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English Language A-level > Key Terminology > Flashcards

Key Terminology Flashcards

1
Q

Concrete nouns

A

a noun denoting a material object rather than an abstract quality, state, or action, e.g. dog, building, tree

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2
Q

abstract nouns

A

a noun denoting an idea, quality, or state rather than a concrete object, e.g. truth, danger, happiness

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3
Q

Accommodation

A

where a speaker adapts to another speaker’s accent, dialect or
sociolect

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4
Q

Acronomy

A

abbreviation using the first letter of a group of words and pronounced as a single word. eg OPEC, NASA, RAM

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5
Q

Active voice

A

SVO clause construction where the subject is also the actor (they are doing or have done something to somebody/something)

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6
Q

Adjacency pair

A

a pair of utterances in a conversation that go together (greeting and reply, question and answer, etc.)

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7
Q

Adverb

A

a word that modifies a verb telling you how, where or when an action takes place; can also modify adjectives, telling you how
much (e.g. ‘I am really delighted’)

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8
Q

Adverbial

A

words. phrases or clauses which act as adverbs and which identify where, when and how when modifying the verb

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9
Q

Affordance

A

linguistic and behavioural choices provided by technology

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10
Q

Agenda setting

A

where a speaker sets up the main topic of conversation

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11
Q

Analogical overextension

A

associating objects which are unrelated but which have one or
more features in common (e.g. both being the same colour)

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12
Q

Anchored relationship

A

an online relationship where two participants know each other in the offline world

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13
Q

Article

A

a determiner such as ‘a’ or ‘the’

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14
Q

Asymmetrical power

A

an imbalance of power between people

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15
Q

Asynchronous

A

unlike synchronous, there is a delay between utterance and
response. Responses posted on a forum, which may occur
months or even years after the original post, are an example of
discourse that is asynchronous

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16
Q

Auxiliary verb

A

assists the main verb; primary auxiliary verbs do, have and be denote changes of tense

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17
Q

Backchannelling

A

supportive terms such as ‘oh’ and ‘really’

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18
Q

Bald on-record

A

where a speaker is completely blunt and direct (e.g. ‘Sit down!’)

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19
Q

Bidialectalism

A

a speaker’s ability to use two dialects of the same language

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20
Q

Categorical overextension

A

the most commonly occurring form of overextension in a child’s
language, and relates to confusing a hypernym (broad category,
e.g. fruit) with a hyponym (specific example)

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21
Q

Catenative verb

A

a verb that can link with other verbs to form a chain or series. Examples of catenative verbs include ask, keep, promise, help, want, and seem, among many others.

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22
Q

Chaining

A

a speaker responds and sets up the other speaker’s next
utterance in a chain that runs on past an adjacency pair

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23
Q

Child-directed speech (CDS)

A

speech patterns used by parents and carers when
communicating with young children

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24
Q

Clause

A

a structural unit that contains at least one subject and one verb - it can include other features as well such as object, complement
and adverbial.

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25
Q

Closer

A

spoken expressions which are designed to close

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26
Q

Codification

A

a process of standardizing a language

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27
Q

Cohesion

A

the many parts of a text that help to draw it together into a recognizable whole. (For example, the headline, picture and caption in a news article will all have words/images that link
together in terms of the meaning and subject matter of the article.

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28
Q

Collocation

A

two or more words that are often found together in a group or phrase with a distinct meaning (e.g. ‘over the top’, ‘fish and chips’,
‘back to front’

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29
Q

Comparative adjective

A

the form of an adjective that designates comparison between two things, generally made by adding the suffix -er to its base form (e.g. ‘this is a faster car’)

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30
Q

Complement

A

a clause element that tells you more about the subject or the object

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31
Q

Complex sentence

A

has two or more clauses, one of which is a subordinate clause

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32
Q

Compound

A

a word formed from two other words (e.g. ‘dustbin’)

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33
Q

Compound sentence

A

has two or more clauses, usually joined to the main clause by the
conjunctions ‘and’ or ‘but’ and depends on the main clause to
exist

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34
Q

Compound-complex sentence

A

a sentence that has three or more clauses, one of which will be a subordinate clause and one of which will be a coordinate clause.
“There are some ruins near my house, which my cousins and I used to play in when we were younger, and I go there sometimes when I need to think.”

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35
Q

Conditioning

A

the process by which humans (and animals) are taught or trained to respond, and learn by positive reinforcement

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36
Q

Conjunction

A

a word that joins clauses together

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37
Q

Connotation

A

the associated meanings we have with certain words, depending on the person reading or hearing the word, and on the context in which the word appears

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38
Q

Consonant clusters

A

groups of consonants (e.g. ‘str’ or ‘gl’) that demand more muscular control than single consonants or vowels, so tend to appear later
in the baby’s utterances

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39
Q

Context

A

where, when and how a text is produced or received

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40
Q

Convergence

A

where a speaker moves towards another speaker’s accent, dialect or sociolect

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41
Q

Cooing

A

sounds a baby will make like ‘goo’ and ‘ga-ga’, generally around the age of 6–8 weeks. It is believed that during this period the child is discovering their vocal chords.

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42
Q

Coordinate clause

A

a clause beginning with a coordinating conjunction and is essentially a main clause joined to another main clause

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43
Q

Coordinating conjunctions

A

these signal the start of a coordinate clause

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44
Q

Copular verb

A

a verb that takes a complement (such as ‘seems’, ‘appears’ or a form of the verb to be – ‘is’, ‘was’, ‘are’, etc.)

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45
Q

Corpus

A

a collection of written texts

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46
Q

Covert prestige

A

describes high social status through use of non-standard forms

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47
Q

Declarative

A

a statement – a type of sentence which gives information and where the subject typically comes in front of the verb (‘Two fish are in a tank.’)

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48
Q

Definite article

A

‘the’

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49
Q

Deixis

A

Deictic words are pointers in a text that allow you to identify its time and place. An example would be “here” and “now” in the sentence “You read this here and now”. “Here” is an example of spatial deixis, and “now” is an example of temporal deixis

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50
Q

Denotation

A

the literal, generally accepted, dictionary definition of a word

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51
Q

Determiner

A

words determining the number or status of the noun

52
Q

Diachronic change

A

refers to the study of historical language occurring over a period

53
Q

Dialect

A

a non-standard variety of a language, including lexis and grammar, particular to a region

54
Q

Direct object

A

the part of the clause that is directly acted upon by the subject

55
Q

Discourse

A

describes the structure of any text (or segment of text) that is
longer than a single sentence

56
Q

Discourse marker

A

marks a change in direction in an extended piece of written or
spoken text (e.g. ‘nevertheless’, ‘to sum up’

57
Q

Discourse structure

A

the way a text is structured, according to the typical features of the text’s genre

58
Q

Dismissal formula

A

a device used to close a conversation

59
Q

Dispreferred response

A

a response that is unexpected, although not necessarily rude
if phrased appropriately. e.g. Speaker A: Dinner’s ready at 7.
Speaker B: Not dinner, I’ve only just had breakfast!

60
Q

Divergence

A

where a speaker actively distances himself/herself from another
speaker by accentuating their own accent or dialect

61
Q

Downward convergence

A

making your accent or lexis more informal

62
Q

Empirical approach

A

gaining knowledge by direct and indirect observation or experience

63
Q

Estuary English

A

a dialect of English that is perceived to have spread outwards
from London along the South East of England. It has features of
Received Pronunciation and London English

64
Q

Etymology

A

the history of a word, including the language it came from, if appropriate, and when it began to be regularly used

65
Q

Exophoric reference

A

a reference to something, often cultural, beyond the text

66
Q

Extra-linguistic variables

A

factors that affect the way you speak (e.g. age, where you live,
etc.)

67
Q

Genre

A

the kind of text you have in front of you (advert, speech, song)

68
Q

Gestural

A

a way of communicating that relates to movement and/or body language, either instead of words or (as would be likely in a multimodal media text) in addition to them

69
Q

Glottal stops

A

a form of stop consonant made at the back of the throat to replace the ‘t’ sound (e.g. ‘whaɁ instead of ‘what’)

70
Q

Grammarian

A

a scholar of grammar (dad)

71
Q

Grapheme–phoneme relationship

A

the correspondence between the written shape of a letter and
its sound

72
Q

Feral children

A

children who are raised without human intervention

73
Q

Field

A

words used in a text which relate to the text’s subject matter (e.g.
the field of medicine; the field of golf, etc.)

74
Q

Flaming

A

making an offensive and insulting post in a chatroom

75
Q

Flouts a maxim

A

where someone obviously and intentionally does not obey the conversational maxims that have been suggested by Grice

76
Q

Framing

A

controlling the agenda of a conversation (its direction and
subject); or making utterances that encourage a child to fill in the
blanks

77
Q

French/Latinate lexis

A

words derived from French or Latin, or both that are more rarely used; often seen as having a higher status and/or being more specialist

78
Q

Head noun

A

the main noun at the centre of a noun phrase

79
Q

High-frequency lexis

A

words that appear often in everyday speech

80
Q

Holophrase

A

a single word representing a more complex thought generally
created by a child. For example, the word ‘juice’ may be used
to signify ‘I want some juice’

81
Q

Hospitality token

A

a polite utterance relating to context designed to put speakers at their ease

82
Q

Hyperlink

A

an electronic link embedded in a text that takes the reader to another website

83
Q

Hypernyms

A

categories (e.g. pets, vehicles and sweets) are all hypernyms

84
Q

Hyponyms

A

examples within categories.
clothes: shirts, dresses, tops, ties

85
Q

Idiom

A

a form of common non-literal expression (e.g. ‘I was dead on my
feet’)

86
Q

Idiolect

A

your own individual way of speaking

87
Q

Illocutionary act

A

implying something in what we say

88
Q

Imperative

A

a command – a type of sentence where the subject is usually left
out and the verb is in its bare form ‘Give the hat to me.’

89
Q

Indefinite article

A

‘a’ or ‘an’

90
Q

Indirect object

A

receives the action
‘Naomi passed me the ball’
Verb: passed
Passed ‘what’: the ball (direct object)
Who received the ball: me (indirect object)

91
Q

Inflection

A

an ending such as -ed, -s or -ing added to change a tense or number, or in the case of nouns to make a plural

92
Q

Initialism

A

abbreviation using the first letter of a group of words and pronounced separately. eg FBI, CIA, DVD

93
Q

Interrogative

A

a question

94
Q

Intertextuality/intertextual reference

A

a subtle reference to another text that helps to create a sense of shared context and can operate on a pragmatic level, creating a sense of imagined closeness between writer/producer and reader/recipient

95
Q

Intonation

A

the pitch (how high or low you are in your vocal range)

96
Q

Irregular verbs

A

change their form when changing from present to past tense as opposed to adding a regular suffix such as ‘-ed’
(e.g. ‘swim’/‘swam’)

97
Q

Isogloss

A

the divisions that linguists draw between regions according to
different dialects

98
Q

Juxtaposition

A

the placement of two contrasting ideas or things next to each other.

99
Q

Labelling

A

the process of attaching words to objects; as the child learns more about the world their capacity to connect words with an increasing range of objects grows

100
Q

Language acquisition device (LAD)

A

a term coined by Chomsky to denote the inherent capacity of
humans for learning language

101
Q

Language acquisition support system (LASS)

A

the support provided by parents and other carers to the child’s language development

102
Q

Left-branching sentence

A

has the subordinate clause or clauses before the main clause

103
Q

Lexical field

A

identifies the main subject matter of a text (e.g. food in a recipe,
money in an article on economics)

104
Q

Lexis

A

words and their origins

105
Q

Linear

A

a text in which the discourse is organized into some sort of
sequence (e.g. a narrative with a beginning, middle and an end).

106
Q

Loanword

A

an English word that has come into use having been ‘borrowed’
from another language

107
Q

Low-frequency lexis

A

words that appear more rarely, such as specialist terms from a field, e.g. medicine

108
Q

Main clause

A

a clause that can stand on its own grammatically

109
Q

Main verb

A

the verb that carries the main meaning or process in a verb phrase (and therefore in a clause/sentence)

110
Q

Mainstream dialect

A

the dialect that spans the whole English nation

111
Q

Manner maxim

A

a co-operative principle relating to what you say so that you avoid being obscure or ambiguous and are instead orderly

112
Q

Marked

A

refers to words that are ascribed less prestige than the standard or unmarked form.

113
Q

Metatalk

A

explicit talk about grammar and language

114
Q

Minor sentence

A

a sentence that has some missing elements, such as the subject
or the verb, making it technically ungrammatical
‘what the hell!’

115
Q

Mixed mode

A

features of speech and writing in the same text

116
Q

Modal auxiliary verb

A

a sub-category of auxiliary verb that expresses degrees of possibility, probability, necessity or obligation

117
Q

Modifier

A

any word that describes a noun (can be an adjective, adverb or noun)

118
Q

Morphological derivation

A

the process of creating a new word out of an old word or affix (e.g. the suffix
-ly changes adjectives into adverbs – ‘nice’ becomes ‘nicely’)

119
Q

Multimodal

A

a text that uses more than one mode; often used for texts that have a combination of text and images

120
Q

Negative face

A

our desire to avoid doing something we don’t want to do. This is part of Goffman’s ideas about face.

121
Q

Negative politeness

A

a more indirect, hedged approach, often using negative constructions (e.g. ‘You couldn’t take the bin out for me, could you?’) This is linked to theories of face’

122
Q

Neologism

A

a newly formed or coined word

123
Q

Network building

A

having labelled objects, children start to identify connections between them, recognizing similarities and differences

124
Q

Nonce formation

A

a ‘nonsense’ new word that is created for a special occasion (e.g. just before lunch ‘feeling hungryish’ might be used)

125
Q

Non-finite subordinate clause

A

clauses in which the verb is not ‘finished’ and the tense is therefore not shown (e.g. clauses with to- infinitives like ‘to buy some cheese’ or with an -ing form of the verb such as in ‘running
down the road’)

126
Q
A

English Language A-level (2 decks)

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