_i [e_i to hold my cookbooks]
2. I bought the cookies_i [for Mary to eat e_i]
3. I bought the cushion_i [for Mary to sit on e_i]

Page Last Modified September 8, 2026

 

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