P

P-Celtic: A designation sometimes applied to the Brythonic branch of the Celtic family of languages.

Paelignian: One of the extinct dialects of the Sabellian branch of the Italic group of the Indo-European family of languages.

Pahari: A modern Indic vernacular, the various dialects of which are spoken by about 2,500,000 persons on the lower ranges of the Himalayas from Nepal as far as Bhadrawal. The most important of these dialects are: Jaunsari, Kului, Chambiali, Mandeali, Suketi, Sirmauri.

Pahlavi: See Pehlevi.

Palaeo-Asiatic: See Hyperborean.

Palaian: See Palawi.

palatal: In phonetical terminology, a consonant pronounced with the surface of the tongue arching toward or held near or against the hard palate. (E.g., [Ĵ], [Ç].)

palatal law: A phonetic law formulated by V. Thomsen, in 1875, although discovered by various linguists more or less independently. This law states that in Sanskrit a Proto-Indo-European velar or guttural ([k] or [g]) preceding the vowel [a] become the palatalized Sanskrit ç and j when the Sanskrit [a] corresponds to Greek or Latin [e], but the [k] and [g] preceding [a] remains unchanged when the Sanskrit [a] corresponds to Greek or Latin [a] or [o]. This law proved that, contrary to the view held up to 1875, Proto-Indo-European had the front vowel [e].

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

palatalization: The change of a sound which is ordinarily not a palatal into a palatal sound.

Palawi: An extinct and almost completely unknown Near-Eastern language of remote antiquity, classified as Asianic. (Alternative names of Palawi are: Palaian and Balaian.)

paleography: The study of ancient ways, methods and forms of writing, including the deciphering and interpretation of ancient texts painted or traced with ink, colors, etc. on paper, parchment, fabrics, and other soft materials. (Cf. epigraphy.)

Palestinian Judaeo-Aramaic: A Western Aramaic dialect, the language of the Palestinian Talmud (fourth to fifth centuries A.D.).

Pali: One of the Prakrit (q.v.) vernaculars of India, no longer a spoken language; it was used in southern India as a literary language, and it is the language in which the Buddhist scriptures (Tripitaka) are written.

Pampangan: A language spoken in the Philippine Islands by about 350,000 persons; a member of the Indonesian sub-family of the Malayo-Polynesian family of languages.

Pamphylian: An extinct language, of undetermined linguistic affinities, spoken in southwestern Asia Minor until the first century A.D. Classified as Asianic.

Pangasinan: A language spoken in the Philippine Islands by almost 400,000 persons; a member of the Indonesian sub-family of the Malayo-Polynesian family of languages.

Panjabi: See Punjabi.

Paphlagonian: An extinct language, of undetermined linguistic affinities, preserved in some inscriptions and in some glosses recorded by classical authors. Classified as Asianic.

Papiamento: A creolized (q.v.) Spanish, spoken by the natives of Curaçao.

Papuan: A family of 132 little known languages, spoken in most of New Guinea, parts of New Britain and Bougainville, in Halmahera, and Tolo, Ran, Tidore and Ternate Islands.

paradigm: (1) A complete set of all the various forms of a word (conjugation, declension).—(2) A model, pattern, or example.

paradigmatic: Relating to or constituting a paradigm (q.v.)—In phonemics, the most important use of this adjective can be summed up as follows: The listing of all the phonemes of a language, in series, orders (qq.v.) and isolated elements forms a paradigm, from which the individual phonemes are selected as needed for the chain of speech. (Cf. syntagmatic.)

paragoge: The addition of a sound, letter, or syllable to the end of a word, without any etymological justification, often for euphony or ease in pronunciation, without changing or affecting the meaning of the word.

paragogic, paragogical: Relating to, constituting or producing a paragoge (q.v.).

paragogic sound, phoneme, syllable: A sound, phoneme or syllable added to a word, for euphony or ease in pronunciation.

paraphrase: The statement of the contents of a passage, text, etc., in the same or another language, without following the original text verbatim.

paraplasm: Replacement of an established form by a newly coined form.

paraplastic form: A form replacing an old, established form.

parasynthesis: Formation of words using both composition and derivation.

parasynthetic: Relating to or produced by parasynthesis (q.v.).

parasyntheton: A word formed by parasynthesis (q.v.) (The plural form is parasyntheta.)

paratactic: (1) Relating to, based on or constituting a parataxis.—(2) Coordinated, especially syntactically.

parataxis: The coordination or juxtaposition of two or more phrases of equal significance or rank.

parent language: The language from which another language or other languages developed is said to be the parent language of the latter.

parenthesis: (1) A word or expression interpolated in a sentence (between commas, dashes, etc.) without being essential or necessary for the grammatical completeness of the sentence; also called parenthetical expression or phrase.—(2) A parenthesis mark (q.v.).

parenthesis marks: The punctuation marks [(] and [)], used to inclose parenthetical words or phrases (see parenthesis).

parenthetical clause: See parenthesis (1).

parenthetical words and phrases: See parenthesis (1).

parisyllabic: Consisting of an equal number of syllables.

parlance: Mode of speech; special usage of words; cf. jargon.

parole: French for word. According to the linguistic terminology introduced by F. de Saussure, parole (usually translated into English as speech) consists in the use of a language by. a given individual in a given case, in contradistinction to the langue (language or tongue) which is characterized by a complete and homogeneous grammatical system observed and followed by a group or community.

paronym: A word derived from the same primary word as a given word. Paronyms are similar in form but differ in meaning.

paronymous: Constituting a paronym (q.v.).

paroxytone: A word bearing the main accent on the penultimate syllable.

paroxytonic language: A language in which the majority of the words are paroxytonic (q.v.).

parse: To analyze a word grammatically as to form and function in a sentence; to analyze a sentence grammatically as to elements and their interrelationships.

Parthian: A synonym for Pehlevi (q.v.).

participial: Belonging or relating to or having the nature of a participle (q.v.).

participial noun: A term occasionally applied to gerunds or verbal nouns.

participial phrase: A group of words built around a participle (q.v.).

participialization: The act or process of transforming into a participle (q.v.).

participle: A verbal adjective, i.e., a verbal form which has the characteristics both of verbs and adjectives, and may be used as an adjective.

particle: A word, usually uninflected and invariable, used to indicate syntactical relationships.

partitive: A case in certain Finno-Ugric languages, having the same denotation as conveyed in English by the use of the word some before the noun, or in French by the use of the partitive article (q.v.).

partitive: (adj.) : Denoting division or the result of a division.

partitive article: In certain languages, a particle used before nouns to indicate that the noun is used to designate a part of the totality of the concept or object meant by it. (E.g., the de l’ in the French de l’eau, meaning “some water.”)

partitive numeral: A numeral which answers the question “What fraction?”

parts of speech: The categories into which the words of a given language can be classified, either according to their functions in sentence construction (nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections) or according to their forms, mode of inflection, etc.

Pasar Malay: A creolized (q.v.) form of Malay, representing a blend of various Malayo-Polynesian dialects, used as a trade language or “contact vernacular” all over British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, and understood even in the Philippine Islands. (Also called Bazaar Malay.)

Pashto: See Pushtu.

pasigraphy: A system of writing using signs of universal significance.

pasimology: The art of communicating by means of gestures, as practised by some American Indian tribes, by the deaf-mutes, etc.

Passamaquoddy: A North American Indian language (Eastern Algonquian).

passive case: See patient case.

passive voice: The conjugational category expressing that the action denoted by the verb is performed upon the grammatical subject, i.e., the grammatical subject is actually the direct object, target or recipient of the action.

past: A general term for all verbal tenses which indicate that the action took place prior to the utterance.

past anterior: In the Romance languages, a form of the pluperfect tense, composed of the preterite of the auxiliary verb and the past participle of the main verb (whereas the regular pluperfect is a compound of the imperfect of the auxiliary verb and the past participle of the main verb). The past anterior is used generally in temporal clauses when the verb of the main clause is in the preterite.

past infinitive: An infinitive referring to past time.

past perfect tense: That tense which indicates that the action was completed by the time another action occurred; the tense which designates a past state which was the result or outcome of a previous action.

past tense: In general, a tense which expresses that the action took place in the past.

Patanuli: See Saurashtra.

patient case: In certain Caucasian languages, a declensional case which designates the subject of an intransitive verb or the logical complement of a transitive verb. (Marouzeau)

patois: Popular speech, mainly that of the illiterate classes, specifically a local dialect of the lower social strata.

patronymic: A name describing the paternity of the bearer. E.g., Johnson, from John’s son.

pattern: The paradigm of all the phonemes of a language. Also, the phonemic system of a language.

Paulista: The dialectal variant of Portuguese used in the State of São Paulo, Brazil.

pause-pitch: A rise of pitch before a pause within a sentence.

Pedageese: See Gobbledegook.

pedigree theory: The theory (Stammbaumtheorie) formulated by August Schleicher in 1866, according to which a parent language split into two branch languages, each of which again bifurcated into two languages, etc., as branches grow from the trunk of a tree, to produce smaller branches, twigs, etc.

Pehlevi: (1) The intermediary stage of the Persian language between Old Persian and Modem Persian.—(2) The alphabet created in Persia about 200 B.C.

pejoration: (1) The semantic shift undergone by certain words, involving and producing a lowering in meaning.—(2) The addition of pejorative suffixes (q.v.).

pejorative suffix: A suffix which gives a word a deprecatory connotation. (E.g., the Italian -accio.)

Pelasgian: An extinct language of southern Europe, variously described as Mediterranean or Japhetic, and said to have been linked with Caucasian, Basque and Etruscan. (N. Marr)

pendent: Said of a grammatically incomplete construction.

Pennsylvania Dutch: A variety of German, originally from the Palatinate, used in parts of Pennsylvania (notably York and Lancaster counties); though it is heavily interlarded with English, its German origin is clearly perceptible. “Dutch” is a misnomer in this expression, and many prefer “Pennsylvania German.”

Pennsylvania German: An alternative designation of Pennsylvania Dutch (q.v.).

Penobscot: A North American Indian language (Eastern Algonquian).

penult: The syllable next to the last in a word.

penultimate: Next to the last.

peregrinism: Foreignism (q.v.).

perfect: A collective term applied to all verbal forms which designate an action or a state which is the result or outcome of an action performed in the past.

perfect infinitive: The past infinitive (q.v.).

perfect tense: A verbal tense expressing that the action has been completed, or designating a present state which is the result or outcome of an action in the past.

perfectivation: The transformation of an imperfective (q.v.) verb into a perfective (q.v.) one by a morphological change, such as the addition of a prefix or suffix, internal vowel change, etc.

perfective aspect: A verbal aspect expressing a non-habitual or one-time action, or an action considered from the point of view of its completion.

perfectum: The aspectual category introduced by the Roman grammarian Varro (first century B.C.), including the perfect, past perfect and future perfect tenses.

period: (1) The punctuation mark [.] used at the end of a declarative sentence.—(2) Occasionally used as a synonym for periodic sentence (q.v.).

periodic sentence: In rhetoric, a sentence in which the most significant element or part occupies the final position.

peripheral language: A language which shows characteristics or features typical of another language group or family, supposedly acquired as a result of an early separation from its own parent speech-community and contact with that other group or family. (Meillet)

periphrasis: Circumlocution; the use of superfluous words.

periphrastic: Using several words for what could be expressed by fewer words.

periphrastic conjugation: Conjugation with the aid of an auxiliary or auxiliaries, instead of inflections.

periphrastic declension: Declension with the aid of prepositions or other independent particles.

periphrastic form: With reference to verbs, a form in which the principal verb is combined with an auxiliary or some other particle; with reference to substantives, a case formed with the aid of a preposition or other particle.

periphrastic tense: A verbal tense formed with the aid of an auxiliary.

perissologic, perissological: Redundant (q.v.).

perissology: Redundancy (q.v.).

permansive aspect: A verbal aspect in Semitic languages, which considers the action from the point of view of its permanency.

Permian: A branch of the Finno-Ugric (or Uralic) sub-family of the Ural-Altaic family of languages; it consists of Votyak and Zyrien (or Syryen).

permissive mood: The verbal mood indicating permission or liberty to perform the action.

Persian: A member of the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian group of the Indo-European family of languages, spoken by approximately 10,000,000 native speakers.

person: The grammatical distinction between the speaker, listener and subject of an utterance. Defined by M. H. Weseen (Crowells Dictionary of English Grammar) as “the grammatical property of substantives and verbs indicating the relations of the persons or things concerned.” The first person refers to the speaker, the second person to the person addressed, and the third person to the person, concept or thing spoken of. The distinction may be made by morphological variations of the verb or by appropriate subject pronouns or other particles. (Certain languages, e.g., Japanese, may express this differentiation by the use of entirely different verbs or nouns.)

person concord: The agreement as to person of syntactically related words in a sentence.

personal endings: The inflectional endings or suffixes which indicate person (and, usually, number).

personal infinitive: An infinitive with a personal ending (q.v.) which indicates distinction as to grammatical person and number. This form is found in various, unrelated languages (e.g., in Portuguese, which is a language of the Romance group of the Indo-European family; in Hungarian, which is a Finno-Ugric language; etc.).

personal pronoun: A pronoun used to indicate or refer to the speaker or speakers (first person), the person or persons addressed (second person) and the person or persons, etc. spoken of (third person).

personal suffix: See personal ending.

personal verb: (1) A verb which can be used in all three persons, in contradistinction to impersonal verbs, used in the third person singular only.—(2) A verb which has different forms for the three grammatical persons.—(3) A verb which shows difference in person by different conjugational suffixes (personal endings).

Petit Nègre: A creolized (q.v.) version of French, used as a “contact vernacular” in French West Africa.

petitionary sentence: A variety of the imperative sentence, expressing a request or supplication.

petroglyph: A primitive pictogram carved into rocks.

petrogram: A primitive pictogram painted or drawn on rocks.

Peul: See Fula.

phantom word: A word that came into being through an error of a lexicographer or printer.

pharyngal: In phonetical terminology, a consonant phonated at the pharynx.

phememe: A rarely used cover term for the smallest lexical and/or grammatical unit. Lexically, it is the phoneme, grammatically the taxeme (qq.v.).

phenomenon word: A word, usually an adjective, expressing a non-permanent attribute or property.

philology: The science and scientific study of language, words and linguistic laws. According to one accepted interpretation of the term, also literature (in particular the older texts of a language) is included, and the study of language is regarded as a means to other ends. Another interpretation of the term makes philology practically synonymous with linguistics.

philosophical grammar: The study of language and languages in general, and of the basic principles behind the grammatical phenomena of all languages, without confining itself to any particular language.

Phoenician: An extinct member of the Canaanite subdivision of the northern branch of the West Semitic group of the Semito-Hamitic family of languages.

phonation: The process or act of producing speech-sounds, i.e., the act or process of uttering phonemes by conscious and deliberate use of the vocal organs in a desired manner.

phonatory: Causing or producing vocal sounds.

phone: A rudimentary vocal sound.

phoneme: A single speech-sound or a group of similar or related speech-sounds which function analogously in a given language and are usually represented in writing by the same letter (with or without diacritic marks to indicate the differences). Bloomfield calls the phoneme “a minimum unit of distinctive sound-feature.” It may be defined also as “a minimal bundle of relevant sound features.”

phonemic analysis: See phonemics.

phonemic transcription: The representation of the phonemes in an utterance, carefully excluding all the irrelevant (q.v.) features.

phonemicist: One who makes or specializes in a phonemic analysis of a language.

phonemics: The study, analysis and classification of phonemes (q.v.), their relationships and changes.

phonetic (noun): In Chinese writing, the symbol within a compound ideograph, which gives a clue to the pronunciation of the spoken word represented by the ideograph. phonetic, phonetical (adj.): Pertaining to, derived from, according to, or based on sound or sounds.

phonetic alphabet: See International Phonetic Alphabet.

phonetic change: A general term for the modifications of a phoneme in the course of the history of the development of a language.

phonetic complement: In logographic or ideographic systems of writing, a non-semantic phonetic element added to the logogram or pictogram to indicate the proper pronunciation and significance of the sign in the context.

phonetic indicator: See phonetic complement.

phonetic law: Any systematic formulation of the rules and principles behind sound shifts and other phonetic changes. According to Jespersen (Language, Its Nature, Development and Origin, p. 269), “a ‘phonetic law’ is not an explanation, but something to be explained; it is nothing but a mere statement of facts, a formula of correspondence, which says nothing about the cause of change. . . .”

phonetic spelling: See phonetic writing.

phonetic symbols: See International Phonetic Alphabet.

phonetic transcription: The representation of a phoneme, sound or utterance in the phonetic alphabet or in the conventional script of another language. (Cf. broad transcription, narrow transcription.)

phonetic writing: (1) In general, a method of writing using signs representing individual sounds (alphabetic writing) or individual syllables (syllabic writing) in contradistinction to ideographic writing (q.v.).—(2) Specifically, a system of writing in which each written sign represents one spoken sound only, and each spoken sound is represented by one written sign only.

phonetician: Phoneticist (q.v.).

phoneticist: A person who studies or is skilled in phonetics (q.v.).

phoneticization: (1) The act or process of making something phonetic; (2) representation of articulate sounds phonetically; (3) phonetic transcription (q.v.).

phonetics: The science, study, analysis and classification of sounds, including the study of their production, transmission and perception. (Cf. acoustic phonetics, articulatory phonetics, experimental phonetics, genemmic phonetics, genetic phonetics, physiological phonetics.) Many authors use the terms phonetics and phonology (q.v.) indiscriminately and interchangeably.

phonetist: Phoneticist (q.v.).

phonic: Relating to or characteristic of sound.

phonics: The science of spoken sounds, more commonly called phonetics (q.v.).

phonogram: (1) A written sign representing a spoken sound.—(2) A graph obtained by the aid of a laboratory apparatus for the study of spoken phonemes.

phonology: The study of the changes, transformations, modifications, etc. of speech-sounds during the history and development of a language or a given dialect, considering each phoneme in the light of the part which it plays in the structure of speech-forms, accepting it as a unit without considering its acoustic nature. (Many authors use the term phonetics indiscriminately for phonology, too; others use the term phonology as a synonym for historical or diachronic phonetics).

phrasal compound: A compound word consisting of words distinguishable as such and having independent meanings of their own when used alone.

phrasal tense: A periphrastic tense (q.v.).

phrase: A group of words not containing a subject or predicate.

phrase-whole: A group of words in a grammatical pattern, taken or learned as a unit.

phraseology: The choice and arrangement of words.

Phrygian: An extinct Indo-European language, once spoken in Asia Minor; preserved in a few inscriptions, dating from the seventh and sixth centuries B.C.

physical phonetics: The study of the sound waves produced when sounds are uttered. A branch of experimental or laboratory phonetics.

physiological phonetics: The study of the production of sounds and of the movements in the body which produce sounds. A branch of experimental or laboratory phonetics.

Picard: A French dialect, spoken in Picardy (France). During the Middle Ages, Picard was a flourishing literary medium, rivalling Francien.

Picenian: An extinct language, once spoken in Italy, of undetermined linguistic affinities. (Also called Liburnian and Pre-Sabellian.)

pictogram: A written symbol which denotes a definite object, of which it is a complete or simplified picture.

pictograph: See pictogram.

pictography: A system of writing by semantic representation using pictograms (q.v.). as symbols. (See also pictorial writing.)

pictorial writing: The system of using pictures for written communication.

pidgin: See Pidgin English.

Pidgin English: A creolized (q.v.) version of the English language, used by traders for communication with the Chinese and other Orientals. The word pidgin (a corruption of the English word business) is often used popularly as an adjective to designate hybrid forms of other languages, too, for which the designation of Bodmer and Hogben, contact vernacular, is a better and more descriptive term.

Pidgin Malay: See Pasar Malay.

Pima-Sonoran: A family of American Indian languages, spoken in the southern United States and in Mexico; its surviving members are: Pima, Papago, Yaqui (or Kahita), Sinaloa, Tarahumare and Huichol. According to Rivet, this family is a sub-family of Uto-Aztecan which includes also Shoshonean and Nahuatlan.

Pisidian: An extinct, almost unknown ancient Near-Eastern language, classified as Asianic.

pitch: The highness or lowness of tone. Defined in laboratory phonetics as the frequency of vibration in the musical sound of the voice.

pitch accent: A variation of pitch within a single phrase or word.

Plattdeutsch: A Low Germanic dialect, spoken in northern Germany.

plene writing: A Hebrew system of consonantal writing, indicating vowel sounds by means of consonantal signs called matres lectionis. (Cf. defective writing.)

pleonasm: The use of superfluous words.

pleonastic: Redundant, superfluous.

plosive: In phonetical terminology, a consonant produced by completely closing the nasal and oral air-passages (implosion), resulting in a retention of air, and then suddenly opening the closure (explosion). Variously termed also explosive, mute, occlusive, and stop.

pluperfect: The past perfect tense (q.v.).

plural: The grammatical number denoting more than one. (In languages having dual forms, the plural denotes more than two.)

plural (adj.): Multiple; more than one; several.

plural of approximation: Jespersen’s term for the plural of numerals referring to decades in the lives of individuals or in centuries (e.g., “in the nineties of the past century”).

plurative: An adjective used, very rarely, as a synonym for the adjective plural.

plurilingual: A synonym for polylingual (q.v.).

Pochismo: A “contact vernacular,” spoken along the American-Mexican border, and consisting of Spanish heavily interlarded with English words and expressions.

poetry: A composition in rhythmical and metrical form, with or without rhymes.

pointer words: A term for demonstratives (used by Hogben and Bodmer in The Loom of Language).

Polabian: A West Slavic language, extinct since the eighteenth century.

Polish: A West Slavic language, the native tongue of about 25,000,000 people.

polyglot: (1) As an adjective, this word means containing or combining several languages.—(2) As a noun (rarely used), it means a person mastering or using several languages.

polylingual: (1) With reference to a text: written in several languages.—(2) With reference to persons: speaking several languages.

Polynesian: A sub-family of the Malayo-Polynesian family of languages, spoken east and west of the Melanesian area, viz., in Samoa, New Zealand, Tahiti, Hawaii, Easter Island, the Hervey, Society, Mangareva, Chatham, Marquesas, etc. Islands. It consists of twenty languages (characterized phonetically by a strong tendency to eliminate consonants and by the lack of consonant clusters and closed final syllables), the most important of which are: Hawaiian, Samoan, Tahitian and Maori.

polyphone: A written sign or combination of written signs which represents different sounds in different words or contexts.

polyphony: The property or characteristic of a written letter, syllable or word sign or other visible sign, of standing for more than one phoneme or sound or group of phonemes or sounds.

polysemantic: Having several, often quite different, meanings, all derived from the basic idea or concept.

polysemous: See polysemantic.

polysemy: The possession of several different meanings.

polysyllabic: Consisting of several syllables.

polysyllable: A word consisting of several syllables.

polysynthesis: The combination of several words into one word.

polysynthetic language: A language in which various words are combined (usually merged into the equivalent of a verb), with the resulting composite word representing an entire sentence, statement or idea.

polytonic language: See tone language.

Pontic: An extinct language, of undetermined linguistic affinities, preserved in inscriptions and in glosses recorded by some classical authors. Classified as Asianic.

pooh-pooh theory: See interjectional theory.

popular etymology: See folk etymology.

portmanteau word: A word coined by combining the first part of one word with the second part of another.

Portuguese: A Romance language, the native tongue of approximately 60,000,000 people in Portugal, its colonies and in Brazil.

Portuguese Creole: A creolized (q.v.) Portuguese spoken in the Cape Verde Islands.

positional variants: Variants (q.v.) due to position in the environment. (Also called combinatory, conditional or contextual variants.)

positive conjunction: A term occasionally applied to conjunctions (q.v.) introducing a clause which expresses an actual, existing state or relation. (E.g., because.)

positive degree: That form of an adjective or adverb which merely expresses the presence of a quality or condition, without comparing or indicating its degree.

possessive: Expressing or signifying possession.

possessive case: The grammatical case which indicates possession; in Indo-European languages, the genitive case.

possessive compound: A compound in which one of the components designates a quality possessed by the other one.

post-dental: See alveolar.

postfix: A rarely used synonym for suffix (q.v.).

postposition: A particle or word placed after a word to indicate its grammatical or syntactical relationship to the other words in the sentence.

post-velar: In phonetical terminology, a consonant pronounced with the tongue farther back than the velar (q.v.) position.

Potawatomi: A North American Indian language (Central Algonquian), surviving in Kansas.

potential mood: A term occasionally applied to verbal forms expressing ability, possibility, freedom for action, also obligation or necessity.

Praenestinian: An extinct dialect of the Latino-Faliscan branch of the Italic group of languages.

Prakrit: Any of the non-Sanskrit vernaculars and literary languages of ancient India. The Prakrits developed into the Apabhramsa vernaculars on which the modern Indic vernaculars are based. Some Indian authorities list as many as thirty-eight Prakrits.

pre-adjective: Sweet’s designation for an adjective which precedes the noun which it modifies.

precative mood: In certain languages, a distinct verbal mood used in utterances expressing a request or entreaty.

precisionist: One who observes and insists on strict, often exaggerated, care and precision in the forms and rules of speech and expression.

pre-dental: In phonetical terminology, a consonant pronounced with the front part of the tongue held near or touching the upper teeth.

predicate: The word or group of words which states or negates a property, condition, etc. of the subject of the sentence. (Cf. complete predicate; compound predicate; simple predicate.)

predicate adjective: An adjective or adjective phrase which modifies a noun or noun-equivalent indirectly, through a copula (q.v.), thus completing the meaning of the latter. In languages which use no copula, the predicate adjective functions as the predicate (q.v.) of the sentence.

predicate noun: A noun used in the sentence to describe, identify, etc. the subject, to which it is linked through a copulative verb (q.v.).

predicate verb: A verb used as the predicate of a sentence, or the verb part of a complete predicate (q.v.).

predicating word: Any finite verb form, so called because it can be used as predicate in a sentence.

predication: A statement or assertion.

predicative: Having the characteristics of a predicate or predication (qq.v.).

predictive future; predictive tense: Terms occasionally used to denote the future tense used to indicate what will happen.

prefix: A formative (q.v.), consisting of a letter, syllable or syllables, placed before and fused with a word, so as to form one unit with the latter and change or alter its meaning. (To prefix means to fuse a letter, syllable or syllables to the beginning of a word.)

preposition: In general, a word or particle placed before a substantive to show the syntactical or grammatical relation of the latter in the sentence. (Unlike prefixes, prepositions do not fuse with the word which they modify.)

preposition-group: A synonym for prepositional phrase (q.v.).

prepositional: In the Slavic languages, a declensional case which is used after certain prepositions only. (Many Slavic grammars call this case locative.)

prepositional phrase: A substantive (with or without modifiers) preceded by a preposition showing the grammatical or syntactical function of the substantive.

Pre-Sabellian: See Picenian.

prescriptive: A synonym for jussive. (Cf. jussive mood.)

prescriptive grammar: The presentation of grammar as a set of rules which must be obeyed by those who wish to be considered as employing the “standard language.” Also called normative grammar.

present tense: The verbal tense indicating that the action or state denoted by the verb is contemporarily occurring or existing.

presentational affix: A word capable of being used as a prefix or suffix or as a separate word with a distinct independent meaning of its own.

presentive word: A word which directly conveys an idea, a concept, the picture or notion of an object to the mind of the listener.

prefer-: A prefix formerly used in grammatical terminology to form names of certain verbal tenses, viz.: preterimperfect (now customarily called imperfect tense), preterperfect (now customarily called perfect tense) and preterpluperfect (now customarily called past perfect tense).

preterit, preterite: A verbal tense expressing that the action occurred in the past.

preterit future: An obsolete name of the verbal tense now usually called future perfect.

primary accent: The main stress in the pronunciation of a given word.

primary compound: A compound word consisting of two simple words.

primary derivative: (1) A word derived from another word which itself is not a derived word.—(2) A word derived from another word by vowel mutation.

primary language: A term often used to designate the spoken language, in contradistinction to the written form of the language (called secondary language).

primary phoneme: (1) A simple, non-compound phoneme.—(2) A speech feature or element, any change in which has a direct bearing on the meaning of the word or utterance.

primary tense: A designation often applied to the present,simple past and future tenses (also called simple tenses).

primary word: In general, a word not derived from another word. (Jespersen uses this term in the sense of substantive.)

prime word: A word which cannot be shown to be composed of other words or linguistic elements.

primitive: The adjective customarily employed in the designation of the unrecorded parent languages of language groups or families (e.g., Primitive Germanic, Primitive Indo-European, etc.).

principal clause: An independent clause (q.v.).

principal word: This term is used by Jespersen in the meaning of substantive.

privative: A generic term for suffixes, prefixes, and other elements of word-formation which indicate lack, absence, etc. (E.g., the English non-, un-, -less, etc.)

proclitic: Said of a word which bears no accent of its own, but is pronounced as forming a phonetic unit with the accented word following it.

productive suffix: A term introduced by Jespersen for suffixes which still can and are used to form new derivatives.

progressive: (1) With reference to changes (phonetical, grammatical, etc.), this adjective indicates that the change occurs under the effect or influence of a preceding element.—(2) See progressive tense.

progressive assimilation: Assimilation (q.v.) of a phoneme which follows the assimilatory phoneme responsible for this phenomenon.

progressive dissimilation: Dissimilation (q.v.) of a phoneme under the influence of a preceding phoneme.

progressive tense: A verbal form, usually periphrastic, expressing that the action is, was or will be in progress at the time indicated.

prohibitive: Expressing a prohibition.

prolative: A declensional case in certain languages (e.g., Finno-Ugric), having the same denotation as conveyed in English by the preposition along.

prolepsis: Anticipative use of a word in the sentence construction.

promissive future; promissive tense: Terms occasionally used to denote the future tense used to express a promise, assurance, etc., in contradistinction to the expression of what is expected or bound to happen (the latter is called predictive tense).

pronominal: Relating to or characteristic of a pronoun (q.v.); having the characteristics of a pronoun.

pronoun: A word used to replace a proper name or a noun, or to refer to the person, object, idea, etc. designated by a noun.

prop-word: A term occasionally used for a word used to replace a substantive. (Cf. anaphoric word.)

proparoxytone: A word bearing the main accent on the syllable immediately preceding the penultimate.

proparoxytonic language: A language in which the majority or a great many of the words are proparoxytones (q.v.).

proper compound: In flexional languages, a compound word in which the members are so intimately linked or fused that only the last member is inflected.

proper noun: The name of a specific individual person, object, place, etc.

proper triphthong: See triphthong.

propiate noun: A noun designating a state or condition or occupation or vocation.

proportional analogy: A rarely used synonym for analogical creation (q.v.).

proportional opposition: The relationship of sets of phonemes to each other: p:b = t:d = k:g; f:v = θ:ð = s:z =∫:Ʒ etc., where more than one set has the same relevant feature.

proposition: A declarative sentence; in general, any complete utterance or assertion. Also, the content of meaning of such a sentence, utterance or assertion.

prose: Language as used in writing and speaking, without observance of rhythm, meter, stanzaic pattern and the other distinctive features of poetry.

prosecutive: A declensional case in certain languages (e.g., in Yukagir), having the same denotation as conveyed in English by the preposition along.

prosodeme: The minimal unit of prosodic feature serving a phonemic purpose. Also called supra-segmental phoneme, and secondary phoneme.

prosodic features: Those phonemic features which are tied, not to individual phonemes, but to larger units (the syllable) or to smaller units (the mora—q.v.).

prosody: The science and art of versification and of the rhythmic structure of sound in speech, especially in poetry.

prosthesis, prosthetic: See prothesis, prothetic.

protasis: See hypothetical clause.

prothesis: The prefixing of a prothetic (q.v.) vowel or syllable to a word.

prothetic phoneme, prothetic vowel: A sound prefixed to a word for easier pronunciation or other phonetical or linguistic reasons.

proto-: When prefixed to the name of a language, this term serves to designate the earliest known, at times the earliest artificially reconstructed, form of that language.

prototype: A primitive form; the original or model after which other words or forms are patterned.

Provençal: A Romance language, formerly used throughout southern France as a unified literary language, today a series of local dialects. An attempt to reconstitute a literary Provençal was made by Mistral about 1900.

provincialism: A word or phrase or construction peculiar to or characteristic of a local dialect or manner of speech.

Prussian: See Old Prussian.

psycholinguistics: The study of linguistics as connected with human behavior.

Puchikvar: A Great Andamanese language.

punctuation: The use of conventional marks (punctuation marks) in order to separate certain parts or elements of a written text, for the purpose of assuring and improving the clarity of its meaning.

punctuation mark: Cf. punctuation.

punctuation words: Particles used in certain languages (e.g., Malay) which serve to indicate a point of division between units of meaning, thus being the spoken equivalents of written or printed punctuation marks.

Punjabi: An Indic language, spoken in the Punjab region of northern India by approximately 17,000,000 native speakers. (Also called Panjabi.)

pure language: A language free of hybridization, admixture of foreign linguistic features, borrowed words and forms, etc.

purism: The tendency or effort to preserve a language “pure” from the use of foreign terms; exaggerated care and precision in the observance of the rules of grammar and speech.

purist: One who believes in and practices purism (q.v.).

Pushto: See Pushtu.

Pushtu: A language, of the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian group of the Indo-European family of languages, spoken in Afghanistan by an estimated 4-5,000,000 native speakers. This language is also called Pushto, Pashto or Afghan.

putative aspect: A verbal aspect, also termed inferential, expressing that the action or state denoted by the verb is reported as an inference or as an item of information gained from someone else’s statement.

Pyu: A language once spoken in Burma, extinct since the 14th century A.D. Hardly anything is known about this language, the only known records of which consist of a few inscriptions. The language is tentatively classified as Tibeto-Burmese.