Glossary of Linguistic Terms

phonetics The study of speech sounds. See further “Note on Phonetic Symbols and Orthography.”
phonology The study of phonemes and other characteristics of the systems of speech sounds in individual languages.
pidgin A language variety developed usu. in a trade colony as a language of communication for European traders and the local populations. Pidgins typically have a reduced linguistic structure at fi rst but may gain complexity both in grammar and vocabulary as they are used by generations of speakers as vernaculars: e.g., Tok Pisin, Nigerian Pidgin English. plosive See stop. plural See number.
possessive A grammatical form for indicating possession: <’s> is a possessive ending for nouns (e.g., cat’s paw); possessive adjectives include my, their, etc. and possessive pronouns include mine, theirs, etc. See also genitive under case.
pragmatic Pertains to meaning yielded at various levels of usage or in the context of utterances. Pragmatics is the study of such meaning.
predicate See clause element.
prefi x See affi x. present See tense.
Present-Day English (PDE) See periodization.
prestige Pertaining to a language, dialect, or form that is considered to have greater social value than others: e.g., in much of the ME period, French was a prestige language in England; in the late ME period, the London variety of English became a prestige dialect. preterit See tense. progressive See aspect.
prosody 1. In the study of poetry, it concerns meter and other techniques of versifi cation. 2. In the study of spoken sounds, it concerns intonation, pitch, stress, rhythm, etc.
protolanguage An unrecorded or unattested language from which a group of historically attested languages have presumably derived. Hence all Indo-European languages are supposed to share Proto-Indo-European as parent language. Likewise, ProtoGermanic is the presumed ancestor of all Germanic languages.