B

Ba: A Great Andamanese language.

Babylonian: New Akkadian, i.e., the Akkadian language after 650 B.C.

Babylonian Judaeo-Aramaic: An Eastern Aramaic dialect, the language of the Babylonian Talmud (fourth to sixth centuries A.D.).

back-formation: The derivation of new words, by analogy, from existing words assumed to be derivatives. (E.g., to sculpt from sculptor, on the analogy of actor—to act.)

back vowel: A vowel, the point of articulation of which is in the rear part of the oral cavity, i.e., pronounced with the back part of the tongue arched toward the palate.

Bafflegab: See Gobbledegook.

Bahasa Indonesia: See Malay.

Bahuvrihi: A term borrowed from the grammarians of ancient India, meaning “much-riced, “ and used to designate possessive compounds of the type “black-haired.”

Balaian: See Palawi.

Balinese: A language spoken by about 1,000,000 persons on the island of Bali; a member of the Indonesian sub-family of the Malayo-Polynesian family of languages.

Balochi (Baluchi): A language spoken in Balochistan; it belongs to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian group of the Indo-European family of languages.

Balta: An artificial language, a modified form of Volapük (q.v.), created by Dormoy in 1893.

Balti: The native language of approximately 150,000 persons in the Kashmirian province of Baltistan, a member of the Tibetan (or Bhotian) group of the Tibeto-Himalayan branch of the Tibeto-Burmese sub-family of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages.

Baltic: A language group, of the Indo-European family, comprising Lithuanian, Lettish (or Latvian) and the extinct Old Prussian. (Customarily classified, with the Slavic group, in the Balto-Slavic sub-family.)

Balto-Slavic: A sub-family of the Indo-European family of languages, consisting of the Baltic and the Slavic language groups.

Baluchi: See Balochi.

Bambala: A Kushitic vernacular.

Banda: One of the Ubangi (q.v.) dialects.

Bangui: An African Negro language, member of the Bantu family of languages.

Bantu: A family of African Negro languages, considered by some authors (notably, Delafosse) to be cognate with the Sudano-Guinean family. The Bantu languages (spoken by an estimated 50,0,000 persons in South Africa, south of the Sudanese-Guinean speech area) have the common characteristic that they group their nouns in classes, and each class has a characteristic prefix which is prefixed also to every word referring to or connected grammatically or syntactically with the noun. The number of the Bantu languages is still undecided, ranging, according to different authorities, somewhere between 80 and 100. The most important Bantu languages are: Swahili, Zulu, Congo, Luba-Lulua, Luganda (or Ganda), Nyanja.

Bara: See Bodo.

Baraba: A language spoken in western Asia; it belongs to the Eastern Turkic group of the Altaic sub-family of the Ural-Altaic family of languages.

barbarism: Any deviation from or violation of the recognized, current rules of grammar or style, speech or linguistic usage.

Bari: An African Negro language, spoken in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, a member of the Sudanese-Guinean family of languages.

Barma: An African language, member of the Sudanese-Guinean family of languages.

Bartholomae’s law: The phonetic law which states that in the Indo-Iranian languages, under Çertain conditions, an aspirated voiced consonant followed by a voiceless consonant becomes unaspirated, and the voiceless consonant becomes voiced and aspirated.

base (of inflection): The simple or basic form of a word to which the inflectional endings are appended. It may be the primary root of the word (root base) or the root with a thematic suffix (stem base).

base of comparison: In phonemics, the relevant features which two or more phonemes have in common. In bilateral oppositions (q.v.) this is the archiphoneme (q.v.). In all oppositions, this is what permits the setting up of orders and series (qq.v.).

Bashkir: An Asiatic language; it belongs to the Western Turkic group of the Altaic sub-family of the Ural-Altaic family of languages.

Basic: Short for Basic English (q.v.).

Basic English: A system, devised by C. K. Ogden, consisting of 850 selected English words and simple rules for using this vocabulary to express ideas. The purpose of this system is two fold: To serve as a simple and easy international auxiliary language, and as an instrument of semantic training. The vocabulary of 850 words consists of 400 general nouns, 200 names of picturable objects, 150 adjectives, and 100 “operators” (verbal forms, prepositions, particles, etc.); a supplementary general science vocabulary of 100 words and special word-lists for specialized scientific fields are also included in the system, to provide a basic scientific vocabulary in addition to the general vocabulary of 850 words.

basis of articulation: The neutral position of the organs of speech and their various parts which is peculiar to or characteristic of a given speech-community or of the native speakers of a given language.

Basque: A language, without any known or demonstrable relationship or affiliation with any other known language, spoken by about 1,000,000 persons in the Pyrenees region (the northeastern corner of Spain and the southwestern corner of France). Basque (called Eskuara or Euzkara by the native speakers) is characterized phonetically by an abundance in stops, spirants and palatals, morphologically by an essentially agglutinative structure, and grammatically by the absence of an active voice of the verb. Some linguists assume that Basque is a descendant of the extinct and almost completely unknown Aquitanian dialect of Iberian, the pre-Roman language once spoken in the Iberian Peninsula. (Cf. Aquitanian.) Certain authorities maintain that Basque has certain affinities with the North Caucasian languages.

Batak: A language spoken in Samoa; a member of the Indonesian sub-family of the Malayo-Polynesian family of languages. Some authorities estimate the number of Batak speakers to exceed 1,000,000.

Bats: See T’ush.

Bazaar Malay: See Pasar Malay.

Beach-la-mar: A contact vernacular (q.v.) used extensively all over the Western Pacific. Its vocabulary is derived, almost entirely, from English. Also called Beche-le-mar, Beche de mer English and Sandalwood English.

Beche de mer English: See Beach-la-mar.

Beche-le-mar: See Beach-la-mar.

Bemba: An African Negro language, spoken in Northern Rhodesia; member of the Bantu family of languages.

benefactive aspect: A verbal aspect (variously termed also accommodative, applicative and indirective), expressing that the action or state denoted by the verb is performed or exists for or in the interest of another person.

Bengali: An Indic language, spoken in Bengal and the Calcutta region of India; the number of its native speakers is about 75,000,000.

Berber: A group of languages (Tuareg, Shluh, Kabyl, Zenaga, Zenete and the extinct Guanche) which with the extinct Libyan constitute the Libyco-Berber branch of the Hamitic sub-family of the Semito-Hamitic family of languages.

Bhili: A Dravidian language, spoken in Central India, classified in the Gondi group.

Bhojpuri: A dialect of the Indic language Bihari; spoken by over 20,0,000 persons in and around the eastern parts of the United Provinces.

Bhotian: See Tibetan.

Biblical Aramaic: A Western Aramaic dialect, the language in which the non-Hebrew portions of the Bible were written.

bibliography: (1) The study of books.—(2) A list of books, usually sources of reference.

Bichlamar: See Beach-la-mar.

Bicol: A language spoken in the Philippine Islands by about 700,000 persons; a member of the Indonesian sub-family of the Malayo-Polynesian family of languages.

Bihari: An Indic language, spoken in northeastern India by approximately 37,000,000 native speakers. Its three main dialects are: Maithili, Magahi and Bhojpuri.

bilabial (bi-labial): In phonetical terminology, a consonant produced by a combined movement of both lips, i.e., in the articulation of which the two lips closely approach or touch each other (E.g., [b], [m], [w]).

bilabiodental: A sound formed with the upper lip and upper teeth touching the lower lip.

bilateral opposition: Two phonemes with the same archiphoneme, opposed to each other on the basis of a single relevant feature (the mark of opposition).

Bilin: A Kushitic vernacular.

bilingual: (1) With reference to a text, written in two languages.—(2) With reference to persons, speaking two languages customarily and with equal ease.

bilingualism, bilinguality: The quality or property of being bilingual (q.v.).

binary: Consisting of two elements; showing two aspects or characteristics.

binary principle: The theory that every phonemic opposition (q.v.) presents a common denominator both on the acoustic and on the articulatory level in a dichotomy imposed by the nature of language; e.g., the relation strong/weak is perfectly measurable physically and physiologically. (Roman Jakob son)

Bindevokal: German for linking vowel; the German term for a bridge-vowel (q.v.).

biolinguistics: The study of language and communication behavior as biologically determined activities of the organism, with stress on the neurophysiological and genetic factors and aspects.

Bisa: An African Negro language, also called Wisa, member of the Bantu family of languages.

Bisaya: A language spoken in the Philippine Islands by about 3,250,0 native speakers; a member of the Indonesian sub-family of the Malayo-Polynesian family of languages. (Also called Visaya.)

Bithynian: An extinct language, preserved in some inscriptions and glosses recorded by classical authors. Although some linguists have regarded it as a member of the Thraco-Phrygian group of the Indo-European family of languages, it is generally considered a language of undetermined linguistic affinities, classified as Asianic.

Blackfoot: A North American Indian language, classified in the Algonquian family; surviving in Alberta, Canada.

blade: The part of the tongue just past the tip (apex) and up to the front (associated with the hard palate).

blend: A word formed as a result of linguistic contamination (q.v.). (Cf. portmanteau word, telescoped word.)

blocked syllable: See closed syllable.

Blue Language: See Langue Bleue.

Bo: See Ibo.

Bobangi: An African Negro language, spoken in South Africa; a member of the Bantu family of languages.

Bodo: A Tibeto-Burmese language, also called Bara, having many related dialects; a member of the Bodo-Naga-Kachin group.

Bodo-Naga-Kachin: A group of Tibeto-Burmese languages, consisting of Bodo or Bara, Naga, Naga-Bodo, Kachin or Singhpho, and Naga-Kuki, each with several related dialects. This group is often, misleadingly, referred to as the Middle and South Assamese languages.

Bohemian: See Czech.

Bontok: A language spoken in the Philippine Islands; a member of the Indonesian sub-family of the Malayo-Polynesian family of languages.

Bopal: An artificial language, representing a modified form of Volapük (q.v.), created by St. de Max in 1887.

borrowed word: A word taken over from another language; also, a word of foreign origin, even though modified in form.

borrowing: A borrowed word (q.v.).

bound accent: See fixed stress.

bound form: Short for bound linguistic form: a morpheme which has a distinct meaning when attached (prefixed or suffixed) to a word. (E.g., a declensional ending.)

Bourguignon: A French dialect, spoken in the former province of Burgundy.

boustrophedon: The method of writing in which the individual lines run alternately from right to left and from left to right, or alternately from top to bottom and from bottom to top.

bow-wow theory: See onomatopoeic theory.

brachylogy: In general, a concise and abbreviated expression or style. Specifically, a grammatically incomplete phrase or expression.

Brahui: A Dravidian language, spoken by about 175,000 persons who form a linguistic island in the mountains of East Baluchistan.

breaking: A literal translation of the German term, Brechung. (See vowel fracture.)

breathings: The marks appearing in Greek over initial vowels and initial r to indicate the presence (‘, rough breathing) or the absence (‘, smooth breathing) of aspiration. The rough breathing is normally transcribed in the Roman alphabet by the letter h, while the smooth breathing is left untranscribed.

Brechung: The German term for vowel fracture (q.v.).

Breton: A language of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic group of the Indo-European family, spoken by about 1,000,000 people in Brittany (France).

breve: The mark [ˇ] placed over a vowel to indicate the correct sound in pronunciation; it often merely indicates that the vowel is to be pronounced short.

bridge-letter: The written representation of a bridge-sound (q.v.).

bridge-phoneme: See bridge-sound, bridge-syllable.

bridge-sound: A sound, usually a vowel, inserted between prefix and root or between root and suffix (especially flexional ending) for easier, clearer or more euphonic pronunciation.

bridge-syllable: A syllable fulfilling the function of a bridgesound (q.v.).

bridge-vowel: See connecting vowel.

bright vowel: A synonym of front vowel (q.v.).

Briticism: A word, expression or grammatical or syntactical construction characteristic of or confined to the English language as spoken in Great Britain.

broad consonant: In Irish phonetics, a consonant immediately following or preceding a broad vowel (q.v.) in the same word.

Broad Romic: The simplified form of Sweet’s system of phonetic symbols, Romic.

broad transcription: A representation of the gross phonetic features of an utterance, usually very close to a phonemic transcription (q.v.). (Cf. narrow transcription.)

broad vowel: A back vowel (q.v.).

broken: Prefixed to the name of a language, this adjective means ungrammatical, insufficiently learned, corrupt, often also mispronounced.

Broken-English: A creolized English, with admixtures of African linguistic features and elements, used as a “contact vernacular” (q.v.) in Liberia and Sierra Leone;

Brythonic: A branch of the Celtic group of the Indo-European family of languages, consisting of Breton, Welsh and Cornish.

Bube: An African Negro language, a member of the Bantu family of languages.

Buduk: A language spoken in the Caucasus; a member of the Samurian branch of the Eastern group of the North Caucasian family of languages.

Bugi: See Buginese.

Buginese: A language (also called Bugi or Bugis) spoken in Celebes; a member of the Indonesian sub-family of the Malayo-Polynesian family of languages.

Bugis: See Buginese.

Bukvitsa: A slightly modified version of the Cyrillic alphabet, showing influences of the Glagolitic alphabet, formerly used by Catholic Slavs in Bosnia and Dalmatia.

Bulgarian: A South Slavic language, spoken by over 7,000,000 people in Bulgaria and neighboring regions.

Burgundian: (1) An extinct East Germanic language.—(2) The Bourguignon (q.v.) dialect of French.

Burmese: A language (also called Maghi), spoken by almost 10,000,000 persons in Burma; a member of the Arakan-Burmese group of the Tibeto-Burmese sub-family of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages.

Burushaski: A language spoken in northwestern India. Although several linguists have considered it to be related to the Dravidian or Munda languages, the current opinion is that it is not related to any other known language.

Buryat: An Asiatic language which constitutes the Northern sub-branch of the Mongol branch of the Altaic sub-family of the Ural-Altaic family of languages.

Bushman: See San.

Bush-Negro English: A creolized English spoken by the Bush Negroes of Dutch-Guiana. (Also called Jew-Tongo.)

Byelorussian: See White Russian.