Metalanguage

Pitch (P)

The ‘highness’ of one’s voice, or how quickly their vocal cords vibrate.

Stress (P)

The loudness/length of different syllables’ utterances; can differentiate between stressed & unstressed syllables, and level of stress (light/heavy).

Volume (P)

The loudness of a voice during speech.

Tempo (P)

The speed at which one speaks.

Intonation (P)

The way that pitch can change during an utterance.

Vocal effects (P)

Any form of non-speech (coughing, breath, laughter, etc.) communication which can add or change information in an utterance.

Assimilation (P)

The process of sounds changing to become more similar to each other.

Vowel reduction (P)

A change to the sound of an utterance as a result of changes in prosodic features.

Elision (P)

The phonological slurring or omission of sounds; an example of such being ‘old man’ to ‘ol’man’.

Insertion (P)

The (accidental) addition of sounds as the vocal tract moves from one sound to another; an example being ‘family’ to ‘fambly’.

Broad accent (P)

One of the three main accents of Australia; it is further from standard English, and is considered the stereotypical (or bogan) Australian accent.

General accent (P)

One of the three main accents of Australia; it is in the middle of this sociolectal continuum, and can be heard from most Australians.

Cultivated accent (P)

One of the three main accents of Australia; it is closest to the UK’s highly formal 'Received Pronunciation'.

Alliteration (P)

The repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of nearby words.

Assonance (P)

The repetition of similar vowel sounds to provide special effect.

Consonance (P)

The repetition of consonants in a sequence of words.

Onomatopoeia (P)

The process of words conveying the sounds that they represent; these could mimic real sounds, or be used for literary effect.

Rhythm (P)

A pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in speech; it is often used by poets to emphasise ideas or to create mood.

Rhyme (P)

The recurring pattern of identical or similar sounds at the end of two or more different words, often used by poets.

Noun (M)

A word which represents any ‘thing’.

Verb (M)

A word which represents the actions of a thing/noun.

Adjective (M)

A word which describes things/nouns.

Adverb (M)

A word class, typically referring to time, frequency, place, manner, etc. Many adverbs can be identified by the -ly suffix.

Auxiliary verb (M)

A type of verb used to support non-finite forms of main verbs, and which are inflected for person and number and tense.

Modal verb (M)

A type of auxiliary verb, used to signal the attitude of the speaker, and to express various notions. These verbs lack any inflection.

Preposition (M)

A function word which is used for a number of purposes, mainly being spatial relations and grammatical information.

Pronoun (M)

A function word which replaces nouns, sometimes to avoid repetition.

Conjunction (M)

A word used to connect clauses or sentences together.

Determiner (M)

A word class, which expresses notions like quantity, number, possession and definite-ness.

Interjection (M)

A word class that encompasses words with emotional meaning (such as ‘D’oh’).

Morphological patterning (M)

Any set of associations or operations which can build the forms of a lexeme.

Affix (M)

Any bound morpheme attached to a root; these morphemes can be in front of (prefix), behind (suffix), or inside (infix) that root.

Root morpheme (M)

A single lexical (usually free) morpheme, representing the core (or root, hence the name) of a word.

Bound morpheme (M)

Any morpheme which cannot stand on its own, hence having to be attached to a free/root morpheme.

Free morpheme (M)

Any morpheme which is able to stand on its own as a word.

Function word (L)

Any type of word with purely grammatical meaning, without reference to any real thing.

Content word (L)

Any type of word with real-life meanings. They are sometimes known as lexical words.

Inflection (L)

A closed set of affixes that add grammatical information to the word.

Derivation (L)

An open set of affixes which form new words, change parts of speech, and carry lexical meaning. They irregularly show close to the stem in some word classes.

Suffixation (L)

The process of adding suffixes to a word, frequently found in Australian English.

Blending (L)

A word formation process resulting from a fusion of two elements of a word. An example is ‘bagonise’, which combines 'baggage' and 'agonise'.

Initialism (L)

Any word formed through the initials of a word, pronounced through those initialisms. An example is ‘IPA’.

Acronym (L)

Any word formed through the initials of a word, pronounced as a single word. An example is ‘PIN’ (as in 'PIN number').

Shortening (L)

A word formation process which produces abbreviations of longer words; for example, ‘loony’, which originates from ‘lunatic’.

Compounding (L)

A word formation process that combines two or more free morphemes; the result can be written as two words, one word, or a word split by a hyphen.

Contraction (L)

A process of shortening two words into one by abbreviating one and turning the other into a bound morpheme, the two separated by an apostrophe.

Collocation (L)

A group of words which frequently combine with each other; an example would be ‘rotten eggs’.

Neologism (L)

Any word which is invented to describe something new (such as ‘yeet’, used to describe the throwing of an object).

Borrowing (L)

The adoption of linguistic features like words from other languages; those words are referred to as loan-words.

Commonisation (L)

The process of a proper noun turning into a regular noun, usually by its introduction into common use (such as ‘google’).

Archaism (L)

Any word which has fallen out of use by the wider population, frequently in favour of newer and more descriptive words.

Phrase (S)

A group of words smaller than a clause which behave as a structural unit; it is named after the head (or core), being named noun/verb/etc. phrases.

Clause (S)

A structural unit larger than a phrase, capable of constituting a simple sentence, or part of a complex sentence.

Sentence (S)

A set of words consisting of a main clause, with subordinate clauses sometimes included.

Sentence fragment (S)

A sentence which is missing a subject or a main verb.

Simple sentence (S)

A sentence consisting of one main clause only.

Compound sentence (S)

A sentence composed of at least two main (independent) clauses, usually joined with a coordinating conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so) or a semicolon.

Complex sentence (S)

A sentence consisting of one main clause, and at least one subordinate clause.

Compound-complex sentence (S)

A sentence made up of at least one main clause, and at least two subordinate clauses.

Ellipsis (S)

A series of three periods, usually found at the end of a sentence to indicate hesitation or a continued sentence.

Nominalisation (S)

The process of creating nouns from verbs or adjectives; an example is ‘length’, originating from ‘long’.

Coordination (S)

The combination of two or more elements which are equal in function and status. These elements are linked by coordinators or coordinating conjunctions.

Subordination (S)

The combination of clauses which are non-equivalent, such as that of a subordinate and a main clause.

Declarative (S)

A sentence which makes a statement; these are typically composed of a subject and a predicate.

Imperative (S)

A sentence which issues a directive; these are usually made up of the word ‘you’, as well as a predicate.

Interrogative (S)

A sentence which poses a question to the reader/listener; these are generally made up of an auxiliary verb, a subject, and the rest of the predicate.

Exclamative (S)

A sentence which expresses high emotion - in other words, making an exclamative. These are made up of a what/how word, followed by a subject predicate.

Subject (S)

A clausal statement about which something gets stated or predicated. Subjects must agree in person and number with the verb/s.

Object (S)

A constituent of a clause which follows the verb; these can be noun phrases or subordinators, and are often made the subject in passive clauses.

Complement (S)

Any word, phrase, or clause which is necessary for the completion of an expression.

Adverbial (S)

A phrase which is optionally included in the predicate; these show a range of different meanings as well as the flexibility of the word order.

Active voice (S)

A form of grammatical voice where the actor or agent of a transitive clause occurs as the subject, and the patient occurs as the object.

Passive voice (S)

A form of grammatical voice where the object turns into the grammatical subject, while the subject is moved into an prepositional phrase or removed altogether.

Agentless passive (S)

A passive voice lacking the original subject.

Antithesis (S)

A form of parallelism which involves the juxtaposition of contrasting phrases to show difference in ideas.

Listing (S)

The formation of sentences into lists. This is also a parallelism.

Parallelism (S)

The use of similar sounds, words, or grammar constructs, to express equally important ideas.

Code-switching (D)

The practice of alternating between two or more languages or dialects in conversation.

Cohesion (D)

The linguistic connections and ties which exist between words and sentences in order to give a text its structure.

Inference (D)

Any additional information assumed by readers or listeners in order to connect what is said with what is meant.

Logical ordering (D)

The links between sentences that provide a meaningful interpretation of a text.

Formatting (D)

The use of layout and format choices (such as headings, dot points, listing, paragraphing, etc.) to make a text easier to read/follow/understand.

Consistency (D)

The maintenance of consistent perspective, formatting, and ordering choices to maintain ease of understanding.

Conventions (D)

The demands (organisation, any given information, register, etc.) of the text type and genre in question.

Synonymy (D)

Groups of words which hold similar meanings to each other.

Antonymy (D)

Groups of words with opposite meanings to each other.

Hyponymy (D)

The relationship between a specific word and its more generic form/s.

Clefting (D)

The compression of a complex sentence into a simple one without losing any meaning.

Front-focus (D)

The movement of a word or clause to the front of a sentence in order to emphasise it.

End-focus (D)

The movement of a word or clause to the end of a sentence to emphasise it.

Anaphoric referencing (D)

The reference of concepts or ideas expressed earlier in the text.

Cataphoric referencing (D)

The reference of ideas which are mentioned later in the text.

Deictic (D)

The denotation of words or expressions whose meanings depend on the context in which it is used (such as time of day).

Pause (D)

A gap in speech where nothing is uttered.

Filled pause (D)

The filling of a pause with small words (um, ah, well, etc.).

False start (D)

The abrupt ending of sentences in a speech, followed by a reworked form of the sentence in question.

Repetition (D)

The repeating of words in a sequence.

Ellipse (D)

Hesitation in a speech, shown when transcribed by three dots at the end of a sentence.

Adjacency pair (D)

An exchange of turns by two speakers; these turns typically require the other to respond in a certain way, and can be found in greetings and compliments.

Overlapping speech (D)

The process of two speakers talking at the same time; this can lead to some confusion for the listener.