CentralA vowel formed with the tongue horizontally positioned in the center of the space for vowel articulation, between front and back (compare mid for the vertical axis). |
Child-directed speechSpeech addressed to children. See also motherese. |
CircumfixA bound morpheme made up of two parts, one that occurs before and one that occurs after the root. E.g. German ge-schrieb-en 'written'. |
Citation formTerm that refers to the form of a lexeme’s paradigm that is used by linguists to refer to the lexeme. Morphologists often give the citation form in small capital letters. |
Class 1 affixesSee primary affixes. |
Class 2 affixesSee secondary affixes. |
ClickA stop consonant produced by creating a vacuum inside the mouth with a raised back of the tongue and tongue tip or closed lips, i.e. having an ingressive velaric airstream mechanism. Employed linguistically in a limited number of African, especially Khoisan, languages. Extralinguistically, clicks occur in many languages, including English, e.g. to express disapproval (tut, tsk) or to spur on animals. |
ClippingA word-formation process by which a word is created by lopping off part of another word, e.g. English Will < William. |
CliticA phonologically weak form that corresponds to a function word or another morpheme (e.g. genitive 's in English, 't (< het 'it'), 'm (< hem 'him'), etc. in Dutch, or -que 'and' in Latin) which becomes attached to a preceding or following word (called host or anchor), sometimes through a process of resyllabification. |
Clitic groupAn expression formed by one or more clitics and the host. |