Grammar Flashcards
Morpheme
the smallest grammatical unit.
Free morpheme
a morpheme that can stand on its own as a word.
Affix
a morpheme that cannot stand on its own as a word, but combines with others to create a new word/
Phrase
a group of words centered around a head word.
Head word
the central word in a phrase which gives the phrase its name (e.g. noun phrase, adjective phrase) and may be modified by other words.
Modification
the adding of additional words to provide more detail to a head word in a phrase either before it (pre-modification) or after it (post-modification).
Clause
a group of words centre around a verb, which may be either grammatically complete (main clause) or incomplete (subordinate clause).
Active voice
a clause where the agent (doer) of an action is the subject.
Passive voice
a clause where the patient (the entity affected by an action) is in the subject position, and the agent either follows or is left out.
Tense
how the time of an event is marked (usually through verb inflection): past, present & future.
Aspect
another element of marking the time of an event, by specifying whether they are progressive (ongoing) or perfective (completed).
Coordination
the joining of two or more independent clauses via co-ordinating conjunctions. single words and no longer phrase can also be co-ordinated.
Subordination
the joining of two or more clauses where only one is independent (the main clause) and the others dependent (subordinate clause/s).
Sentence
a larger unit of meaning, which may be formed of a single clause (simple sentence) or several clauses (compound or complex sentences). minor sentences are sentences without a verb.
Sentence function
the purpose a sentence fulfills to communication: as a statement, question, command or exclamation. these are also referred to in many grammar books as (respective): declaratives, interrogatives, imperatives and exclamative.
