Metalanguage English Language

Lexeme

Word

Open class words/content words

the nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs that constitute the major part of the vocabulary

Nouns

A person, place, thing, or idea

Infinitive verbs

Most basic form of a verb and is usually preceded by the preposition "to". A split infinitive occurs when an adverb is placed between "to" and the "verb" (to boldly go)

Verb conjugation

Verbs which have been changed to communicate one or more of the following: person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, or voice.

Lexical verb

main verb

Auxiliary verb

Assists the main verb; primary ones 'do', 'have' and 'be' denote changes of tense

Modal verb (modal auxiliary)

a verb used with other verbs to show ideas such as ability or obligation or possibility. They include can, must, will, should

Adjective

a word that modifies a noun or pronoun, describes

Adverb

A word that describes a verb e.g: quickly

Interjection

expresses emotion and has no grammatical relation to the rest of the sentence 'Oh, what a beautiful house!' 'oh' is the interjection

closed class/function words

prepositions, conjunctions, articles, pronouns, determiners

determiner

A word that modifies a noun to show amount, ownership, specificity, or definiteness.

→ He has no dogs.

(The negative determiner "no".)

→ Which shoes are you wearing?
(The interrogative determiner ‘which’ shows specificity')

What types of determiners are there?

Articles, demonstratives, possessives, quantifiers, numerals, interrogatives, exclamatives, distributives.

coordinating conjunction

FANBOYS=for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so

note: sometimes they aren't coordinating conjunctions, depends on the case

subordinating conjunction

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

where is a preposition usually placed?

it is typically placed before a noun, noun phrase, or pronoun

what is the function of a preposition?

to show the relationship with a noun or noun phrase with some other word and it indicates time, direction, position. e.g: in, at of, on to

morphemes

the smallest units of meaning within a language

bound morpheme

A morpheme that must be "bound" with another morpheme to form a word. There are 2 types of bound morphemes: derivational, inflectional.

derivational morpheme

affixes that create a new word by changing from noun to verb ex. sad→sad-ness, happy→un-happy. In these cases the affixes 'ness' and 'un' change the meaning of the word.

inflectional morpheme

changes the grammar of the word, like the tense and plurality. e.g: bird → bird-s, fart → fart-ed. In these cases the affixes 's' and 'ed' changes the plurality and tense respectively,

free morpheme

a morpheme that can stand alone as a word e.g the 'free' in freedom, it can stand alone.

affixes

an additional element placed at the beginning, middle, or end of a root, stem, or word, or in the body of a word, to modify its meaning.

suffix

an affix that is added at the end of the word

prefix

an affix that is at the start of a word

infix

an affix in the middle of a lexeme, usually found in colloquial terms

word formation processes

compounds, blends, borrowing, commonisation, conversion, contraction, reduction, neologism, acronym, initialism

compounding

adding free morphemes to create new words. e.g: icecream and greenhouse.

blending

combining lexemes together to create a new word e.g: brunch, bromance.

affixation

process of forming words by adding affixes to morphemes e.g: govern → government

borrowing

taking words from other languages. e.g: karaoke (Japanese), kindergarten (German)

commonisation

forming a common noun from a proper noun

conversion

changing the part of speech a word is a part of without adding affixes. E.g: 'there's some dust' → 'I will dust the lamp' noun to verb conversion.

contraction

a word formed by removing some letters and marking it with an apostrophe. E.g: she's (from she has)

shortening

cutting words down into smaller forms e.g: 'pram' from 'perambulator'

abbreviaition

writing or pronouncing shorter forms of a word or a string of words. e.g: 'st' for 'street/saint,' or VCAA where the 'CAA' bit is pronounced as 'car'

acronym

Taking the first letter of each word in a string od words and pronouncing them as a new word 'ANZAC' and 'lol'

Initialism

taking the first letter in a string of words and pronouncing them all. E.g: NPC, VCE.

backformation

refers to removing parts of a word to create a new word, think of it as the revers of affixation. E.g: 'burgle' from 'burglar,' 'televise' from 'television'

grammatical roles

subject-verb-object e.g: Andy (subject) bit (verb) the dog (object)

verb

a word used to describe an action, state, or occurrence, and forming the main part of the predicate of a sentence, such as hear, become, happen.

phrase

a single word or a group of them strung together to convey meaning. They do not include a subject or a verb, so they require other phrases or words to complete a sentence.

noun phrase

a group of one or more words and contains a noun as the head of the phrase, as well as modifiers of it. Modifiers can occur before or after the noun. e.g: 'the happy mouse,' or 'the mouse who was very happy.'

verb phrase

consists of main verb and any modifiers. Modifiers such as: primary and modal auxiliaries, infinitives, adverbs, adverb phrases, noun phrases acting as objects, and complements. E.g: 'am eating a chocolate,' or 'might eat the chocolate.'

prepositional phrases

consists of preposition and noun phrase that is considered to be its object. preposition MUST come before the noun phrase. e.g: 'in the hat,' 'with the topper on the table,' 'on the side.'

adjective phrase

adjective as head and may include modifiers. Typically these modifiers are other adjectives or adverbs. e.g: 'very happy,' 'bright pink fluffy.'

adverb phrase

adverb at head, may include other modifiers to the adverb.

clause

a set of phrases that must contain both a subject and a predicate, they can also include objects, complements, and adverbials.

subject

the main actor that plays a role with the verb of the clause, typically are noun phrases. e.g: the happy vendor gave me a hot potato cake. or else: she gave the dog a treat.

predicate

main verb of clause and all the modifiers. e.g: the potato cakes were fried last Tuesday. We usually split predicates into 2 parts 'predicator' and 'the rest of the predicate.'

predicator and the rest of the predicate

predicator = verb + modifiers

rest of the predicate = any objects, complements, or adverbials that attach to the predicate

object

part of the clause that gives further information abt the subject. e.g: 'I ate the potato cake,' 'I gave Mary the book.'

Direct object

direct = non phrase is directly affected by the verb. e.g: 'I gave Mary the book.'

Indirect object

indirect = noun phrase is indirectly affected by the verb, normally appears after direct object and is introduced by 'for' or 'to' e.g: 'I gave the book to Mary'

what is an adverbial

provide extra info about a verb (when, where, how, how often). the can be adverb phrases,

common types of adverbials

acronym PTSD-MC-P

place → The cat was purring on my lap.

time → The train will arrive in the morning.

superlative → Stress levels increase most often before a big life event.

degree → He studied just enough to pass the exam.

manner → She performed poorly.

comparative → We are working harder.

probability → Obviously a writer of this book likes potato cakes.

subordinate clause

Cannot stand alone and begins with a subordinating conjunction

sentence structure

There are 5 types: simple, compound, complex, compound-complex, and fragment.

Simple sentence

Contains one clause that consists of a subject and a predicate. e.g: 'I ate the pie,' 'he cried,' or 'the entire crowd of very angry people marched down the road.'

Compound sentence

two or more independent clauses joined by a coordinator (FANBOYS) e.g: 'We will use umbrellas and raincoats or we will all get wet,' 'He cried but she laughed.'

Complex sentence

one independent clause and at least one dependent clause joined by a subordinator. e.g: 'I ate the pie after she ate the cake.' 'Umbrellas and raincoats will be used unless we want to get wet.'

Compound-complex

at least 2 independent clauses joined by a coordinator and at least one dependent clause joined by subordinator. e.g: 'He cried because she laughed and I did too.'

Sentence Fragment

incomplete sentences missing either the subject or predicate. Often used in spoken convos. e.g: 'Eat. Sleep. Rinse. Repeat.' 'I can't even.'

Sentence types

There are four sentence types. You can remember them by the acronym I-DIE (interrogative, declarative, imperative, exclamative.)

Interrogative

asks a question. Ends in a question mark. e.g: 'Where are you going?'

Declarative

makes a statement. Ends in a period. e.g: 'I am going to the doctor.'

Imperative

gives a command, instruction, or request. Can end in a full stop or an exclamation mark. e.g: 'Do not touch the wall.'

Exclamative

expresses emotions, typically end with an exclamation mark. e.g: 'I forgot to do my homework!'

Ellipses

omission of either words, phrases, clauses, or utterances. e.g: 'Stella took the first slice of cake and Grace (took) the second.'

Semantics

The study of meaning - both logical meaning and lexical (dictionary) meaning; the study of understanding and meaning-making when we consider words, phrases, sentences and texts as a whole.

collocation

words that typically appear next to or near each other. e.g: 'do you like strong or weak tea?'

connotative meaning

the meaning suggested by the associations or emotions triggered by a word or phrase

denotative meaning

the literal or dictionary meaning of a word or phrase

antonyms

words with opposite meanings. e.g: 'hot and cold'

synonyms

words that have the same/similar meaning typically both denotatively and connatively

hyperbole

exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally.

idiom

A common, often used expression that doesn't make sense if you take it literally.

irony

the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning

metaphor

A comparison without using like or as

personification

the giving of human qualities to an animal, object, or idea

semantic field

Group of words which are related in meaning

Simile

A comparison using "like" or "as"

oxymoron

conjoining contradictory terms (as in 'deafening silence')

pun

a joke exploiting the different possible meanings of a word or the fact that there are words that sound alike but have different meanings.

symbolism

the use of symbols to represent ideas or qualities

front focus

clefting

end focus