gatekeeper ngatekeeping n
in describing power relations within a society, anything that controls or
limits access to something for a segment of the population. The ability to
speak standard English or a prestige variety of English may have a gate-
keeping role since those who do not speak this variety of English may find
their access to certain professions or services restricted.
gatingn
a research paradigm in which subjects hear fragments of a word and
attempt to identify the whole word, used to determine the amount of
phonetic information needed for word identification.
GB theory orG/B theory n
another term for government/binding theory
geminate adj
in phonology, adjacent segments that are the same, such as the two con-
sonants in the middle of Italian folla[folla] (“crowd”) or Japanese [nippon]
(“Japan”). Geminate consonants are sometimes called longor doubled
consonants.
GEN n
an abbreviation for genitive relative clause
see noun phrase accessibility hierarchy
gender^1 n
refers to sex as either a biological or socially constructed category. For
example, the term genderlectcan refer to the speech of men and women and
by extension to such varieties as a homosexual register in communities
where such varieties exist or are recognized. In postmodernism and
feminist linguistics, gender is viewed more as a process (something
that someone does or performs in interaction), rather than an attribute that
one possesses.
gender^2 n
a grammatical distinction in some languages that allows words to be
divided into categories such as masculine, feminine, or neuteron the basis
of inflectional and agreement properties, not limited to nouns with inherent
gender (see gender^1 ). For example, in Spanish, most nouns and ending
in –aare feminine and most nouns ending in –oare masculine, and both
articles and adjectives agree in gender with the nouns they modify. In
English, grammatical gender is limited to the distinction between he,
she, and itin pronouns, and a small set of nouns that reflect the gender
gatekeeper