INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS – FINAL TEST TERMINOLOGY

Basic notions: linguistics, language, semiotics, system, structure, communication

Levels of linguistic analysis / branches of linguistics: phonetics, phonology, morphology, word-formation,

syntax, semantics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, stylistics, dialectology, neurolinguistics,
anthropological linguistics

Design features of language: vocal-auditory channel, broadcast transmission and directional reception, rapid
fading, interchangeability, total feedback, specialization, semanticity, arbitrariness, discreteness,
openness/creativity/productivity, duality of patterning, displacement, cultural transmission

Communicative functions of language: referential, emotive, conative, phatic, metalinguistic, poetic,

performative

Key oppositions: prescriptive linguistics (grammar) vs. descriptive linguistics (grammar), diachronic linguistics
vs. synchronic linguistics, competence vs. performance, syntagmatic relations vs. paradigmatic relations,
grammatical vs. ungrammatical, direct speech act vs. indirect speech act, lexical morphemes (categories) vs.
functional morphemes (categories), free morphemes vs. bound morphemes, derivational morphology (derivation)
vs. inflectional morphology (inflection), conceptual meaning (denotation) vs. associative meaning (connotation),
gradable antonyms vs. non-gradable antonyms, external change vs. internal change, pidgin vs. creole,
endocentric compound vs. exocentric compound, accent vs. dialect, natural gender vs. grammatical gender, first
language acquisition vs. second language acquisition/learning

Word-formation processes: affixation, compounding, conversion (zero-derivation), clipping, blending, back-

formation, abbreviation (initialisms and acronyms), commonization (eponymization), coinage (root creation)

Lexical/meaning/sense relations: synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, meronymy (partonymy), homonymy,

homophony, homography, polysemy

Thematic (semantic) roles: agent, theme, experiencer, instrument, recipient, location, source, goal

Historical linguistics: types of change in language (sound change (e.g. metathesis, epenthesis, prothesis),
grammatical change, lexical change, semantic change (e.g. broadening/widening, narrowing, meaning shift,
pejoration, amelioration)), stages in the history of English (Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English,
Modern (present-day) English)

Other basic terms (arranged alphabetically):

affix
agreement (in grammar)
allomorph
alphabetic writing
anaphora
base
bilingualism
borrowing
cant / argot
code-switching
cognate
coherence
cohesion
collocation
communicative competence
comparative reconstruction
compositionality (compositional semantics)
connotation
dead language
deixis (deictic expressions)
denotation
diglossia
epenthesis
eponym
ethnic dialect (ethnolect)
euphemism
grammatical gender
ideogram
idiolect
idiom
inference
infix
isogloss
jargon
language family
language planning
lexeme
lexicography
lexicon
loanword
loan translation (calque)
logogram
logographic writing
metaphor
metathesis
metonymy
morpheme
personification
phonographic writing
phrase-structure rule
pictogram
prefix
presupposition
proposition
prothesis
protolanguage
Proto-Indo-European
prototype
recursion
reduplication
reference
regionalism
register
regular sound correspondences
retronym
reversive
root
semantic broadening (widening/generalisation)
semantic narrowing
slang
sociolect (social dialect)
standard variety
stem
structural ambiguity
suffix
suppletion
synesthesia
transformational rule
utterance