A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics David Crystal

358 peripheral
at the next level, higher in the grid, occur twice (car – turned). The notion thus
has relevance for accounts of a speaker’s sense of an utterance’s rhythmical
structure.
peripheral (adj.) (1) An application of the general sense of this term in linguistics,
to refer to units or processes which operate at the margins (periphery)
of a structure or within a representation. For example, extrametricality
is restricted to the peripheral elements in a string, and several kinds of edge
phenomena have been noted. The term has a particular application in some
phonological studies of Australian Aboriginal languages, where it refers to
articulations made at the front or back of the mouth (as distinct from
apical and laminal articulations), and is thus equivalent to non-coronal.
(2) In role and reference grammar, a term used to identify one of the
two basic concepts used in analysing clause structure; opposed to core. The
peripheral layer contains a range of optional adjunctival elements.
periphrasis (n.) A term used in grammatical description to refer to the use
of separate words instead of inflections to express the same grammatical
relationship. In English, for example, the comparison of adjectives involves
both inflection (e.g. happier, happiest) and periphrasis (e.g. more happy, most
happy – the periphrastic forms), though most adjectives use only one or other of
these possibilities (cf. *more big, *interestinger).
perlocutionary (adj.) A term used in the theory of speech acts to refer to
an act performed by making an utterance which intrinsically involves an effect
on the behaviour, beliefs, feelings, etc., of a listener. Examples of perlocutionary
acts include frightening, insulting and persuading. A distinction may be drawn
between the intended and the actual perlocutionary effect of an utterance (e.g. a
speaker may intend to persuade X to do Y, but instead succeed in getting X to
do Z). Perlocutionary acts are distinguished from locutionary acts (which are
mere acts of saying, or uttering words with sense and reference), as well as from
illocutionary acts (which are defined without intrinsic reference to their effect
on a listener), although a single utterance might involve all three kinds of act.
permutation (n.) A term often used within the framework of transformational
grammar to refer to a basic kind of transformational operation. ‘Permutation
transformations’ have the effect of moving constituents (usually
one at a time) from one part of a phrase-marker to another, as in the formation
of passive sentences. An alternative term is movement or reordering. In
some approaches this notion is broken down into the more basic operations of
adjunction and substitution.
perseveration (n.) A term used by some psycholinguists to refer to a type of
tongue-slip where an earlier linguistic unit is carried over, as when stop the
car might become stop the star.
perseverative/perseveratory coarticulation
see coarticulation
person (n.) (per, PER) A category used in grammatical description to indicate
the number and nature of the participants in a situation. The contrasts are