Prototypical

- prototypical category – See Prototype theory; Prototype; Prototypicality effect

Prototypicality effect (salience; centrality effect) – means that some elements of the category are far more conspicuous or salient, or more frequently used than others. Such p.e. occurs not only at the level of senses, but at the level of referents. E.g. the category 'fruit' would have 'apple' as a salient member for the Northern Europeans' conceptual construal, whereas Southern Europeans if asked to name fruits would name figs. – See Prototype

Proverb – also paremy,a short familiar epigrammatic saying expressing popular wisdom, a truth or moral lesson in a concise and imaginative way: their lexical components are constant, their meaning is traditional and mostly figurative, they are introduced into speech ready-made.

Pseudo-compounds – See Compound, pseudo-c.

Purism – a movement/scholarly approach advocating scrupulous purity in language (concerning the processes of borrowing, creolization, jargonization, vulgarization, etc.)

Q

Quotation compounds (holophrasis ) – See Compound, quotation c.

Quotation, familiar – expressions which come from literature and by and by become part and parcel of the language, so that many people using them do not even know that they are quoting, e.g. Shakespearian quotations: There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy; The rest is silence; from A.Pope: To err is human; At every word a reputation dies; A little learning is a dangerous thing.

R

Reduplication – a minor means of word formation (q.v.), doubling of stems with sound interchange. – See Ablaut combinations; Compounds, reduplicative c.

Reference (referential content) – is derived from reality and depend on how the conceptual space (a given referential area) is covered by a lexical item. R. is referring – linkage of a linguistic unit with a non-linguistic entity to which it serves a name. This linkage can be of a different nature and is reflected in discrimination between specific referential functions /usage of words:

- existential;

- identifying;

- non-referential (usage);

- direct address to the communicant.

Referent – 1) the object of thought correlated with a certain linguistic expression, the element of objective reality as reflected in our minds and viewed as the content regularly correlated with certain expression, an object of our experience, a fact of the outer world which is encompassed by a given symbol. In this sense r. can be equated terminologically with denotatum, but the two terms can be distinguished as well in the following way: denotatum means a class of objects, to which a concept of a class would be a corresponding conceptualisation on the cognitive level 2) while r. would mean a discrete representative of a class of denotata, to which a mental referent would correspond on the level of conceptualisation.

Referential approach to meaning – See 'Lexicentric' approach to meaning

Referential meaning – 1) equivalent to denotation-1 – part of the word's semantics which involves the relationship between a linguistic unit (a lexical item) and the non-linguistic entities to which it refers; 2) type of meaning actualised by lexical items when they denote a single representative of a class of denotata/referents, its cognitive counterpart being a mental referent (a thought / a conceptualised image of a single referent) as opposed to concepts of a class (reflected in denotational meaning) and concept of a property/feature (reflected by significative meaning); actualised primarily by proper names and common names supported by the individualising (specifying) function of the articles.

Register – refers to functional specification of language use. Introduced into linguistic analysis by M.A.K.Halliday who defined the notion in the following way: "A register can be defined as a particular configuration of meanings that is associated with a particular situation type. The distinction between one register and another is a distinction of what is said as much as how it is said, without any enforced separation between the two". Register features are a universal factor: they cut across the whole of English vocabulary; in analysis of register it is customary to distinguish three interacting dimensions of variation: field, mode, and style, which are closely interwoven:

- field (subject-field) – refers to the subject-matter, the specialised or predominant themes of discourse; we can speak of lexical and grammatical peculiarities of such fields of discourse as the language of law, academic discourse, advertising language, political speeches, etc. The structure of discourse in respect to subject-fields will involve the division into general and specialised vocabulary