tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jun 10 08:35:05 1998

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RE: Online Lexicon of Linguistic Terminology



: > I've found a useful online glossary of linguistic terms.  It will no doubt
: > help some of us here to understand the discussions when they get too
: > technical for the layman.  The BGs may want to bookmark this.
: >     http://helpdesk.rus.uni-stuttgart.de/~rustless/ling/
: >
: > Voragh
: 
: The Summer Institute of Linguistics maintains a more general glossary of
: linguistic terms.  http://gopher.sil.org/glossary/
: 
: --Holtej

I just had a look.  A MUCH better site for us than the one I stumbled upon!
Simple, clear descriptions with English examples, lots of hot-linked cross
references and even bibliographical citations to the linguistic literature.  

We should add this helpful URL to the FAQ.  Just a quick glance showed me
that what I had been calling an "indefinite", "vague" or "non-explicit"
subject WRT to the discussion of {SIS} ("it's raining, pluit, es regnet",
etc.) is properly called a "dummy word": 

    A dummy word is a grammatical unit that has no meaning, but completes a
    sentence to make it grammatical.  

    Here are some examples of dummy words:
      *It* is raining.
      *Does* he know?

And whaddaya know... "It is raining" is listed as an example!
 
Voragh
 
_____________________________________________________________________
Steven Boozer   University of Chicago Library   [email protected]



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