Language Convention
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A Language Convention is a use of Language with implicit meaning.
- See: Idiom, Linguistic Expression.
References
2008
- (Crystal, 2008) ⇒ David Crystal. (2008). “A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, 6th edition." Blackwell Publishing. ISBN:9781405152976
- convention LINGUISTICS uses this term in its general sense - referring to any accepted practice in the use of LANGUAGE (e.g. the convention of using certain formulae upon leave-taking), or in developing a MODEL of language (e.g. it is conventional to transcribe PHONEMES using brackets). But there is also a restricted sense, where it refer to the ARBITRARY nature of the relationships between linguist EXPRESSIONS and their MEANINGS: one says that the relationship between the LEXICAL ITEM table and the thing 'table' is conventional, the term here being used in a traditional philosophical sense which dates from Plato. See COGNITIVE GRAMMAR.
2007
- (Matthews, 2007) ⇒ Peter H. Matthews. (2007). “Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics." Oxford University Press. ISBN:0199202729
- conventional Having no natural explanation. Thus the meaning of cat is purely conventional, in that there is no natural relation between the phonetic form [kat] and any feature of the animals that it denotes. Cf. arbitrariness.