Morphology

overtly expressed subject vs. vocative

vocative isn't a sentence element (so also not a subject) You two keep quiet. You two, keep quiet.

what/who vs. which

which = strong selective force (Which is more fun?) what = more generalizing (What languages do you speak?)

inflectional morphology

word forms of a single lexeme play/plays/playing/played

'contact' clauses

'zero' relative pronoun I can't find the books I got from the library.

absolute superlative

= elative He wears the oddest clothes. > high degree, no direct comparison

non-sentential/continuative relative clause

A skilled workforce is essential, which is why our training programme is so important. (> and that is why...)

partitives

item, article, glass, bar, lump, item, word, bit, piece

reclassification (uncountable > countable noun)

It was a scene of indescribable beauty. > Your roses are beauties this year.

the group genitive

He had to take [a minute or two]'s rest to recover his breath.

false definite of a demonstrative pronoun

I met [this] really weird guy last night.

absolute comparative

I've got a pain in my lower back.

conjugation

I/you/we

collective nouns

jury, team, crew, staff, government, crowd, audience

spatial/locative preposition + reflexive pronoun

Look behind you! I haven't got my driving licence on me. You have your whole life before you.

genitive case vs. of-phrase

Mary's chair (animate) > the chair of Mary the fire's cause (inanimate) > the cause of the fire

declension

Peter/Peter's

quantative nouns

PreM = quantitative word several hundred people, five thousand dollars, two dozen eggs, three score years, 40 head of cattle

intransitive sentence pattern

S + P Someone was laughing.

sentence elements

S, P, DO, IO, A, SC, OC

the = marker of conversion, not definiteness

She trains guide dogs for the blind.

restrictive/defining relative clause

crucial information, no commas Is this the train [that] stops at Cambridge?

the independent/elliptic genitive

That isn't my handwriting. It's Selina's.

"mixed" antecedent ('that')

The generals complained that the Defence Department had not sent the extra [men] and [equipment] [that] they needed.

morphemes + types

immediate constituents of words - lexical/root/free: claim - affixes/bound: dis-, -er, -s - stem (word minus inflectionalsuffix): disclaimer - base (affixes can be added): claim > disclaim > disclaimer > disclaimers

whom

immediately after a preposition With whom did you go out last night? inversion: Who did you go out with last night?

particle

The plane took [off]. [Only/Even] Peter knew the answer.

generic use of personal pronouns

The way we waste this planet's resources is criminal. Soya is meant to be very good for you, or so they say.

personal vs. non-personal reference

The winner was a Brazilian player, whose name I have forgotten. Solar energy is an idea whose time must come.

partial conversion

There's one law for [the rich] and another for [the poor].

dummy/empty 'it' (types)

impersonal: It's raining. identifying/demonstrative: There was a knock at the door. It was Mary. emphatic (cleft sentences): It was your father who was driving. introductory subject: Is it (Si) difficult [to play the harmonica]? (Sp = 'postponed subject') introductory object: She doesn't find it (Doi) easy [to talk about her problems]. (DOp = 'postponed object')

proper reflexive verb

You cannot choose to absent yourself from school on a whim. pride

non-personal, inanimate reference of a demonstrative pronoun

You must meet Alan. [That guy] saved my life. vs. [This] is my husband. (be > identification)

independent relative

[What really concerned her] was how unhappy the child was. > that which/the thing that [Who said that] is a liar. > he who/the person who

non-restrictive/non-defining relative clause

additional information, commas, no 'that' That bar on the Milton Street, which by the way is very nice, is owned by Trevor's brother.

semantic/thematic roles

agent, recipient, theme

the double possessive/post-genitive

indefinite determiners > partitive meaning: A student of Mr Brown's is asking to see you. demonstrative pronouns > evaluative function: This paper of Susan's is a fine piece of scholarship.

adverbial function of 'all, both'

intensifying I'm hopeless at physics - I get it all wrong. Both parents were interviewed.

anaphoric vs. deictic use of pronouns

anaphoric = the use of a pronoun or other linguistic unit to refer back to another word or phrase (cataphoric: This is what I'll do. I'll telephone Anna and explain.) deictic = relating to or denoting a word or expression whose meaning is dependent on the context in which it is used [Mary] tells me that her car has been giving [her] a lot of trouble recently. Could you help me with this, please?

independent vs. anaphoric relatives

anaphoric: who, whose, which, that, where, when independent: who, what, where + compound relatives

types of gender in nouns

animate (masculine, feminine + neuter) inanimate (neuter)

nonpersonal reference (noun)

baby, infant, child (> it)

copular/linking verbs

be, seem, appear, become

types of affixes

by position: prefix, suffix, infix by function: inflectional, derivational expletive infix: fan[freaking]tastic

participants/arguments

can be obligatory I give you a thing. to give > Who? What? To whom?

uncountable nouns aren't used with ...

cardinal numerals, other numerical quantifiers, the indefinite article (a, an)

nouns of multitude

cattle, police, people, folk, the youth

shift of stress (conversion)

con[trast] (v.) > [con]trast (n.)

conjunction

connects two clauses She said [that (conjunction) she'd collect it for me after work.] > that connects two clauses I can't find the books [that (relative pronoun) I got from the library]. > that describes the noun She was only twenty [when (conjunction) she had her first baby]. Does anyone know [when (interrogative adverb) they are arriving]?

derivational morphology

different lexemes play/replay/display/player

full/lexical verbs

express action, state, other predicate meaning intransitive (no object) transitive (1+ objects) arrive, die send, buy

auxiliary verbs

express grammatical meaning primary, modal be, have, do can, ought

circumstances

for her birthday yesterday at the party in front of everybody

foreign plurals

from Latin, Greek, French, Italian antennae vs. antennas

augmentative plural

great quantity: There were miles of golden [sands] all around us. intensity: They are strong, which fits them for enduring the [colds] of winter.

voicing of the final consonant (conversion)

house /s/ (n.) > house /z/ (v.)

abstract infix

man > men

mutation plural

man, woman, foot, tooth, goose, mouse, louse

transitive sentence patterns

monotransitive (S + P + DO) ditransitive (S + P + IO + DO) complex-transitive (S + P + DO + OC) copular/linking (S + P + SC) My mother enjoys parties. Mary gave the visitor a glass of milk. Most people considered Picasso a genius. The country became totally independent.

voiced plural

mouth /θ/ > mouths /ðz/ voiced: path, youth, bath voiced or regular: truth, oath, sheath, wreath regular: length, birth (consonant + -th), death, faith, moth, cloth

final-s uncountable nouns

news, diseases (shingles, measles, mumps, rickets), sciences (linguistics), sports

sentential/continuative relative clause

no 'what' She says it is Charlotte's fault, which is rubbish, and that she blames her.

case

nominative/subjective: [He] is our teacher. (S) accusative/objective: We like [him] (DO) common: What is the title of [the book]? genitive/possessive: What is [the book's] title?

'dual' gender

non-specific gender artist, singer

word classes/parts of speech + subclassification

noun (common, proper) verb (lexical, auxiliary, copular) adjective adverb preposition pronoun (personal, demonstrative ...) numeral conjunction (coordinators, subordinators) interjection particle article

valency

number and type of arguments controlled by a predicate I give you a thing. > 3

comparison

old/older/oldest

open vs. closed class items

open classes: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs content/full/lexical words, indefinitely extendable, full lexical meaning function/grammatical words, only exceptionally extendable, little or no lexical meaning

compounding

play + ground > playground compound: a blackbird syntactic unit: a black bird (speed[o]meter > infix)

types of pronouns

possessive (my, mine) personal (I, me) relative = connects dependent clauses to independent clauses (who, whom, which, what, that) reflexive (myself) intensive = refers back to the subject in order to add emphasis (myself) indefinite = doesn't specify what it's referring to (some, somebody, anyone, nothing) - universal (all, both, every, each) - partitive (some, any, either) - negative (no, none, no one, nobody, nothing, neither) - quantifying (many, much, several, (a) little, (a) few, other, another, one) demonstrative (this, that, these, those) interrogative (who, whom, what, which, whose) reciprocal (each other, one another)

antecedent

precedes another, personal or demonstrative pronoun [Mary] (antecedent) tells me that her car has been giving [her] a lot of trouble recently.

types of demonstrative pronouns

proximal: this, these, here, now distal: that, those, there, then

zero inflectional suffix

sheep > sheep

zero plural

sheep > sheep

phrase

simple, complex headword determines the type of phrase (NP, VP, AdjP, AP, PP) premodifiers (determiner) + postmodifiers

'headed' vs. 'non-headed' compounds

snowman > snowmen Walkman > Walkmans

types of genitive

specifying: the children's toys (Whose toys?) classifying: a children's book (What kind of book?)

types of sentence (communicative function)

statement/declarative sentence: affirmative, negative question/interrogative sentence: verbal/yes-no, pronominal/wh-question, alternative, tag command/directive/imperative sentence exclamation/exclamatory sentence mixed types: declarative & exclamatory questions They arrived yesterday. Didn't they arrive yesterday? Why are they not here yet? Did they arrive yesterday or this morning? They arrived yesterday, didn't they? Keep the dog outside, please. What a nuisance that dog is! They arrived when? Isn't that dog a nuisance!

genitive marker

student['s]

allomorphs

variants of a single morpheme that depend on the phonetic environment books /s/, boys /z/, boxes /iz/

morph

the smallest meaningful phonetic segments of a word, each representing one morpheme dis + claim + er + s

suppletion

the use of etymologically unrelated forms to complete the inflectional paradigm of a word be - am - are - is - was go - went bad - worse

conversion

the word is shifted from one word class to another without the use of any overt affixes bottle (n.) > to bottle (v.)

number contrast with uncountable nouns

three pairs of swim goggles

bipartite nouns

two pairs of scales BrE: scales, tweezers, compasses, (nutcrackers) vs. AmE: scale, tweezer, compass With over 70 different goggle styles for all ages and abilities. We have the perfect goggle for you. (type) She's bought a very smart trouser suit for her job interviews. (PreM)