Essential Linguistics Terms and Definitions

Essential Linguistics Terms

Phoneme

Phoneme: the smallest abstract unit of language. It is an idealized element used to distinguish words; phonemes have the ability to differentiate one word from another.

Sound

Sound: the actual realization of a phoneme. It is the specific way a speaker pronounces a phoneme or a single phonetic segment.

Accent

Accent: the force used to pronounce a syllable; the syllable that receives prominence is called the stressed syllable.

Intonation

Intonation: applies to the entire sentence. It is the melodic curve that expresses the utterance and the speaker's mood.

Morpheme (Monema)

Monema / Morpheme: the element that marks the first articulation of language. It is the smallest unit equipped with both a signifier and a signified.

Statement

Statement: a sequence composed of one or more words that acquires a complete meaning in a given situation.

Sentence

Sentence: a type of statement that contains at least one finite verb and establishes a relationship between subject and predicate.

Phrase

Phrase: a group of words that may not convey a complete sense on its own; phrases are typically parts of larger structures.

Pragmatics

Pragmatics: the study of language use in specific communicative situations.

Text Language

Language of text: the discipline that studies how statements combine to form a text and the links between those statements.

Signifier

Signifier: the sequence of phonemes or letters perceived by the listener or reader.

Meaning

Meaning: the mental image or concept associated with a particular signifier.

Semantics

Semantics: a set of associated words that belong to the same grammatical category and share aspects of meaning.

Denotation

Denotation: the objective or literal meaning of a word, independent of the speaker's attitudes or context.

Morphology

Morphology: the branch of linguistics responsible for the study of the word, its structure, the smallest units that compose it, its classes, and the mechanisms available in a language to create new words.

Noun

Noun:

• From the morphological standpoint: accepts morphemes of gender and number inflection.
• From the syntactic standpoint: serves as the core of the noun phrase.
• From the semantic standpoint: denotes a person, animal, object, or concept.

Specificative Adjective

Adjective (specified): accompanies the noun and selects within a group; it provides objective and evaluative information and usually follows the noun.

Determiner

Determiner: the word used to present, update, or clarify the meaning of the noun it accompanies.

Pronoun

Pronoun: the word used to replace a noun and thus avoid unnecessary repetition. Pronouns lack independent semantic content; their meaning and syntactic functions mirror those of the nouns they replace.

Verb

Verb: from the semantic point of view, the verb is the word class used to express actions, processes, or states with reference to a subject and in relation to time. Syntactically, verbs serve as the core of the predicate (verb phrase). Morphologically, verbs exhibit a wide range of inflectional variations.