sentence, e.g. 'Sit down, please.' indicated by a lack of subject (but 'you' is implied).
4. It can make an exclamation. This is called an exclamatory sentence, e.g. 'What a mess!', indicated by an exclamation mark.
'Minor sentence' A minor is a sentence without a subject and/or verb. Exclamations are an example, �Not on your life!' Poets and writers use them to create the effect of real conversation.
Sociolect A sociolect is a variety of language used by a particular social group; a dialect is a variety of language used in a particular geographical region; and an idiolect is the variety of language used by a particular individual.
Sign / signifier / signified
A sign is anything that creates meaning. Words are an important kind of sign composed of symbols called letters. The brain
recognises a word and unconsciously gives it an agreed meaning, but, in fact, the word is merely a symbolic code, one that we learn, mostly during childhood, to 'decode' to find its meaning.
Standard English This is the agreed standard national dialect of English. Standard English is generally considered to be the clearest way of
expressing meaning and as such is accepted for use in most textbooks, by teachers, in the news media and as the basis for English teaching across the world. Non-standard English includes regional dialects and slang. There are also 'standard forms' of important international English languages such as 'standard American English'.
Stem The 'core' part of a word to which prefixes and suffixes can be added, e.g. interest which can become uninteresting by adding affixes, the prefix un- and the suffix -ing.
(structured / structural)
- such as a sentence or a text - and the way its individual parts have been put together to create a coherent (interrelated) whole. In a phrase, clause or sentence the individual words are related both by their grammatical structure and their semantic properties in a text, the relationship and connections between its structural parts (e.g. its sentences and paragraphs) is considered using discourse analysis.
Style (stylistic)
Style is the result of the choices a writer (or speaker) makes regarding aspects of language, language features and structure with regard to creating a text or discourse that will suit a particular genre, context, audience and purpose. Three key aspects of style that are often worthy of comment are a text's degree of formality or informality, its use of standard or non-standard grammar and its discourse structure. Some skilled writers also develop distinctive, individual aspects of style, which may also be called a 'voice' - akin to a person's spoken idiolect.
Subject and object The word 'subject' needs care as it has a particular - and very important - meaning that is quite distinct to grammar and which is different from its everyday, non-grammar meaning.
In grammar, the subject (S) is a syntactical position or element within a clause. The subject can be either a word or a phrase, usually a noun phrase. In the sentence, 'I gave him a present', 'I' is the grammatical subject and 'gave' is its associated verb in the sentence (in the past tense). In the simple sentence, 'The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog', the subject is 'The quick brown fox'. This is a noun phrase that has as its associated finite verb, 'jumped'. Most English sentences need a subject but
sometimes this can be one of the small words (called pronouns) 'it' or 'there'. This type of subject can be tricky to recognise as proper subjects.
Some typical word orders of simple declarative sentences are: SV (subject-verb), SVO (subject-verb-object), SVC (subject-verb- complement) or SVA (subject-verb-adverbial).
Some types of verb transfer their action from their subject onto something else (the thing receiving the action of the verb is called
its object). These are called transitive verbs. In the above sentence, the verb 'gave' is transitive as action transfers to the object, the noun 'a present'.
Verbs are called intransitive if they do not transfer action, but, instead, act to tell what their subject is doing, e.g. 'He is working.', 'It died.' Some verbs can be either transitive or intransitive
according to their usage in the sentence, e.g. 'He is singing.' (intransitive) and 'He is singing a song.' (transitive).
A few special verbs (stative verbs) have no sense of direct action but, instead, act to make a statement about their subject's state of being. These verbs are called copular or linking verbs, e.g. He seems ill, She is clever, he was a criminal, it appears dark, etc.. The word that follows a stative verb has no action passing on to it so it cannot be called an object; instead, it is termed a
complement.
Confusingly, Some verbs can take two objects:
'I gave Sally a present.' (i.e. 'I gave a present to Sally') In this type of sentence, the object is 'a present' (= the thing given; this is called the DIRECT OBJECT); but there is a second 'object' - the 'receiver' of the direct object. This is termed the INDIRECT OBJECT. Notice that all sentences of this type can be re-written as shown using the word 'to'.
Subjunctive Verb mood used to show a hypothetical situation, e.g. If it were possible, I would do it.
Suffix An affix (a morpheme) added to the end of a word to alter its grammatical function, e.g. the noun luck can become an adjective by adding the suffix (or 'adjective marker') -y, as in lucky.
Synonym / antonym
A word that has a closely similar meaning to another word. English has very few true synonyms (e.g. sofa / couch / settee), but many near synonyms, e.g. house - dwelling - home - abode - pad. The existence of synonyms allows variety of word choice according to style and register. A list of synonyms is available in a thesaurus.
An antonym is a word with directly 'opposite' meaning, e.g. black/white good/bad.
Syntax (syntactic / syntactical)
Syntax is the most important aspect of English grammar. It refers to the way words are put together in a group to create meaning as phrases, clauses or as a sentence. Studying the syntax of a sentence involves investigating the structure and relationships of its words.
Standard syntax refers to the syntax of a particular dialect of English called Standard English - this is the syntax you will read in most written texts and hear from teachers in lessons,
newsreaders and in any other more formal context. Non-standard syntax is a normal part of much spoken English and is common in regional dialects. Syntax does not have to be standard for meaning to be clear such as here in the screen play from the film Star Wars when Yoda speaks:
YODA
Ready, are you? What know you of ready? For eight hundred years have I trained Jedi. My own counsel will I keep on who is to be trained! A Jedi must have the deepest
commitment, the most serious mind. (to the invisible
Ben, indicating Luke)
This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away... to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph. Adventure. Heh! Excitement. Heh! A Jedi craves not these things. (turning to Luke)
You are reckless.
Tense Tense refers to the way the time of an action can be directly indicated in a verb by changing its form (i.e. morphologically).
English only has two verb tenses - present tense 'I leave.' and past tense, 'I left.'. However, we have many other ways of creating the idea of tense by using auxiliary verbs or other structures that indicate the time of an action. For example, each of the following grammatical structures suggests a future event, or a future aspect (the 'will' construction is often, but loosely, called 'the English future tense'):
I will leave in the morning.
I am going to leave in the morning. I shall leave in the morning.
I leave in the morning. I am leaving in the morning. Text
(textual)
Within linguistics, the word 'text' means any continuous and coherent sequence of writing or speech. See also discourse. Utterance A linguistic term that refers to a spoken text of any kind. Verb
(verbal)
Combined with its subject, the verb becomes the central element of a sentence or clause.
A main verb is the head word of a verb phrase - sometimes called a verb chain, e.g. 'He hit him hard.' A lexical verb is the part of the verb chain that suggests
the action involved, e.g. He might have hit him.
A verb that tells of a 'state of being' is a copular or stative verb, e.g. is, was, seems, appears, becomes, etc.
Verbs that work along with a subject are called finite (e.g. the girl looked). But verbs do not have to work with a subject within a sentence - these are called a verb's non-finite forms (e.g. I like to run). Non-finite forms of verbs can act as other parts of speech:
The infinitive from of the verb (often used with 'to'), e.g. 'He used to love me.'
The -ed participle form (usually ending with the suffix - ed):
The -ing participle form:
o 'He used cooking apples' (adjective). o 'The cooking was superb' (noun).
o 'He will be cooking this evening' (continuous aspect). Verb chain /
phrase
A verb chain has a head word that is a main verb along with one or more 'helper' or auxiliary verbs. Many grammarians reserve the term verb chain for the verb elements alone and use the term verb phrase to include any adverbials that function to modify it, e.g. The car was parked / on the pavement.
Grammatically, a verb chain is always directly linked to and usually follows its subject, usually a noun phrase. The two grammatical units create a clause.
In a verb chain, the main verb can be inflected to show tense (e.g. eat, eaten, ate), agreement (e.g. I eat, she eats) or
continuous action (e.g. He is eating). It can also be pre-modified with an adverb (e.g. He is quietly eating). The auxiliary verbs in a verb chain can be inverted to form a question (e.g. Do you eat spaghetti?).
Voice The voice of a verb can be either active or passive. The active voice is the most common and preferred in English usage. In an active clause the subject and object of the main verb are in their usual position, i.e. SVO, 'Alex caught the thief' however, in a passive sentence, the object is transferred to the subject position, e.g. 'The thief was caught by Alex.' This can have the effect of emphasising the object or diminishing the effect of the subject. in fact, in a passive construction, the subject can be hidden completely, e.g. 'The thief was caught.'
Word class One of the eight parts of speech of traditional grammar in which words that have a similar grammatical function are grouped together: noun, pronoun, adjective, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction and interjection.