Definitions
Syntax
Part of grammar, the word order.
Borrowing
Loan words; use of prefixes and suffixes.
Broadening
The process by which a word expands from its original meaning and becomes more general.
Prescriptivism
Language should have a set of rules that must be obeyed in speech and writing. Perceived superiority of one variety over another.
Who created the Functional Theory?
Michael Halliday
Lexis
The words of a language.
Telescoping
Acronyms, compounding, blending, clipping, coalescence, and backformation.
Narrowing
The process by which a word takes on a more restricted meaning.
Descriptivism
No use of language is incorrect. Variation should be acknowledged and recorded rather than corrected.
Who created the Cultural Transmission Theory?
Bandura (1977)
Mackintosh (1983)
Hartl and Clark (1997)
Orthography
The letters and spelling.
Backformation
Word created from longer existing words (phone from telephone.)
Amelioration
The process by which the meaning of a word changes to become more positive.
Corpus
A collection of language texts which provide a representative sample of the language of a time in the past.
Who created the Random Fluctuation Theory?
Charles Hockett
Morphology
The structure, the building blocks of words
Forming a new word from and existing word, often by adding a prefix or suffix (happy-happiness.)
Prejoration
The process by which the meaning of a word changes to become more negative.
Word Sketch
Assessed from a corpus, shows the functions and usage of a word or a phrase in a concise form.
Who created the wave model?
Johannes Schmidt
Etymology
Acronymisation
Initial letters of a series of words which are together said as a word.
Semantic process
The process of understanding and interpreting the meaning of words, phrases, and concepts.
Collocation
Shows frequent pairing of words.
Who created the S-Curve model?
Chen