Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics.pdf

Dictionary of language and linguistics 1162syncope [Grk‘cutting off’]Loss of an unstressed vowel (or, more rarely, a consonant) within a word. Compare, forexample, two common pronunciations of laboratory: Am. Eng.and Brit.Eng. ( apocope).language changeReferencessyncretism [Grk‘mixed together’]Historical language change: formal collapse of different, originally separate grammaticalfunctions, especially apparent in the case system of various languages, thus the ablative,locative, and instrumental in other Indo-European languages correspond to the dativein Greek, while the functions of the instrumental and, in part, those of the locative aresubsumed under the ablative in Latin; in German, the nominative case has assumed thefunction of the vocative. A result of syncretism is that grammatical categories come to beno longer morphologically marked: for instance, syncretism in the development ofEnglish led to the loss of case marking and the stabilization of word order.syndeton [Grk syndéton ‘bound together’]Connection of linguistic expressions (words, syntagms, or sentences) with the aid ofconjunctions. ( also asyndeton)