Glossary of Grammar and Metalangauge
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a word formed from the initial letters of a series of words that refer to an entity or concept. Unlike an acronym, an abbreviation is pronounced just as a string of letters. For example, PDQ (pretty damn quick) and VCR (video cassette recorder) are abbreviations. Sometimes called alphabetisation.
Aboriginal English:an umbrella term used to cover the many different varieties of English that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples speak.
accent:pronunciation patterns that are associated with a particular set of speakers.
acronym:a word formed from the initial letters of a series of words that refer to an entity or concept. For example, AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) and Qantas (Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services) are acronyms.
active:a grammatical contrast, generally called voice, in which the agent or ‘appears as the subject. For example, The dog ate my homework. is an active sentence. The corresponding passive sentence is My homework was eaten by the dog.
adjacency pairs:adjacent turns in a spoken interaction that have a close relationship with each other, such as Hello–Hello, how are you?.
adjective:a part of speech that refers to qualities or states. For example, green and lovely are adjectives. They are typically used to convey information about nouns. They may occur as a modifier in a noun phrase: the lovely weather, or as a predicative complement in a verb phrase: The grass was green. Some English adjectives may be inflected for degree: green, greener, greenest.
adjective phrase:a phrase that is constructed around an adjective. Examples are, very happy and really bright.
adverb:a part of speech that refers to the manner, place, time, frequency, or degree in which an event occurs. For example, slowly, often and now are adverbs. Adverbs may also be used to modify adjectives: My hair is very long and to connect sentences: However, my friend showed up on time.
adverb phrase:a phrase that is constructed around an adverb. For example, so quickly and very often.
adverbial:the name of the function of an element in a clause that carries information about manner, place, time, frequency, or degree. Adverb phrases, prepositional phrases and some noun phrases can function as adverbials. Consider the prepositional phrase on the table in:
I dropped my plate on the table. Adverbials are optional. For example, we can say either:
That was my favourite meal or That was truly my favourite meal.
affix:a bound morpheme that is added to the root to form a new word as, for example, -in and -able in in +dispute +able or to express a grammatical relationship such as plural with -s in dog +s. See also prefix and suffix.
affixation or affixing:the process of combining a root and an affix. For example the word true becomes truth, truthful, untruthful and untruthfulness through the process of affixation.
agentless passive:a passive sentence in which not only the patient or ‘undergoer’ appears as the subject instead of the agent or ‘doer’, but the agent has also been omitted. For example, Uranium was discovered in 1789. is an agentless passive sentence.
alliteration:a type of sound pattern that involves the use of identical consonants or consonant clusters at the beginning of words.
anaphora:a feature of grammatical structure in which a lexical item such as a pronoun refers back to something already expressed.
anaphoric reference:refers to a relationship between a pronoun and its referent in which the pronoun is referring back to an already expressed referent.
animation:a type of metaphor that involves the transfer of animate qualities rather than strictly human qualities to things, concepts, animals and natural phenomena. See also personification.
antithesis:a type of syntactic patterning that involves the setting of one lexical expression or clause against another to which it is opposed. Antithesis is a particular form of parallelism as it expresses a semantic relationship of antonymy between elements in a sentence.
antonymy:refers to the sense relation between words that are opposites or near opposites of each other.
article:the English articles are a(n) and the and they belong to the part of speech known as determiners. Articles are used to indicate whether a noun is definite or indefinite.
assimilation:a phonological process in which a sound is changed to become more similar to a neighbouring sound (typically either in its place or manner of articulation or with respect to whether it is voiced or voiceless). This process makes sequences of sounds easier to produce.
assonance:a type of sound pattern that involves the use of identical vowel sounds within words.
audience:the person or people that the speaker/writer/signer is addressing. The audience may also include unintended addressees as is the case when people eavesdrop on a conversation.
Australian English:an umbrella term for the English language as used in Australia, covering the many different varieties of English that Australians speak, including those under the umbrella of Aboriginal English.
auxiliary:a part of speech that refers to a group of words that precede verbs in certain forms and express distinctions of time, aspect, modality and voice.
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Bbackchannel signal:a short response, such as hmm, yeah, ooh, right, by the audience in a spoken interaction to indicate that they are listening. Also known as a minimal response.
back vowel:a vowel sound formed by the position of the tongue towards the back of the mouth that is used in naming these vowels. The vowel /u/ is a back vowel.
basic clause:a structurally complete clause, consisting of a noun phrase followed by a verb phrase. A basic clause makes a grammatical utterance. See also simple sentence, main clause and subordinate clause.
blend(ing):a process of word formation in which parts of two independent words are combined and used as a new word. For example, smog, is a blend of smoke and fog.
borrowing:the process of acquiring new words or grammatical features from another language. Examples of borrowings into English include giraffe and lute from Arabic, and cargo, cigar, and vanilla from Spanish.
bound morpheme:a morpheme that cannot stand alone, typically an affix (for example the verb suffixes -ing and -ed are bound). Some roots are also bound morphemes and must be combined with an affix in order to produce a word. For example, -ceive cannot occur alone but does occur in the forms receive, conceive and deceive.
broad accent:the Australian English accent most frequently stereotyped as working class or 'ocker' Australian. See also general accent, cultivated accent and ethnic accent.
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Ccataphoric reference:refers to a relationship between a pronoun and its referent in which the pronoun is referring forward to a referent that is coming up later in the text.
clause:a larger unit than a phrase and usually contains a verb. A complete clause may stand alone as a simple sentence or be part of a compound, complex or compound-complex sentence.
cliché:an expression that has become so overused it has lost its power to inform and to enliven. A cliché, such as to not beat around the bush, has become trite and stereotyped, and no longer conveys much meaning.
coherence:the implicit logical connectedness within a text. To have coherence the concepts and relationships expressed within a text should be relevant to each other, enabling the audience to make plausible inferences about the underlying meaning.
cohesion:the explicit language features that connect or bind a text together. For example, lexical choice, reference, ellipsis, substitution, and connecting adverbials and conjunctions can all serve a cohesive function.
collocation:a pairing of words that are conventional or closely associated in the minds of speakers. For example, we say on the bookshelf not in the bookshelf, handsome man but beautiful woman.
colloquialism:a lexical item from the informal, localised, slang, or taboo elements of the lexicon that has the effect of making a spoken or written occurrence of language use more personal, more direct, more sincere, more sociable, more blunt, more playful, and/or more amusing.
comment:the part of a clause that makes some sort of statement about the topic.
complex sentence:a sentence containing two or more clauses, where the relationship between the clauses is one of subordination. A subordinating conjunction may occur as a marker of a subordinate clause.
compound-complex sentence:a sentence containing both two (or more) coordinated clauses and one (or more) subordinate clauses.
compounding:the creation of a new word by combining two already existing words. For example, the compound carport contains the independent words car and port.
compound sentence:a sentence containing two or more clauses of equal status, where the relationship between the clauses is one of coordination. Compound sentences make use of coordinating conjunctions.
conjunction:a part of speech that refers to a group of words that are used to link words, phrases and clauses together. The conjunction in the following example is and: I woke up early this morning and promptly went back to sleep.
connecting adverbial:an adverbial which functions to connect two sentences within a text. For example, however in The colour of life is always changing. However, the spirit of youth remains ever vibrant.
connotation:refers to the social meanings or emotional associations triggered by a word. For example, the word mother may have positive (caring, nurturing) or negative (showing excessive concern, limiting) connotations, depending on the context. Compare: I really need some mothering at the moment with She’s always mothering me. See also denotation.
consonance:a type of sound pattern that involves the use of identical consonants or consonant clusters at the end of words.
content:the message of the communication, the information being conveyed.
content word:a word that carries lexical meaning, that refers to something in the real world. The following classes contain content words: nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives. See also function word.
context:the social situation in which communication takes place.
contraction:a reduced form of one or more words, especially when spoken language is represented in writing. For example, can’t is a contraction of cannot.
conversion:the process of creating a new word that belongs to a different part of speech than the original word without any affixation. For example, the noun laugh as in That got a few laughs is a conversion from the verb laugh as in She laughed out loud.
cooperative principle:a unstated agreement people adopt when they communicate: they try to get along with each other by following certain conversational conventions or ‘maxims’ that underlie the efficient use of language.
coordinating conjunction:conjunctions used to link together language units, such as phrases and clauses, that are of equal status. Coordinating conjunctions include the words and, or, and but. See also compound sentences.
coordination:the relationship between two language units of the same sort, such as phrases or clauses, that are joined together by means of a coordinating conjunction such as and, or, and but. For example: I wanted to watch TV but I had to finish my homework. See also subordination.
cultivated accent:the Australian English accent closest to standard British pronunciation of English. See also general accent, broad accent and ethnic accent.
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Ddeclarative:the sentence type typically used to make a statement. Declaratives have the structure of basic clauses, where the subject precedes the verb. For example:
I like milk on my cereal.
definite determiner or article:the article the is a definite determiner. This means we use it when referring to something we expect the audience will recognise because it has already been mentioned, or because it will be easy for them to work out. See also indefinite determiner or article.
deictic:when the interpretation or reference of a lexical item such as a pronoun is directly tied to the personal, temporal or locational characteristics of the context of use. For example, the location identified by here depends on the actual situation of the particular occasion of use.
deixis:a feature of grammatical structure in which the interpretation or reference of a lexical item such as a pronoun or adverb is directly tied to the personal, temporal or locational characteristics of the context of use.
demonstrative pronoun:in English the forms this, that, these and those, which refer to things by pointing to their location in time and/or space. For example, This is the one I want. (near the speaker) versus That is the one I want. (away from the speaker). Demonstratives are also used as determiners, as in I want that one.
denotation:refers to the ‘core’ meaning of a word. For example, the denotation of the word mother is ‘a female parent’. See also connotation.
dependent clause: a clause that is part of a larger clause or sentence. It can have a function such as subject or object in the larger language unit. For example, going to the footy in I really enjoy going to the footy is a dependent clause, and is the object of the verb enjoy. Dependent clauses are also known as subordinate clauses.
descriptivism:an approach to language that aims to characterise objectively how people use language. See also prescriptivism.
determiner:a part of speech that expresses the grammatical categories of definiteness, number, and possession. Determiners reflect the grammatical categories of the nouns they precede.
dialect:the set of grammatical, lexical and pronunciation features that mark the variety of language used by a speech community or an individual. Widespread differences in accent are also associated with dialects.
diminutive:a form denoting smallness, familiarity, affection or triviality, as the suffix -let in piglet and the suffix -o in smoko.
diphthong:a vowel sound that is articulated differently as it is being pronounced. The start and end points of the diphthong are indicated in the phonological representation. For example the diphthong / / is initially articulated as / / but ends as a / /.
direct object:the function of an element in a clause. In English, the direct object follows the indirect object. The direct object is most affected by the verb; typically it is transferred from the subject to the indirect object. In the following example, a letter is the direct object: We sent George a letter.
discourse particle:words and small expressions, such as well, yep, you know, sort of, and I mean, that are used in a text to communicate to the audience information such as changes of topic or scene, personal attitudes, and other nuances of meaning.
discriminatory language:language that reflects or imposes hierarchical distinctions between people. For example, the titles Miss and Mrs reflect a distinction between married and unmarried women whereas no such distinction is made for men.
domain:a contextualised sphere of communication such as home, school, work, medicine or religion where a specific set of language conventions is used marking a register. For example, contracts and wills mark the register of legal English and cardiac arrest and spinal function mark the register of medical English.
doublespeak:euphemisms used for the purpose of confusing the audience and obscuring the meaning to create social distance.
dysphemism:the use of a word or expression that emphasises harshness, abusiveness or offensiveness.
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Eelision:a phonological process in which sounds are omitted in connected speech.
ellipsis:the omission of words or phrases that are not required in order to communicate in a particular context, because the speaker and hearer can make use of information from previous utterances in the discourse or they can infer the information from the context.
emoticon:an image used to represent facial expressions that is constructed using the standard keyboard. Emoticons are used in emails and SMS messages, for example, to communicate some of the paralinguistic information that is lost in the transition from speaking to writing.
end-focus:the situation in which new information is presented at the end of a sentence.
ethnic accent:the umbrella term for the Australian English accent that encompasses the varieties that have emerged through contact with indigenous and migrant languages. See also general accent, broad accent and cultivated accent.
ethnolect:variation within a language that is associated with a group of speakers who identify with the same ethnic group.
euphemism:the strategy of referring to taboo subjects using general or indirect language. For example, instead of saying urinate or defecate, people say go to the toilet or use the loo in Australia, and use the bathroom in North America. In Canada and Hong Kong, people go to the washroom for the same purposes.
exclamative:the sentence type typically used to express an exclamation. An exclamative begins with either what or how. For example: What a beautiful picture you drew!
expression:the words, phrases and sentences used to communicate a message.
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