url?sa=t&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CCAQFjAD&url=http://data.ulis.vnu.edu.vn/jspui/bitstream/123456789/1966/1/54_1405152974

conversational maxims 113
the abstract pronominal element PRO. For example, a PRO which is the subject
of an embedded infinitive clause is said to be under the ‘control’ of the
main-clause subject (its controller), after a verb like promise; but after a verb
like persuade it is controlled by the object of that verb (it is ‘non-subjectcontrolled’):
compare I 1 promised John PRO 1 to go and I persuaded John 2
PRO 2 to go. Still other uses of PRO are uncontrolled (that is, they have
arbitrary reference, and do not take their reference from an antecedent NP).
Control sentences subsume the equi NP deletion sentences of classical transformational
grammar; they are often contrasted with raising sentences.
Sometimes, control constructions are referred to as catenative constructions.
control agreement principle (CAP) A term used in generalized phrasestructure
grammar to refer to a principle which is introduced to account for
agreement phenomena.
controller (n.)
see control
convention linguistics uses this term in its general sense – referring to any
accepted practice in the use of language (e.g. the ‘convention’ of using certain
formulae upon leave-taking), or in developing a model of language (e.g. it is
‘conventional’ to transcribe phonemes using // brackets). But there is also a
restricted sense, where it refers to the arbitrary nature of the relationship
between linguistic expressions and their meanings: one says that the relationship
between the lexical item table and the thing ‘table’ is conventional, the
term here being used in a traditional philosophical sense which dates from Plato.
See cognitive grammar.
conventional implicature
see implicature
convergence (n.) (1) A term used in sociolinguistics to refer to a process
of dialect change in which the dialects become more like each other (or
converge). This usually happens when a non-standard dialect falls under the
influence of the standard, but it may happen the other way round – as in the
current development of modified forms of received pronunciation in English.
Geographically adjacent speech communities are sometimes referred to as
convergence areas. The opposite effect is known as divergence. ‘Convergence’
also has a currency in historical linguistic studies, referring to the merging of
forms which at an earlier stage of a language were contrastive.
(2) In the minimalist programme, a derivation is said to converge if a
structural description is interpretable at the level of phonetic form or at
the level of logical form. For this to happen, there should be nothing other
than phonologically interpretable features in the phonetic representation
(PF-convergence) and nothing other than semantically interpretable features
in the semantic representation (LF-convergence). If these conditions are not met,
the derivation is said to crash.
conversational implicature
see implicature
conversational maxims
see maxims of conversation