terminology for paper 2

Question 1

Active voice

Answer 1

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

Question 2

Adverbial

Answer 2

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

adverbial clauses (e.g., ‘although it’s raining’) are adverbials formed using multiple words.

Question 3

Analogical overextension

Answer 3

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

Question 4

Bidialectalism

Answer 4

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

Question 5

Catenative

Answer 5

chain-like structure in a sentence (‘so we… and then… and then we…’)

Question 6

Clause

Answer 6

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.

A clause is a group of words that includes a subject and a verb. For example: The dog barks when the postman arrives.

Question 7

Cohesion

Answer 7

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.)

Question 8

Collocation

Answer 8

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’)

Question 9

Comparative adjective

Answer 9

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’)

Question 10

Complement

Answer 10

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

Question 11

Complex sentence

Answer 11

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

Question 12

Compound

Answer 12

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

Question 13

Compound sentence

Answer 13

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

Question 14

Compound-complex sentence

Answer 14

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

For example, in the sentence ‘I played out until it went dark’, the phrase ‘until it went dark’

In the sentence ‘It stopped raining and the sun came out’, ‘It stopped raining’ and ‘the sun came out’ are both coordinate clauses, joined by the word ‘and’.

Question 15

Connotation

Answer 15

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

Question 16

Context

Answer 16

where, when and how a text is produced or received

Question 17

Coordinate clause

Answer 17

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

Question 18

Coordinating conjunctions

Answer 18

these signal the start of a coordinate clause e.g. but, and, or

Question 19

Copular verb

Answer 19

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

Question 20

Deixis

Answer 20

terms that point towards something and place the words in
context

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.

Question 21

Denotation

Answer 21

the literal, generally accepted, dictionary definition of a word

Question 22

Determiner

Answer 22

words determining the number or status of the noun

Question 23

Diachronic change

Answer 23

refers to the study of historical language occurring over a period

Question 24

Direct object

Answer 24

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

Question 25

Empirical approach

Answer 25

gaining knowledge by direct and indirect observation or
experience

Question 26

Etymology

Answer 26

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

Question 27

Exophoric reference

Answer 27

a reference to something, often cultural, beyond the text

Question 28

Field

Answer 28

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

Question 29

French/Latinate lexis

Answer 29

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

Question 30

Head noun

Answer 30

the main noun at the centre of a noun phrase

Question 31

High-frequency lexis

Answer 31

words that appear often in everyday speech

Question 32

Hypernyms

Answer 32

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

Question 33

Hyponyms

Answer 33

examples within categories (e.g. pony, truck and sherbet lemons)
are all hyponyms

Question 34

Idiom

Answer 34

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

Question 35

Illocutionary act

Answer 35

implying something in what we say

Question 36

Indefinite article

Answer 36

‘a’ or ‘an’

Question 37

Inflection

Answer 37

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

Question 38

Intertextuality/intertextual reference

Answer 38

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

Question 39

Irregular verbs

Answer 39

change their form when changing from present to past tense
(e.g. ‘swim’/‘swam’

in simple words is a verb that doesnt follow usual rules e.g. past tense of eat is not eated its eaten

Question 40

Left-branching sentence

Answer 40

has the subordinate clause or clauses before the main clause

“the big house,”

Question 41

Lexical field

Answer 41

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

Question 42

Loanword

Answer 42

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

Question 43

Locutionary act

Answer 43

saying something

Question 44

Low-frequency lexis

Answer 44

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

Question 45

Main clause

Answer 45

a clause that can stand on its own grammatically

Question 46

Minor sentence

Answer 46

a sentence that has some missing elements, such as the subject
or the verb, making it technically ungrammatica

Question 47

Mixed mode

Answer 47

features of speech and writing in the same text

Question 48

Modification

Answer 48

description in the form of words, phrases or whole clauses that
alters our understanding of the thing described

Question 49

Morphological derivation

Answer 49

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’)

Question 50

Neologism

Answer 50

a newly formed or coined word
a newly formed or coined word

Question 51

Nonce formation

Answer 51

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

Question 52

Non-finite subordinate clause

Answer 52

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’

Question 53

Non-linear

Answer 53

a text with no expected sequence for reading – the cohesion
may be less obvious and this may be reflected in the layout
(e.g. more use may be made of features such as text boxes and
hyperlinks than if the text was linear)

Question 54

Object permanence

Answer 54

the ability of a baby to recognize that an object still exists
even when the baby cannot actually see it, thus it requires the
capacity to form a mental representation of the object

Question 55

Orthographical

Answer 55

the methodology for writing a language including features such
as spelling, punctuation, hyphenation, etc.

Question 56

Periodic sentence

Answer 56

a complex sentence in which the main clause is saved until the
end (e.g. ‘The Minister, who was usually late in the mornings,
except on those occasions when she had been working all night,
was already at her desk.’)

Question 57

Possessive determiner

Answer 57

determiner which shows who the noun belongs to (e.g. my book)

Question 58

Post-modified

Answer 58

the modification that comes after the head noun (or after a
phrase or clause)

Question 59

Pre-modified

Answer 59

modification that comes before the head noun (or before a
phrase or clause)

Question 60

Primary verbs

Answer 60

be, have, do

Question 61

Privation

Answer 61

the absence of social relationships

Question 62

Representation

Answer 62

language used to present an impression of ourselves, or of an
event, company or institution (like your school or college) to the
wider world

Question 63

Semantic shift

Answer 63

the change in a meaning of a word

Question 64

Semiotics

Answer 64

the study of signs and symbols; considering not only the
ways in which words work and how they are used, but also by
considering images, sounds, music, and patterns

Question 65

Standardization

Answer 65

the process of forming a uniform language codified in
dictionaries, educational and government texts that demands
conformity by all variant language forms

Question 66

Subordinate clause

Answer 66

depends on the main clause to exist

Question 67

Subordinating conjunctions

Answer 67

these signal the start of a subordinate clause

Question 68

Superlative adjective

Answer 68

expresses the highest level of the quality represented by the
adjective, generally made by adding -est to its base form (‘the
fastest car’)

Question 69

Synonym

Answer 69

a word that has a similar meaning to another word (e.g. ‘malady’
and ‘illness’)

Question 70

Syntax

Answer 70

the order of the elements in a clause or sentence (subject, verb,
object, etc.)

Question 71

Valediction

Answer 71

expression of farewell

Question 72

Vernacular writing

Answer 72

informal, non-standard writing