Aaron Burr
(1756–1836)US Democratic Republican statesman. After losing the presidential election to Jefferson in 1800, Burr was elected Vice-President. He was defeated in the contest for the governorship of New ...
abacus
An ancient device for performing arithmetic calculations by sliding beads along rods or in grooves. Despite the spread of electronic calculators and computers, the abacus is still widely used in the ...
abduction
An inference process widely used in artificial intelligence, particularly in expert systems and rule-based systems. In diagnosis, for example, there may be a rule like “if measles then red spots” so ...
Abkhaz-Adyghe Languages
Also called Northwest Caucasian or West Caucasian languages. They are spoken primarily in the northwestern Caucasus, though there are also sizable emigrant communities in Turkey and the Middle ...
abortion
There is no actual prohibition in the Bible against aborting a foetus. Nevertheless, in the unanimously accepted Jewish consensus, abortion is a very serious offence, though foeticide is not treated ...
Abraham Lincoln
(1809–65)US Republican statesman, 16th President of the USA (1861–65). His election as President on an anti‐slavery platform antipathetic to the interests of the southern states helped precipitate ...
academies
Are societies or institutions for the cultivation and promotion of literature, the arts or science, or of some particular branch of science such as medicine, for example, the Académie de ...
Acanthus
(family Acanthaceae)A genus of shrubs and perennial herbs, most of which are xeromorphic and have spiny leaves. Some species are cultivated as ornamentals. The upper lip of the corolla is lacking. ...
Ache-Chamic Languages
A branch of Western Malayo-Polynesian. They are spoken in Sumatra, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and China.LANGUAGE LISTAceh: also called Atjeh, Atjehnese, Achinese, Achehnese. 3,000,000 ...
Acoustic Phonetics
Sound waves form the physical link between speaker and hearer. Central to the field of acoustic phonetics are the concepts and techniques of acoustic physics; but acoustic phonetic research also ...
Acquisition of Language
[This entry includes the following subentries:PhonologySyntaxCommunicative CompetenceMeanings and FormsCritical PeriodsSecond-Language Acquisition]PhonologySyntaxCommunicative CompetenceMeanings and ...
acrostic
A poem, word puzzle, or other composition in which certain letters in each line form a word or words. The word is recorded from the late 16th century, and comes via French from Greek akrostikhis, ...
actant
In the narratology of A. J. Greimas, one of six basic categories of fictional role common to all stories. The actants are paired in binary opposition: Subject/Object, Sender/Receiver, ...
ad hominem argument
For Aristotle, a fallacy in which ‘persons direct their solutions against the man, not against his arguments’ (Sophistical Refutations, 178b17). Locke sees it as a ‘way to press a man ...
Adamawa Languages
Spoken in eastern Nigeria, northern Cameroon, and southern Chad, with some extension into the Central African Republic. They form one of the branches of Adamawa-Ubangi.LANGUAGE LISTAwak: also called ...
Adamawa-Ubangi Languages
Formerly known as Adamawa-Eastern. They form one of the major branches of the Niger-Congo family. Adamawa-Ubangi languages are spoken in an area from eastern Nigeria through eastern Cameroon, ...
Adjacency
Word-internal conditioning, of whatever kind, is commonly observed to be local rather than remote. In rules of derivation and compounding which are conditional on word-class categorizations, it tends ...
Adjectives
Although the word class of adjectives is now considered a major part of speech, it was long held to be a special type of noun (“noun adjective”) and did not ...
Adjunction
In the theory of generative grammar, transformations are said to map phrase markers into other phrase markers. Transformational operations are composed of elementary operations of permutation, ...
