Module 5 Syntax Vocabulary Practice Flashcards
Syntax
The rules concerned with the study of a sentence; the study of how words and phrases are arranged to form grammatically correct sentences.
Grammar
The complete system of phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic information and rules that speakers of a given language possess.
Systematic Structure
The organized and patterned way in which language elements (like sounds, words, or sentences) relate to each other within a language, forming a network of choices and potions that allow for meaningful communication, where each element has a defined position and function within the overall system.
Constituents
A word or group of words that functions as a unit within a sentence.
Phrases
Any word or group of words that play a particular role within the syntactic structure of a sentence.
Pronominalisation
The substitution of a constituent by a pronoun.
Pro-form
A word or expression that replaces another word, phrase, clause, or sentence.
Wh-pronoun
Interrogative pronouns that start with the letters “wh”
Movement
A process that describes the displacement of constituents from their original positions in a sentence.
Coordination Test
A structural analysis test that joins two elements into one such as with a word like and or but.
Gapping
A type of ellipsis that occurs in the non-initial conjunctions of coordinate structures.
Sentence-Fragment Test
A way to determine if a group of words is a complete sentence by asking if it has a subject, a verb, and expresses a complete idea.
Structural Ambiguity
When a sentence or phrase has multiple possible interpretations due to the way words are organized.
Head
The word or words that determine the phrase’s syntactic category and grammatical properties.
Syntactic Categories
Groups of words that share similar syntactic properties such as word order and how they occur together; parts of speech.
Determiners
A word that modifies a noun by clarifying what it refers to, it’s quantity, or its ownership.
Phrase Structure Rules
A set of formal guidelines that describe the syntactic structure of a sentence by outlining how phrases and their constituents are organized.
Subordinate Clauses
A clause that cannot stand alone as a complete sentence; it merely complements a sentence’s main clause, thereby adding to the whole unit of meaning; also referred to as a dependent clause.
Predicate
The grammatical term for the words in a sentence or clause that describe the action but not the subject; explains what the subject does.
Subject-Verb Agreement
A grammatical rule that requires the verb to match the number of its subject.
Transitive Verbs
A verb that requires a direct object, which is a noun, pronoun, or noun phrase that follows the verb and indicates the person or thing that receives the action of the verb.
Intransitive Verbs
A verb that doesn’t need a direct object, which is a noun, pronoun, or noun phrase that follows the verb, to complete its meaning.
Ditransitive
A transitive verb whose contextual use corresponds to a subject and two objects which refer to a theme and a recipient.
Complement
A word, phrase, or clause that is required to complete the meaning of a given sentence, part of a sentence, or expression.
Predicative Complements
A word or phrase that provides information about a noun or pronoun in a sentence, and completes the meaning of the sentence.
Adverbial
A word or group of words that modifies a verb, adjective, adverb, or clause; can change the meaning of the verb they modify.
Direct Object
The person or thing that directly receives the action or affect of the verb; an entity that undergoes the action or process denoted by the verb.
Indirect Object
A noun phrase referring to someone or something that is affected by the action of a transitive verb, but it not the primary object; the recipient or the beneficiary of the event denoted by the verb.
Transitive Verbs
A verb that requires a direct object to complete the sentence’s meaning; verbs that need an object.
Intransitive Verbs
A verb that doesn’t require a direct object to make sense; verbs that cannot take an object
Case Form
Forms that mark the grammatical function of noun phrases in a sentence or phrase; grammatical categories that indicate how a word is used in a sentence.
Clause
A group of words that contains a subject and a verb that are related in some way; a syntactic unit that consists minimally of a verb phrase and its subject.
Sentences
The largest syntactic units and are made up of one or more clauses; a group of words that expresses a complete thought and follows grammatical rules.
Noun Phrases
A group of words that functions like a noun in a sentence; phrases headed by a noun.
Diction
The choice and use of words and phrases in speech or writing.
Misplaced Modifier
A phrase or clause placed awkwardly in a sentence so that it appears to modify or refer to an unintended word; a word, phrase, or clause that is separated from the word it describes, creating confusion and ambiguity.
Sentence Fragment
A word, phrase, or clause that usually has in speech the intonation of a sentence but lacks the grammatical structure usually found in the sentences of formal and especially written composition.
Run-On Sentence
A grammatical error that occurs when two or more independent clauses are joined without proper punctuation or conjunctions.
Subordinate Clause
A clause, typically introduced by a conjunction, that forms part of and is dependent on a main clause; a clause that cannot stand alone as a complete sentence.
Word-Class Membership
The categorization of words into groups based on their grammatical properties.
