environment (n.)

A general term used in LINGUISTICS and PHONETICS to refer to specific parts of an UTTERANCE (or TEXT) near or adjacent to a UNIT which is the focus of attention. Features of the linguistic environment may influence the selection of a particular unit, at a given place in an utterance, and thus restrict its occurrence, or DISTRIBUTION. For example, in PHONOLOGY, whether a CONSONANT PHONEME is lip-ROUNDED or not may depend on the presence of a rounded VOWEL in its phonetic environment. Sounds are referred to as being ‘conditioned’ by their environment. In GRAMMAR, the term is used similarly; e.g. the occurrence of one MORPHEME may depend on the prior use of another in its environment, as with cran-, which occurs only in the grammatical environment of -berry. The term CONTEXT has also come to be widely used in this sense. The symbol / (in such contexts as A ⇒ B/C ‘rewrite A as B in the context of C’) is called an environment bar.

Particularly in the phrase linguistic environment, the term refers to the SOCIOLINGUISTIC situation in relation to which a particular observation is being made. In language ACQUISITION, for example, a particular STRUCTURE might be said to appear at age two, ‘regardless of the linguistic environment of the child’, i.e. disregarding the kind of language the child is used to hearing in its social situation. The term CONTEXT is sometimes used in this sense also.