Cambridge English A Terminology #5

Modality

The attitude a speaker or writer takes to the idea being expressed (ex: certainty, possibility, obligation, ability)

Form

The specific type of whatever category is being considered (ex: speech, dialogue, poem)

Implicature

A meaning that is suggested by an utterance, rather than being explicitly stated or directly entailed by the words used (EX: “He failed to get there” means that he tried to get there but didn’t succeed or he didn’t try to get there)

Prose

Ordinary language, without a rhyming pattern or rhythmic structure

Register

The variety of language used in a particular situation, particularly with regard to levels of formality (word choices, tone of voice, body language, etc)

Second Person Narrative

When the reader is addressed directly, typically through the use of you, your, yours, etc. (EX: Series of Unfortunate Things)

Third person narrative

Where the narrator of a story is not directly related to the events being narrated, and typically uses third-person pronouns (he, she, they) to refer to the characters involved

Slogan

A short, direct, and memorable phrase, frequently used in advertising.

Style

The distinctive overall effect produced by interactions between form, structure, and language

Topic shift

The point at which speakers move from one topic to another in conversation

Transactional

Writing or speech which aims to complete a transaction and produce a particular outcome (ex: a letter claiming a refund; giving spoken directions to a destination)

Typography

The visual aspects of written language, including the size, colour, and type of font used.

Collocation

The frequent appearance together in a given corpus of two lexical terms (ex: two high-frequency collocates of chair are wooden and meeting)

Concordance

An alphabetical list of all the words used in a given text or corpusC

Concordancer

A computer program used to automatically generate a concordance from a given text or corpus

Corpus

A large and structured set of texts stored electronically

Corpus data

The information stored in a corpus, comprising written texts and/or transcriptions of spoken language

Corpus linguistics

The study of language data stored in corpora

Frequency

The number of times an item (eg an n-gram) appears in a given corpus

Mutual Information Score

A measure of how frequently words appear together compared to how often they appear separately

n-gram

A series of n items from a given sample of texts. The term refers to items containing n words. n = number. (EX: English is a 1-_; English Language is a 2-_; English Language and Literature is a 4-_)

n-gram graph

Line graph displaying the changes in usage frequency for particular n-grams over a time period. The graphs are based on data from a specific corpus.

Word sketch

A page summary of word information derived from a corpus

Enallage

Intentional misuse of grammar to characterize a speaker or to create a memorable phrase (EX: “We was robbed!” - Joe Jacobs)

Loose sentence

A type of sentence in which the independent clause comes first, followed by dependent grammatical units such as phrases and clauses. It makes its major point at the beginning and then adds subordinate phrases and clauses that develop or modify the point.

EX: “We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom, symbolizing an end as well as a beginning, signifying renewal as well as change” - JFK 1961 Inaugural Address

Parallelism

The grammatical or rhetorical framing of words, phrases, sentences, or paragraphs to give structural similarity, often involving repetition of a grammatical element. (EX: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”)

Periodic sentence

A sentence that presents its central meaning in an independent clause at the end (EX: “Ecstatic with my AP score, I let out a loud, joyful shout!”)

Predicate adjective

A type of subject complement is an adjective, group of adjectives, or adjective clause that follows a linking verb. It modifies or describes the subject. (EX: “Joey seems hungry today”; linking verb is seems, hungry is the [term])

Predicate nominative

A noun, group of nouns, or noun clause that renames the subject. (EX: “Julia Roberts is a movie star”; ‘movie star’ is the [term] because it renames the subject, Julia Roberts)

Subject complement

The word or clauses that follow a linking verb and complements/completes the subject of the sentence by either renaming or describing it.

Subordinate clause

A phrase that contains a subject and verb but cannot stand alone