Glossary - P
Palatal - sound made with the tongue touching the palate,
the tissue just behind the alveolar ridge
[j]
Palate - soft and hard the tissue between the alveolar ridge and the velum, the ‘roof of the mouth’. just behind the alveolar ridge is the hard palate, further to the back is the soft palate
Performative - the action that the sentence describes
is performed by the sentence itself.
‘I nominate you to be the leader’
‘I sentence you to
5 years imprisonment’
‘Ik benoem jou tot leider’
‘Ik veroordeel u tot 5 jaar
gevangenisstraf’
Perlocutionary act speech - act that has an effect on those who hear it threatening, or frightening, etc.
Person and number - person has to do with someone’s
role in a conversation. speaker is 1st person (I, we), addressee is 2nd
(you) person and the 3rd person (he/she, they) is neither
(number is normally
singular or plural)
Person deixis - reference to speaker, addressee or people who are neither speaker nor addressee (reference to 1st, 2nd or 3rd person)
Phrase - grammatical unit smaller than a clause, usually built around a word from one of the 5 major word types Noun Phrase, Verb Phrase, etc.
Phoneme - smallest unit of sound that can change the
meaning of spoken words
/t/ and /p/ are phonemes of English, because ‘tin’ and ‘pin’ mean
something else they are also phonemes of Dutch, ‘tot’ (until)
and ‘pot’ (pot) mean something else
Phonetics - the study of the production and reception of speech sounds
Phonetic realisation - different ways of pronouncing
a single phoneme, dependent on its phonetic environment
In English, the
phoneme /p/ is pronounced [p] in ‘spin’ but
[p h] in ‘pin’
In Dutch, /n/ is pronounced /n/ in ‘anders’ but
/ɳ/
in ‘ankers’
Phonetic transcription - transcription of speech sounds. each speech sound has its separate symbol
Phonology - the study of sound patterns in languages
Phonological feature - see Distinctive feature
Place deixis - linguistic pointing to a location, relative
to the location of participant in a conversation (speaker or listener)
‘here’, ‘there’, ‘that
way’, etc.
‘hier’, ‘daar’, ‘die
kant op’,
enz.
Plosive - a consonant where a sudden release of air
follows a full obstruction of the air flow
[p], [t], [k], [b], [d] etc.
Polyseme - the use of one word in different situation,
generalising its meaning
‘the mouth of a river’ ‘the
mouth of a bottle’
‘de voet van een berg’ ‘de
voet van een mens’
Pragmatics - the branch of linguistics which studies how utterances communicate meaning in context (Trask, 243)
*Predicate - the part of the sentence that is not the
subject
‘You GAVE HIM A BOTTLE’ ‘He LIKES YOU’
‘Jij
GAF HEM EEN FLES’ ‘Hij VINDT JOU LEUK’
Prefix - an affix that needs to attach to the beginning of a word. see affix
*Preposition - words like ‘on’, ‘by’, ‘over’, ‘in’ etc.
the famous Dutch test is to combine it with ‘de kast’ (the
cupboard):
in de kast, over de kast, bij de kast, onder de kast,
aan de kast, achter de kast etc.
Prepositional *ER - ER used in combination with a preposition.
If the preposition immediately follows ER they form one word
‘erover’, ‘ervoor’, ‘erin’, ‘ervan’ etc.
Prescriptive grammar - rules of grammar that tell you how to use the language, normally used in schools or language courses ‘do not split infinitives’, ‘say may I, not can I’ etc.
Productive - the fact that you can use grammar to generate new sentences that you’ve never heard or said before
*Pronouns - pronouns can refer back to a noun or take
the place of a noun
‘Tony said the cat is nice’ 
‘HE
said the cat is nice’
(pointing to a woman) ‘SHE
is my neighbour’
‘I’, ‘you’, ‘he/she/it’, ‘we’, ‘you’, ‘they’,
but also ‘mine’, ‘yours’, ‘his/hers’ etc.
‘HIJ
zei dat de kat lief is’
‘ZIJ is mijn buurvrouw’
‘Ik’, ‘jij’, ‘hij/zij/het’, ‘wij’, ‘jullie’, ‘zij’,
en ook ‘mij’, ‘jou’,
‘hem/haar’