application (n.)

A term used by some LINGUISTS to refer to the overall relationship which exists between LANGUAGE and non-linguistic entities, situations, etc. The ‘application’ of a linguistic UNIT is its use in a specific CONTEXT; a unit is said to be applicable to that context. For example, a LEXICAL ITEM may be applied to a range of situations (none of which would constitute part of its normal DENOTATION or REFERENCE), e.g. heap being applied to a car, a house, a sculpture. The term is particularly useful in the context of translation, where pairs of apparently equivalent terms turn out to have different ranges of application (or applicability); e.g. the use of merci in French differs from the use of thank you in English. If items from different languages totally correspond in the range of situations where they may be used, they are said to have the same application.

applicational grammar The name given to a type of CATEGORIAL GRAMMAR proposed by the Russian linguist Sebastian Konstantinovich (b. 1916). Its basic units are term (α) and sentence (β).