congruence (n.)

A term used in LINGUISTICS to refer to a correspondence between the decisions made at one LEVEL of analysis (PHONOLOGY, GRAMMAR or SEMANTICS) and those made at another. The SENTENCE is the UNIT where there is maximum congruence of levels, in that criteria of identification at each level tend to coincide: certain classes of exception aside, a sentence is a grammatically, semantically and phonologically autonomous unit. The notion of WORD, by contrast, displays less congruence (‘is less congruent’): phonological (and orthographic), MORPHOLOGICAL, SYNTACTIC and semantic criteria often conflict in word identification and CLASSIFICATION.