TERM DEFINITION PAGE accent The way in which a speaker of a particular linguistic variety pronounces 17 words and the rules that govern these pronunciations acceptance The sub-process of standardization in which speakers (consciously or 41 subconsciously) agree to use the standard form and view it as prestigious acrolect A language variety used in a contact situation that is most similar to the 287 superstrate language acronyms An abbreviation formed from the initial components of some or all of the 138 words of a phrase, e.g., Absent WithOut Leave = AWOL affixes Morphemes added to the roots of words to create a change in meaning or 68 function, e.g., prefixes and suffixes African American A linguistic variety spoken in the US that developed out of the history, 144 English culture, and experiences of African Americans in North America age-grading The idea that speech correlates to the stage of life that speakers are in, such 128 as adolescence, irrespective of the time period they live in analytic See "isolating" 264 Anglicization The process by which words that English borrows from other languages 81 become more English-like, most often in terms of pronunciation Anglo Saxon The earliest form of the English language, also referred to as Old English, 10 which developed from the varieties of language brought to the British Isles by Germanic tribes that included the Angles, the Saxons, the Frisians, and the Jutes articulatory The study of the physiological processes in the production of speech sounds 4 phonetics aspectual A grammatical form that gives additional meaning to a verb, e.g., that an 155 markers action is ongoing or completed aspiration The articulation of a consonant with an added breath of air; in English, for 29 instance, stop consonants are typically aspirated when they appear word- initially assimilation A phonological process in which a speech sound adopts the characteristics 263 of a sound or sounds in its linguistic environment basilect A language variety used in a contact situation that is least similar to the 287 superstrate language bilingual Educational programs in which two languages are taught and used (to some 217 education degree) as the language of instruction call-and-response The verbal, often spontaneous, back-and-forth interaction between a 159 speaker and his/her audience calque A word created by literal translation from one language to another, e.g., 82 flamethrower is a calque of Flammenwerfer from German card/cord merger The merger of the low back vowel and the mid back vowel before /r/ in 114 minimal pairs such as barn/born, card/cord, and farm/form in some dialects of English, particularly associated with the speech of Utah and St. Louis careful style A style of relatively guarded speech elicited in sociolinguistic interviewing; in 123 Labov's New York City study, this was typically elicited in a follow-up to the fourth-floor question case The grammatical function of a noun that expresses its semantic relationship 69 to the other words in a given sentence, e.g., nominative, genitive, accusative

© 2014 Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa Business casual style A style of relatively unguarded speech elicited in sociolinguistic interviewing; 123 in Labov's New York City study, this was typically an informant's first response to the fourth-floor question circumlocution Refers to the use of several words when the idea could be conveyed more 284 clearly with fewer words, e.g., "on the brink of extinction" instead of "endangered" clipping A process whereby a word is shortened to form a new word, e.g., meds 114 from medications, doc from doctor code talkers Native speakers of Choctaw, Navajo, and other Native American languages 274 who used their languages to create indecipherable codes for the American armed forces in World Wars I and II codeswitching An alternation of two or more linguistic varieties by a speaker within a 220 conversation codification The sub-process of standardization in which individual features are 40 determined to be standard, producing minimal variation in form colonial lag The idea that colonial varieties of a language tend to be more conservative 88 and develop more slowly than those varieties used in the place of origin colonial leveling A process by which differences between language varieties used in the place 88 of origin are reduced or eliminated in colonial varieties complaint The common practice of disparaging language use, particularly with regard 44 tradition to variation and change compounding A word-formation process in which two or more words are joined together 85 to form a new word, e.g., book + worm = bookworm contact Systems that are formed out of linguistic necessity by speakers who do not 280 languages share a common language; such systems include pidgins, creoles, and mixed languages. content words Nouns, verbs, and adjectives that refer to objects, actions, and 283 characteristics copula In English, the verb "to be" and its inflected forms, including is, am, and are 154 cot-caught See "Low Back Merger" 105 merger creaky voice A type of speech created by the tightening of the vocal folds, often 132 producing a low pitch at the end of utterances creole A complex linguistic system with native speakers, which is created in a 280 language contact situation and typically develops from a pidgin creole continuum An approach to creoles that views varieties of these languages in terms of 287 their similarities to the superstrate language creolization A process whereby the linguistic system of a pidgin moves toward full 285 grammatical complexity as its range of uses and the needs of its speakers expand crowd-sourced A dictionary in which the entries are written and edited by the general 36 dictionary public danger-of-death A question used in the sociolinguistic interview, as created by Labov, which 125 question is meant to obtain the informant's most unguarded speech by asking them about a time in which they thought they might die deaf Referring to profound hearing loss or to individuals who are hard of hearing 302

© 2014 Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa Business Deaf Referring to a shared connection with a community, identity, and culture, 302 regardless of an individual's ability to hear deficit approach Analyzing speech in such a way as to suggest that the differences it has with 131 another variety show that it is lacking in sophistication or intelligence compared to that variety descriptive The rules of naturally occurring speech 24 grammar dialect A variety of language associated with a specific region or social group 17 dialectology The study of language variation, often with an emphasis on the influence of 95 geography on language difference Analyzing speech in such a way as to indicate that the differences are simply 132 approach differences rather than deficits that one variety has compared to another diglossic A language in which distinct varieties are reserved for specific social 246 language situations; for example, variety X is used in educational settings and variety Y is used in places of worship discourse A linguistic unit that is longer than a single sentence, such as a conversation 159 Don-Dawn See "Low Back Merger" 105 merger Ebonics Term, meaning "black sounds," which refers to the linguistic varieties 147 spoken in the African diaspora. Sometimes used as a synonym for African American English ejectives A class of voiceless consonants whose articulation includes closure of the 290 glottis elaboration The sub-process of standardization in which the use of the codified system is 40 extended to other social contexts, such as education or government, thus producing maximal variation in function English as a The use of English by non-native speakers, or courses in which English is 189 Second Language explicitly taught to non-native speakers ESL See "English as a Second Language" 189 etymology (The study of) the origins and development of words 34 euphemism Words or phrases that replace other words that are considered offensive or 19 as having unpleasant associations external factors Social factors that introduce or promote language change, such as 13 technological changes or the influence of speakers of other languages fingerspelling The manual representation of the letters of a written system incorporated 307 into signed language focus marker A morpheme that highlights new information that is being conveyed in an 131 utterance folk etymology A faulty inference that an unknown word has a certain meaning or history 81 based on its superficial similarity to a known word, e.g., garden snake from garter snake folk linguistics The study of non-expert views on language 49 free variation A phenomenon in which the alternation of two or more linguistic features in 121 the same environment does not contribute to a change in meaning function words Words that have little semantic content, used to meet the demands of 283 grammar; prepositions and conjunctions are two parts of speech that are

© 2014 Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa Business considered function words functional shift The conversion of a word from one part-of-speech to another without 130 explicit change in its form, e.g., the verb run and the noun run in the respective sentences "She will run in the marathon" and "She takes a run every morning." Morphological and syntactic characteristics of English allow for the productive use of functional shift, whereas in some other languages this word-formation process is uncommon. grammar The underlying structure of a linguistic system 23 grammatical A word or phrase that adheres to the structure, or grammar, of a linguistic 30 system grammatical A system of noun classes in which words are categorized as masculine, 8 gender feminine, and/or neuter. grammaticality The determination by native speakers as to whether a form is grammatical 31 judgment or ungrammatical Great Vowel Shift A change in the phonological system of the English language that began in 73 the late Middle English period and affected the majority of the vowels in the language group exclusive A feature that is used exclusively by one specific group of speakers 100 group A feature that is associated with a certain group or groups, despite its 100 preferential limited use by other speakers hedge A word or phrase used to qualify a statement, e.g., kind of, sort of 131 heritage Nondominant languages spoken in a community. In the US, this typically 211 languages refers to any language other than English heteronormative The view that heterosexuality is normal, while other sexual orientations are 135 viewed as abnormal or dispreffered high-density A social network in which members of the network tend to know a large 125 network number of other members of the group home signs Manual signing systems created for communication among family and 314 friends homophones Words that sound the same but have different meanings 5 hypercorrection The over-application of a perceived linguistic rule in order to sound 124 "correct" or more sophisticated idiolect The linguistic system of an individual person 18 imperfective A verbal form that expresses that the action has not been completed 157 infixing The affixation of a morpheme into the middle of the root rather than at the 265 beginning or ending. In English, this process is generally reserved for emphasis, as in abso-friggin-lutely, while in some other languages, infixing has a wide range of functions. inflectional A class of morphemes used to change grammatical (as opposed to semantic) 68 properties of a word, such as those referring to number, tense, gender internal factors Linguistic processes within a language itself that lead to language change, 11 such as analogy or ease of articulation International A written system in which each symbol represents an individual speech 5 Phonetic sound in the world's languages Alphabet

© 2014 Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa Business IPA See "International Phonetic Alphabet" 5 Isleños Inhabitants of the Canary Islands, some of whom have immigrated to the 218 United States, particularly Louisiana isogloss A line on a map indicating differences in the geographic distributions of a 100 linguistic feature, namely, that a feature tends to be used on one side of the line and not the other isogloss bundle An area in which several isoglosses align and, in doing so, suggest regional 100 dialects isolating A morphological type in which words do not typically take inflectional 264 affixes, but rather, there tends to be a one-to-one relationship between morphemes and words. Chinese is the best example of a language that is considered isolating jargon The specialized terminology associated with a specific field of work or study 137 kinship A set of terms that speakers of a language use to refer to family members 268 terminology language An open, arbitrary, and conventional system of sounds used for 3 communication within a linguistic community language An governmental body that oversees policy on language and language use 170 academy language The thoughts, beliefs, and perceptions held about language and language 45 attitudes use language contact Interaction between speakers of different linguistic systems, which often 13 leads to linguistic borrowing and sometimes even results in new languages language The continued use of a minority language by an individual or group or the 197 maintenance support of such use language maven A person who claims to be an authority on language, often by taking a 33 prescriptive view of grammar language The prejudgment of an individual or group based solely or primarily on 61 prejudice language language An attempt to reverse language decline or revive an extinct language, 228 revitalization typically through the efforts of heritage speakers, linguists, and/or government institutions language shift The transition from one language to another, often occurring in the 195 direction of a minority language to that of the dominant group lexicographer A writer of or contributor to a dictionary 34 lexicon The vocabulary of a linguistic system, or a person's own mental dictionary 5 lexifier See "superstrate" 282 lingua franca A language adopted for use by groups of speakers who do not have the 261 same native languages linguistic The negative, unjust treatment of an individual or group based on language 61 discrimination linguistic drift A phenomenon in which a variety of language diverges from other varieties 232 of that language due to the isolation of its speakers linguistic features Individual elements of a language, such as a word, phoneme, or morpheme 4 linguistic The belief that one's own language is incorrect and/or stigmatized 60 insecurity

© 2014 Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa Business linguistic profiling The determination and assessment of the characteristics of a person or 61 group based solely or primarily on language linguistic security The belief that one's own language is correct and/or prestigious 60 linguistic variable The option of two or more linguistic features that result in the same 122 meaning linguistics The scientific study of language 4 Low Back merger The merger of the low back vowel and the mid back vowel in some dialects 105 of English, esp. Midland and Western American English low-density A social network in which members are linked to only a limited number of 126 network members; at its most extreme, members of a low-density network are linked to only the central member of the network and not to other members matched-guise A technique for studying language attitudes in which listeners judge 48 test different voices without knowing that they actually belong to a single multilingual speaker melting pot A metaphor used to characterize linguistic and cultural assimilation in the 188 United States mental map The personal perception and categorization of geographic space, which is 49 generally informed by other, non-linguistic information, such as perceived quality of life mesolect Language variety that resides on the creole continuum between the basilect 287 and the acrolect in terms of its similarity to the superstrate language metalinguistic One's conscious understanding of language and how it works, and the 49 knowledge comments that reveal or reflect this understanding metathesis A phonological process in which two sounds are transposed, e.g., 159 prescription as perscription minimal pair A pair of words that differ in meaning even though they only differ by a 122 single phoneme, which shows that both phonemes are distinct in the language; e.g., in English bake and wake are a minimal pair mixed language A language formed through the fusion of two source languages, a North 296 American example being Michif, which was formed from Cree and French Mock Spanish A phenomenon by which Spanish words and phrases are appropriated by 222 non-Spanish speakers, often intended for humorous effect morpheme The smallest unit of meaning or grammatical function in a language 4 morphology (The study of) word formation in languages 4 multifunctionalit Referring to a word that has more than one syntactic function; e.g., like 284 y serves many functions in English, including as a preposition, a quotative, and a hedge multilingualism The use of more than one language 187 multiplex tie A link between members of a social network who know each other in 126 multiple ways, e.g., they might be members of the same family, roommates at college, and teammates on a bowling team New Mexican A variety of Spanish used in New Mexico that has several commonalities 218 Spanish with European Spanish not shared by New World Spanishes nonce word A word that is made up for a specific occasion, such as showing how a 8 morphological rule works Northern Cities A process affecting the vowel system of American English associated with 104

© 2014 Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa Business Shift the speech of northern cities such as Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago null copula The absence of an overt form of the verb "to be" within a sentence. The null 154 copula construction is grammatical in several languages as well as in some varieties of English. observer's A paradox that emerges when a field worker tries to get the most natural 125 paradox linguistic data from an informant by closely observing his or her speech in unnatural, controlled environments orthographies Writing systems, e.g. alphabets or syllabaries 5 partial A process in which part of an original word is copied and added to itself to 266 reduplication form a new word or phrase, as in hocus pocus, mumbo jumbo, chit-chat, roly-poly perceptual The study of attitudes towards language variation associated with region 49 dialectology perfective A verbal form that expresses that the action has been completed 157 phonetics The study of speech sounds 4 phonology (The study of) sound systems of languages 4 pidgin A linguistic system, with a simplified vocabulary and grammar, created to 280 meet the needs of speakers who otherwise do not share a common language pile sort method Research technique used to study folk categorization that requires 53 respondents to group labeled cards based on perceived similarity pin-pen merger The merger of the high front lax vowel and the mid front lax vowel, esp. in 105 Southern American English polysemy Referring to a word with multiple related meanings; e.g., head as the part of 284 the body, the top position in a company, or the foam on a beer polysynthetic A type of synthetic language in which a single word, because of its multiple 264 bound morphemes, expresses the amount of semantic and grammatical information that would be expressed in a full sentence in non-polysynthetic languages (such as English). Many Native American languages are considered to be polysynthetic languages. post-vocalic The sound preceded by the articulation of a vowel 31 pragmatics (The study of) meaning in context 4 prescriptive The rules applied to language that dictate a formal, standardized usage 24 grammar propredicate do A syntactic construction in which a form of do is used, as in "I can do" as 114 opposed to "I can." The construction is associated more with British English than American English. quotative A word or phrase used to introduce a quotation, e.g., said, goes, like 129 rapport style A conversational style that prioritizes language as a way of establishing 132 empathy reanalysis An internal factor of language change in which a surface form is 12 misinterpreted as the product of a known rule, such as pease (singular) being misinterpreted as singular pea + plural -s Received The standard or most regionally neutral form of pronouncing British English 40 Pronunciation

© 2014 Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa Business reclaimed epithet A term used as a pejorative term for members of a social group, who in turn 136 adopt the term and self-apply it as a show of solidarity reduplication A process in which part or all of an original word is copied and added to 266 itself to create a new word or phrase report style A conversational style that prioritizes language as a means for conveying 132 information to others selection The sub-process of standardization in which a linguistic variety (or varieties) 40 is chosen as the basis for the standard form semantics (The study of) meaning in language 4 serial verb The use of two or more verbs in a sentence to indicate an action that could 286 construction be described by a single verb in another language sheltered English An educational program in which English learners are placed into courses 217 immersion where they learn academic material, such as math and history, while also receiving additional ESL instruction shibboleth A linguistic feature that can be used to distinguish members of specific 17 social groups slang A constantly changing vocabulary comprising words and phrases that are 129 considered informal and that are often associated with particular sets of speakers sociolinguistics The study of the intersection of society and language 120 solidarity A connection to a local community and the traits that represent this 48 connection/are valued as a part of community membership, such as trustworthiness or friendliness. source language A language that contributes to the development of a pidgin or creole 281 Southern Shift A process affecting the vowel system of Southern American English, which 105 includes the pin-pen merger and other vowel movements standard The belief that only a standard form of a language is the correct, valid form 39 language and, thus, that all other forms are incorrect or invalid ideology standardization The process of setting a language into a singular, non-varying form 37 stative A verb form that expresses a static state or condition instead of an action, 154 such as in the sentence, "I am tall." status (As applied to language attitude studies,) social standing with regard to 48 traits that are valued by wider community, such as intelligence or "correctness" in language substrate The language(s) of the socially dominated speakers in a language contact 282 situation superstrate The language of the socially dominant speakers in a language contact 282 situation syllabary A writing system in which individual symbols are used to represent syllables 276 rather than individual sounds syntax (The study of) phrase structure in language 4 synthetic A morphological type in which morphemes can be liberally added to roots to 264 form new words. taboo language Language that is banned from use or faces heavy stigma in certain social 19 situations

© 2014 Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa Business The Dozens A language game that includes ritual insults to show oral dexterity and quick 160 thinking; also called Snaps TMA markers Morphemes used with verbs to express distinctions in the tense, mood, 286 and/or aspect of an utterance topicalization A movement of the object of a declarative sentence to the initial position of 308 a sentence that is usually filled by the subject, e.g., "Linguistics I like." total A process in which all of an original word is copied and added to itself to 266 reduplication form a new word or phrase, as in mama, papa, yoyo, something something ungrammatical A word or phrase that adheres to the structure, or grammar, of a linguistic 30 system uniplex tie A link between members of a social network who know each other in only 125 one capacity, e.g., as high school classmates or as colleagues in the workplace, but not both uptalk The use of rising intonation at the end of declarative statements 133 village signs Manual signs developed in small communities as a local communication 302 system vocal fry See "creaky voice" 132 vowel mergers A phonological process by which a distinction between two or more vowels 104 are lost vowel shifts A systematic change by which the pronunciation of vowels in a language or 104 dialect are altered Yat dialect A variety of English used by some speakers in the Greater New Orleans area 109

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