A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics David Crystal

taxeme 477
tamber, tambre (n.)
see timbre
tap (n.) A term used in the phonetic classification of consonant sounds on
the basis of their manner of articulation: it refers to any sound produced by
a single rapid contact with the roof of the mouth by the tongue, resembling
a very brief articulation of a stop. It is commonly heard in many American
English pronunciations of the medial /t/ or /d/ in writer and rider. Some phoneticians
distinguish between taps and flaps in terms of the articulatory movements
involved.
target (n.) (1) A term used in phonetics and psycholinguistics to refer to
a hypothetical articulatory state used as a reference point when describing
speech production in dynamic terms. In connected speech, the target
articulatory features for a sound (e.g. alveolar, voicing) may not be fully
attained, because of the anticipatory influence of successive target articulations.
The target model postulates an idealized set of articulatory positions and a set
of rules which attempt to predict actual patterns of articulatory movement,
taking into account such factors as speed of articulation, and the direction and
distance between articulators. Similarly, models of speech perception have
been proposed which use the construct of an auditory target, which enables the
listener to identify the common factors in different accents, voice qualities,
etc. The term is also used in the description of speech segments as a linear
combination of a limited set of vectors (‘targets’), the temporal contribution of
each target being expressed by an interpolation function.
(2) The language (or variety, etc.) which is the focus of a linguistic process
of change is known as the target language, e.g. the language into which one is
translating or interpreting, the language (or variety, etc.) being taught to foreign
learners, and so on.
(3) In transformational grammar, the constituent affected by a transformation
is sometimes referred to as the target. For example, the target for
WH-movement can be a noun phrase, as in How many parcels will he send to
London?, a prepositional phrase, as in In which book did you read about it?,
or certain other kinds of phrase. A similar use is found in generative phonology,
where a rule can be triggered by one segment (the ‘trigger segment’) so as
to apply to another (the ‘target segment’).
(4) See conceptual metaphor.
ta-ta theory
see ding-dong theory
tautosyllabic (adj.) A term sometimes use in phonology to characterize a
pattern of segments which can be analysed as belonging to the same syllable;
contrasts with heterosyllabic, where the segments belong to different syllables.
For example, the question of VCV syllabification can be discussed in terms of
whether it is the VC or CV sequences which are best analysed as tautosyllabic.
taxeme (n.) A term introduced by Leonard Bloomfield (see Bloomfieldian),
on analogy with the phoneme, to refer to a single minimal feature of grammatical
arrangement. Examples of taxemes include word-order, concord,
the grammatical use of pitch, and the constituents of the actor–action–goal