A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics David Crystal

74 checking
in a short time interval. ejectives and implosives, in this view, are [+checked].
The opposite term is unchecked, which applies to all non-glottalized sounds,
signalled acoustically by a lower energy discharge over a larger time interval.
(2) The term is also found as an alternative to closed, in the description of
syllables: a checked syllable is one ending in a consonant, and a checked
vowel is a vowel occurring in such a syllable.
checking (adj.) (1) A term sometimes used in grammatical description to
refer to a subtype of tag questions: a checking tag is one which reverses the
positive or negative value of the main-clause verb, and whose function is seen
as one of confirmation, or ‘checking’, e.g. It’s Sunday today, isn’t it. Other types
of tag would be referred to as ‘copy’ tags.
(2) In the minimalist programme, a term describing a procedure which determines
whether a lexical element has the appropriate features before it is
used in a position in sentence structure. It is a basic relation which allows
one element to license another by checking off the features with which the
latter is associated. The features involved must be in a local domain, called the
checking domain.
chereme (n.)
see cherology
cherology (n.) In linguistics, a term sometimes used for the study of sign
language. It was coined on analogy with phonology to refer to the study of the
smallest contrastive units (cheremes) which occur in a sign language. Signs are
analysed into such features as the location of the signing space in which a sign
is made, the hand configuration used, and the action of the active hand.
chest pulse A term used in phonetics to refer to a contraction of those muscles
of the chest which are involved in the exhalation of air from the lungs. For
the production of emphatic speech, these pulses are said to be ‘reinforced’ or
‘stressed’. The chest pulse has been suggested as a central explanatory concept in
one account of syllable production (chest pulse theory), but this view presents
several problems.
child-directed speech In language acquisition, a term used for the whole
range of distinctive linguistic characteristics found in adult speech addressed
to young children. In early studies it was frequently referred to as baby-talk
(a term still widely used in popular parlance), but the notion includes far more
than the often stereotyped use of endearing pronunciations and words (such as
doggie, /den/ for then, etc.) and is primarily characterized with reference to the
use of simplified sentence structures, and certain types of linguistic interaction
(such as the expansion of a child’s sentence into a full adult form, e.g.
Dadda gone ⇒ Yes, daddy’s gone). The study of baby-talk, or ‘language input’,
became a major focus of language acquisition studies in the early 1970s, a
particular stimulus coming from sociolinguistics. An early argument of
Chomsky’s was that child-directed speech was highly degenerate in quality
(involving many errors, false starts, etc.), but later research has established a
great deal that is systematic in the input of adults to children. The term is now
uncommon in psycholinguistics because of its apparent restriction to babies