Sank's Glossary of Linguistics 
 Trae-Tz

TRANSITIVITY-CHANGING OPERATIONS

  1. (Grammar) 
      Macrorole
    Operation Actor Undergoer
    Installation actor-focused
    transitivization
     • causative     		undergoer-focused
    transitivization
     • applicative
     • extraversive
    Suppression actor-focused
    detransitivization
     • passive
     • anticausative     		undergoer-focused
    detransitivization
     • antipassive
     • introversive
     | Christian Lehmann and Elisabeth Verhoeven, 2006
  2. (Examples)

TRANSLANGUAGING

  1. (Sociolinguistics) Refers to speakers' dynamic and creative use of resources across the borders of named languages. It is premised on the view that multilingual individuals have an innate ability to draw flexibly upon a repertoire of linguistic features (phonetic, morphological, semantic, orthographic, and so forth) that originate in more than one named language, as well as what has been termed extra-linguistic or non-linguistic meaning-making resources, including bodily and sensory resources. Translanguaging is performative, and this includes everyday performances in mundane situations; it exudes creativity and criticality, generating positive disturbance to social interaction. | Tong King Lee and Li Wei, 2020
  2. (Sociolinguistics) A theoretical lens that offers a different view of bilingualism and multilingualism. The theory posits that rather than possessing two or more autonomous language systems, as has been traditionally thought, bilinguals, multilinguals, and indeed, all users of language, select and deploy particular features from a unitary linguistic repertoire to make meaning and to negotiate particular communicative contexts. | Sarah Vogel and Ofelia García, 2017
  3. (Pedagogy) An approach that affirms and leverages students' diverse and dynamic language practices in teaching and learning. | Sarah Vogel and Ofelia García, 2017

TRANSLOCATIVE
See VENITIVE.

TRANSPARENCY

  1. (Grammar) A one-to-one relation between meaning and form. All structures violating transparency are called non-transparent or opaque. "One meaning" and "one form" are of course both highly problematic concepts.
     The notion of transparency has been discussed and studied before in theoretical linguistics, creole studies and language acquisition.
     In Functional Discourse Grammar terms, transparency obtains when one unit at one of the upper two levels of linguistic organization (IL, RL) corresponds to one unit at one of the lower two levels of linguistic organization (ML, PL). | Sterre Leufkens, 2015
  2. (Grammar) A striking fact about languages is that it is exceptional for them to display a systematic one-to-one relation between meaning and form, i.e. languages are never completely transparent. Rather, to different degrees they allow ambiguity, discontinuity, and fusion, to mention just a few of the properties that make languages less transparent.
     The lack of transparency in the majority of languages is all the more surprising when one takes into account that there is evidence that the transparent features that they exhibit are the first to be mastered by young children acquiring their mother tongue. In contrast, children struggle with non-transparent features of language for far longer, and there is a phase in their development in which they systematically adapt these features so as to force them into a transparent pattern (Slobin 1977, Slobin 1980, Clark 1993, MacWhinney 2005). | Kees Hengeveld and Sterre Leufkens, 2018
  3. (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
    See Also FIGURATION.

TREE

  1. (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
  2. (Syntax) A tree, qua P-marker, is a representation of an equivalence class of derivations at level P, a history of applications of rules at that level.


     Important: The tree is fully and completely interpreted.


     | Robert May, 2023

TREEBANK

  1. (Corpus) A syntactically processed corpus that contains annotations of natural language data at various linguistic levels (word, phrase, clause and sentence levels). A treebank provides mainly the morphosyntactic and syntactic structure of the utterances within the corpus and consists of a bank of linguistic trees, thereby its name. | Bernard J. Jansen, Amanda Spink, and Isak Taksa, 2009
  2. (Corpus) A collection of POS-tagged sentences that are bracketed to align with constituency. | Maeve Carmody and Ryan M. Kasak, 2023

TRIPLE-AGREEMENT LANGUAGE

  1. (Typology; Grammar) A language in which the verb agrees with all arguments present in a clause (Rosen 1990). | Fabian Heck and Mark Richards, 2007
  2. (Typology; Grammar) As argued by Rosen (1990), Southern Tiwa (Tanoan; New Mexico) is a triple-agreement language, in which the verbal prefix can register agreement with up to three arguments in a clause. Thus verbs may agree with as many as three arguments: the ergative (NPerg), absolutive (NPabs) and dative (NPdat). This agreement, which is expressed in the form of a verbal prefix, registers person, number and, in the case of third-person arguments, class as well; see (1), (2), and (3), from Rosen (1990).
     
    1. a.
       
      Te-mı̃-ban
      1SG-go-PAST
      (eskwela-ʼay)
      school-to
        'I went (to school)'
      b.
       
      A-mı̃-ban
      2SG-go-PAST
      (eskwela-ʼay)
      school-to
        'You went (to school)'
    2. a.
       
      Ka-musa-wia-ban
      1SG:A:2SG-cat-give-PAST
        'I gave the cat to you'
      b.
       
      Kam-musa-wia-ban
      1SG:B:2SG-cat-give-PAST
        'I gave the cats to you'
    3. a.
       
      ʼUide
      child-A
      tam-musa-wia-ban
      1SG:B:A-cat-give-PAST
        'I gave the cats to the child'
      b.
       
      ʼUide
      child-A
      tow-keuap-wia-ban
      1SG:C:A-shoe-give-PAST
        'I gave the shoes to the child'

     Example (1) exhibits person and number-agreement for the single, absolutive argument of an intransitive. Examples (2) and (3) display triple-agreement with all three arguments of a ditransitive, with the absolutive argument registering variation in inflectional class according to number in (2) and animacy in (3). | Fabian Heck and Marc Richards, 2010

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 ‖ :

 Again, let W equal a set of possible worlds. We'll think of each sentence in L as having as its meaning a function from W to the set of values {T, F, U}, where we think of T as false, F as true, and U as undefined, so each sentence is true, false or undefined at each possible world. Each atomic sentence is bivalent in the sense that it takes W into {T, F}, in other words, it is true or false at every possible world. We get trivalence through the extra binary operator ‖, whose semantics is defined as follows:
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:
A B A ‖ B
T T T
F T F
T F U
F F U
T/F U U
U T/F U
 | Daniel Rothschild, 2011

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. 

  1. a. It's Beverly.
    b. That was his father.
    c. It could have been me.
    d. That might be Adrian.
 These are known as truncated clefts in the literature, based on their similarity to the clefts in (2) (see Poutsma 1916, Jespersen 1954, Declerck 1983, Büring 1998, Hedberg 2000, Merchant 2001, Ward et al. 2003, Birner et al. 2005, a.o.).
  1. a. It's Beverly that makes the best pies.
    b. That was his father that went to Hamburg.
    c. It could have been me that drove the car.
    d. That might be Adrian that's knocking on the door.
 As these authors observe, the sentences in (1) and (2) are similar in both form and meaning. The truncated clefts in (1) look like the clefts in (2) minus the cleft clause, and in the right contexts, each of the sentences in (1) can be used with the meaning of the corresponding sentence in (2). Following a question like Who went to Hamburg?, (1b) can be used to convey what (2b) conveys, and following a knock on the door, (1d) can be used with the meaning of (2d). | Line Mikkelsen, 2007

TRUNCATION
(Syntax) Proposals according to which constituents are reduced, truncated, pruned, etc., constitute a significant subliterature in syntactic theory. Some phenomena for which a truncation analysis has been proposed include: Equi-NP deletion (Ross 1967), clitic climbing (Ross 1967, Rivero 1970, Marusic 2005), ECM/S′-deletion (Chomsky 1981), embedded subject extraction (Gazdar 1981), long passive in German (Wurmbrand 2000), various stages of L1 or L2 acquisition (Lebeaux 2000, Vainikka 1993/1994, Vainikka and Young-Scholten 1996), root vs. embedded clause contrasts (Hooper and Thompson 1973, Haegeman 2012, Shlonsky and Soare 2011, Miyagawa 2017, de Cuba 2014), Malagasy headlines (Paul 2017), Malagasy perception verb complements (Pearson 2017), etc. | Daniel Finer and Hasran Basri, 2020

TRUTH-COMPATIBLE INFERENCE

  1. (Pragmatics) A knowledge-based inference which bridges the gap between:
    1. The speaker-intended representation: e.g., upper-bounded majority, and
    2. The relevant state of affairs (e.g., 'all').
     How? By mobilizing a (reasonable) assumption (TCI) that "A whole is compatible with its proper subsets". But, the discoursal compatibility of some meaning (e.g., a circumbounded majority for most) with a subsuming state of affairs (e.g., 'all') is not guaranteed. Truth-compatible inferences are merely potentially mobilized. | Mira Ariel, 2023
  2. (Pragmatics) TCIs are inferences that are legitimate in that the speaker is quite likely to endorse them given the content of the utterance, or else, should the assumption be true in reality, it will be seen as compatible with what the speaker said. The speaker is then not seen as having precluded it (nor as having uttered a false proposition). Here is the example I first cited in Ariel (2004) as a basis for the proposed TCI concept:

    1. a. REBECCA: (H) U=m,
       ... do you guys have the cash to pay for it right now?
       ... When you- to get out? (Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English)
      b. TCI: The addressees may be too poor to afford the parking fee.

     | Mira Ariel, 2016

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 2012).
 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).

  1.  <Nixon, {x: x is alive}>
 And we say that Nixon is alive is true if and only if the referent (or referent of) Nixon belongs to the set associated with is alive, that is, if and only if Nixon is alive.
 In semantics, the truth condition of a sentence is almost universally considered distinct from its meaning. The meaning of a sentence is conveyed if the truth conditions for the sentence are understood. Additionally, there are many sentences that are understood although their truth condition is uncertain. One popular argument for this view is that some sentences are necessarily true—that is, they are true whatever happens to obtain. All such sentences have the same truth conditions, but arguably do not thereby have the same meaning. Likewise, the sets {x: x is alive} and {x: x is alive and x is not a rock} are identical—they have precisely the same members—but presumably the sentences Nixon is alive and Nixon is alive and is not a rock have different meanings. | Wikipedia, 2024

TYPE

  1. (Semantics) A notion developed in mathematical logic and used as part of the conceptual apparatus underlying formal semantics (notably, in lambda calculus). A type-theoretic approach offers a mathematical perspective for the categorial syntax of natural language, using the notion of a hierarchy of types as a framework for semantic structure (as in Montague grammar).
     Basic (or primitive) types, e.g. 'entity', 'truth value', 'state', are distinguished from derived or complex types, e.g. functional types: an example is (a, b), i.e. all functions taking arguments in the a domain apply to values in the b domain. | David Crystal, 2008
  2. (Lexical) A term used as part of a measure of lexical density. The type/token ratio is the ratio of the total number of different words (types) to the total number of words (tokens) in a sample of text.
     Types are used in several models of lexical representation (notably, typed feature structures) to refer to a superordinate category. The types are organized as a lattice framework, with the most general type represented at the top and inconsistency indicated at the bottom. Similarities in lattices specify compatibility between types. Subtypes inherit all the properties of all their supertypes: for example, in a typed feature structure hierarchy, the subtype sausages under the type food ('sausages are a type of food') means that sausages has all the properties specified by the type constraints on food, with some further properties of its own. | David Crystal, 2008

 

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