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Grammar Glossary (a-l)
abbreviated adjective clauses
• Abbreviated adjective clauses are the most important type of non-finite adjective clause. There are two types: those made from FINITE ADJECTIVE CLAUSES in the active voice and those made from FINITE ADJECTIVE CLAUSES in the ac.
• An example of the first type is, "Jill thought the coat left in the car was Jack's." Here the CLAUSE, "left in the car" should be seen as an abbreviation of the full adjective clause "that was left in the car." An example of the second type is, "Jill suddenly realized that the man waving at her was Jack." Here the clause "waving at her" should be seen as an abbreviation of the clause "who was waving at her."
• Notice that adjective clauses cannot be abbreviated if the RELATIVE PRONOUN is the OBJECT of the VERB, as in "Jill suddently realized that the man (who) she was waving at was Jack." Here the clause cannot be abbreviated; the subject and the auxiliary verb must remain.
abbreviation
• An abbreviation is short form of a word. For example, 'Dr.' is an abbreviation of 'doctor.' An abbreviation is usually followed by a PERIOD.
act/action
• 'Act' is a verb that means 'do something.' "We must act." has the same meaning as: "We must do something."
• The NOUN form, 'action' means 'something that is done.'"Jack's actions later that evening were very strange," means the same thing as "The things Jack did later that evening were very strange."
active voice/passive voice
• Sentence/clauses can be either "active" or "passive." (Often grammarians speak of sentence/clauses as being in the active or passive "voice.")
• If a sentence/clause has a transitive verb phrase, then it often also has an object. For example, in the sentence, "Jack kissed Jill," "Jill" is the object.
• Usually, if a sentence/clause has an object, then a passive version can be made by making the object into a subject and making some chages to the verb phrase. For example, the active sentence, "Harry interviewed Jill" can be made into the passive sentence, "Jill was interviewed."
• In the passive version, the auxiliary verb "be" is used in combination with the past participle of the main verb. The simple past of "be" is used because the active version was in the simple past. In the simple present, the passive version would be, "Jill is interviewed." In the compound tenses, two auxiliaries are required. The present and past progressive forms would be "Jill is being interviewed," and Jill "was being interviewed." The present and past perfect forms would be,"Jill has been interviewed" and "Jill had been interviewed."
• Usually, in an active sentence with an object, the "agent" — the person or thing doing the action — is named by the subject. When the active sentence is put into the passive, this information about the agent may disappear. (It may also be kept by the use of an adverbial phrase as in "jill was interviewed by Harry.")
• There are several reasons for using the passive rather than the active: the agent may be unimportant as in "Harry's office has been painted"; the agent may be unknown as in, "Harry's old friend Bill has been murdered"; or it may be necessary to emphasize the "recipient" of the action by naming it at the beginning of the sentence/clause, as in "The repairs to Harry's roof were paid for by the insurance company."
adjectival form of verb
• The adjectival form of a verb is an adjective which has been made from a verb. Many verbs can be made into adjectives by adding the suffix "able."
• For example the adjectives, "disposable," "debatable," "detectable," "manageable," "readable," "playable" are the adjectival forms of "dispose," "debate," "detect," "manage," "read," and "play."
• When an adjective formed in this way is used to describe a particular thing the meaning is, more or less, that the action described by the original verb can be done to or with that thing. For example, "a disposable razor" is a razor that can be (or "is meant to be") disposed of (or "thrown away), and "a readable book" is a book that can be read (easily and with pleasure).
• This does not happen with all adjectives, however. For example, "lovable" is a common word, which means, approximately, "can be (and is) loved (easily and naturally and by many people," but no such adjective as "hateable" will be found in an English dictionary.
• However, although the word is not in dictionaries, it would be possible to "make up" the adjective "hateable" for a special occasion and use it to communicate successfully and grammatically. Someone could say for example, "Harry is a really terrible person. He's done all kinds of awful things to me and all sorts of other people. I know I should really hate him, and have nothing to do with him, but I just can't. I always end up forgiving him. I guess he's just not hateable."
• The suffix "able" can, in fact be added to almost any English verb to create an understandable and grammatical adjective; suffixes and prefixes that can be used in this way are called "productive." )
• Some verbs have special adjectival forms which have a similar meaning to the "able" form in which the suffix "ible" is added to a special "root." For example, something that is "visible" is something that can be seen, something that is "edible" is something that can be eaten, and something that is "portable" is something that can be carried.
adjective
• Adjectives make up one of the seven word classes in English.
• They are words such as "red" and "loud." They are used, for example,in the sentence "Harry told Jane that if she pushed the red button she would hear a loud noise." Here the adjecvtives "red" and "loud" are used ATTRIBUTIVELY to MODIFY the nouns they precede, "button," and "noise."
• In the sentences, "Jane told Harry that his voice was too loud" and "Harry's tace turned red" the adjectives "red" and "loud" are used PREDICATIVELY. In other words, there is a verb between them and the nouns they modify.
adjective clause
• Adjective clauses are CLAUSES that MODIFY NOUNS. They are called 'adjective clauses' because they do the same sort of job that single-word ADJECTIVES do. For example, in the sentence, "The man who was screaming was was Jack's friend, Harry," the adjective clause, "who was screaming'' does the same job as the adjective, "screaming" does in the sentence, "The screaming man was Jack's friend Harry."
• see also: RESTRICTIVE AND NON-RESTRICTIVE ADJECTIVE CLAUSES and, for a full discussion of this subject, Chapter Two of "Complex Sentences."
• adjective clauses are often called 'relative clauses.'
adjunct
• Adjuncts are one of the three types of ADVERBIAL. They are words or PHRASES or CLAUSES that are used to add meaning to VERB (PHRASES). For example, the phrase 'on the shelf' is an adjunct in the sentence, "Dinah put the jar on the shelf".
• For a fuller discussion of adjuncts and other adverbials, see Chapter Two of "Complex Sentences."
adverb
• An adverb is a word that can be used, by itself, as an ADVERBIAL. There are three kinds of adverb, ADJUNCTS, CONJUNCTS, and DISJUNCTS.
• For example, ''quickly" is an ADJUNCT in the sentence: "When the sun came up, Jane quickly got dressed and went out,"
• "however" is a CONJUNCT in the sentence "However, she forgot to take the documents with her,"
• and "unfortunately" is a DISJUNCT in the sentence, "By the time she realized her mistake, it was unfortunately too late to go back to get them."
• Some adverbs can also used to MODIFY ADJECTIVES. For example, in the sentence, "When Jane arrived at Harry's office she was extremely frightened," the adverb "extremely" modifies the adjective, "frightened."
• Some adverbs can also be used to modify other adverbs. For example, in the sentence, "When she saw the smile on Harry's face she calmed down very quickly," the adverb, 'very,' modifies the adverb, 'quickly.'
• Adverbs are one of the seven WORD CLASSES (or 'parts of speech' ) in English. (There is a full discussion of word classes in Chapter Two of "Complex Sentences.")
adverbial
• The adverbial is one of the five sentence parts. An adverbial can be a one-word adverb as in the sentence, "Dick and Jane left quickly after the wedding," where "quickly" is the adverbial. It can be a PHRASE as in, "Dick carried Jane into the house," where "in the house," is the adverbial. And it can be a CLAUSE as in, "As soon as they got into the car, Dick kissed Jane," where the adverbial is "as soon as they got into to the car."
• For a full discussion of sentence parts, see Chapter Two of "Complex Sentences."
adverbial clause
• Adverbial clauses are clauses that modify verbs. For example,in the sentence, "Sarah cleaned up the mess while Harry had another drink," the adverbial clause, "while Harry had another drink" modifies the verb "cleaned up." And in the sentence, "Harry was angry because Sarah had refused his offer," the adverbial clause, "because Sarah had refused his offer" is an adverbial clause modifying the verb "was."
•The two examples just given are finite adverbial clauses, but adverbial clauses are often non-finite. For example, in the sentence, "After refusing Harry's offer, Sarah left immediately," the non-finite adverbial clause "after refusing Harry's offer" modifies the verb "left."
adverbial phrase
An adverbial phrase is a PHRASE, typically a PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE, that is used as an ADVERBIAL. For example in the sentence, "In the bedroom, Jane found a wonderful surprise," the prepositional phrase, "in the bedroom," is an adverbial.
ambiguous
• A word is ambiguous if it has more than one meaning. For example, the word, "bank" is ambiguous because it can REFER to either the edge of a river or to a business where money is lent and deposited.
• A sentence is ambiguous if it can be understood in more than one way. For example, the sentence, "Flying planes can be dangerous," is ambiguous because it can be understood as meaning, "The acivity of flying playings (being a pilot) can be dangerous," or as meaning "Planes that are flying (in the air, not on the ground) can be dangerous."
• Usually — but not always — the CONTEXT makes it clear which of two or more possible meanings of a word or sentence is the right one.
antonym
The antonym of a particular word is the word that has the opposite meaning of that word. For example, the antonym of "fat" is "thin," and the antonym of "short" is "tall."
apostrophe
• An apostrophe is a PUNCTUATION MARK. It has two uses:
(1) to show that letters have been omitted in a CONTRACTION, for example in "I'm," an apostrophe is used to show that the letter 'a' has been removed from the word 'am.'
(2) with the letter 's' after a noun to show possession. For example in, "Harry's house is not far from his office" the apostrophe and the 's' are added to "Harry" to indicate that the house belongs to Harry.
• Notice that apostrophes have the same shape as the closing member of a pair of SINGLE QUOTATION MARKS.
article
"Articles" make up a subgroup of the determiner word class.
• There are two articles "a" and "the"; "an" is a spelling and pronunciation variant of "a". The articles are among the most common English words. ("The" seems be in first place on all the lists; "a" is variously listed as number four, five, or six.)
• Articles can be thought of as "default" determiners: where no other determiner is used before a noun, an article is used —except in those cases where no determiner of any kind is necessary.
• "The" is called a "definite article" because, roughly speaking, it is used when the following noun refers to a definite, specific thing (or to definite, specific things). "A"
is used, roughly speaking, when the following noun has a more general or abstract reference.
• Articles are of great importance for ESL students and their teachers because the rules governing their use are complex and difficult to state precisely —and also because, for students from some linguistic backgrounds at any rate, using articles seems "go against the grain." The most important rule — because it is the one whose violation causes the most mistakes — is: an article (or some other determiner) is ALWAYS required before a singular count noun.
auxiliary verb
• An "auxiliary verb" is a verb that appears in a verb phrase, but is not the main verb.
• For example, in the verb phrase "has been working," "has" and "been" are auxiliary verbs and "working" is the main verb.
base form of verb
• The base form of a VERB is just the "verb word" by itself without any "ending" and without "to." In all verbs except the verb "be," the base form is IDENTICAL with the FIRST PERSON SINGULAR (the verb form used with "I.")
• The base form is used, for example, with VERBS OF PERCEPTION, as in the sentence, "Jack watched Jill run down the hill."
• It is also used after MODAL AUXILIARIES, as in the sentence, "Dick should be more polite to Jane."
built-in object
• CLAUSAL VERBS often have 'built-in objects.' In other words, these verbs have the structure of a CLAUSE that contains a VERB, and an OBJECT. For example, in the clausal verb "make a complaint," the word "complaint" must be seen as the object of the verb "make."
causative verbs
• Four verbs — "make," "let," "have," and "get" — can be used "causatively," to indicate that someone "caused" someone else to do something.
•There are real and important differences between the four causative verbs but these differences are not very precise, so in explaining the verbs, it is probably better to speak of what they "suggest" rather than what they "mean."
•Here are some examples and explanations:
"Dinah made Sam wash the dishes."
This suggests that Sam didn't want to wash the dishes and Dinah forced him to do it perhaps by saying she would hurt him or punish him if he didn't
"Dinah let Sam wash the dishes."
This suggests that Sam did want to wash the dishes and Dinah allowed him to do so.
"Dinah had Sam wash the dishes."
This suggests that Dinah somehow arranged (or "brought it about") that Sam washed the dishes, perhaps by paying him or perhaps just by asking him. It does not suggest that Sam was forced to wash the dishes — or that he wanted, or didn't want, to do the job.
"Dinah got Sam to wash the dishes."
This is similar to "Dinah had Sam..." but there is a slight suggestion that Sam didn't really want to wash the dishes or that this wasn't the sort of thing he was normally expected to do.
• Notice that all the causative verbs except for "get" are COMPLEMENTED by the BASE FORM. "Get" is complemented by a "to"-infinitive.
clausal verb
• Clausal verbs have the structure of a clause: In other words, like clauses, they have, a VERB ''inside" them — and that verb will have an OBJECT, or perhaps AN ADVERBIAL, which is also "inside" the clausal verb.
• For example the clausal verb, "make a complaint," contains the verb, "make" and the object "complaint."
• To take another example, the clausal verb, "make sure," contains the verb, "make" and the adverbial, "sure."
• However, despite having the COMPLEX STRUCTURE of a clause, clausal verbs have a SIMPLE meaning. In other words they have meaning in the same way ordinary words do.
• For example, in the sentence, "Sarah made a complaint about the way Harry was talking to her," the three words, "made," "a," and "complaint" have, taken together, just one meaning, in the same way as the word "complain" has one meaning in the sentence, "Sarah complained about the way Harry was talking to her."
clause
• A "clause" is a grammatical group of words that is "centered" on a "verb phrase". The verb phrase always has a subject — although in some cases this subject will only be "implicit." (It is important to remember that "subject" and "verb phrase" refer to sentence/clause parts, not to word classes. )
• The idea of a clause should be understood in contrast to the idea of a "phrase." Phrases do not have verb phrases at their center as clauses do.
• Clauses are either "finite" or "non-finite." A finite clause is one that has a "finite verb" in its verb phrase. (A finite-verb is a verb that has one of the three following forms: "base-form," "s-form," "past-form.")
• Clauses can also be classified as "main clauses," "subordinate clauses," and "independent clauses."
• Clauses can further be classified in terms of their function — as "adjective clauses," "noun clauses," and "adverbial clauses."
NOTE: an understanding of the idea of a clause — and in particular to the idea of a finite clause — is essential to an understanding of the idea of a sentence.
collocation
• When two words are commonly used together, they are "collocated" — or "in collocation" with one another. For example, it is common to speak of a person's reputation being "damaged," but not common to speak of it being "injured." This is not because there is a rule against speaking of an injured reputation, but just because, in general, English speakers do not speak that way. This is because "reputation" and "damage" are collocated. It is a matter of habit, not of GRAMMAR or SEMANTICS.
• To take another example, it is natural for an English speaker to speak of high hills and tall people. It would not be incorrect to speak of a high person or a tall hill; it's just that English speakers don't speak that way. If someone learning English speaks of a high person English speakers will understand what they say, but it will sound unnatural to them and, perhaps, funny. Knowledge of collocations is useful to anyone who is trying to learn to speak natural English — and even more useful to someone who is trying to learn to write natural English.
colloquial language
• Colloquial language is INFORMAL language. The difference between colloquial and formal language is mainly a matter of vocabulary. The word 'kid,' for example, is commonly used colloquially to refer to children. It is appropriate in friendly conversation, and in certain kinds of writing — a letter to a friend, for example, or, perhaps in a piece of FICTION. It would generally not be appropriate to refer to a child as a "kid" in a text book or a political speech.
• Sometimes the difference between colloquial language and formal language is a matter of grammar. It is colloquially acceptable, in North America at least, to use the verb, "go" as a SYNONYM for "say," as in "And then Jill goes, 'I really hate you.' "
• Sometimes the difference is one of PRONUNCIATION. For example, it is acceptable in colloquial, but not in formal language to pronounce "going to" as if it were spelled "gonna."
comma
• A comma is a PUNCTUATION MARK.
•The main use of the comma is to separate words and parts of sentences from one another. The purpose of commas is to make the sentences easier to understand.
• For example, in the following sentence commas are used to separate the items in a list: "Sarah came home carrying a basket full of bananas, apples, pears, peaches, grapes, oranges, lemons, and mangoes."
• In this sentence a comma is used to separate an introductory PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE from the rest of the sentence, "In the garage Harry found a piece of wood that was just the right size."
• In this sentence a comma is used to separate a CLAUSE from the rest of the sentence: "When Harry had fixed the chair, he made a cup of coffee and sat down."
comparative adjective
• Comparative adjectives are adjectives with an "er" or "ier" SUFFIX — for example, "longer" is the comparative form of "long" and "prettier" is the comparative form of "pretty."
• Examples: "Harry tried to convince Jack that the Volga River is longer than the Amazon River." "Jane thinks she is prettier than Jill."
• An adjective like "pretty" that ends in a "y" forms its comparative by "dropping" the "y" and adding "ier."
• Only one-SYLLABLE adjectives and two-syllable adjectives ending in "y" have special comparative forms.
• Adjectives with more than one syllable that do not end in "y" generally form their comparatives by putting the word "more" in front of the adjective, as, for example, in the sentence: "Harry tried to convince Jack that mathematics was more interesting than football."
complements
• Complements are one of the five SENTENCE PARTS.
• There are two types of complement, SUBJECT COMPLEMENTS and OBJECT COMPLEMENTS.
• Like OBJECTS subject complements follow VERBS, but unlike objects, they REFER to the same thing as the subject refers to. For example, in the sentence. "On January 16, Jack became an accountant," "Jack" and "an accountant" refer to the same person.
• In this example, the subject complement is a noun phrase, but ADJECTIVES are also commonly used as subject complements. for example in the sentence, "On January 16, Jack was drunk all day." Here "drunk" and "Jack" refer to the same person.
• Subject complements can be used only after some VERBS, for example, "be," "become," "appear," and "get" when it is used as a SYNONYM for "become."
• A few verbs — "elect" and "call" are examples — can also take object complements.
• Object complements always occur with objects. They follow the object and refer to the same thing as the object refers to. Here is an example: "At the meeting, they elected Jack President of the gardening club." Here "Jack" is the object and "President of the gardening club," which refers to the same person, is the object complement.
• It is important not to confuse the idea of complements as sentence parts with the different idea of VERB COMPLEMENTATION. (When "complement" is used as a verb as in sentences like " 'Enjoy' is complemented by an 'ing'-clause," it refers to verb complementation.)
• For more on complements and other sentence parts, see Chapter 1 of Complex Sentences.
complex sentence
• Complex sentences are sentences in which at least one CLAUSE is 'enclosed' inside another clause. For example, in the sentence, "When Jack arrived, Jill told him that he looked wonderful," the clause "that he looked wonderful," is enclosed in the clause "Jill told him that he looked wonderful."
• The clauses of a complex sentence are usually joined together with SUBORDINATING CONJUNCTIONS such as "when" and "if."
• When one clause is enclosed in another clause, we say the enclosed clause is SUBORDINATE to the clause that encloses it. A clause that is not inside another clause is called an INDEPENDENT CLAUSE. The whole sentence, "When Jack arrived, Jill told him that he looked wonderful" is an independent clause.
• For more on complex sentences, see Chapter Three of "Complex Sentences."
compound sentence
• A compound sentence contains two or more INDEPENDENT CLAUSES — clauses that are not enclosed in another clause.
• For example, the sentence "Jack arrived with Jane, but three minutes later, Jane left with Dick" is a compound sentence; it contains two clauses, "Jack arrived with Jane" and "three minutes later, Jane left with Dick," and neither of these clauses is enclosed in another clause.
• The independent clauses that make up a compound sentence are normally joined together with a COORDINATING CONJUNCTION, such as "and," "or," and "but."
compound noun
• A compound noun is a NOUN, like "classroom" that is made up of two words. Compound words have "their own" meaning. In other words, the noun, "classroom" has a meaning in just the way the words, "class" and "room" have their own meaning.
• A lot of compound nouns are made by combining two nouns, but other WORD CLASSES are also used. For example, "running shoe" is made from a VERB and a noun, and "software," is made from an ADJECTIVE and a noun. Compound nouns are also, very commonly, made by combining the two parts of a PHRASAL VERB — for example, the METHAPHORICAL phrasal verb, "let down," means "disappoint," and the compound noun, "letdown," means "a disappointment."
• Usually, as with "classroom" there is a close connection between the meaning of a compound noun and the meaing of the words that make it up. But sometimes, as with "butterfly," there is no clear connection and it is impossible to PREDICT the meaning of the compound noun on the basis of knowledge of the words that it contains.
• Sometimes compound nouns are spelled as one word, "doghouse," for example. Sometimes they are spelled as two words, as with , "boy friend," and sometimes they are spelled with a HYPHEN, for example, "dry-cleaning." Sometimes, particularly with new compounds, more than one spelling is ACCEPTABLE. For example, the compound noun made from "whistle" and "blower" can acceptably be spelled as one word, as two words, or with a hyphen.
• Whether a compound noun is spelled as one word or two, the STRESS is always on the first word. This makes it possible to IDENTIFY a compound in speech, even without the help of CONTEXT. For example, in the NOUN PHRASE, "the hot •dog•," the fact that the stress is on "dog" INDICATES that the phrase REFERS to a dog that is hot, and in the phrase, "the •hot•dog," the fact that the stress is on "hot" indicates that this is a reference to a kind of food.
conditionals
• Conditionals are sentences in which a subordinate clause — usually an "if-clause" — states a "condition" for an event described in the main clause. For example, the sentence, "If Jack drinks a lot of beer, he gets sick," states that Jack's drinking a lot of beer is a "condition" of his getting sick.
• There are three main types of conditional sentence:
(1) real conditionals such as: "If Jack tells a joke, Jill laughs."
(2) unreal conditionals such as: "If Jack told a joke, Jill would laugh."
(3) unreal past conditionals such as: "If Jack had told a joke, Jill would have laughed."
• It is also possible to form conditionals with "unless-clauses" and "whenever-clauses" (For example, "Jack won't tell the joke unless Jill asks him to" or "Whenever Jack tells a joke, Jill laughs very loudly.")
• It is also possible to make unreal past conditionals by inverting the normal order of the subject and the auxiliary verb and omitting the conjunction. (For example, "Had Jack told a joke, Jill would have laughed" has the same meaning as "If Jack had told a joke, Jill would have laughed.")
conjunct
• Conjuncts are a type of ADVERBIAL. They are used to CLARIFY or EMPHASIZE connections between CLAUSES and sentences. (Conjuncts are often called "sentence connectors.")
• "Then," "however," and "otherwise" are examples of conjuncts.
• Conjuncts are used to clarify and emphasize connections of meaning. For example, the two following sentences with or without using the word "however":
"When Jane and Harry left the office at 2:00 a.m., they thought the job was finished and they'd be able to rest the next day. When Harry answered his phone at 7:00 the next morning, [however,] Dick, who was already in the office, started sh•outing at him angrily."
if they are written without "however," it would be natural to think that a CONTRAST was being made between what Jane and Harry expected and what actually happened the next morning, but it is not absolutely certain that there is such a connection. When the word "however" is added, it becomes completely clear that a contrast is being made.
• In many types of writing, the most important thing is to be clear — to make it easy for readers to understand, in other words. Using conjuncts intelligently is a good way to to increase clarity, but more is required: well-made sentences, good word choice, and properly-ordered, logically-connected ideas. If these things are absent, conjuncts will not help.
• It is important to understand the difference between conjuncts and CONJUNCTIONS. Conjunctions such as "if" and "when" are like conjuncts in that they emphasize and clarify connections, but unlike conjuncts in that they also connect CLAUSES GRAMMATICALLY, in order to create COMPLEX and COMPOUND SENTENCES.
• Learners who do not understand the difference between conjuncts and conjunctions often make serious mistakes as a result. It is correct, for example, to write, using the conjunction, "after," to write
"After Dick phoned, Harry and Jane quickly went back to the office."
but, because "then" is not a conjunction, it is not correct to write:
¿ "Dick phoned then Harry and Jane quickly went back to the office." ¿
This must be written as two sentences:
"Dick phoned. Then Harry and Jane quickly went back to the office."
conjunctions
• Conjunctions are a special type of FUNCTION WORD They are used to combine clauses into COMPOUND SENTENCES and COMPLEX SENTENCES.
• There are two main types of conjunction: COORDINATING CONJUNCTIONS such as “and” and “or” are used to combine INDEPENDENT CLAUSES and make COMPOUND SENTENCES. SUBORDINATING CONJUNCTIONS such as “when” and “if” are used to enclose DEPENDENT CLAUSES inside other clauses and in that way to make COMPLEX SENTENCES.
•It is important not to confuse conjunctions with CONJUNCTS.
connotation
•Many words "carry" feeling with them: when something is described with these words, anyone listening or reading will have POSITIVE or NEGATIVE feelings about the thing being described. For example, the same, not-fat person could be described correctly as being "skinny," or "slim," or "thin." The first of these words will create negative feelings in a listener or reader, and the second one positive feelings. The word "thin" is NEUTRAL; in other words, by itself, it will not lead to any feelings at all.
content word
• Content words are words like "table" or "green" or "run" that have meaning "on their own" as "names" of things. They are also called LEXICAL WORDS. The idea of a content word has to be understood in contrast to the idea of a FUNCTION WORD (or GRAMMAR WORD). Function words like "in," "the," or "should" — words that are used to combine other words into grammatical sentences and have little or no meaning "on their own."
•One way of defining "content word" would be to say that a content word is a word that is not a function word.
context
• The context of a word or phrase is the language that surrounds it — the "text" that goes with it in other words. ("Con" is a PREFIX meaning "with.")
• If a word or sentence is AMBIGUOUS, it is usually possible to understand what it means by looking at the context.
And sometimes it is possible to guess the meaning of an unknown word "from the context."
• The word "context" is often used in other ways as well. For example, "Sam told his students that they would have to learn more about the political context of Italian painting."
contraction
• In speech, very common words are often joined together and pronounced as one word. When this happens some of the sounds are omitted. The result is a 'contraction.' When a contraction is written, an APOSTROPHE is used to indicate the place where the sound, and the letters, have been left out.
• Examples: "I'm" is a contraction of "I am." "Don't" is a contraction of "do not." "They've" is a contraction of "they have."
• Contractions are not usually used in FORMAL writing but they are often used in INFORMAL writing.
coordinating conjunctions
• The coordinating conjunctions are, "and," "but," and "or."
• They are used to join INDEPENDENT CLAUSES together to make COMPOUND SENTENCES.
• Examples:
- "Dick will go to the meeting, and Jane will come with him." "Dick will go to the meeting, but Jane will not come with him."
- "Dick will go to the meeting or Jane will go in his place."
• The word "so" can also be used to join independent clauses and make compound sentences, as, for example in "Dick wants to continue working on his report, so Jane will go to the meeting," but it is different in some ways from the basic coordinating conjunctions.
count nouns and non-count nouns
• a count noun is a noun that has a plural form
• the most typical count nouns are
(1) ones like "table" and "chair" which refer to physical objects" with definite boundaries and
(2) ones like "war" and "game" which refer to events with a definite beginning and end
• non-count nouns — unlike count nouns — do not have plural forms;
• the most typical non-count nouns are:
(1) ones like "air" and "butter" which refer to physical material that is not divided into objects with definite boundaries and
(2) "abstract" nouns like "pain," and "heat" which refer to feelings or conditions without referring to a particular ("concrete") instance of that feeling or condition
• nouns in the second category of count nouns can sometimes also be used "abstractly" (or "generally") as non-count. For example, "war" is a count-noun in a sentence like "The Vietnam War ended in 1975" and but it is a non-count noun in a sentence like "War must be avoided if possible."
• nouns in the second category of non-count nouns can sometimes be used as count nouns to refer to a particular "episode" of a feeling or condition. For example, in the sentence "Jill suffered from terrible pain after the accident," "pain" is a non-count noun, but it is a count noun in a sentence like: "As Jill was walking down the stairs, she suddenly felt a terrible pain in her ankle.
• Although it is generally true that nouns referring to physical objects with definite boundaries are count nouns, there are several important, "generic" words that refer to types of such objects that are non-count, for example: "furniture," "luggage," "equipment."
• The distinction between count and non-count nouns is of great importance to ESL teachers — and their students — mainly because of its relevance to the complicated matter of article use. The most important points are these:
(1) singular count nouns must always be preceded by an article or some other "determiner"
(2) non-count nouns can never be preceded by an "indefinite article" ("a(n)")
determiner
"Determiners" make up one of the seven "word classes" in English.
• Determiners are words that modify nouns. (In this way they are similar to adjectives which also modify nouns; but in other ways they are different from adjectives).
• There are several types of determiners:
- articles ("a," "an," "the")
- demonstratives (such as "this," and "those")
- possessive determiners (such as "my" and "their")
- quantifiers (such as "all" and "many")
- cardinal numbers (such as "one" and "thirty-five")
- ordinal numbers (such as "first" and "eighth")
• All the demonstratives, one possessive ("his"), and many of the quantifiers ("many" and "some," for example) can be used without nouns —and when used in this way, they are similar to pronouns.
• When possessives are used without nouns, they are still not identical to adjectives. For example, several adjectives may be used to modify a single noun, but no more than one article, demonstrative, or possessive can precede a single noun. (In other words, phrases like "A big, fat, ugly man" are grammatically correct, but phrases like ¿"A my house"¿ or ¿"the your mother"¿ are never grammatically correct.)
• Similarly, when demonstratives or other determiners are used without following nouns, they are still not identical with pronouns. For one thing, they cannot be used in "tag questions" as pronouns can. (For example, although "It's delicious, isn't it?" is correct, ¿"This is delicious, isn't this?"¿ is not correct.) Another difference between pronouns and determiners used without nouns is that the former must be placed between the verb and the particle of a separable phrasal verb. However, demonstratives, like nouns, can be placed either between the verb and the particle or after the particle. (For example, the sentence, "Jill picked up this today" is correct, but the sentence "Jill picked up it today" is not.)
• note: in the grammar text, "Complex Sentences," "determiner" is defined as a referring to a sub-group of the "word class," "noun introducer," and articles and demonstratives are regarded as types of "determiner." (This now seems to me to be an unnecessary way of doing things.)
direct object
• Direct objects are a type of OBJECT. The other main type of object is INDIRECT OBJECTS.
• Examples:
– "Jack sold his car." Here the direct object is "his car."
– "Harry broke the window." Here the direct object is "the window."
• Some verbs can have indirect objects as well as direct objects.
• For example, in "Harry sold Tom his car," "Tom" is the indirect object and "his car" is the direct object.
• VERBS that can take direct objects only are called TRANSITIVE VERBS. Verbs that can take both direct and indirect objects are called DITRANSITIVE VERBS.
•There is another important kind of object, the PREPOSITIONAL OBJECT. Prepositional objects are similar to direct objects but, unlike direct objects, they must be preceded by a PREPOSITION, as is. for example the prepositional object "some strange music" in the sentence, "Tom, Dick, and Harry listened to some strange music."
direct quotation
•
disjunct
• Disjuncts are one of the three types of ADVERBIAL. Disjuncts are used to INDICATE the speaker or writer (or someone else) feels (or thinks) about what is being said. Disjuncts can be either single words or PHRASES.
• For example:
- "Unfortunately, Harry didn't tell Jane about Sarah's illness."
- "Of course, it would have been better if Jane had never agreed to Harry's plan."
- "Unbelievably, Harry's mother and Jane's father died on the same day."
- "Sam does not have long to live, in his doctor's opinion."
• Unlike the other two sorts of adverbial, disjuncts APPLY to the whole sentence in which they appear. For example, it is the "whole" fact Harry didn't tell Jane about Sarah's illness that is important. (By contrast, ADJUNCTS apply only to the VERB PHRASE of a CLAUSE or sentence, and CONJUNCTS apply to both the two sentences they connect.)
ditransitive prepositional verb
• A ditransitive prepositional verb is a verb that takes both a direct object and a prepositional object. The verb is followed by a direct object, then a preposition, and finally, a prepositional object.
• For example: "Tom persuaded Jill to come to Harry's party." Here "Jill" is the direct object and "to come to Harry's party" is the prepositional object. As in this case, the prepositional objects of ditransitive prepositional verbs are often non-finite clauses, but this is not always the case. For example, in the sentence, "Jill doesn't earn much money from her teaching job," the noun phrase, "her teaching job" is a prepositional object.
French
• In 1066, England was conquered by French-speaking people, the Normans. For the next three hundred years, French was the language of the English "ruling class" — the rich and powerful people who controlled the society. Ordinary English people continued to speak English.
•Slowly, the use of French declined, and by 1425, English was the spoken language at all levels of English society. For a while, French continued to be commonly used for writing — as did Latin. However, after printing was invented in 1476, more and more people who knew no French or Latin learned to read and wanted books written in English. As a result, English soon became the language of writing in England, as well as the language of speech.
• (By 1649 around 20,000 books and "pamphlets" had been printed in English; it is thought that at that time between one-third and one-half of the people in the biggest city, London, could read.
• Although the English stopped speaking using French words, they did not stop using the French words that had become part of English over the 300 years that the French had been in control. In 1485 there were approximately 10,000 French "loan words" in English, and about 7,000 of these have survived.
headword
• The headword is the main word in a phrase. For example, in the noun phrase, "the beautiful golden ring that was stolen from the museum," the headword is "ring."
homonym
•Two words are homonyms of each other if they have different meanings but are:
(a) spelled in the same way although pronounced differently (For example, "wind" as in "Harry's hat blew off in the wind," and "wind" as in "Jill watched Jack slowly wind the string around his finger.")
(b) pronounced in the same way although spelled differently: (For example, "pear" as in "Harry said it was the best pear he had ever eaten,"and "pair" as in "Jack bought Jill an expensive pair of earrings.")
(c) both pronounced and spelled in the same way (For example, "Sarah screamed when she saw the bear standing in the doorway " and in "Jane couldn't bear to look at Dick's drunken face any longer.)
•[The word "homonym" is defined in different ways by different writers. The flesl.net definition follows the one given in the Wikipedia article on homonyms. That article contains a discussion of other ways that "homonym" can be defined.]
"ing" clause
•An "ing" clause is a non-finite clause in which the main verb is an "ing"-form. These can be noun clauses as in "Harry hates getting up early in the morning," adjective clauses, as in "Jane is the woman sitting to the left of Harry" or adverbial clauses as in "Walking back to the office with Sarah, Harry suddenly felt dizzy."
intransitive verbs
Intransitive verbs are verbs like "die," "sleep," and "happen" which can never take an object. (See also the entry, "transitive and instransitive verbs.")
Latin and English
• Latin was the language of the city of Rome and of the large empire the Romans built.between about 500 BCE and 100 CE. In many areas that were part of the Roman Empire, ordinary people eventually came to use Latin as their native language. When the Roman Empire collapsed, these people continued to speak Latin. Slowly, however, because there was no longer any central control, the Latin spoken by these former Roman citizens evolved into a number of separate, languages: this is how the "Romance languages" — Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Romanian — came into existence.
•
Much of the island of Britain was part of the Roman Empire from about 50 BCE until about 300 CE, but the people who lived there — the "Celts" — did not become Latin speakers in the way that people in some other parts of the Empire did. •Soon after the Romans left, Britain was invaded by people from northern Europe, the "Jutes," the "Angles," and the "Saxons." The invaders killed many of the Celts. Those who were not killed were pushed back into small areas in the far west of Britain, or across the English channel to "Brittany." The part of Britain that the invaders occupied came to named after one of the invading groups — "Angle-land" or "England." And the invaders' language came to be the language of England. It is called "Anglo-Saxon" or (another name for the same thing) "Old English."
•The Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes had not been citizens of the Roman Empire, but they had been in contact with it for a long time. As a result, when they invaded England, there were already about a hundred Latin words in their vocabulary. So even at the very beginning, there was a Latin influence on English. "Kitchen," "street," "wine," and "chalk" are originally Latin words which were already in the vocabulary of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes before they invaded England.
•The influence of Latin increased when, around 600 CE, the Anglo-Saxons became Christians. Latin-speaking Christian missionaries began coming to England from Rome, where the headquarters of the Christian church were located and they brought Latin words with them. The present-day English words "circle," "city," "martyr," and "master" came into English at this time.
•Because the French language evolved from Latin, Latin also exerted an indirect but important influence on English during the period when French speakers controlled England, between 1066 and about 1400. During that time, as many as 10,000 French words became part of English — and as many as 7,000 of them are still used in present-day English.
•Between 1500 and 1650 there was a large increase in intellectual and artistic activity in England — and a great deal of interest Roman and Greek history. Many books were written and the "scholars" who wrote them often brought in Latin or Greek words. "Image," and "juvenile" came into English from Latin during that time.
•In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries many more Latin and Greek words were adopted as the result of increased scientific activity. "Data," "ratio" and "molecule" all came into English from Latin during that time
lexis
• the "lexis" of a language is everything in it that has meaning: all the individual words that are not "function words," all the "morphemes" that are parts of words, and all the "multi-word lexical items" such as "phrasal verbs."
• a "lexicon" is a dictionary or a list of words used in a particular area; the adjective, "lexical" means "having to do with meaning."
• ETYMOLOGY: the English word "lexis" comes from the Greek "lexis" meaning "word" or "speech"
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