tone - (linguistics) a pitch or change in pitch of the voice that serves to distinguish words in tonal languages; "the Beijing dialect uses four tones"

complementary distribution, complementation - (linguistics) a distribution of related speech sounds or forms in such a way that they only appear in different contexts

science, scientific discipline - a particular branch of scientific knowledge; "the science of genetics"

cognitive science - the field of science concerned with cognition; includes parts of cognitive psychology and linguistics and computer science and cognitive neuroscience and philosophy of mind

computational linguistics - the use of computers for linguistic research and applications

dialect geography, linguistic geography - the study of the geographical distribution of linguistic features

etymology - the study of the sources and development of words

historical linguistics - the study of linguistic change

lexicology - the branch of linguistics that studies the lexical component of language

neurolinguistics - the branch of linguistics that studies the relation between language and the structure and function of the nervous system

pragmatics - the study of language use

semantics - the study of language meaning

sociolinguistics - the study of language in relation to its sociocultural context

structural linguistics, structuralism - linguistics defined as the analysis of formal structures in a text or discourse

descriptive linguistics, synchronic linguistics - an explanation of a person's mastery of their native language

derivative - (linguistics) a word that is derived from another word; "`electricity' is a derivative of `electric'"

descriptor, form, signifier, word form - the phonological or orthographic sound or appearance of a word that can be used to describe or identify something; "the inflected forms of a word can be represented by a stem and a list of inflections to be attached"

root word, stem, root, theme, radical, base - (linguistics) the form of a word after all affixes are removed; "thematic vowels are part of the stem"

participant role, semantic role - an entity realized by a noun or noun phrase in a clause or sentence

postposition - (linguistics) the placing of one linguistic element after another (as placing a modifier after the word that it modifies in a sentence or placing an affix after the base to which it is attached)

preposition - (linguistics) the placing of one linguistic element before another (as placing a modifier before the word it modifies in a sentence or placing an affix before the base to which it is attached)

topicalization - (linguistics) emphasis placed on the topic or focus of a sentence by preposing it to the beginning of the sentence; placing the topic at the beginning of the sentence is typical for English; "`Those girls, they giggle when they see me' and `Cigarettes, you couldn't pay me to smoke them' are examples of topicalization"

morphophoneme - (linguistics) the phonemes (or strings of phonemes) that constitute the various allomorphs of a morpheme

phoneme - (linguistics) one of a small set of speech sounds that are distinguished by the speakers of a particular language

allophone - (linguistics) any of various acoustically different forms of the same phoneme

linguistic rule, rule - (linguistics) a rule describing (or prescribing) a linguistic practice

sign - a fundamental linguistic unit linking a signifier to that which is signified; "The bond between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary"--de Saussure

phylum - (linguistics) a large group of languages that are historically related

aphaeresis, apheresis - (linguistics) omission at the beginning of a word as in `coon' for `raccoon' or `till' for `until'

linguistic process - a process involved in human language

voice - (linguistics) the grammatical relation (active or passive) of the grammatical subject of a verb to the action that the verb denotes

etymologise, etymologize - construct the history of words

topicalize - emphasize by putting have stress on or by moving to the front of the sentence; "Speakers topicalize more often than they realize"; "The object of the sentence is topicalized in what linguists call `Yiddish Movement'"

geminate, reduplicate - form by reduplication; "The consonant reduplicates after a short vowel"; "The morpheme can be reduplicated to emphasize the meaning of the word"

arts, humanistic discipline, humanities, liberal arts - studies intended to provide general knowledge and intellectual skills (rather than occupational or professional skills); "the college of arts and sciences"