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Mood / modality
‘Mood’ is an aspect of English verbs which we use when we need to suggest that an action is… -
Mode
‘Mode’ refers to the channel of communication of a text. A text might be spoken or written, for… -
Morphology / morpheme
The suffix ‘morph-’ is to do with shape, and morphology concerns the form and shape of words. It… -
Narrative & Myth
Whilst it’s true to say that a narrative is no more than a story, the important realisation from… -
Noun
A noun is any word that can form the head word in a noun phrase or be the subject or object of a… -
Nonce word
‘Nonce’ is an archaic word meaning, ‘for the one time’. A ‘nonce word’ is a word that is… -
Orthography
Orthography is the term used in linguistics used to refer to the way that words are spelled. -
Participle
Words made from verbs that are used either with an auxiliary to create a verb tense (e.g. was eaten)… -
Person
This grammatical term is used to describe pronouns. A pronoun always has a referent (i.e. a noun to… -
Phonetics / Phonology / Prosody / Phoneme / Diphtong / Glide
Phonetics is the study of the way people physical produce and perceive the different sounds we use… -
Phrase
A phrase is a key grammatical or syntactic unit. In terms of its meaning, a phrase is an individual… -
Pragmatics
Pragmatics is the study of how social context contributes to the meaning of language. It is… -
Predicate
The grammatical predicate is all that is written or said in a sentence or clause about its… -
Prefix
A prefix is a type of affix (i.e. a bound morpheme) that is added to the beginning of a word to… -
Preposition
A preposition is a small word or phrase that begins a longer adverbial phrase (called the object of… -
Progressive / continuous
A verb form created from the present (i.e. -ing) participle to tell of a continuing event, e.g. he… -
Pronoun
A word used often – but not always – to replace a noun, e.g. Alex, when the teacher came into… -
Referent
A referent is the word to which another word in a sentence or text refers. It is an important… -
Purpose
Purpose is the reason why a text was created. This may be, for example, to entertain, explain,… -
Register
When context results in a commonly recognisable language variety to be produced, the resulting style… -
Repossession
Repossession is a linguistic term used in the study of language change. It is used to describe a… -
Relative clause
An important type of clause (a group of words built around a subject and verb) that is a variety of… -
Root words
A free morpheme to which can be added a affix (a prefix or suffix) that acts to change the root… -
Semantics
Semantics is the study of word and phrase meaning (but also see pragmatics). Writers often… -
Semantic / lexical field or set
This term refers to a relationship that exists between some of the words or phrases used in a text.… -
Semantic value
The semantic value of a unit of something is the meaning it contains. By forming words and… -
Sentence
A sentence is a sequence of words constructed in accordance with the conventions of standard grammar… -
‘Minor sentence’
A minor is typically an aspect of speech and consists of a grammatical sentence that is missing its… -
Sign / signifier / signified
A sign is anything that creates meaning. Words are an important kind of sign composed of symbols… -
Sociolect
A sociolect is a variety of language used by a social group within a particular context; a dialect… -
Standard English
This is the agreed standard national dialect of English. Standard English is generally considered to… -
Structure
The structure of something refers to the form of the complete item – such as a sentence or a text… -
Stem
The ‘core’ part of a word to which prefixes and suffixes can be added, e.g. interest which can… -
Style
Style means the way language and structure are chosen by a writer or speaker to suit a particular… -
Subject and object
The word ‘subject’ needs care as it has a particular – and very important – meaning that is… -
Subjunctive
Verb mood used to show a hypothetical situation, e.g. If it were possible, I would do it. -
Suffix
An affix (a morpheme) added to the end of a word to alter its grammatical function, e.g. the noun… -
Synonym / antonym
A word that has a closely similar meaning to another word. English has very few true synonyms (e.g.… -
Syntax
Syntax is the most important aspect of English grammar. It refers to the way words are put together… -
Tense
Tense refers to the way a verb is inflected to suggest the time an action occurred. This can be… -
Utterance
A linguistic term that refers to a spoken text of any kind. In conversation, there is no such thing… -
Text
Within linguistics, the word ‘text’ means any continuous and coherent sequence of writing or… -
Verb
Combined with its subject, the verb becomes the central element of a sentence or clause. A main verb… -
Verb chain / phrase
A verb chain has a head word that is a main verb along with one or more ‘helper’ or auxiliary… -
Voice
The voice of a verb can be either active or passive. The active voice is the most common and… -
Word class
One of typically eight parts of speech of traditional grammar in which words that have a similar… -
Convergence / Divergence / Accommodation Theory
In his theory of ‘accommodation’ regarding conversation, Giles suggested that conversational… -
Co-operative Principle
Conversation is a social interaction and co-operative and thus aims to be truthful, clear, brief and… -
Covert prestige
The use of non-standard language forms (accent or dialect) in situations where such a form will gain… -
Deixis
Deictic expressions need knowledge of context for their meaning to be clear, e.g. here, there, now,…
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Glossary
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