interpretation. Interpretation is often required in a variety of situations,
such as conferences, community settings, and the courts.
see also translationinterpretern
in general, someone who provides an oral translation of a speaker’s words
from one language to another. An accredited interpreter(or certified inter-
preter) is one who has received accreditation (or certification) from a pro-
fessional organization such as the Institute of Translation and Interpreting
(ITI), issued on the basis of training, experience, and examinations. Some
interpreters have highly specialized skills and are accredited as confer-
ence interpreters orcourt interpreters.
interpretingn
see interpretation
interpretive errorn
see error
interpretive semanticsn
a theory about the place of meaning in a model of generative grammar.
It considers a meaning component, called the semantic component, as
part of the grammar. This component contains rules which interpret the
meaning of sentences. This theory differs from generative semantics, which
insists that the semantic component is the most basic part of a grammar
from which all sentences of a language can be “generated” (see generative
grammar, rule^2 ).
In generative semantics, syntactic rules operate on the meaning of a sen-
tence to produce its form. In interpretive semantics, semantic rules operate
on the words and syntactic structure of a sentence to reveal its meaning.
inter-rater reliabilityn
(in testing) the degree to which different examiners or judges making differ-
ent subjective ratings of ability (e.g. of L2 writing proficiency) agree in their
evaluations of that ability. If different judges rank test takers in approxi-
mately the same order, using a rating scalethat measures different aspects
of proficiency, the rating scale is said to have high inter-rater reliability.
see also intra-rater reliability
interrogative pronounn
wh-pronouns (who, which, what, whose, who(m), etc.), which are used to
form questions, e.g.:
interrogative pronoun