terminology Flashcards
borrowing
taking words from other languages e.g. karaoke, pyjamas
affixation
addition of bound morphemes to an existing word e.g. eco-friendly, -micro-biology, laughable
compound
joining two words together e.g. laptop
blend
two words fusing to form one e.g. smog, motel
eponym
when a word is named after a person e.g. sandwich, hoover
initialism
a word made up of the first letters of a phrase, individually pronounced e.g. FBI, CBA
coinage/neologism
creation of new words
back-formation
the removal of a part of a word e.g. editor/edit
narrowing
when the meaning of a word becomes more specific
broadening
when a word takes on additional new meanings e.g. friend, mouse
amelioration
when the meaning of a word becomes more positive e.g. wicked
pejoration
when the meaning of a word becomes more negative e.g. bitch
euphamism
a way of describing something unpleasant or taboo in a more pleasant or less offensive manner e.g. down-sizing = sacking staff, passed away = died
semantic shift
when a word acquires a new meaning
functional conversion
changing of word class e.g. noun to verb ‘text’
diachronic change
study of language at two different times over time
syntactical parallelism
using the same verb clause in a sentence e.g. by example, by encouragement, and by holding..’
deontic modality
according to a set of rules or desires e.g. should, could
epistemic modality
according to evidence or reasoning
orthographical convention
a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalisation, word boundaries, emphasis, and punctuation.
graphological convention
the visual appearance of language. this includes the layout, font, use of colour, and anything else that affects the way we see words visually represented.
