ÿþ<html> <head> <title>J Paul Sank's Glossary of Linguistics, T-Z</title> </head> <body> <h2>J Paul Sank's Glossary of Linguistics, T-Z</h2> <p>TAUTOSYLLABIC <br>(Phonology) Part of the same syllable. E.g. a phonological diphthong analyzed into a sequence of two tautosyllabic vowels. <p>TENSE <br>(Phonetics) Articulated, or claimed to be articulated, with greater effort of the relevant muscles. <p>TH-FRONTING <br>(Phonology) Th-fronting refers to the pronunciation of the English "th" as "f" or "v". When th-fronting is applied, /¸/ becomes /f/ (for example, three is pronounced as free) and /ð/ becomes / v/ (for example, with is pronounced as wiv). Th-fronting occurs (historically independently) in Cockney, Newfoundland English, African American Vernacular English, Liberian English, Estuary English, as well as in many foreign accents (though the details differ among those accents). <p>THAT-TRACE EFFECT aka THAT-T EFFECT <br>(Syntax) The phenomenon that the complementizer (that) cannot be followed by a trace (except in relative clauses) in some languages (e.g. English). Thus, in languages showing the that-t(race) effect, a subject cannot be extracted when it follows that. This is shown by the contrast in (i) and (ii). <br>(i) who did you think [CP t' [C' e [IP t would win ]]] <br>(ii) *who did you think [CP t' [C' that [IP t would win ]]] <br>As noted, the that-t effect is not a universal phenomenon. It is absent in e.g. Dutch, as shown by the fact that the Dutch translation of (ii) is grammatical: <br>(iii) wie denk je [CP t' [C' dat [IP t gewonnen heeft ]]] <p>THEMATIZATION <br>(Discourse) Discourse producers, particularly those producing written discourse, will often arrange smaller chunks of the text in a certain order so as to give prominence to that chunk or to another chunk. These chunks are composed of thematically related material. For example, it is not uncommon for writers to begin with one discourse chunk made up of one or more broad propositions only to follow that chunk with another (or series of others) that draws specific points from those preceding propositions. This kind of organization is often referred to as thematization. <br>&nbsp;&nbsp;Given that linearization affects both the smaller and larger ranks of discourse (from the clause up), then it stands to reason that one ought to be able to determine the thematic structure at the discourse level by determining the thematization in each of its constituent parts. <p>TOPIC <br>(Discourse) In discourse there are places where new semantic environments are established. These semantic boundaries, called "Topics," are signaled in many different ways, often by the use of several types of signals at once. One signal is the use of discourse markers. In their lexicon, Louw and Nida create an entire domain specifically for discourse markers -- familiarity with the lexical items within this domain is good to acquire for exegesis. A second signal to be aware of is the disruption of cohesion. Where there are disruptions in cohesion because of shifts in grammar (e.g., changes in tense form, changes in person/participants, etc.) or semantics (e.g., breaking of semantic chains), especially in conjunction with the use of discourse or deictic markers, the author is likely signaling the establishment of a new Topic in the discourse. Everything between Topic shifts is the Comment. <p>TOPIC PERSISTENCE <br>The number of recurrences of a referent in the following text. <p>TOPICAL/FOCAL <br> Givón states that discourse is made up of a combination of new and old information. We shall refer to the new information as focal, and the old information as presupposed or topical. Presupposed, topical information is  assumed by the speaker to be accessible to the hearer either from the preceding text, or from a general knowledge of the world; focal information is  assumed by the speaker to be inaccessible to the hearer .9 Presupposed information serves as the  grounding point or framework within which the focal information is processed.10 By definition, the focal information is the most important part of the utterance, with the presupposed information grounding it to the context. --Runge <p>TRACE <br>A phonetically null element said by Chomsky and his followers to occupy the position from which a syntactic element has been moved. <p>UNACCUSATIVE VERB <br>(Syntax) Unaccusative verbs are a subclass of intransitives. Their single arguments denote direct objects in relational grammar and GB, instead of agent-like participants. Thus unaccusatives are defined syntactically rather than semantically. <br>&nbsp;&nbsp;English unaccusatives are fall, arrive or melt. In German there are unaccusative verbs like entgleiten (slip) or zerbrechen (break). <br>&nbsp;&nbsp;In English as well as in German, unaccusatives differ from other verbs in the selection of their perfective auxiliary. The unaccusatives take a form of to be or sein, respectively, whereas the other verbs take a form of to have or haben, respectively. <p>UNDERLYING REPRESENTATION <br>(Phonology, Morphophonology) The underlying representation (UR) or underlying form (UF) of a word or morpheme is the abstract form the word or morpheme is postulated to have before any phonological rules have applied to it. <p>UNDERSPECIFICATION <br>(Phonology) In theoretical linguistics, underspecification is a phenomenon in which certain features are omitted in underlying representations. Restricted underspecification theory holds that features should only be underspecified if their values are predictable. For example, in English, all front vowels (/i, j, e, [, æ/) are unrounded. It is not necessary for these phonemes to include the distinctive feature ["round], because all ["back] vowels are ["round] vowels, so the distinctive feature is not distinctive if we know the vowel to be front. Radical Underspecification theory, on the other hand, also allows for traditionally binary features to be specified for only one value, where it is assumed that every segment not specified for that value has the other value. For example, instead of the features [+voice] and ["voice], only [+voice] is specified and voicelessness is taken as the default. <p>UNERGATIVE VERB <br>(General) Special kind of intransitive verb. Semantically, unergative verbs have a subject perceived as actively initiating or actively responsible for the action expressed by the verb. E.g.: in English run, talk and resign are unergative verbs. In syntax, unergative verbs are characterized as verbs with an external argument. See unaccusative verb. <p>UPDATE POTENTIAL <br>(Syntax) One distinction: "Theme" vs. "Rheme" (=Topic vs. Comment) Rheme: The "update potential" of the sentence. Theme: Where the update should apply, what the sentence is "about." <p>V2 <br>(Syntax) Verb-second (V2) word order is the rule in some languages that the second constituent of declarative main clauses is always a verb, while this is not necessarily the case in other types of clauses. <p>WH-IN-SITU LANGUAGE <br>(Syntax) A language without wh-movement. <p>X-BAR THEORY <br>A generative theory of language conceived by Noam A. Chomsky. It is a theory about the internal structure of syntactic constituents which was originally intended to place constraints on the power of phrase structure rules. X-bar theory captures the insight that all phrases share some essential structural properties. Its main tenet is that all phrase structure (hence the X) can be reduced to recursive specifier-head configurations. <p>X-PHEMISM <br>(Pragmatics)the combination set of euphemism and (its opposite) dysphemism <p>ZERO ANAPHORA <br>(Syntax) Relation in which a phonetically null element is seen as linked by anaphora to an antecedent. <p>ZERO-FORM <br>(Morphology) A morpheme that doesn't change the word at all, typically in spelling or pronunciation. </body> </html>