English Language Analysis Terminology

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Common Noun

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A naming word for a thing that is tangible, eg. chair, penguin, man, arsonist, murderer, ghost, crumpet, trumpet,

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Abstract Noun

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Naming word for an idea, concept, state of mind or belief, eg. tidiness, sadness, love, politics, Marxism.

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Collective Noun

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Naming word for the grouping of common nouns, eg. a HERD of cows, a MURDER of crows, a PARLIAMENT of owls, a LOVLINESS of ladybirds etc.

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Proper Noun

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Naming word for a specific example of a common noun (often are names of places or specific people) eg. Bob, Eiffel Tower, London, Prince Charles.

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Noun Phrase

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When a phrase acts as a single noun - "lets talk about THE END OF THE WORLD"

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Verb

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A word that represents an action or process: in simple terms of "doing" word.

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Active Verb

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A word that represents a physical action, eg. jump, run, kill, slap, kiss, make-love, wallop, sleep.

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Stative Verb

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A word that represents a process that is often only mental, eg. think, love, ponder, believe, (to) fear.

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Auxilary Verb

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A verb that has to be used with another verb in order to create present participles or the future tense, eg. "DID you go?"; "I AM going"; you WILL GO.

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Auxiliary Modal Verb

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An auxilary verb that express a degree of either possibility or necessity, eg. might, could, must, should, may.

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Irregular Verb

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A verb that changes form unusually when used in a different tense without the usual or 'regular' patterns ... eg. a verb that doesn't add the '-ed' ending when put into the past participle. 'go' becomes 'went' for example as opposed to 'walk' becomes 'walked'.

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Morphology

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The process of changing words into different forms, eg. when verbs are put into different tenses or changes to gerunds, when a noun (hyperbole, for example) can be used in different contect, like a verb or adjective (to hyperbolise or hypobolic, respectively).

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Infinitive Verbal Form

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Verbs, in all their forms, derive from the infinitive form, which is basically, the verb without 'to' written before it: to steal, to love. From this form other forms (present participle, past tense, future tense etc) can be formed.

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Split Infinitive

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When an infinitive verb is split in two with an adverb, eg. "to boldly go" - no longer considered 'ungrammatical' due to frequent use in the language.

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Present Participle

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When the verb is in the present tense used with the auxilary verb 'am' or 'are', eg. I am PLAYING. Ends with '-ing' suffix.

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Gerund

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When a present participle with the '-ing' suffix is used as a noun: 'Did any LEARNING take place?'

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Past Participle

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The past tense ... the verb 'eat' becomes ate.

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Past Perfect Tense

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Using the verb 'have' in the past tense ('had') in conjunction with another verb ... "I HAD gone out..." - often used in fiction flashbacks. It's, in effect, the past past tense.

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Conjugation

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Changing the form of the verb from its root form.

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Adjective

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A describing word that modifies a noun or pronoun.

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Adverb

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A describing word that modifies all types of word, excluding nouns and pronouns.

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Adverbial of Time

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An adverb made up of a phrase that tells WHEN an action took place ... "On the 5th of August ..."; "at noon ..."; "... just after you left". Remember, it has to be attributed to a verb.

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Adverbial of Manner

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An adverb that suggests something is done in a certain way. "he walked ridiculously".

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Superlative

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An adjective that displays the most extreme value of its quality, eg. most, biggest, smallest, worst, furthest, farthest, quietest, zaniest. Most of the time superlatives end with '-est'.

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Comparative

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An adjective that relates one thing in some way to another and usually ends in 'er': bigger, smaller, further, quieter, zanier.

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Co-ordinative Conjunction

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A word that joins clauses together in a compound sentence: and, or, but.

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Sub-ordinating Conjunction

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A word that joins clauses in a complex sentence: although, because, though, therefore.

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Preposition

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A word that shows the physical relationship between one thing and another: in, on, out.

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Determiners

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Adjectives that precede nouns and relate directly to them, eg. "I want THAT pen"; "take away MY father." They differ from demonstrative pronouns because pronouns replace nouns. "I want that". The last quote still has the word 'that' in it, but there is no noun to describe.

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Definite Article

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The

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Indefinite Article

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A or an.

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Pronoun

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A word that takes the place of a noun in a sentence, eg. him, her, it, he, she, I, you, me (self-reflexive pronoun), they.

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First Person Pronoun

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I, and the first person plural: we, our, us

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First Person Pronoun

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You.

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Third Person Pronoun

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Him, her, he, she, it, and the third person plural: they.

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Reflective Pronoun

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When a personal pronoun utilises the suffix 'self' or 'selves'.

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Possessive Pronoun (1st, 2nd or 3rd person depending)

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Mine, ours, yours, his, hers, theirs. Beware the distinction between these and determiners.

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Demonstrative Pronoun

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This, that, those. See explanation for Determiners, above as to the subtle distinctions in function.

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Monosyllabic Lexis

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Words of one syllable.

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Polysyllabic Lexis

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Words of two or more syllable.

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Imperative Sentence Mood

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When a sentence is issuing a command.

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Declarative Sentence Mood

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When a sentence is making a statement

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Interrogative Sentence Mood

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When a sentence is asking a question.

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Exclamatory Sentence Mood

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When a sentence conveys a strong sense of emotion, sense of alarm or overly strong emphasis.

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Register

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The level of formality of a text.

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Tenor

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The tone of voice, the relationship between author and reader and how it is created.

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Colloquialism

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Informal language useage, eg. bloke, fella, lass, bog (toilet), arse, bum, grum, scran, scram, mate.

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Compound Words

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A word created by utilising two existing words separated by a hyphen, eg. global-village, bone-headed, to go-straight. There are compound versions of nouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs.

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Clipping

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Colloquial ommission of parts of words to create a more casual alternative, eg. 'cause, bra, pram.

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Grammar

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The construct of written language - the order and syntax etc.

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Minor Sentence

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A sentence that is incomplete by missing a subject or a verb, yet it still is capped with a full stop, eg. 'Stop!' or 'How?'

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Exclamation

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A one word sentence (always minor sentence) with an excalmation mark at the end.

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Ellipsis

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When parts of written structure are missing. In texts, sometimes they are indicated by three full stops in a row, denoting perhaps a significant pause ... Do you see?

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Simple Sentence/Independent Main Clause

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Every sentence must contain a subject (a noun or pronoun), a verb (something for the subject to do) and, perhaps, an object (something for the subject to do something to), eg. I love English Language (first person pronoun + stative verb + proper noun (object)).

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Compound Sentence

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Two simple sentences (of equal semantic weighting) joined by a co-ordinating conjuction (or a semi-colon where the co-ordinating conjuction would have been).

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Complex Sentence

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A simple sentence with an added clause that somehow adds extra information (although of lesser important semantically than the independent main clause) linked by a sub-ordinating conjunction.

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Syntax

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The way words form sentences (the ordering of them to create meaning).

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Syntactic Dislocation

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Can be 'right' or 'left'. When a clause utilises a pronoun, 'the dog bit HER', it makes sense, but dislocation can occur from further clarification and other effects by adding seemingly unnecessary nouns at either side of the clause.

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Syntactic Variance

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The mixture of long and short syntactic structures for effect.

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Active Voice

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When the subject of the sentence carries out the verb. "I carried the bag".

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Passive Voice

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When the subject is the recipient of the verb. "The bag was carried by me."

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Cataphoric Referencing

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An overt reference to something that occureds later on in a text.

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Anaphoric Referencing

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An overt reference to something that occured earlier in a text.

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Fronting

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What we label elements at the start of a sentence ... for example, a fronted co-ordinating conjunction is: "And what do we have here?" Elements that are fronted are given semantic weighting and hence more significance and may be worth talking about.

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Terminum

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The terminus is the end of the sentence. You can analyse the significance of syntactically placing things at the end of sentences by referring to them being placed at the sentence's terminus.

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Parenthesis

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An aside within a text created by sectioning off extra information between brackets, dashes or between two commas.

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Parenthetic Commas, Dashes or Brackets

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An aside within a text created by sectioning off extra information.