A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics David Crystal

32 appropriateness
appropriateness (n.)
see appropriate
approximant (n.) A general term used by some phoneticians in the classification
of speech sounds on the basis of their manner of articulation, and
corresponding to what in other approaches would be called frictionless
continuants, i.e. [w], [j], [r], [l], and all vowels. The term is based on the
articulations involved, in that one articulator approaches another, but the
degree of narrowing involved does not produce audible friction. In some analyses,
[h] would also be considered an approximant (i.e. the voiceless equivalent
of the vowel following).
aptronym (n.) A term used in onomastics for a name which derives from a
person’s nature or occupation, such as the English surnames Smith and Barber;
sometimes called aptonym. The name may be used humorously or ironically, as
with Mr Clever.
arbitrariness (n.) A suggested defining property of human language (contrasting
with the properties of other semiotic systems) whereby linguistic forms
are said to lack any physical correspondence with the entities in the world to
which they refer. For example, there is nothing in the word table which reflects
the shape, etc., of the thing. The relationship between sound and meaning is said
to be arbitrary – or ‘conventional’, as classical tradition puts it. By contrast,
some words in a language may be partly or wholly iconic, i.e. they do reflect
properties of the non-linguistic world, e.g. onomatopoeic expressions, such as
splash, murmur, mumble.
arbitrary reference A term used in generative grammar, especially in
government-binding theory, in connection with the understood subject of
certain infinitives, represented by big PRO. For example, in It’s easy PRO to
annoy John, the infinitive has an empty PRO subject which is not controlled
(i.e. it is not co-referential with some other noun phrase in the sentence),
but is interpreted as ‘for anyone’. The reference in such a case is arbitrary. See
pro (big).
arboreal (adj.) A term sometimes used in generative linguistics to describe
a tree structure. In metrical phonology, an arboreal grid is a modification
of the metrical tree in which heads are vertically aligned with their mother
constituent nodes, resulting in a grid-like hierarchical configuration of
heads.
arc (n.) (1) A convention used in relational grammar to represent a directional
dependency relation between a syntactic unit (or governor) and the
entities which constitute the relational structure of that unit. The ‘arcs’ in a
‘relational network’ are represented by curved arrows; alternatively, the dependency
relations can be shown as a dependency tree. Arcs are also an important
device in network grammars. Relationships can be postulated between pairs
of arcs, and these pairs of arcs can then in turn be interrelated in ‘pair networks’
(as is found in arc-pair grammar, a formalized development of relational grammar
proposed in the mid-1970s).