A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics David Crystal

pitch 369
sea). Modern pictograms are widespread, such as those used in present-day road
signs (e.g. crossroads ahead).
pictograph (n.)
pictography (n.)
see pictogram
see pictogram
pidgin (n.) A term used in sociolinguistics to refer to a language with a
markedly reduced grammatical structure, lexicon and stylistic range,
compared with other languages, and which is the native language of no one.
Structures which have been reduced in this way are said to be pidginized. Pidgins
are formed by two mutually unintelligible speech communities attempting to
communicate, each successively approximating to the more obvious features of
the other’s language. Such developments need considerable motivation on the
part of the speakers, and it is therefore not surprising that pidgin languages
flourish in areas of economic development, as in the pidgins based on English,
French, Spanish and Portuguese, in the East and West Indies, Africa and the
Americas (where they were often referred to as trade languages). Some pidgins
have become so useful that they have developed a role as auxiliary languages,
and been given official status by the community (e.g. Tok Pisin). These cases are
called expanded pidgins because of the way they have added extra features to
cope with the needs of the users. Pidgins become creolized when they become
the mother-tongue of a community.
pied piping A term used in generative linguistics for one of the processes
involved in deriving such sentences as To whom did you turn for help?: the
preposition optionally moves to the front of the clause, following its WHnoun
phrase object – just as, the analogy suggests, the rats in the traditional tale
followed the Pied Piper out of Hamelin. A contrast can be drawn with cases where
the preposition is left behind (stranded), as in Who did you turn to for help?
pitch (n.) The attribute of auditory sensation in terms of which a sound may be
ordered on a scale from ‘low’ to ‘high’. It is an auditory phonetic feature,
corresponding to some degree with the acoustic feature of frequency, which in
the study of speech is based upon the number of complete cycles of vibration of
the vocal folds. Frequency is measured in hertz (Hz), e.g. 440 Hz = 440 cps
(cycles per second). The frequency of a sound can be determined automatically
using a ‘fundamental frequency analyser’, or pitch meter. There is however
no direct or parallel correlation between pitch and frequency: other factors than
frequency may affect our sensation of pitch (measured in units known as mels).
Variations of pitch are more easily produced using voiced sounds, because of
their regular waveform. It is, however, possible to hear pitch contrasts in voiceless
sounds; and even in whispered speech, impressions of falling, rising, etc.,
pitches can be heard, reflecting the changing configurations of the vocal tract.
The linguistic use of pitch is of particular interest to the phonologist, and this
is studied under the headings of intonation and tone. However, the term
pitch accent is used phonologically in the description of languages in which the
distribution of the tones within a word is totally predictable once one has
specified a particular tonal feature of the word (as in Japanese). The notion has