terms-usages

Créée le Friday 14 June 2024

Linguistic jargon

¶ L1 - First language, or morally equivalent. This refers to the first language a user of language has gained the ability to use, and can also refer to the speaker themself when the language is the context.

¶ L2 - Second (or further) language. This refers to subsequent languages a user of language has gained the ability to use. It can also, in rare cases, refer to someone relearning their L1 after forgetting it completely.

¶ native language, Lnative - The language that comes most easily to a user of language in a given context. Context-sensitive, allows for a language to become someone's native language not having been that, and may be offensive to indigenous peoples whose effective Lnative is that of the colonizer.

¶ conlang noun - constructed language. This refers to a language which a user of language has invented, intentionally, from whole cloth, whether based on an existing language (natural or constructed) or entirely on their own initiative.

¶ phonemic adj - phonetics jargon. Sense 2 from Wiktionary says "Relating to a difference between sounds that can change the meaning of words in a language."

¶ allophone, allophonic - phonetics jargon. Refers to phones (sounds, or equivalent) which can be interchanged for each other. In English, multiple different rhotics are allophones - the uvular R of Northumberland and some French learners of English, the alveolar trilled R of the Scottish, the labiodental "W" R of some England English, and the retroflex or non-retroflex R of the Americans are all interchangeable. You could use all of them in a single sentence and be understood.

¶ rhotic - Refers to consonants which, in languages using the Latin script, are typically rendered with the letter R, and otherwise are recognized by speakers as constituting a form of "R". The most often mishearing of laterals for Japanese speakers, as Japanese speakers do not use laterals (or when they do, it's an allophone with the rhotic).

¶ morpheme noun - Wiktionary gives the definition of "the smallest linguistic unit within a word which can carry a meaning. It may be a letter, a syllable, or otherwise." This can be understood as a sort of "wordlet".

¶ hyperpolyrhoticity quality - See entry under Field Guide-specific jargon

¶ * - prefix for incorrect, or unattested reconstructed words - for the latter sense we may use %.

¶ gloss - in one sense, a form of direct, word-for-word translation, either from a language to the same language (deforming words back to the lemma (uninflected) form, and listing bound morphemes (in English (not exhaustive): a- anti- pro- dis- re- -ment -ly -like -ish -ize) separately), or from a language to the language it's being discussed in, and in professional linguistics often both. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlinear_gloss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloss_(annotation) ¶ In another sense, an informal dictionary entry, usually used in the same language (this book is written in English, as is this glossary), to explain terminology that may be unfamiliar to readers. This page, a glossary, is a collection of glosses (second sense).

¶pertinative - In this case, a genitive or possessive (ambiguous as to which, often).

Division-specific jargon

¶ as a full sentence (usage varies) - Means that the word or phrase was sent without any other words, and is interpreted either as a sentence or an interjection.

¶ «arrow quotes», ‹arrow single quotes› (not always used) - Sometimes, multiple layers of quotes are required. The English-language typographic quote markers cannot represent this, so in some cases we use arrow quotes, like are used in French. Double quotes are produced with Compose and the arrowhead twice; single quotes are Compose, arrowhead, dot.

¶ Division policy, Department policy - Policy promulgated by the Linguistics Division, Ministry of Rural Development, Republic of Evdonia.

¶ utterance noun - A fragment of speech or writing - anywhere from a single morpheme to several seconds or minutes of speech or tens of word-equivalents of writing.

¶ Death Star (capitalization varies) - an exceptionally broad data release, or request for same.

¶ hyperpolyrhoticity noun (quality) - a language with an exceptionally high number of non-allophonic rhotics - three or more, in any case. This meaning was decided on because Spanish, the highest polyrhotic language the Directors are familiar with, has two, so a language with more than two would be hyperpolyrhotic. The theoretical limit is six: tapped, alveolar trilled, long alveolar trilled, guttural trilled, long guttural trilled, and liquid. English has only one, and all six phones (sounds) are used for that single phoneme, as well as being elided completely in some dialects.