Ch.1
Creativity: The characteristic of language which makes it possible for us to produce and
understand utterances we have never heard or produced before.
Arbitrariness: The characteristic of language such that there is no natural relation between
words and what it stands for.
Syntax: The study of how words go together to form sentences.
Anomalous sentence: A meaningless sequence of words which deviates from the rules for
sentence formation.
Paraphrase: An alternative way of expressing the content of a sentence
Synonym: A word that is equivalent in sense to another word (in a particular context or
contexts).
Contradiction: The relation between two propositions such that if one is true, the other must be
false
Antonym: A word that is opposite in meaning to another word.
Ambiguity: The condition whereby any linguistic form has two or more interpretations
Presupposition: The information that must be assumed in order for a sentence to be
meaningful.
Grammar: The rules by which a language operates, and therefore the implicit knowledge that
speakers of that language have which makes them competent to use the language; also, an
account of the rules.
Ch.2
Utterance: A stretch of speech by one person; it may consist of a single word, a single
sentence, or numerous sentences.
Sentence: A grammatical construction that is complete in itself.
Linguistic meaning: The meaning conveyed by linguistic forms, as distinct from meanings
conveyed by the circumstances of an utterance, which is speaker meaning.
Discourse: A continuous stretch of spoken or written language, consisting of at least one
sentence and usually more than one.
Implicature: A meaning derived not from what is said but deduced from the necessary way of
interpreting what is said.
Ch.3
Lexeme: A minimal form that conveys one meaning and can be used in reference or predication
Function: The role played by a word in a sentence.
Morpheme: The smallest contrastive unit of meaning.
Reference: The relation between a language form and some physical entity, which is the
referent of that sign
Denotation: The objective relationship between a linguistic form and its referent.
Connotation: The personal associations produced by words.
Sense relations: The relations of meaning between words, as expressed in synonymy,
hyponymy, antonymy, etc.
Syntagmatic: The relation of words to one another when they form a construction.
Paradigmatic: The relation of items that can substitute for one another at the same place in a
sentence.
Lexicon: The vocabulary of a language, together with information about the pronunciation, use,
and meaning of each item in it.
Homonyms: Words with the same pronunciation but different meanings
Prospective verb: A verb that expresses some action or attitude oriented toward a later time
Ch.4
Proposition: The meaning of any sentence that is asserted to be true or false.
Focus: Special attention to one element in a sentence, in speech focus it is often accomplished
through accent.
Tense: The expression of time in a verb; in English a verb has two tenses, present (play) and
past (played).
Aspect: The expression of some temporal characteristic of a predicate; includes ingressive,
durative, egressive, prospective, and retrospective.
Modality: The expression of necessity, possibility and probability, often through modal verbs.
Subject: The noun phrase about which something is stated.
Object: The noun phrase that names the entity which receives the action of the verb
Complement: Any form that follows a predicate and completes its meaning:
Valency: The number of arguments (noun phrases) that a predicate may have in one sentence.
Weather predicate: An adjective like rainy or a verb such as snow which occurs with the
empty subject it.
Actor: the role of an argument that performs some action without affecting any other entity.
Affected: the role of an argument that undergoes a change due to some event or is affected by
some other entity
Affecting: the role of an argument that, without any action, affects another entity.
Agent: the role of an argument that by its action affects some other entity.
Associate: the role of an argument that tells the status or identity of another argument, the
theme.
Effect: the role of an argument that comes into existence through the action of the predicate
occur.
Place: the role of an argument that names the location in which the action of the predicate
occurs.
Theme: the role of an argument that is the topic of a predicate that does not express actionstative predicate.
Stative verb: A verb that expresses some state of affairs, rather than an action or event.
Ch.5
Semantic field: A group of lexemes that are defined with respect to one another: kinship,
colors, etc
Hyponym: A word whose referent is included in the referent of a more general word, called the
superordinate.
Co-hyponyms: Two or more lexemes that have the same superordinate.
Collective noun: A noun that refers to a group of entities.
Binary antonyms: Two lexemes such that, if used as predicate for the same subject, only one
can be true: dead, alive.
Non-binary antonyms: Two lexemes that have opposite meanings but for which there are
intermediate degrees of the same quality: hot and cold.
Converse antonyms: Two lexemes so related that either one presupposes the other.
Goal: The role that expresses what is affected by the action of a predicate
Reciprocal: A relationship that can be expressed by each other or one another.
Ch.8
Statement: A sentence that tells something
Gerund: The form of a verb ending in -ing used as (part of) a noun phrase.
Infinitive: A non-finite form of a verb; in English often, but not always, consisting of to+the
verb
Perceptual predicate: A verb that expresses the activity of any of the five senses.