A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics David Crystal

E
ear-training (n.) A technique used in phonetics whereby aspiring practitioners
of the subject are trained to discriminate and identify the whole range of human
speech sounds. The correlative technique of producing the sounds is known as
performance.
Ebonics (n.) The name given to African-American vernacular English when
given the status of a language distinct from standard English; derived from
ebony + phonics. Although the name was coined as early as 1973, it did not
become widely known until December 1996, when the local school board in
Oakland, California, concerned about the low level of achievement among the
African-American children in its care, and anxious to increase the respect for the
language the children used at home, decided to give the variety official status –
the first school district in the USA to do so. The decision proved to be enormously
controversial, among both black and white populations, and was dropped
a month later.
echo (n.) A term used in some grammatical descriptions, notably Quirk
grammar, to refer to a type of sentence which repeats, in whole or in part,
what has just been said by another speaker. Such echo utterances include ‘echo
questions’ (e.g. A: I saw a ghost. B: You saw what?) and exclamations (e.g.
A: Have you been to the office? B: Have I been to the office!). Questions which
do not echo in this way are sometimes referred to as non-echo questions.
eclecticism (n.) The application of this general term in linguistics is found
mainly in relation to models of description which have been built from a
combination of features originating in more than one linguistic theory. For
example, Quirk grammar is eclectic in that it makes use of concepts and procedures
deriving from structuralist, transformational and other approaches.
Eclectic accounts are justified by the multiple insights they can provide into an
area of language. Their main weakness is the difficulty of developing a coherent
theoretical framework within which the various descriptive components can
be interrelated.
ecolinguistics (n.) In linguistics, an emphasis – reflecting the notion of ecology
in biological studies – in which the interaction between language and the
A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics 6th Edition. David Crystal
© 2008 David Crystal. ISBN: 978-1-405-15296-9