Metalanguage Flashcards
Accents in Australian English
Broad, General, Cultivated
Acronyms
Pronounceable set of initials formed from initial letter of other words
(E.g. ‘ANZAC’ from “Australian New Zealand Army Corps’)
Active Voice
Most common type of ‘grammatical voice’, whereby actor/agent of transitive clause = subject, patient = object
(E.g. ‘Fred ate the cake’)
Adjacency Pairs
Part of conversation that contains an exchange of turns by 2 speakers & turns related to each other in such way that 1st turn requires certain types of response
(E.g. Q&A, ‘thank you’ & ‘no worries’)
Adjectives
Qualities or states which can either modify a noun phrase, or complement a verb phrase
(E.g. Modify noun ‘tall person’ or complement a verb ‘person is tall’)
Adverbial
Phrase that is optionally included in predicate, has flexibility of word worder & adds more info to subject/predicate
(E.g. ‘Fred at cake five minutes ago’)
Adverbs
Refers to time, frequency, place, manner, etc
(Many derived from adjectives via ‘-ly’ suffix, E.g. quickly)
Affixation
Type of bound morpheme either Prefix, Suffix, Infix
Agentless Passive Voice
Passive without agent/’doer’ of action (subject in active voice)
(E.g. ‘The cake was eaten’)
Alliteraion
Repetition of initial consonants
Anaphoric Reference
Part of cohesion. Expressions that refer back to something that has gone on before in the discourse (the antecedent). Antecedent necessary to provide info for expression’s interpretation
(E.g. ‘If you want my book, you can take it’)
Animation
Figure of speech that gives living beings (non-human), human qualities such as emotions, desires, expressions & powers of speech
Antithesis
Kind of parallelism that involves juxtaposition of contrasting phrases
(E.g. ‘many are called, but few are chosen’)
Antonymy
Using antonyms throughout text
(E.g. ‘dog’ & ‘cat’, ‘happy’ & ‘sad’)
Archaism
Word or construction that no longer employed/transferred from earlier phrases of language
(E.g. ‘manifold’, ‘ere’, ‘prithee’)
Article
Special modifiers that appear before nouns or noun phrases
Definite: ‘The’, Indefinite: ‘A/An’
Assimilation
Process of altering sounds so that it is closer to a neighbouring sound
(E.g. ‘sandwich’ to ‘samwich’)
Assonance
Repetition of same vowel sounds within words
(E.g. ‘get’ and ‘better’)
Auxiliary Verbs
Verb that precedes main verb
(E.g. ‘be’, ‘have’, ‘do’)
Blends
Word composed of elements of other words
(E.g. ‘vlog’ from ‘video blog’)
Borrowing
Process of adopting linguistic features from another language
(E.g ‘cafe; from French)
Bound Morpheme
Appear only as part of words
Broad Australian Accent
Accent identified with the ‘Australian twang’
Cataphoric Reference
Part of cohesion. Refers forward to another expression that follows it
(E.g. ‘If want you it, you can take my book’)
Clause Structure (& Basic Function)
Subject, object, complement, adverbial
Clauses
Structural unit that is larger than a phrase & may constitute a simple sentence/constituent of a complex sentence
(E.g. ‘I eat cake’)
Clefting
Focus device that splits off part of sentence in order to give it prominence
Code-Switching
Practice of alternating between 2/more language/dialects in conversation
Coherence
Semantic connections that exists within text to make it meaningful, if text is coherent it makes sense
Cohesion,Inference,Logical Ordering,Formatting,Cosistency,Conventions
Cohesion
Linguistic connections & ties that exist between words & sentences to give structure to a text
Collocations
Words that routinely combine with each other
(E.g. ‘round of applause’, ‘black and white’, ‘committing suicide’)
Colloquial Language/Colloquialisms
Slang that is recognised by majority of Standard English speaker
(E.g. ‘snags’)
Commonisation
Conversion of proper noun/name to common noun
(E.g. ‘esky’, ‘coke’, ‘elevator’)
Complement
Generally, an obligatory element in grammatical construction & completes what is said about subject
(E.g. ‘That cake looks delicious’)
Complex Sentence
1 coordinating & 1 subordinating clause joined by subordinating conjunction
(E.g. ‘I eat cake because I like it’)
Compound Sentence
2 coordinated clauses joined by coordinating conjunction
(E.g. ‘I eat cake and I drink coffee’)
Compound-Complex
2+ coordinating & 1+ subordinating clauses joined by conjunctions
(E.g. ‘I like to eat cake and drink coffee because I like it’)
Compounding
Combination of 2/more free morphemes
(E.g. ‘homework’)
Conjunctions
Link clauses/parts of clauses, subordinators & coordinators
(E.g. ‘while’, ‘when’, ‘but’, ‘therefore’)
Connected speech processes
Assimilation, Vowel Reduction, Elision, Insertion
Connotation
Emotional meaning of words that arises from people’s personalities, beliefs, experiences & can differ from person to person
Consistency
Consistent viewpoint
Consonance
Repetition of consonant sounds within words
(E.g. ‘white gate’)
Content Words
Words that have a real word/dictionary meaning
(E.g. ‘table’, ‘leg’)
Contractions
Omission/elision of internal sounds/letters within word
(E.g. ‘y’know’, from ‘you know’, ‘where’d’ from ‘where did’)
Conventions
Recipe breaks process down into simple, manageable steps, what is expected of text types
(E.g. A letter has a greeting and a sign off)
Coordinating Conjunctions
A word that links two verbs, two nouns, two adjectives, two phrases or two independent clauses
(E.g. FANBOYS; ‘for’, ‘and’, ‘nor’, ‘but’, ‘or’, ‘yet’, ‘so’)
Coordination
Combination of 2/more elements (words, phrases, clauses) that are equal in function & status
(Elements linked by coordinators/coordinating conjunctions (and, or))
Covert Norms/Prestige
Linguistic features that signal membership within certain subgroup (kind of ‘street cred’)
Cultivated Australian Accent
Accent used by around 10% of Australian population & is more rounded in articulation of vowels than Broad or General
Cultural Context
Cultural background of discourse & includes what participants know about context, reasons for their behaviour & their expectations of others involved in discourse
Deictics
Part of cohesion. Word/expression whose meaning is dependent on context in which it is used
(E.g. ‘here’, ‘you’, ‘me’, ‘that one there’, ‘next Tuesday’)
Declarative
Making a statement & subject + predicate
(E.g. ‘I like cake’)
Denotation
Dictionary meaning
Derivation
Changes word meaning/class
(E.g. ‘unhappy’, ‘relaxation’)
Determiners
Express definiteness, quantity, number & possession
(E.g. Articles: ‘an’, Demonstrative: ‘this’, Quantifiers: ‘few’, Interrogatives ‘what’, Possessive pronouns ‘my’)
Discourse Particles
Features of speech that have discourse functions to do with focus & change of topic & conversational functions to do with turn-taking. Also play role in expressing social relationships, personal attitudes & opinions, conveying sometimes subtle nuances of meaning
(E.g. ‘well’, ‘yeah-no’, ‘like’, ‘y’know’)
Double-Speak
Language that conceals true meaning of word/utterance by making negative seem positive & diverts hearer/reader from consequences of utterance/speech act
Dysphemisim
Involves verbal resources for being offensive, abusive or letting off steam & motivated by hatred/contempt/fear/distaste
(E.g. ‘slut’ for ‘prostitute’)
Elision
Omission of certain sounds in connected speech
(E.g. ‘fish ‘n chips’)
Ellipses
Part of cohesion. Leaving words out rather than repeating them unnecessarily
(E.g. ‘cake?’ vs ‘do you want cake?’)
End Focus
Given/old/established info is given before new/unpredictable/surprising info
Ethnolect
Variety that identifies speakers by their ethnicity & and usually influenced by 1st language/that of their families. Often employed as in-group codes in addition of mainstream Australian English
Euphemisim
Avoidance language that involves sweet-sounding/at least inoffensive alternatives for expressions that speakers/writers may prefer not to use on a given occasion
(E.g. ‘to pass away’ instead of ‘to die’)
Exclamative
Making an exclamation & what/how + predicate
(E.g. ‘what a big cake that is’, ‘how delicious that cake looks’)
False Starts
Kind of redrafting feature found in spontaneous/unplanned speech
(E.g. ‘today I, today I want to talk about…’)
Features of Spoken Discourse
Openings & Closings, Adjacency Pairs, Overlapping Speech, Interrogative Tags, Discourse Particles, Non-Fluency Features
Figurative Language
Asking the reader/listener to understand something by virtue of its relation to some other thing/action/image
Formatting
E.g. Title, date, by-line, opening & ending phrases, bolding, italics, underlining
Free Morphemes
Can function independently as words
Front Focus
Moves elements to beginning of sentences giving them greater prominence
Function Words
Words that have purely grammatical meaning and does not refer to anything in the real world
(E.g. ‘the’, ‘to’)
General Australian Accent
Accent used by great majority of Australian population
Holding the Floor
Act of extending your turn
Hyponymy
The semantic relation between hyponym (subtype) and hypernym (supertype)
(E.g. ‘poodle’ is hyponym of ‘dog’, ‘dog’ is hypernym of ‘poodle’)
Idiom
Group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words
(E.g. ‘over the moon’, ‘under the weather’)
Idolect
Linguistic system associated with an individual speaker
Imperative
Issuing directive & implied subject (you) + predicate
(E.g. ‘(you) eat your cake’)
Inference
Additional info assumed by hearers/readers in order to make a connection between what has been said/written & what is meant (speakers/writers imply what readers infer)
Infix
Placed in middle of word
(E.g. ‘fanbloodytastic’)
Inflection
A change in the form of a word that signals grammatical relationships
(E.g. tense, plural, possession)
Information Flow
Part of cohesion. How speakers/writers go about ‘packaging’ their messages, how provide they right sort of cues to help audience interpret text appropriately
Clefting, Front Focus, End Focus
Initialisms (abbreviation)
Non-pronounceable set of initials formed from 1st letter of each word in name/phrase
(E.g. ‘TTYL’ from ‘talk to you later’)
Insertion
Addition of sounds in speech which ease articulation
(E.g. ‘drawing’ to ‘drawring’)
Interjection
Words that have emotional meaning & stand by themselves outside clause
(E.g. ‘wow!’)
Interrogative
: Posing a question & auxiliary + subject + rest of predicate
(E.g. ‘does he like cake?’)
Interrogative Tags
Type of reduced interrogative ‘tagged’ on the end of declarative clause & requests hearer to express agreement/disagreement
(E.g. ‘the cake is pretty good, isn’t it?’)
Intonation
Way pitch changes accross an utterance
IPA
International Phonetic Alphabet
Irony
Language that expresses incongruity between what might be expected & what actually happens
Jargon
Language shared by those who belong to profession/trade/some other occupational group
(Functions: Serve specialist language or promote in-group solidarity)
Lexical Ambiguity
Expression with more than 1 meaning => structure of sentence can also give rise to ambiguity
(E.g. ‘my mum won’t stop grinding me’)
Lexical Choice
Part of cohesion, involves Synonymy, Antonymy, Hyponymy, Collocation
Lexical Choice & Semantic Patterning
Figurative Language, Irony, Metaphor, Oxymoron, Simile, Personification, Animation, Puns, Lexical Ambiguity
Lexical Meaning (Sense Relations)
Synonymy, Antonymy, Hyponymy, Idiom, Denotation, Connotation
Listing
Often involves coordinated phrases/lists of words, more captivating way to present info
(E.g. ‘unmoved, unchanged, undefeated’)
Logical Ordering
E.g. Chronological ordering
Metaphor
Non-literal use of language where people refer to 1 domain by using language expressions usually associated with some other domain & there is transfer of meaning from 1 context to another
Minimal Responses
Involves words such as ‘yeah’, ‘ok’ & sounds such as ‘mm’, ‘hmm’, ‘uh huh’ that listeners use while someone else is talking, to show engagement
Modal Verbs
Verbs that convey necessity, possibility, obligation or probability
(E.g. ‘may’, ‘will’, ‘could’, ‘would’, ‘should’)
Morphemes
Smallest possible unit of meaning in language
(E.g. root, bound, free)
Negative Face Needs
Desire to not be pushed around/not to be imposed on/basic claim to personal territories, rights to non-distraction, to freedom of action & from imposition
Neologism
Newly coined word
(E.g. ‘Altcoin’ - any coin that is not bitcoin in a digital currency)
Nominalisation
Process that turns whole clauses into noun-like structures, becomes more abstract
(E.g. ‘the self-destructing device’ > ‘the device that self-destructs’)
Non-Fluency Features
Pauses, Pause Fillers/Voiced Hesitations, False Starts, Repetition, Repairs
Non-Standard English
Any other form of English outside of Standard English
Nouns
Name of a person, place or thing
Vowel Reduction
Omission of unstressed vowels in everyday speech
(E.g. ‘library’ to ‘libry’)
Objects
Clausal constituent that follows verb in basic clauses
(E.g. for noun phrases ‘Fred never eats cake’)
Onomatopoeia
Words with pronunciations that echo natural sounds of the world
(E.g. ‘splash’)
Openings & Closings
E.g. ‘hello & goodbye’, ‘dear & sincerely/from/regards’, ‘ladies and gentlemen’
Overlapping Speech
Simultaneous talk by 2/more conversational participants, irrespective of its status in participants minds as an interruption
(E.g. ‘so like I was talking to my [mum]’ ‘[yeah]’)
Overt Norms/Prestige
Linguistic features that are recognised by culturally dominant group (standard features)
Oxymoron
Phrase that combines 2 contradictory terms
Parallelism
Use of similar sounds, words, or grammatical constructions & expresses dieas that are equally important
(E.g. ‘the sun rises, the sun sets’)
Passing the Floor
Act of indicating your turn is over & inviting/allowing another speaker to start their turn
Passive Voice
Discourse strategy whereby original object becomes grammatical subject, while original subject moved to optional prepositional phrase
(E.g. ‘The cake was eaten by Fred’)
Pause Fillers/Voiced Hesitation
Vocalised hesitation or sounds that fill pauses
(E.g. ‘umm’, ‘uhh’, ‘err’)
Personification
Figure of speech that gives non-humans, human qualities such as emotions, desires, expressions & powers of speech
Phonological Patterning
Alliteration, Assonance, Consonance, Onomatopoeia, Rhythm, Rhyme
Phrases
Group of words that is smaller than a clause & behaves like a structural unit. Named after most important word in string
(E.g. Noun phrase, verb phrase, adverbial phrase)
Pitch
How high/low the voice is
(reflecting how fast the vocal chords vibrate)
Political Correctness
Avoidance of expression/behaviours that perceived to exclude/marginalise/affront groups of people who are disadvantaged/discriminated against
Positive Face Needs
Desire to be liked/individual’s positive consistent self-image/personality/desire of person to be appreciated & approved of by at least some people
Predicate
Stand alone subordinating clause
Prefix
Precedes root
(E.g. ‘anticlockwise’)
Prepositions
Express spatial relations, & is also infinitive marker, indirect object marker, agent marker in passive clause (by), possessive marker
(E.g. ‘in’, ‘at’, ‘under’)
Pronouns
Used in place of noun phrase
(E.g. ‘it’, ‘they’, ‘him’, ‘I’)
Prosodic Features
Pitch, Stress, Volume, Tempo, Intonation
Public Language
Variety of language used in open & shared contexts
Puns
Type of word play that uses different meanings of word/brings together words that are similar in sound, but have different meanings
Register
The level of formality in labguage determined by context. Frozen, formal, consultative, casual, and intimate.
Repairs
Process by which speaker recognises speech error & repeats what has been said with some sort of correction
(E.g. ‘toni-today I want to talk about…’)
Repetition
Part of cohesion. Using the same word/phrase over & over again
Rhetoric
Involves techniques for effective/persuasive speaking/writing
Rhyme
Recurring pattern of identical/similar sounds at end of 2/more different words
Rhythm
Regular recurrence of stresses or prominent units in speech
Root Morpheme
Main free morpheme
Semantic Fields/Domains
Area of meaning that is identified by set of related lexical items
(E.g. ‘cake’, ‘ganache’, & ‘flour’ are under semantic field of cooking)
Sentence Fragments
Phrases without subject/predicate
(E.g. ‘he is’, ‘Harry’s book’, ‘eat cake’, ‘if I die’)
Sentence Structures
Fragments, Simple, Compound, Complex, Compound-Complex
Sentence Types
Declarative, Imperative, Interrogative, Exclamative
Shortenings
Reduction of word to 1 of its parts
(E.g. ‘exam’ from ‘examination’, ‘pop’ from ‘popular music’)
Simile
Figurative expression that involves comparison between 2 things, signalled by ‘like’ or ‘as’
Simple Sentence
Single independent clause
(E.g. ‘I eat cake’)
Situational Context
Contextual knowledge & includes knowledge of who is speaking, listening, what is being discussed & general facts about the world
(Field, Function, Participants, Setting, Mode)
Slang
In-group variety used by people with something in common & often bound by time & generation
Social Purpose
Other purposes of language, common social purposes include: to build rapport, to promote solidarity and encouraging itimacy
Sociolect
Variety used by people of particular socioeconomic status/educational background
Spoken Discourse Strategies
Topic Management, Turn-Taking, Holding the Floor, Passing the Floor, Minimal Responses/Back-Channelling
Standard English
Idealised variety that constitutes notional set of norms, generally adopted by educated speakers of English. Many standard varieties of English, according to age, generation & especially according to national origins
Stress
How loudly/softly & how long/short different syllables are uttered
(Can differentiate stressed & unstressed, light & heavy stress)
Subject
Clausal constituent about which something is stated/predicated
(E.g. ‘Fred never eats cake’)
Subordianting Conjunctions
A word or phrase that links a dependent clause to an independent clause
(E.g. ‘because’, ‘although’, ‘therefore’)
Subordination
Combination of clauses that are syntactically non-equivalent, a subordinate clause is part of another clause (main clause) & is introduced by subordinator/relative pronoun
(E.g. ‘I bought that book because I liked it’)
Substitution
Part of cohesion. Substituting a word
(E.g. ‘do you have a pencil? Yeah I have one.’)
Suffix
Follows root
(E.g. ‘happiness’)
Suffixation in Australian English
Colloquial terms that add an ending such as a, o, ie, or y
(E.g. ‘‘arvo’, ‘barbie’, ‘ambo’)
Synonymy
Using synonyms throughout text
(E.g. ‘dog’, ‘canine’ & ‘hound’)
Syntactic Patterning
Antithesis, Listing, Parallelism
Taboo Language
Words/phrases that considered inappropriate in certain contexts
Tempo
Rate of speed of speech
Topic Management
Related topic subjects discussed by speakers during turn-taking
Turn-Taking
Practice of alternating turns from 1 person to another
Use of Adverbials & Conjunctions in Cohesion
They show following relationships: addition, cause & effect, comparison & contrast, concession, temporal
Verbs
Used to describe an action, state or occurrence, & forming main part of predicate of sentence
Vocal effects
Noises made during speech
(E.g. Coughs, laughter, breath)
Voice Types
Active, Passive, Agentless Passive
Volume
Degree of loudness
Word Classes
Nouns, Verbs, Auxiliary Verbs, Modal Verbs, Adjectives, Adverbs, Prepositions, Pronouns, Conjunctions, Determiners, Interjections
Word Loss & Formation Processes
Blends, acronyms, initialisms, shortenings, compounding, contractions,
collocations, neologisms, borrowing, commonisation, archaism
