Narrow scope
SEMANTICS: an operator O has narrow scope with respect to an operator
O' if O occurs in the subformula which corresponds to the scope of O':
(i) ... O' [ ... O [ .... ] ... ]The operator O' is then said to have wide scope with respect to O or to have scope over O. EXAMPLE: the existential quantifier ThereIs(y) in (ii) has narrow scope with respect to the universal quantifier All(x), but wide scope with respect to negation Neg:
(ii) All(x) [ P(x) -> ThereIs(y) [ Neg R(x,y) ]]LIT. Gamut (1991).
Nasal
PHONOLOGY: a °feature which
characterizes sounds that are produced by lowering the soft palate (=velum),
allowing the air to escape through the nose.
EXAMPLE: English [m], [n] and [h] are nasal (cf. bang).
Nasalization
PHONOLOGY: an °assimilation
process in which an oral segment acquires nasality from a neighbouring segment,
as the vowel in French bon is pronounced as [b~].
Natural Morphology
MORPHOLOGY: a theoretical model developed by morphologists such as
Dressler and Wurzel. They seek to provide a theory of what constitutes a
'natural' or 'unmarked' morphological system, and what laws govern deviations
from that natural system. The most natural type of morphology is fully
transparent, in the sense that every morpheme has one form and one meaning,
and every meaning corresponds to exactly one form. This relation is called
°biuniqueness.
LIT.
Dressler (1985a,
1985b).
N-bar deletion
SYNTAX: phenomenon of a NP without an overt
°head but with either a numeral specifier
(i) or a possessive pronoun (ii).
(i) John has [NP three [N' e]] (ii) These books must be [NP hers [N' e]]If the N' is an °empty category, as indicated in (i) and (ii), it poses a problem for the formulation of the °ECP, which it appears to violate. Alternatively, these NPs may in fact be °DPs without NP complement.
Necessary truth
SEMANTICS: a sentence which is true by virtue of its logical structure.
EXAMPLE: sentence (i) is necessarily true due to the meaning of the
°logical constants every,
or, independently of the words raven and black:
(i) Every raven is black or not blackSentence (i) is also called a °tautology. All sentences that are not necessarily true are °contingently true. See also °analytic truth.
Negation
SEMANTICS: the logical operation in
°propositional logic which turns
the truth value of a proposition into its opposite. Proposition Neg phi is true
if and only if phi is not true:
(i) phi Neg phi 1 0 0 1The negation operator Neg is a unary °connective. In syllogistic logic, negation can be an operator on terms. Thus in nobody is ill, the term nobody is considered the negation of somebody.
Negative polarity item
SEMANTICS: expression which needs to be in the scope of a negation
(or more generally: a monotone decreasing element).
EXAMPLE: if the sentence I don't need anybody has the
negation taken out, we don't get *I need anybody but I need
somebody. Therefore, the part any is taken to be a negative
polarity item. Because the negation of I need somebody is not I
don't need somebody, the part some is considered to be a positive
polarity item: it resists the presence of a negation (or its equivalent).
LIT.
Ladusaw (1980).
Neutralization
PHONOLOGY: °absolute
and °contextual neutralization
No Vacuous Application Principle
(NVAP)
MORPHOLOGY: principle proposed in Marantz (1984) which states that
an affix marked with a given feature value cannot attach to a stem bearing the
same feature value. Marantz assumes that affixes are lexical items which have
subcategorization frames indicating the category to which they attach, as well
as other inherent features.
EXAMPLE: he assumes that the English passive affix -en has
the lexical entry (i):
(i) -en: ]V ___, [-logical subject] [-transitive]As a consequence of the NVAP, this affix may only be attached to stems bearing the features [+logical subject] [+transitive]. Amongst other things this will automatically prevent -en from attaching to °unaccusative verbs or to passive participles, since they are [-transitive] (= cannot take a direct object) and [-logical subject] (= do not assign a semantic role to an external argument).
Node (Terminal, Non-terminal, Branching, Non-branching)
°Tree structure.
Nominalization
SYNTAX: nominal form (ii) corresponding to a verbal expression
(i) Hannibal [VP destroyed the city] (ii) [NP Hannibal's [N' destruction of the city]]In examples like (ii), the nominalization preserves the °argument structure of the corresponding verb, but the way in which the arguments are realized differs. The subject gets a genitive -'s- marking, and the object must be accompanied by the preposition of.
Non-argument
SYNTAX: an NP in °A-position,
which is not a °referential
expression and is not assigned a
°theta-role.
EXAMPLE: existential there in (i) and
°expletive it in (ii) are
non-arguments.
(i) There is a man in the garden (ii) It is certain that John will win°Idiom chunks such as too much in too much has been made of this problem are also considered non-arguments.
Non-argument position
°A-position.
Nonconcatenative morphology
MORPHOLOGY: a term which is used for non-agglutinative root-and-pattern
morphologies. In such systems, word formation processes generally do not take
the form of linear affixation.
EXAMPLE: in Arabic words are commonly formed on the basis of a
triliteral root, i.e. a set of three consonants, between which sets of vowels
are intercalated. This set of vowels sometimes itself signifies a grammatical
category such as 'perfective active'. Furthermore, the structure of words
within a single class (or binyan) is identical, in the sense that they have
the same °prosodic template.
Compare the following stems which are formed on the basis of the root
ktb 'write', and a particular set of vowels:
binyan Pref.Act. Perf.Pass. Impf.Act. Impf.Pass I katab kutib aktub uktab II kattab kuttib u-kattib u-kattab III kaatab kuutib u-kaatib u-kaatab IV ?-aktab ?-uktib u-?-aktib u-?-aktab V ta-kattab tu-kuttib a-ta-kattab u-ta-kattabMcCarthy (1979, 1981) has convincingly shown that nonconcatenative systems can best be accounted for within the framework of °Autosegmental Phonology/Morphology. Words such as katab and kutib consist of three morphemes which are represented at autonomous levels or tiers, viz. the root ktb, the perfective active morpheme a and the perfective passive morpheme u-i, respectively, and the binyan I template CVCVC. These words differ from kattab and kuttib in that the latter take the binyan II template CVCCVC.
Non-configurational language
Language which has very few or no word order restrictions. See
°configurational language
and °scrambling.
Non-factive predicate
See °factive predicate.
Non-linear morphology
MORPHOLOGY: a term which is used for theoretical frameworks in
which the morphemes that make up a derived word are each represented at
an independent, autonomous level of representation. These levels of
representation are called (morphological) tiers or (morphological) planes.
McCarthy (1979, 1981) has shown that this framework provides the necessary
machinery to account for the intricate
°non-concatenative
root-and-pattern morphologies such as Arabic. Furthermore, Marantz (1982)
has shown that this framework is able to solve the long-standing problem of
reduplication. Other terms used for this framework are
°Autosegmental Phonology/Morphology and
°Multilinear Phonology/Morphology.
LIT.
McCarthy (1979,
1981),
Marantz (1982),
McCarthy & Prince (1986,
1990),
Goldsmith (1990),
Spencer (1991).
Nonreferential noun phrase
°Referential noun phrase.
Nonrestrictive relative (clause)
°Restrictive relative
clause.
Nonspecific reading
°Specific reading.
No-Phrase Constraint
MORPHOLOGY: constraint proposed by Botha (1983) which says that
°root compounds may not contain
syntactic phrases. This constraint accounts for the unacceptability of compounds
such as *black-as-coal bird and *slightly-used-car salesman.
However, there are many counterexamples, the first one being the constraint
itself. Other counterexamples are car-of-the-month election and (the)
why-does-it-always-happen-to-me complaint. Compounds having the structure
[XP + N] are fully productive in Dutch: oudemannenhuis 'old men's home',
onderwatergedeelte 'submerged part' (Lit. 'under water part'), and
God-is-dood-these 'God-is-dead thesis'.
LIT.
Botha (1983),
Hoeksema (1986),
Lieber (1988).
Noun (N)
One of the major °lexical categories.
°Head of a Noun Phrase (NP).
Noun Incorporation
°Incorporation.
NP-movement
SYNTAX: movement of an NP into an
°A-position. Such movement occurs in
°passive constructions and
°Raising to Subject constructions,
and arguably in constructions with
°ergative verbs. The trace of
NP-movement is an °NP-trace.
NP-trace
SYNTAX: °trace of
°NP-movement. An NP-trace is in a
°Theta-position without
°Case. NP-traces are anaphors, hence obey
°condition A of the
°binding theory.
Nucleus
PHONOLOGY: the core of a
°syllable consisting of vocalic material.
It is the only obligatory part of a syllable and can be preceded and/or followed
by one or more consonants. The term nucleus also refers to the constituent that
dominates [+°sonorant] segments.
Null affixation
MORPHOLOGY: a process by which new words are formed by adding an
affix which happens to be phonologically null. Many linguists (e.g.
Bloomfield (1933),
Kiparsky (1982)) account for
°conversion by assuming that a null affix
is added to a base.
EXAMPLE: they account for verbs such as to clean, to thin, to slow,
to warm etc. by assuming that these have the structure [[...]A 0]V.
Null Case
SYNTAX: Case assigned to subject by infinitival inflection. This Case
is only realized by PRO.
LIT.
Chomsky & Lasnik (1993).
Null Morpheme
MORPHOLOGY: Morpheme involved in
°null-affixation. Other terms for
null morpheme are zero morpheme and ghost morpheme.
Number
SYNTAX: one of the °phi-features
which may be involved in °agreement. The
most common number features are +/- plural and +/- singular.
Number-theoretic tree
°Tree of numbers.