terminology for paper 2 Flashcards
Active voice
clause construction where the subject is also the actor (they are doing or have done something to somebody/something)
Adverbial
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.
Analogical overextension
associating objects which are unrelated but which have one or more features in common (e.g. both being the same colour)
Bidialectalism
a speaker’s ability to use two dialects of the same language
Catenative
chain-like structure in a sentence (‘so we… and then… and then we…’)
Clause
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.
Cohesion
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.)
Collocation
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’)
Comparative adjective
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’)
Complement
a clause element that tells you more about the subject or the
object
Complex sentence
has two or more clauses, one of which is a subordinate clause
Compound
a word formed from two other words (e.g. ‘dustbin’)
Compound sentence
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
Compound-complex sentence
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’.
Connotation
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
Context
where, when and how a text is produced or received
Coordinate clause
a clause beginning with a coordinating conjunction and is
essentially a main clause joined to another main clause
Coordinating conjunctions
these signal the start of a coordinate clause e.g. but, and, or
Copular verb
a verb that takes a complement (such as ‘seems’, ‘appears’ or a
form of the verb to be – ‘is’, ‘was’, ‘are’, etc.)
Deixis
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.
Denotation
the literal, generally accepted, dictionary definition of a word
Determiner
words determining the number or status of the noun
Diachronic change
refers to the study of historical language occurring over a period
Direct object
the part of the clause that is directly acted upon by the subject
Empirical approach
gaining knowledge by direct and indirect observation or
experience
Etymology
the history of a word, including the language it came from, if
appropriate, and when it began to be regularly used
Exophoric reference
a reference to something, often cultural, beyond the text
Field
words used in a text which relate to the text’s subject matter (e.g.
the field of medicine; the field of golf, etc.)
French/Latinate lexis
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
Head noun
the main noun at the centre of a noun phrase
High-frequency lexis
words that appear often in everyday speech
Hypernyms
categories (e.g. pets, vehicles and sweets) are all hypernyms
Hyponyms
examples within categories (e.g. pony, truck and sherbet lemons)
are all hyponyms
Idiom
a form of common non-literal expression (e.g. ‘I was dead on my
feet’)
Illocutionary act
implying something in what we say
Indefinite article
‘a’ or ‘an’
Inflection
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
Intertextuality/intertextual reference
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
Irregular verbs
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
Left-branching sentence
has the subordinate clause or clauses before the main clause
“the big house,”
Lexical field
identifies the main subject matter of a text (e.g. food in a recipe,
money in an article on economics)
Loanword
an English word that has come into use having been ‘borrowed’
from another language
Locutionary act
saying something
Low-frequency lexis
words that appear more rarely, such as specialist terms from a
field, e.g. medicine
Main clause
a clause that can stand on its own grammatically
Minor sentence
a sentence that has some missing elements, such as the subject
or the verb, making it technically ungrammatica
Mixed mode
features of speech and writing in the same text
Modification
description in the form of words, phrases or whole clauses that
alters our understanding of the thing described
Morphological derivation
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’)
Neologism
a newly formed or coined word
a newly formed or coined word
Nonce formation
a ‘nonsense’ new word that is created for a special occasion (e.g.
just before lunch ‘feeling hungryish’ might be used)
Non-finite subordinate clause
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’
Non-linear
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)
Object permanence
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
Orthographical
the methodology for writing a language including features such
as spelling, punctuation, hyphenation, etc.
Periodic sentence
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.’)
Possessive determiner
determiner which shows who the noun belongs to (e.g. my book)
Post-modified
the modification that comes after the head noun (or after a
phrase or clause)
Pre-modified
modification that comes before the head noun (or before a
phrase or clause)
Primary verbs
be, have, do
Privation
the absence of social relationships
Representation
language used to present an impression of ourselves, or of an
event, company or institution (like your school or college) to the
wider world
Semantic shift
the change in a meaning of a word
Semiotics
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
Standardization
the process of forming a uniform language codified in
dictionaries, educational and government texts that demands
conformity by all variant language forms
Subordinate clause
depends on the main clause to exist
Subordinating conjunctions
these signal the start of a subordinate clause
Superlative adjective
expresses the highest level of the quality represented by the
adjective, generally made by adding -est to its base form (‘the
fastest car’)
Synonym
a word that has a similar meaning to another word (e.g. ‘malady’
and ‘illness’)
Syntax
the order of the elements in a clause or sentence (subject, verb,
object, etc.)
Valediction
expression of farewell
Vernacular writing
informal, non-standard writing
