A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics David Crystal

124 cross-sectional
co-referential. The crossover constraint or principle would be used, for
example, to explain why passivization cannot apply to structures of the type
John washed himself: given an underlying structure John i washed John i , to
derive a passive John i was washed by John i would involve a violation of this
principle. In later formulations, more specific constraints on the application of
this principle are introduced. In government-binding theory, weak crossover
refers to cases of crossover phenomena which involve the movement of an
R-expression across a non-c-commanding co-indexed pronoun, as in *Who i
does his i mother love t i ? Strong crossover refers to cases which involve this
movement across a c-commanding co-indexed pronoun, as in [*Whose i mother] j
does he i love t j ? The latter case is eliminated through condition C of binding
theory. A leftness principle excludes all cases of weak crossover, and allows
a unified account of these phenomena at the level of logical form. See also
bijection principle.
cross-sectional (adj.) An application of the general use of this term in the field
of child language acquisition, referring to one of the two main procedures
used in order to study the process of language development. In a crosssectional
study, the language of a group of children of the same or different ages
is compared at a given point in time. This method contrasts with a longitudinal
study, which follows the course of language acquisition in a single child
or group over a period of time.
cryptophasia (n.)
see idioglossia
c-selection
see selectional feature
C-slot (n.) see slot (2)
c-structure (n.) An abbreviation in lexical-functional grammar for
constituent-structure. This is essentially the surface structure of a
sentence, and contrasts with f-structure (or functional structure), which
provides an analysis of the sentence in terms of grammatical functions such as
subject and object.
cue (n.)
see acoustic feature
culminativity (n.) In metrical grid theory, a foot-shape parameter which
constrains every content word to contain one stressed syllable. This is a
consequence of the nature of the prosodic hierarchy, and of the exhaustivity
condition, which requires every syllable to be included in metrical structure.
More generally, any prosodic process which makes certain syllables more prominent
is described as culminative.
cultural transmission A suggested defining property of human language
(contrasting with the properties of many other semiotic systems), whereby
the ability to speak a language is transmitted from generation to generation by
a process of learning, and not genetically. This is not to deny that children may
be born with certain innate predispositions towards language, but it is to