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In morphology and syntax, a clitic is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a word, but depends phonologically on another word or phrase. In this sense, it is syntactically independent but phonologically dependent—always attached to a host. A clitic is pronounced like an affix, but plays a syntactic role at the phrase level. In other words, clitics have the form of affixes, but the distribution of function words. For example, the contracted forms of the auxiliary verbs in I'm and we've are clitics.
In grammar, tense is a category that expresses time reference with reference to the moment of speaking. Tenses are usually manifested by the use of specific forms of verbs, particularly in their conjugation patterns.
In linguistics, syntax is the set of rules, principles, and processes that govern the structure of sentences in a given language, usually including word order. The term syntax is also used to refer to the study of such principles and processes. The goal of many syntacticians is to discover the syntactic rules common to all languages.
A syntactic category is a type of syntactic unit that theories of syntax assume. Word classes, largely corresponding to traditional parts of speech, are syntactic categories. In phrase structure grammars, the phrasal categories are also syntactic categories. Dependency grammars, however, do not acknowledge phrasal categories.
In traditional grammar, a part of speech is a category of words that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are assigned to the same part of speech generally display similar syntactic behavior—they play similar roles within the grammatical structure of sentences—and sometimes similar morphology in that they undergo inflection for similar properties.
In grammar the term particle has a traditional meaning, as a part of speech that cannot be inflected, and a modern meaning, as a function word associated with another word or phrase to impart meaning.
A compound is a word composed of more than one free morpheme. The English language, like many others, uses compounds frequently. English compounds may be classified in several ways, such as the word classes or the semantic relationship of their components.
Tmesis is a linguistic phenomenon in which a word or phrase is separated into two parts, with other words between them.
Verbs constitute one of the main parts of speech in the English language. Like other types of words in the language, English verbs are not heavily inflected. Most combinations of tense, aspect, mood and voice are expressed periphrastically, using constructions with auxiliary verbs.
A modal verb is a type of verb that is used to indicate modality – that is: likelihood, ability, permission, request, capacity, suggestions, order, obligation, or advice. Modal verbs always accompany the base (infinitive) form of another verb having semantic content. In English, the modal verbs commonly used are can, could, may, might, must, will, would, shall, should, ought to, had better, "have to" and sometimes need or dare. In English and other Germanic languages, modal verbs are often distinguished as a class based on certain grammatical properties.
In syntactic analysis, a constituent is a word or a group of words that functions as a single unit within a hierarchical structure. The constituent structure of sentences is identified using tests for constituents. These tests apply to a portion of a sentence, and the results provide evidence about the constituent structure of the sentence. Many constituents are phrases. A phrase is a sequence of one or more words built around a head lexical item and working as a unit within a sentence. A word sequence is shown to be a phrase/constituent if it exhibits one or more of the behaviors discussed below. The analysis of constituent structure is associated mainly with phrase structure grammars, although dependency grammars also allow sentence structure to be broken down into constituent parts.
An adpositional phrase, in linguistics, is a syntactic category that includes prepositional phrases, postpositional phrases, and circumpositional phrases. Adpositional phrases contain an adposition as head and usually a complement such as a noun phrase. Language syntax treats adpositional phrases as units that act as arguments or adjuncts. Prepositional and postpositional phrases differ by the order of the words used. Languages that are primarily head-initial such as English predominantly use prepositional phrases whereas head-final languages predominantly employ postpositional phrases. Many languages have both types, as well as circumpositional phrases.
In lexicography, a lexical item is a single word, a part of a word, or a chain of words (catena) that forms the basic elements of a language's lexicon (≈ vocabulary). Examples are cat, traffic light, take care of, by the way, and it's raining cats and dogs. Lexical items can be generally understood to convey a single meaning, much as a lexeme, but are not limited to single words. Lexical items are like semes in that they are "natural units" translating between languages, or in learning a new language. In this last sense, it is sometimes said that language consists of grammaticalized lexis, and not lexicalized grammar. The entire store of lexical items in a language is called its lexis.
A separable verb is a verb that is composed of a lexical core and a separable particle. In some sentence positions, the core verb and the particle appear in one word, whilst in others the core verb and the particle are separated. The particle cannot be accurately referred to as a prefix because it can be separated from the core verb. German, Dutch, Afrikaans and Hungarian are notable for having many separable verbs. Separable verbs challenge theories of sentence structure because when they are separated, it is not evident how the compositionality of meaning should be understood.
Studies that estimate and rank the most common words in English examine texts written in English. Perhaps the most comprehensive such analysis is one that was conducted against the Oxford English Corpus (OEC), a very large collection of texts from around the world that are written in the English language. A text corpus is a large collection of written works that are organised in a way that makes such analysis easier.
The grammar of Macedonian is, in many respects, similar to that of some other Balkan languages, especially Bulgarian. Macedonian exhibits a number of grammatical features that distinguish it from most other Slavic languages, such as the elimination of case declension, the development of a suffixed definite article, and the lack of an infinitival verb, among others.
In linguistics, the catena is a unit of syntax and morphology, closely associated with dependency grammars. It is a more flexible and inclusive unit than the constituent and may therefore be better suited than the constituent to serve as the fundamental unit of syntactic and morphosyntactic analysis.
This article describes the syntax of clauses in the English language, that is, the ways of combining and ordering constituents such as verbs and noun phrases to form a clause.
In linguistics and grammar, affirmation and negation are the ways that grammar encodes negative and positive polarity in verb phrases, clauses, or other utterances. Essentially an affirmative (positive) form is used to express the validity or truth of a basic assertion, while a negative form expresses its falsity. Examples are the sentences "Jane is here" and "Jane is not here"; the first is affirmative, while the second is negative.
In English a phrasal verb is the combining of two or three words from different grammatical categories — a verb and a particle, such as an adverb or a preposition — to form a single semantic unit on a lexical or syntactic level. Examples: turn down, run into, sit up. There are tens of thousands of them, and they are in everyday, constant use. These semantic units cannot be understood based upon the meanings of the individual parts but must be taken as a whole. In other words, the meaning is non-compositional and thus unpredictable. Phrasal verbs that include a preposition are known as prepositional verbs and phrasal verbs that include a particle are also known as particle verbs. Additional alternative terms for phrasal verb are compound verb, verb-adverb combination, verb-particle construction, two-part word/verb or three-part word/verb and multi-word verb.
References
- ↑ "Multi-word verbs". British Council. Archived from the original on 2011-11-30. Retrieved 2011-11-24.
- ↑ Beate Haba (2011), Between Heads and Phrases: Particles in English Phrasal Verbs, GRIN Verlag, pp. 6–10, ISBN 978-3-640-83275-0
