Unit 3 & 4 English Language Metalanguage 2024

Assimilation

A common phonological process where one sound becomes similar to a sound adjacent to it.
- regional/cultural variation
- improves flow

Vowel reduction

A phonological process which includes any of the various changes possible in the acoustic quality of vowels, which are related to changes in stress, sonority, duration, loudness, articulation, or position in the word (e.g privilege --> privledge)

- maintains rhythm + flow of speech

- helps convey naturalness of speech

Elision

The omitting of one or more sounds in a word.
- informal speech
- improves flow
- shows cultural nuances (e.g AusEng g dropping)

Insertion

The addition of one or more sounds in a word
- enhances expressiveness + emotion
- fills pauses (e.g fillers 'um' 'uh')

Stress

Increase volume applied to a word, part of a word, phrase or sentence.
- conveys emotion
- indicates importance

Intonation

A range of functions such as indicating the attitudes and emotions of the speaker, signalling the difference between statements and questions, and between different types of questions, focusing attention on important elements of the spoken message and also helping to regulate conversational interaction.
- facilitates turn-taking
- illustrates sentence type
- signals mood/emotion

Pitch

In speech, the relative highness or lowness of a tone as perceived by the ear, which depends on the number of vibrations per second produced by the vocal cords.
- emotion + tone
- emphasis
- turn-taking

Cultivated Australian

An accent in that part of the sociolectal continuum in Australian English that is closest to British Received Pronunciation. It is sometimes identifed with the educated middle and upper middle class, especially females.

Broad Australian

An accent at the end of the sociolectal continuum in Australian English that is the furthest from British Received Pronunciation and therefore often considered as the stereotypical Australian accent. It is sometimes identified with working class or rural Australians, especially males.

General Australian

The accent characterising most Australians which lies between Cultivated and Broad on the sociolectal continuum.

Volume

Loudness or softness of the speaker's voice.
- importance
- attention
- emotion

Tempo

The speed at which we speak. It can refer to both the emotional state of the speaker, as well as provide grammatical features.
FAST:
- enthusiasm
- Anger
SLOW:
- Uncertainty

Alliteration

Repetition of initial consonant sounds
- enhances retention
- enhances understanding
- fosters engagement

Assonance

Repetition of vowel sounds
- emotional response
- emphasis + attention
- descriptive imagery
- retention

Consonance

Repetition of a consonant sound within two or more words in close proximity.
- emphasis
- rhythm + flow
- auditory pleasure

Onomatopoeia

A word that imitates the sound it represents.
- vivd imagery
- creating realism
- eliciting emotional responses

Rhythm

The pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in speech.
- engagement + flow
- enhancing readability
- emphasising key points

Rhyme

The repetition of word endings that have the same or similar vowel and consonant sounds.
- aesthetic appeal
- enhancing memorability
- expressive effect

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

A phonetic notation system used to represent all of the sounds (phones) in human speech.

Noun

Member of a syntactic class which includes people, places, things, ideas and concepts

Verb

Member of the syntactic class which signals events and actions.

Auxiliary verb

Is a verb that adds functional or grammatical meaning to the clause in which it appears, such as to express tense, aspect, modality, voice, emphasis, etc. Auxiliary verbs usually accompany a main verb.

Modal verb

An auxiliary verb that expresses necessity or possibility

Adjectives

A describing word, the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified.

Adverbs

Tells more about a verb, an adjective, or another adverb. For such categories as: time, manner, place, direction.

Preposition

Function word that shows the relationship between nouns (or pronouns) and other words in a sentence.

Pronoun

A word that takes the place of a noun

Coordinating conjunction

Connects two independent clauses. FANBOYS

Subordinating conjunction

Connects an independent clause with one or more dependent clauses; examples: since, before, unless, however

Determiner

An noun modifier which provides introduces and provides context to a noun, often in terms of quantity and possession.

Interjection

A word or expression that occurs as an utterance on its own and expresses a spontaneous feeling or reaction.

Prefix

Morpheme added to the beginning of a word

Suffix

Morpheme added to the end of a word

Infix

A morpheme added into the middle of a word

Inflectional

A bound morpheme that does not change meaning or word class

Derivational

A bound morpheme that changes the meaning of a word or could change the word class.

Root morpheme

The semantic base or centre of the word. It is the smallest unit around which we build new words.

Bound morpheme

Cannot stand independently and must be attached to a free morpheme

Free morpheme

Free morphemes stand alone; they are words in their own right.

Hypocoristic Use of Suffixes

Characterised by our love of creating colloquial words by shortening them and adding suffixes (-y/-ie, -a, -o)
- informality
- endearment/intimacy
- expressing affection

Blending

New words are formed by combining pieces of two words into one new word
- creativity
- linguistic innovation
- enhancing clarity (new words)

Acronym

A word formed using the first letter of a series of words and pronouncing it as a new word in its own right.
- efficiency
- memory

Initialism

Made up of the beginning letters in a sequence of words, but continue to be said as the series of letters.
- memory
- efficiency

Shortening

Dropping the ending (or beginning) of a word to create a shorter form.
- jargon/slang creation
- informality
- efficiency
- ease of understanding
- current social trends

Compounding

Creating a new word by putting together two free morphemes.
- efficiency
- clarity + precision
- linguistic innovation

Conversion of Word Class

Converting words from one word class to another without adding any suffixes to the word.

Contraction

A word formed from two or more words by omitting or combining some sounds.
- emphasis
- ease of pronunciation
- informality
- efficiency

Collocations

Words within phrases so closely associated with one another that when we hear one we almost automatically provide the other.
- fluency/naturalness
- enhancing comprehension
- precision/clarity

Neologism

A newly coined word, expression, or usage.
- challenge linguistic norms
- identity + in-group membership
- addressing language gaps

Borrowing

A new word borrowed from another language and incorporated into the English lexicon.
- enriching vocabulary
- filling language gaps
- expressing multiculturalism

Commonisation

The development of common, everyday words that began as Proper Nouns.

Word Loss

Words disappear for a number of reasons (obsolescence, societal change, weakening, taboo).

Lexical choice

The number of choices a person has made about the words they use in any given context. These factors should be considered in an analysis.

Phrase

A collection of words that have a grammatical relationship with each other. They cannot exist as a complete grammatical sentence.

Clause

A grammatical unit that contains both a subject and a verb.

Sentence

A group of words that contains at least one main clause. It makes sense as a whole and can stand on its own to create meaning.

Sentence Fragment

A sentence missing a subject or verb or complete thought. Used typically in informal texts.

Simple Sentence

Contains one single main clause.

Compound Sentence

At least two main clauses, joined together by a coordinating conjunction.

Complex Sentence

Contains one single main clause and one or more subordinate clauses.

Compound-Complex Sentence

Must have at least three clauses in total, with at least two main clauses and at least one subordinate clause.

Ellipsis

Removing words or phrases from an utterance, clause or sentence, in particular if they are implied or unnecessary given the context.
- informality
- lack of effort
- pause/interruption
- building suspense

Nominalisation

When a noun is created from a word from any other word class, particularly verbs.

Coordination

Uses coordinating conjunctions to combine clauses into sentences.

Subordination

Uses subordinating conjunctions to change main clauses into subordinating clauses.
- adds information with ease

Declaratives

A sentence that functions to provide information, observations and statements.

Imperatives

A sentence that functions to give a direct order or instruction. They often omit the subject, particularly if the subject is already known or addressed.

Interrogatives

Sentences used when framing questions. They are designed to elicit responses. Can be use rhetorically.

Interrogative Tag

Turns an imperative or declarative sentence into an interrogative by inverting the verb of the main clause into its negative form and attaching it to the end of the interrogative. (eg. Wasn't it?)

Subject

The person, place, thing, or idea that is doing or being something in a sentence.

Object

Receives the action of the verb in a sentence.

Subject Complement

The adjective, noun, or pronoun that follows a linking verb.

Complement

A word, phrase or clause that is necessary to complete the meaning of a given expression.

Adverbial

Single words, phrases or clauses that provide extra information about an element, typically in relation to time, manner or place.

Active Voice

The agent is the subject of the sentence.
- directness
- emphasis
- conciseness
- responsibility

Passive Voice

The agent moves out of the subject position and makes the object the topic of the sentence.
- avoid blame/responsibility
- shift focus to object

Agentless Passive

Sentence constructions that do not include a reference to an agent.

Antithesis

The writer or speaker employs two sentences of contrasting meanings in close proximity to one another.
- strengthens argumentations
- highlights contrast
- encourages critical thinking by adding depth

Listing

Collections of usually three or more related elements are placed together, separated by punctuation such as commas or bullet points.
- efficiency
- readability
- comparisons (grouping)

Parallelism

When two or more phrases, clauses or sentences are structurally similar and appear near each other.
- clarity + coherence
- creating symmetry
- enhancing persuasion

Cohesion

A means of establishing connections within a text at different structural levels.

Code-Switching

The practice of alternating between two or more languages or dialects in conversation to demonstrate group membership and belonging.

Inference

A conclusion reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning.
- coherence

Logical ordering

Ensures that a text is structured both visually and textually in a way that makes sense for that text type.
- coherence

Formatting

The appearance of a text to aid coherence. Refers to the way words are ordered within a discourse.
- coherence

Consistency

Achieved by using lexical choices from within the same semantic field, or by using dominant sentence types. It goes hand-in-hand with formatting.
- coherence

Conventions

A way of writing that confirms to the accepted rules within an expected structure of discourse.
- coherence

Coherence

A text that is one that can be understood. It makes sense and is logical, and the ideas presented in the text are related to each other.

Synonymy

Lexemes with a very similar meanings are used to vary the language included in a text or utterance.
- cohesion

Antonymy

Provides contrasting ideas in ways that are cognitively simpler for the brain to process; a person who knows the initial lexeme is likely to know the opposite.
- cohesion

Hyponymy

Words that are conceptual subdivisions of a general categorisation. This means that they're conceptually included in the definition of categorisation and belong to the same semantic field or domain.
- cohesion

Clefting

The movement of a phrase to another position within a sentence.
- cohesion

it-cleft

A phrase is moved to the front of the sentence. The third-person singular neutral pronoun 'it' and the appropriate grammatical tense of the verb 'to be' are used to construct a predicate complement.
- cohesion

Pseudo-cleft (wh-cleft)

Sentences where prominence is created through the use of a relative pronoun.
- cohesion

Front focus

Moving a phrasal element out of the usual position to the front of a sentence thereby giving it prominence.
- cohesion

End focus

Allows for the prominence to be placed on a particular phrasal element in a sentence by moving it to the end.
- cohesion

Anaphoric Reference

A word or expression in a text that refers back to another part of the text by using substitution, such as a pronoun.
- cohesion

Cataphoric Reference

A word or expression in a text that refers forward to another part of the text.
- cohesion

Deictics

A type of substitution that relies on contextual information to determine the referent of the substitution.
- cohesion

Repetition

Acts to create cohesion as it helps to reinforce or maintain a topic.