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Definition
| A variation of a morpheme, usually determined by its environment. For example, the three allomorphs of the regular plural morpheme are determined by the final sound of the nouns to which they are added: /s/ cats; /z/ dogs; and /ez/ churches. |
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Term
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Definition
| A morpheme, or meaningful unit, that is added to the beginning (prefix) or end (suffix) of a word to change its meaning or its grammatical role or its form class: (prefix) unlikely; (suffix) unlikely. |
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Term
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Definition
| The morpheme that gives a word its primary lexical meaning: helping, reflect. |
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Term
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Definition
| A morpheme that cannot stand alone as a word. Most affixes are bound(helping, react); some base morphemes are also bound (concise, legal). |
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Definition
| A word that is a combination of two or more free morphemes acting as a unit. Some compound words are closed (highlight), some are hyphenated (high-handed), and some are open, written as separate words (high school). |
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Definition
| A single morpheme that is also a complete word (in contrast to a bound morpheme, which is not). |
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Definition
| Words and morphemes that have the same sound and the same spelling but have different meanings: saw/saw; farmer/brighter. |
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Definition
| Words that have the same sound, but with both different meanings and different spellings: sale/sail; to/too/two. |
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Term
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Definition
| Morphemes that are added to the form classes (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs) to change their grammatical role in some way. Nouns have two inflectional suffixes (-s plural and ’s possessive); verbs have four (-s, -ing, -ed, and -en); adjectives and some adverbs have two (-er and -est). |
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Definition
| A sound or combination of sounds with meaning. |
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Definition
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Term
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Definition
| An affix added to the beginning of the word to change its meaning (unlikely, illegal, prescribe, renew) or its class (enable, belittle). |
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Term
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Definition
| An adjective with a meaning that is generally not capable of being intensified or compared, such as unique or perfect or square. Careful writers avoid such usages as “very perfect” or “more unique.” |
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Term
| 15. Attributive adjective. |
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Definition
| The adjective in pronoun position: “my new coat”; “the big attraction.” |
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Term
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Definition
| A noun that refers to a collection of individuals: group, team, family. Collective nouns can be replaced by both singular and plural pronouns, depending on the meaning. |
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Term
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Definition
| A noun with general, rather than unique, reference (in contrast to proper nouns). Common nouns may be countable (house, book) or noncountable (water, oil); they may be concrete (house, water) or abstract (justice, indifference). |
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Term
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Definition
| The variation in adjectives that indicate a noun’s comparison to another (“Bill is bigger than Tim”). Certain adverbs also have degree variations, with the comparative usually designated by more. |
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Term
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Definition
| A noun whose referent can be identified as a separate entity; the countable noun can be signaled by the indefinite article, a, and numbers: a house; an experience; two eggs; three problems. |
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Definition
| A class of adverb that is the same in form as its corresponding adjective: fast, high, early, late, hard, long, etc. |
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Term
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Definition
| Nouns referring to what might be called an undifferentiated mass—such as wood, water, sugar, glass—or an abstraction—justice, love, indifference. Whether or not you can use the indefinite article, a, is probably the best test of countability: If you can, the noun is countable. |
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Term
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Definition
| The variations in adjectives that indicate the simple quality of a noun (“Bill is a big boy”). |
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Term
| 23. Predicative adjective. |
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Definition
| The adjective that occupies a complement slot in the sentence as subject complement or object complement. |
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Term
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Definition
| A noun with individual reference to a person, a historical event, or other name. Proper nouns are capitalized. |
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Definition
| See Degree. The variations in adjectives that indicate the simple quality of a noun, a positive degree (“Bill is a big boy”); its comparison to another, the comparative degree (“Bill is bigger than Tim’”; or to two or more, the superlative degree (“Bill is the biggest person in the whole class”). Certain adverbs also have degree variations, usually designated by more and most. |
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Term
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Definition
| The determiner, together with pre- and postdeter- miners that qualify and quantify and in other ways alter its meaning. |
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Term
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Definition
| A word that enables the writer or speaker to shift the stress in a sentence or to embed one sentence in another: “A fly is in my soup → There is a fly in my soup”; “I know that he loves me.” The expletive is sometimes called an “empty word” because it plays a structural rather than a lexical role. |
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Term
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Definition
| See Noncountable noun. Nouns referring to what might be called an undifferentiated mass- such as wood, water, sugar glass- or an abstraction- justice, love, indifference. Whether o not you can use the indefinite article, a, is probably the best test of countability: If you can, the noun is countable. |
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Definition
| A feature of nouns and pronouns, referring to singular and plural. |
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Definition
| A preposition consisting of two or more words, a simple preposition preceded by a word from another category, such as an adverb or adjective: according to, aside from, because of, prior to. |
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Term
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Definition
| A structure-class word that qualifies or intensifies an adjective or adverb: “We worked rather slowly”; “The work was very difficult.” |
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Term
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Definition
| A feature of personal pronouns and certain nouns that distinguishes masculine (he), feminine (she), and neuter (it). Nouns with gender distinctions include waiter, waitress, actor, actress, girl, boy, man, woman, ewe, ram. |
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Term
| 33. Indefinite relative pronoun. |
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Definition
| The relative pronouns with –ever added, which have indefinite referents; they introduce adjectival clauses: “I will give a bonus to whoever works the hardest” (i.e., to the person who works the hardest). |
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Term
| 34. Pronoun-antecedent agreement. |
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Definition
| See Agreement. (1) Subject-verb. A third-person singular subject in the present tense takes the –s form of the verb: “The dog barks all night”; “He bothers the neighbors.” A plural subject takes the base form: “The dogs bark”; “They bother the neighbors.” (2) Pronoun-antecedent. The number of the pronoun (whether singular or plural) agrees with the number of its antecedent: “The boys did their chores”; “Each girl did her best.” |
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Term
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Definition
| A feature of nouns and pronouns denoting one referent. |
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Definition
| The role in the sentence of a noun phrase or a pronoun when it functions as the subject of the sentence. Personal pronouns have distinctive forms for subject case: I, he, she, they, etc. |
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Definition
| The juxtaposition of contrasting ideas: “I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.” |
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Definition
| The grammatical, lexical, and semantic connections between sentences. Cohesive ties are furnished by pronouns that have antecedents in previous sentences, by adverbial connections, by known information, and by knowledge shared by the reader. |
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Definition
| The common rhythm pattern in which the prominent peak of stress falls on or near the final sentence slot. |
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| A metadiscourse signal that helps readers interpret the writer’s degree of certainty: perhaps, possibly, might, seems, etc. |
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Term
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Definition
| 41. Known-new contract. A common feature of prose in which the known information opens the sentence and the new information occupies the point of main focus at or near the end of the sentence. |
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Term
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Definition
| A figure of speech in which an attribute is applied to something or someone that is literally untrue but that expresses a sense of connection. When we call Superman a man of steel, we are using the term “steel” metaphorically, to attribute the qualities of steel to Superman. Many common expressions are based on metaphor: the eye of the hurricane, a carpet of grass, a movie that bombed. |
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Term
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Definition
| The process producing a noun by adding derivational affixes to another word class, commonly a verb: legalize-legalization; regulate-regulation; friendly-friendliness. |
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Term
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Definition
| The use of the plural pronoun they (their, them) in reference to a singular antecedent whose sex is unknown. It is especially common in reference to the indefinite pronouns, such as someone, everyone, everybody, which take singular verbs, even when they refer to more than one person: “Everyone is expected to do their best”; “Someone called but they didn’t leave a message.” This use of the plural pronoun is an alternative to his or her/he or she. Although common in speech, it is not generally accepted in formal writing. |
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