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  • Accent and dialect
    Accent is how we speak; dialect is the words we use – technically! But many people seem to include…
  • Active and passive ‘voice’
    This involves an aspect of the grammar (or properly. The syntax) a sentence or clause called agency…
  • Adjective
    An adjective is a member of a grammatical word class that functions to modify or make more specific…
  • Adjacency Pairs
    An adjacency pair is two speech turns made by different speakers consecutively, labelled first part…
  • Agency
    Agency is an aspect of a clause or sentence. Typically, the agent of a clause or sentence is the…
  • Agenda
    The motives of the speakers in a conversation.
  • Agreement
    Agreement is an aspect of English grammar. Within a clause structure certain words need to…
  • Adverb
    An adverb is typically a word or phrase that modifies or provides extra detail to tell more about…
  • Adverbial
    An adverbial is a grammatical term used to label any part of a clause that functions to give,…
  • Ambiguity
    This means ‘more than one possible meaning’. The rules of grammar exist to allow a structure of…
  • Archaic
    If a word is described as archaic, it suggests its use is now old-fashioned. Many words in poems are…
  • Article
    One of a very small class of words, akin to adjectives, called determiners. The so-called definite…
  • Audience
    ‘Audience’ refers broadly to the kind of reader or listener the text was intended for. As this…
  • Auxiliary verb
    English verbs are limited as to what they can indicate on their own, i.e. through their own…
  • Clause
    A clause is a key grammatical structure. Thought of at its simplest, a clause can be considered as a…
  • Cohesion
    Many patterns of words exhibit a quality known as cohesion. This means that they form coherent…
  • Collocation
    Many words are habitually put together – or collocated. A collocation is any habitually linked…
  • Colloquial / slang
    A ‘colloquy’ is simply a formal word for ‘conversation’, so colloquial language refers to…
  • Complement
    A word, phrase or clause that follows a verb (or, in some grammars, also a preposition) and which…
  • Conjunction
    A word class composed of words that are used as ‘joining words’. Conjunctions function to link…
  • Connotation / denotation
    The denotation of a word is its direct, literal or specific meaning (the one that can be found as a…
  • Context
    Context is a central aspect of language use. It refers to ‘things’ that ‘surround’ a text at…
  • Copula / linking verb
    A very few verbs act only to link a subject to a complement, for example, the verb ‘is’ in,…
  • Determiner
    One of a small group of words that precedes and pre-modifies a noun to create a noun phrase, e.g. a,…
  • Discourse / discourse analysis / discourse structure
    Calling a text a ‘discourse’ means to consider its original existence as a part of a real-world…
  • Element
    A grammatical or clause element is a distinct grammatical unit – one of the several ‘building…
  • Elision
    Elision is the omission of one or more sounds from a word, e.g. a vowel, consonant or a whole…
  • Ellipsis
    When we speak or write, we try to be succinct. Grammar allows the use of ellipsis to help create…
  • Ephemeral
    A term that means ‘lasting for a short time’, i.e. transitory. In the study of language change,…
  • Finite / non finite
    This word applies only to certain verbs. A verb in a sentence can exist on its own as in these…
  • Form and content
    Form is what gives rise to meaning; without form, there can be no meaning. This form refers to…
  • Function
    The function of a word is what it ‘does’ in its sentence, e.g. its function is to act as a…
  • Genre
    The genre of a text is its type or kind. It’s a word that can be applied to more than just texts,…
  • Grammar
    Grammar is the set of ‘rules’ or conventions that tells how words can be linked (syntax) and…
  • Graphology
    Graphology is concerned with the form of a written text, i.e. its shape, layout and appearance.…
  • Head / head word
    All phrases have what is called a head or head word. This is the word within the phrase that…
  • Ideology
    Ideology refers to the values and attitudes we all share towards such things as ourselves, others…
  • Idiomatic Language
    Idiomatic language refers to many words or phrases that are a familiar and everyday feature of our…
  • Imperative
    The imperative mood is a form of grammar that allows the creation of a particular kind of sentence…
  • Infinitive
    A ‘bare’ form of a verb without tense but one that is often introduced by ‘to’. Infinitive…
  • Inflection / inflexion/ inflected
    The way words can change their form to show, for example, that they are singular or plural (e.g.…
  • Intensifiers
    Intensifiers are a special kind of adverb. An intensifier is used when the semantic value of another…
  • Intransitive
    A verb is called intransitive when no action transfers from its subject to an object, e.g. we swam…
  • Interjection
    A word class that is used to show emotion, e.g. ‘Ouch!’, ‘Hey!’
  • Irony
    Irony is the name given to an effect of meaning created when one thing is said or written but…
  • Lexeme
    A lexeme or lexical item is a word – or occasionally a phrase – in its most basic form, like the…
  • Latinate
    This term refers to those many rather formal and often multisyllabic words in English that derive…
  • Lexical (dynamic) and stative verbs
    Lexical or dynamic verbs tell of an action (to hit, to call, to sing); stative verbs tell of a state…
  • Lexis and Semantics
    Lexis concerns word choice; semantics concerns meaning. Clearly the two concepts are intimately…
  • Modifier / Modification / Pre-modification / Post-modification
    Modification describes the grammatical process through which the meaning of a head word within a…
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