Linguistics in Credo: Terms and Concepts

In speech, emphasis given a particular sound, called prosodic systems in linguistics. There are three basic accentual methods: stress, tone, and length.

Grammatical part of speech for words that describe nouns. Adjectives generally have three degrees (grades or levels for the description of relationships): the positive degree (new, beautiful), the comparative degree (newer, more beautiful), and the superlative degree (newest, most beautiful).

[Lat. genus =kind], in grammar, subclassification of nouns or nounlike words in which the members of the subclass have characteristic features.

A system of rules specifying a language; principles governing the construction of sentences from words. Description of the structure of a language, consisting of the sounds (see phonology); the meaningful combinations of these sounds into words or parts of words, called morphemes; and the arrangement of the morphemes into phrases and sentences, called syntax.

In grammar. In many languages, words or parts of words are arranged in formally similar sets consisting of a root, or base, and various affixes.

From Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science
The lexicon of a grammar must provide a systematic and efficient way of encoding information about the words in a language.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
In English, part of speech of vast semantic range. It can be used to name a person, place, thing, idea, or time. It generally functions as subject, object, or indirect object of the verb in the sentence, and may be distinguished by a number of formal criteria. A noun may be recognized by inflection (e.g., -'s and -s) or by derivation (e.g., -ness, -ity, and -tion).

From Good Word Guide
The tense of a verb is a set of forms expressing distinctions of time. Some modern grammarians say that fundamentally there are only two real tenses in English: the present: • It is hot today, and the past: • It was cloudy yesterday.

Grammatical part of speech for what someone or something does, experiences, or is. Verbs are of crucial importance to the construction of the sentence. The rules governing the correct use and spelling of verbs are complex, involving consideration of number, voice, mood, aspect, and tense.

In speech, emphasis given a particular sound, called prosodic systems in linguistics. There are three basic accentual methods: stress, tone, and length.

Set of conventional symbols used for writing, based on a correlation between individual symbols and spoken sounds, so called from alpha (α) and beta (β), the names of the first two letters of the classical Greek alphabet.

Variety of a language used by a group of speakers within a particular speech community. Every individual speaks a variety of their language, termed an idiolect.

Systematic communication by vocal symbols. It is a universal characteristic of humans.

An auxiliary language, generally of a hybrid and partially developed nature, that is employed over an extensive area by people speaking.

The identification, description, and classification of sounds used in articulate speech.

A lingua franca that is not the mother tongue of anyone using it and that has a simplified grammar.

From A Dictionary of Sociolinguistics
A claim that languages can differ so greatly in the way they encode semantic information (in LEXIS and GRAMMAR) that they can determine the way that speakers of a language think.

[Gr.,=significant] in general, the study of the relationship between words and meanings. The empirical study of word meanings and sentence structures in existing languages is a branch of linguistics; the abstract study of meaning in relation to language or symbolic logic systems is a branch of philosophy.

The visible recording of language peculiar to the human species. Writing enables the transmission of ideas over vast distances of time and space and is a prerequisite of complex civilization. Where, and by whom writing was first developed remains unknown, but scholars place the beginning of writing at 6,000 B.C.