informant

See also: Informant

English

Etymology

Latin informans, participle of informo.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ɪnˈfɔːmənt/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ɪnˈfɔɹmənt/

Noun

informant (plural informants)

1. One who relays confidential information to someone, especially to the police; an informer.
2. (linguistics) A native speaker who acts as a linguistic reference for a language being studied. The informant demonstrates native pronunciation, provides grammaticality judgments regarding linguistic well-formedness, and may also explain cultural references and other important contextual information.
   • 1977, A. E. Kibrik, The methodology of field investigations in linguistics

     The only material the linguist has to begin with are the informant's grammatical utterances in the target language pronounced arbitrarily in a natural or assigned communicative situation or stimulated artificially by the investigator.

   • 2003, Sergei Nirenburg, H. L. Somers, Yorick Wilks, Readings in machine translation (page 116)

     The informant learns his language by formal training and, more importantly, by constant exposure to its use. He cannot repeat to the linguist what he has never seen or heard.

Synonyms

• For semantic relationships of this term, see informant in the Thesaurus.

Translations

one who relays confidential information

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 提供消息的人 (tígōng xiāoxī de rén), 告密者 (zh) (gàomìzhě), 線人 (zh), 线人 (zh) (xiànrén)

• Czech: informátor m
• Danish: informant c
• Finnish: informaattori (fi)
• French: informateur (fr) m, informatrice (fr) f
• German: Informant (de) m, Informantin (de) f
• Greek: πληροφοριοδότης (el) m (pliroforiodótis)
• Italian: delatore (it), informatore (it), spia (it)

• Japanese: 情報提供者 (じょうほうていきょうしゃ, jōhō teikyōsha), インフォーマント (infōmanto)
• Kurdish:

  Sorani: ئاگادار‏‎ (ku) (agadar)

• Maori: kaiwhāki
• Polish: informator (pl) m
• Portuguese: informante (pt) m, f, delator (pt) m
• Russian: осведоми́тель (ru) m (osvedomítelʹ), осведоми́тельница (ru) f (osvedomítelʹnica), информа́тор (ru) m (informátor)
• Tagalog: tagahimaton

See also

• name names

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Catalan

Verb

informant

1. present participle of informar

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French

Verb

informant

1. present participle of informer

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Latin

Verb

īnfōrmant

1. third-person plural present active indicative of īnfōrmō