Key Terms Flashcards
(32 cards)
What is the ‘Active Voice’?
Active voice means that a sentence has a subject that acts upon its verb. Passive voice means that a subject is a recipient of a verb’s action.
Active Voice:
He bought a car.
I ate an apple
Passive:
A car was bought by him
An apple was eaten by me
What is an ‘Adverbial’?
Adverbials are words that we use to give more information about a verb. They can be one word (angrily, here) or phrases (at home, in a few hours) and often say how, where, when or how often something happens or is done, though they can also have other uses.
Examples:
I left school immediately
I left school after lunch
When the bell rang, I left
What are the two types of Apostrophe?
There are two types of apostrophe, one shows there is a letter
(or letters) missing, one shows possession (that an object
belongs to somebody or something)
e.g. That is becomes that’s when the letter I is missed out
The girl’s pens. The apostrophe shows the pens belong to
the girl.
What is an ‘Antonym’?
a word opposite in meaning to another (e.g. bad and good ).
What is an ‘Article’?
Articles are words that define a noun as specific or unspecific.
Examples:
After the long day, the cup of tea tasted particularly good.
(By using the article the, we’ve shown that it was one specific day that was long and one specific cup of tea that tasted good).
After a long day, a cup of tea tastes particularly good.
By using the article a, we’ve created a general statement, implying that any cup of tea would taste good after any long day.
What is an ‘Auxiliary Verb’?
Auxiliary (or Helping) verbs are used together with a main verb to show the verb’s tense or to form a negative or question. The most common auxiliary verbs are have, be, and do.
Examples:
Does Sam write all his own reports?
The secretaries haven’t written all the letters yet.
Terry is writing an e-mail to a client at the moment.
What is a ‘Clause’?
A clause is a group of words that includes a subject and a verb. A clause can be distinguished from a phrase, which does not contain a subject and a verb.
Example:
e.g., in the afternoon, drinking from the bowl).
What is ‘Cohesion’?
The term ‘cohesive devices’ refers to the conjunctions, connectives and pronouns used to link the parts of a piece of writing. Using the same verb tense throughout a text also offers ‘cohesion’.
Example:
an attempt has been made to link clauses, sentences and paragraphs so that the writing ‘hangs together’.
What is a colon
The colon is used to separate two independent clauses when the second explains or illustrates the first
Example:
I have very little time to learn the language: my new job starts in five weeks.
A college degree is still worth something: a recent survey revealed that college graduates earned roughly 60% more than those with only a high school diploma.
All three of their children are involved in the arts: Richard is a sculptor, Diane is a pianist, and Julie is a theater director.
What is a ‘Complement’?
It’s a word, clause, or phrase that’s needed to complete a given expression.
Examples:
For example, “Every morning is a gift.” In this sentence, “every morning” is the subject, “is” is the linking verb, and “a gift” is the complement. It completes the idea. Without it, we wouldn’t understand what every morning is.
Another example would be, “The air smells beautiful.” In this sentence, “the air” is the subject, “smells” is the linking verb, and “beautiful” is the complement. Let’s explore the different kinds of complements, as well as how to spot them in a sentence.
What is ‘Compounding’?
In English grammar, compounding is the process of combining two words (free morphemes) to create a new word (commonly a noun, verb, or adjective). Also called composition, it is from the Latin for “put together”.
Examples:
Compounds are written sometimes as one word (sunglasses), sometimes as two hyphenated words (life-threatening), and sometimes as two separate words (football stadium). Compounding is the most common type of word-formation in English.
What is ‘Continuous’?
We use continuous aspect:
for something happening before and after a specific time:
He’s getting on the train. (before and after the moment of speaking)
It was a quarter past ten. We were watching the news on television.
What is ‘Coordination’?
In English grammar, coordination is the joining of words, phrases, or clauses of the same type to give them equal emphasis and importance
Example:
The common conjunctions and, but, for, or, not, yet and so to join the elements of a coordinate construction.
What is a ‘determiner’
A determiner is a word that goes before a noun and identifies the noun in further detail.
What is a ‘finite verb’?
A finite verb shows agreement with a subject and is marked for tense
I love parades
She loves parades
He loved parades
What is a ‘homonym’?
Homonyms are two words that are spelled the same and sound the same but have different meanings
Example:
A simple example of a homonym is the word “pen.” This can mean both “a holding area for animals” and “a writing instrument.”
What is a ‘homophone’?
each of two or more words having the same pronunciation but different meanings, origins, or spelling.
each of a set of symbols denoting the same sound or group of sounds.
Examples:
(there, their and they’re, for example).
What is an ‘Infinitive’?
An infinitive is a verb combined with the word to. Most often, an infinitive acts as a noun in the sentence. Less frequently, it acts as an adjective or an adverb.
What is ‘Inflection’?
Inflection refers to a process of word formation in which items are added to the base form of a word to express grammatical meanings
Example:
The same inflection -s at the end of runs shows that the subject is in the third-person singular (s/he runs). The inflection -ed is often used to indicate the past tense, changing walk to walked and listen to listened. In this way, inflections are used to show grammatical categories such as tense, person, and number.
What is an ‘Intransitive Verb’?
An intransitive verb has two characteristics. First, it is an action verb, expressing a doable activity like arrive, go, lie, sneeze, sit, die, etc. Second, unlike a transitive verb, it will not have a direct object receiving the action.
Eg:
Huffing and puffing, we arrived at the classroom door with only seven seconds to spare.
Arrived = intransitive verb.
James went to the campus cafe for a steaming bowl of squid eyeball stew.
Went = intransitive verb.
What is a ‘main clause’?
A main clause—sometimes called an independent clause—must contain a subject and a verb as well as express a complete thought. Look at the examples below:
Diane kicked the soda machine.
Diane = the subject; kicked = the verb.
A giant spider has made its home behind the shampoo bottle in Neil’s bathroom.
Spider = the subject; has made = the verb.
What is a ‘modal verb’?
Modal verbs change or affect other verbs in a sentence. They are used to show the level of possibility, indicate ability, show obligation or give permission. Modal verbs behave differently to ‘ordinary’ verbs.
The most common modal verbs are:
will would should could may can shall ought to must might
What is ‘morphology’?
Morphology is the study of the internal structure of words and forms a core part of linguistic study today.
EG: UNKINDNESS
UN- and -NESS are the bound morphemes, requiring the root KIND to form the word.
These are also called affixes as they are attached to the stem. There are two types as outlined below:
What is a ‘noun phrase’
A noun phrase includes a noun—a person, place, or thing—and the modifiers which distinguish it.
Modifiers that come after the noun might include prepositional phrases, adjective clauses, participle phrases, and/or infinitives.
Prepositional phrases: a dog on the loose, the dog in the front seat, the dog behind the fence
Adjective clauses: the dog that chases cats, the dog that looks lost, the dog that won the championship
Participle phrases: the dog whining for a treat, the dog clipped at the grooming salon, the dog walked daily
Infinitives: the dog to catch, the dog to train, the dog to adopt
