Linguistic Terms: Definitions and Examples
| Acronym | Words formed with the initial letters of other words. |
| Adjective | A word that modifies a noun or pronoun to identify or describe it. |
| Adverb | A word that modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb. |
| Anaphora | A grammatical element that requires a background reference in a local syntactic domain. |
| Antithesis | Generally describes a denial of a proposition. |
| Antonym | Words that have opposite or contrary meanings. |
| C Semantic | A set of word meanings associated with a term. |
| Code | All that can be understood by the sender and receiver. |
| Coherence | A property of texts which are well-formed as a unitary whole. |
| Cohesion | A property of well-formed texts. |
| Colloquial | The use of language in an informal setting and relaxed family environment. |
| Conjunction | An expression linking phrases to give some sense to the sentence. |
| Context | A set of circumstances in which a message is produced: place, time, etc. |
| Cronica | A literary work that recounts historical events in chronological order. |
| Cultism | A word whose morphology follows very closely its etymological origin. |
| Derivation | A regular process of word formation. |
| Description | Explanation of how people, places, objects, among others, are. |
| Determinant | Any word or morpheme that is attached to a noun phrase. |
| Ellipsis | Deleting any element of discourse without contradicting the rules of grammar. |
| Interview | A dialogue where questions are asked and interviewees answer. |
| Epithet | An adjective or participle that highlights the inherent characteristics of a noun. |
| Etopeya | A figure of speech which consists of describing a person’s psychological traits. |
| Euphemism | A distasteful word that may offend or suggest something unpleasant to the listener. |
| Exposure | A narrated explanation, display, and development of a theme for the purpose of reporting on it. |
| Lexical Family | The set of words that share the same lexeme. |
| Hyperbaton | Disrupting or disturbing the natural syntactic order of the sentence. |
| Hyperbole | Involves making a very big exaggeration. |
Irony / Sarcasm: A figure of speech which implies the opposite of what is said.
Lexeme: That have an independent meaning.
Metaphor: The use of an expression with a different meaning or a different context than is habitual.
Metonymy: A phenomenon of semantic change which means one thing by naming another.
Moneme: A sequence of phonemes that cause regular systemic change.
Morpheme: The smallest grammatical unit that has semantic meaning.
Morphology: The branch of linguistics that studies the internal structure of words.
Narrator: Within any story, the entity that relates the story to the audience.
Neologism: A new word that appears in a language.
Oracion: The smallest syntactic constituent possible, able to make a statement or express content.
Paradox: Situations, texts, or circumstances arising contradictory.
Parasíntesis: A word formation process which adds morphemes.
Paronomasia: Involves two or more words that have similar sounds but different meanings.
Polisemia: Occurs when a word or sign language has several significations.
Prefix: A derivative morpheme affixes class that is prefixed to a root.
Preposition: A word that invariably introduces a prepositional phrase.
Redundancy: A way to establish matches between linguistic elements.
Reportaje: Journalistic genre that is the narrative of facts that can be actualidad.
Semiotics: Defined as the study of mixing signs.
Sinestesia: Mixing different senses.
Synonym: Words that have a similar meaning or identical meaning.
Syntagma: A type of syntactic constituent formed by a group of words.
Suffix: The derivative of languages.
Sustantivo: Part of the sentence that can function as a core subject of a sentence.
Tecnicismo: Terms used in scientific language.
Texto: Composition of signs encoded in a system of writing.
Verbo: Part of speech that expresses existence, action, condition, or state of the subject.