Glossary of Linguistic Terms

participle See conjugation. part of speech See word class. passive See voice, grammatical. past See tense.
PDE = Present-Day English. See periodization. perfect See aspect.
periodization The history of English is conventionally divided into three periods. Old English (OE) spans beginnings through the Norman Conquest and the few subsequent decades. The term Anglo-Saxon may be used for Old English to underline its connection with the Germanic languages of the Continent. The second period is Middle English (ME), which ends in the late fi fteenth century. ME is often divided into Early and Late Middle English, though without a clear dividing point. The third period is Modern English (ModE). Early Modern English corresponds roughly with the Renaissance period. Contemporary English may be called Present-Day English (PDE), although there is no consensus as to when it begins.
periphrasis The use of one or more additional words rather than infl ections to express grammatical information: e.g., more gentle as opposed to gentler. Some periphrastic constructions include auxiliaries: e.g., progressive (they are running), perfect (we have moved), and the auxiliary do (do not ask as opposed to the older construction ask not).
person A grammatical category which subdivides into three parts: fi rst person (I and we) referring to the speaker(s); second person (you) referring to the addressee(s); and third person (he, she, it, and they) referring to one or more individuals who are neither the speaker(s) nor the addressee(s).
philology The study of language in its cultural and social contexts. May refer specifi cally to the study of historical languages before the rise of modern linguistics in the early twentieth century.
phoneme The smallest unit of sound to make a semantic distinction in a given language: e.g., the words top and tap are distinguished by the phonemes /ɑ/ and /æ/. See further “Note on Phonetic Symbols and Orthography.” An allophone is a variant of a phoneme: e.g., the sound [v] was an allophone of /f/ in Old English; hence [væt] would have been a variant pronunciation of fæt (‘vessel’). The phonemicization of [v] and several other consonants took place in Middle English.