English Language Glossary

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Accent
The pronunciation of words
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Active tense
A sentence where the subject is acting on the object e.g. The boy kicked the ball
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Adjacency pairs
An utterance and response that are often seen together e.g. "How are you?" "I'm fine, thanks"
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Adjective
A type of word class - adjectives refer to words that describe a noun
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Adverb
Another word class - adverbs describe the verbs and usually end in "-ly" e.g. she walked quickly
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Alliteration
Repetition of a series of consonant or vowel at the beginning of words
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Amelioration
Where a word's meaning lessens over time
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Anaphoric reference
Using the proper noun first, then switching the pronouns e.g. "Cathy wanted to buy some fruit. She picked up an apple."
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Assonance
Repetition of the vowel sound in a series of words
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Auxiliary verb
Helps to establish when the action took place - the tense of the verb. It indicates plurality (is/are, was/were)
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Back formation/clipping
Where a word is shortened by removing the latter part of the word e.g. "****" is formed from "****ography"
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Broadening
Where a word gains wider meaning over time e.g. "butcher" used to mean seller of goats, but has now broadened to a seller of meat
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Cataphoric reference
Using a series of pronouns before introducing the proper noun e.g. "He's from the UK. It's Ronnie O'Sullivan!"
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Main clause
A complete sentence, containing object, verb, and subject e.g. It was cold
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Subordinate clause
A subordinate is dependent on the main clause e.g. "because it was late" - to understand this, you need something like "he missed the bus because it was late"
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CMC
Computer Mediated Communication e.g. email, text message, websites, etc.
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Collocation
Words that habitually go together e.g. fish and chips
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Colloquial
The language of speech
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Complement
Tells us something about the subject e.g. the man was busy
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Connotations
The associations and other ideas that we link to a word e.g. red = danger, love, stop
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Consonance
Repetition of the consonant sound in a series of words
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Dialect
Using different, regional lexis
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Declarative
The type of sentence function that states/describes something
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Deictic expression
Words that require context for understanding, or 'pointing' words e.g. this, them, it
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Denotation
The dictionary definition of a word
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Determiner
Words that come before a noun to determine it e.g. the hat, her feather, you drink
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Discourse structure
The structure of the text
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Elision
Missing out letters or words
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Ellipsis
Missing words out because the reader can fill in the gaps
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Emoticon
Iconic representation of emotions
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Emotive
language (often hyperbole) used to evoke emotions within the reader
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Euphemism
A word of phrase used to soften a harsh reality e.g. "passed away" means "died"
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False start
Starting again to correct yourself
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Fillers
Similar to voiced pause, but actually adding a word
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First/second/third person
First - writing in a subjective style using the personal pronoun "I". Second = writing in a style to directly address the reader "you". Third = Writing in an objective style using the pronouns "he", "she", "it"
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Function shift/conversion
Where a word moved from one word class to another e.g. "Google was once a noun, but has become a verb
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Graphology
The visual aspects of text, such as layout, font sizes, image choices etc.
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Genre
The category that a text falls into e.g. letter, newspaper article, novel excerpt etc.
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Homonym
A word with the same spelling but different meaning and sound e.g. lead and lead
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Homophone
Words that sound the same, but have a different spellings depending on their meanings e.g. their/they're/there
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Hybrid/multi-modal
A cross between written and spoken language
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Hyperbole
Exaggeration
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Hypernym
An over-arching noun that encompasses other nouns e.g. "animal" encompasses "cat", "dog", "goat" etc.
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Hyponym
The words within the hypernym, with a more precise meaning than the over-arching noun (the hypernym). Nouns like "cat", "dog", "goat" etc are hyponyms of "animal"
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Idiolect
Individual language, made up of accent, pitch, favourite phrases etc.
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Imperative
The type of sentence function that commands
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Interrogative
The type of sentence function that is a question
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Letter/number homphone
l8r = later, b = be, 2 = to, etc.
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Lexis
Individual word choice
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Litotes
Understatements
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Media
Literally means "in the middle of". Reality -> the media -> us
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Metaphor
A comparison where one thing is said to be another, which isn't literally true
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Metonymy
A word or phrase used to stand for a person, group, or place e.g. "Number 10" can represent the prime minister
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Morphology
Changing the spelling of words
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Narrowing
When a word's meaning is narrowed over time e.g. "meat" once meant food in general, but now means a specific type
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Non-fluency features
A general term for anything that removes fluency in spoken language, such as voiced pauses, non-voiced pauses, fillers, false starts
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Neologism
A new word. Recast = giving an existing word a new meaning. Compound = joining two existing words together to form a new one. Acronym = initials that are read like a word. Abbreviation = MSN, URL, HTML etc.
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Noun
A type of word class - nouns refer to words that are names e.g. of a person, place, or thing. Concrete = nouns are physical objects like tables, chairs, etc. Abstract = nouns are non-physical things like emotions, ideas, and feelings
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Object
The person or thing that the verb is affecting
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Onomatopoeia
Where a word sounds like what it's describing
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Over/under extension
Over = where a child uses a word in a wider context than its intended use e.g. "Daddy" for every male in the family. Under = where a child uses a word in a narrower context than its intended use e.g. "shoes" for a particular pair of shoes
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Paralinguistic features
Features of conversation outside of the speech e.g. facial expressions, posture, eye contact, laughing, etc.
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Parsing
Identifying each part of a sentence e.g. the subject, verb, and object
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Passive tense
A sentence where the object is being acted upon to it by the subject e.g. the ball was kicked by the boy
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Patterning or parallel phrasing
Repeating sentence structure
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Pejoration
Where a word's meaning becomes more negative over time
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Personification
Giving something inhuman, human qualities
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Phonology
The study of sound
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Pragmatics
The underlying meaning in a given context
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Preposition
Used to position things in a sentence (spatial or temporal) e.g. to, under, in, behind, on, by, at, etc.
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Pre/post modification
Words that come before/after a noun to describe it
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Pronouns
Another word class - pronouns are words that stand in the place of nouns, to avoid repetition
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Prosodic features
Aspects of voice (pitch, volume, intonation, stress) that contribute to understanding
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Register
Level of formality
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Rhetoric
Using language to persuade
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Rhetorical question
A question aked to which the answer is obvious and doesn't need responding to
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Sibilance
Repetition of the "s" and "sh" sounds in a series of words
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Simile
Comparison where something is like something else
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Semantic field
Semantics is concerned with meaning, when a groups of words are together with similar connotations, they're part of a "theme" or semantic field
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Sentence function
What the sentence does, there are four basic functions: interrogative, imperative, declarative, exclamative
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Sociolect
Language of a social group
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Spatial metaphors
Metaphors concerned with space e.g. enter a chatroom (technically, you're not moving anywhere)
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Subject
The person or thing doing the verb
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Synchronous/asynchronous CMC
Synchronous = communication that happens at the same time e.g. IM, chatrooms, etc. Asynchronous = communication with a time delay e.g. emails, forums, blogs, etc.
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Tag questions
Questions added to the end of speech to check the listener's understanding
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Tautology
Rhetorical feature - use of redundant language that adds no information
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Techspeak
David Crystal's word for any jargon relating to IT
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Tenor
The relationship between the text and the reader
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Topic management
A person bringing conversation back to the topic, usually shows power within a conversation
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Transcript
A written record of speech
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Transient
Temporary language - text messages are deleted
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Triadic structure
Writing a list of three things for flow
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Verb
Another word class - verbs are 'doing' words. Modal verbs are verbs that change the mode of the sentence e.g. "I can walk" is a declarative, "I must walk" is imperative.
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Virtuous error
Where a child makes a mistake with their language, but follows a grammatical rule that would be acceptable for other words e.g. "He runned", "It was the baddest"
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Voiced/unvoiced pause
Voiced = "erm", "um", "err". Unvoiced = a natural pause with no sound
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Word class
The category a word falls into is its class e.g. noun, adjective, adverb, and pronoun are all types of word classes
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Other cards in this set

Card 2

Front

A sentence where the subject is acting on the object e.g. The boy kicked the ball

Back

Active tense

Card 3

Front

An utterance and response that are often seen together e.g. "How are you?" "I'm fine, thanks"

Back

Preview of the back of card 3

Card 4

Front

A type of word class - adjectives refer to words that describe a noun

Back

Preview of the back of card 4

Card 5

Front

Another word class - adverbs describe the verbs and usually end in "-ly" e.g. she walked quickly

Back

Preview of the back of card 5
View more cards

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