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English Subordinators
English subordinators (also known as subordinating conjunctions or complementizers) are words that mostly mark clauses as subordinate. The subordinators form a closed lexical category in English and include ''whether''; and, in some of their uses, ''if'', ''that'', ''for'', arguably ''to'', and marginally ''how''. Syntactically, they appear immediately before the subordinate element. Semantically, they tend to be empty. Terminology and membership Peter Matthews defines ''subordinator'' as "a word, etc. which marks a clause as subordinate." Most dictionaries and many traditional grammar books use the term ''subordinating conjunction'' and include a much larger set of words, most of them prepositions such as ''before'', ''when'', and ''though'' that take clausal complements. The generative grammar tradition uses the term ''complementizer'', a term which sometimes excludes the prepositions. Membership The subordinators are ''whether''; and, in some of their uses, '' if'', ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Word
A word is a basic element of language that carries an semantics, objective or pragmatics, practical semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguistics, linguists on its definition and numerous attempts to find specific criteria of the concept remain controversial. Different standards have been proposed, depending on the theoretical background and descriptive context; these do not converge on a single definition. Some specific definitions of the term "word" are employed to convey its different meanings at different levels of description, for example based on phonology, phonological, grammar, grammatical or orthography, orthographic basis. Others suggest that the concept is simply a convention used in everyday situations. The concept of "word" is distinguished from that of a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of language that has a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Cambridge Grammar Of The English Language
''The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language'' (''CGEL'') is a descriptive grammar of the English language. Its primary authors are Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum. Huddleston was the only author to work on every chapter. It was published by Cambridge University Press in 2002 and has been cited more than 7,000 times. History Huddleston published a very critical review of ''A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language'' in 1988. In his review, he wrote,there are some respects in which it is seriously flawed and disappointing. A number of quite basic categories and concepts do not seem to have been thought through with sufficient care; this results in a remarkable amount of unclarity and inconsistency in the analysis, and in the organization of the grammar.The University of Queensland provided a special projects grant to launch the project in 1989, when Huddleston began work on CGEL. From 1989 to 1995, "workshops were held regularly in Brisbane and Sydney to develo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Grammar
English grammar is the set of structural rules of the English language. This includes the structure of words, phrases, clauses, Sentence (linguistics), sentences, and whole texts. This article describes a generalized, present-day Standard English – a form of speech and writing used in public discourse, including broadcasting, education, entertainment, government, and news, over a range of Register (sociolinguistics), registers, from formal to informal. Divergences from the grammar described here occur in some historical, social, cultural, and regional List of dialects of the English language, varieties of English, although these are more minor than differences in English phonology, pronunciation and lexicon, vocabulary. Modern English has largely abandoned the inflectional grammatical case, case system of Indo-European in favor of analytic language, analytic constructions. The personal pronouns retain morphological case more strongly than any other word class (a remnant of the m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Clause Syntax
This article describes the syntax of clauses in the English language, chiefly in Modern English. A clause is often said to be the smallest grammatical unit that can express a complete proposition. But this semantic idea of a clause leaves out much of English clause syntax. For example, clauses can be questions, but questions are not propositions. A syntactic description of an English clause is that it is a subject and a verb. But this too fails, as a clause need not have a subject, as with the imperative, and, in many theories, an English clause may be verbless. The idea of what qualifies varies between theories and has changed over time. History of the concept The earliest use of the word ''clause'' in Middle English is non-technical and similar to the current everyday meaning of ''phrase'': "A sentence or clause, a brief statement, a short passage, a short text or quotation; in a ~, briefly, in short; (b) a written message or letter; a story; a long passage in an author's s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Otto Jespersen
Jens Otto Harry Jespersen (; 16 July 1860 – 30 April 1943) was a Danish linguist who specialized in the grammar of the English language. Steven Mithen described him as "one of the greatest language scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries." Early life Otto Jespersen was born in Randers in Jutland. He was inspired by the work of Danish philologist Rasmus Rask as a boy, and with the help of Rask's grammars taught himself some Icelandic, Italian, and Spanish. He entered the University of Copenhagen in 1877 when he was 17, initially studying law but not forgetting his language studies. In 1881 he shifted his focus completely to languages, and in 1887 earned his master's degree in French, with English and Latin as his secondary languages. He supported himself during his studies through part-time work as a schoolteacher and as a shorthand reporter in the Danish parliament. In 1887–1888, he traveled to England, Germany and France, meeting linguists like Henry Sweet and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bettelou Los
Bettelou Los is a linguist and philologist specializing in the history of the English language. Since 2013 she has held the Forbes Chair of English Language at the University of Edinburgh. Academic career Los received her MA from the University of Amsterdam in 1986. After spending some time working as a translator, she obtained her PhD in 2000 from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; her dissertation focused on infinitives in Old and Middle English. From 2004 she held positions as lecturer first at the Vrije Universiteit and then at Radboud University Nijmegen, where she was promoted to senior lecturer in 2008, before moving to Edinburgh in 2013. Research Los is known for her work on language change in the history of English and other early Germanic languages, particularly in the domain of syntax. Information structure and its interaction with syntactic change has played an important role in her more recent work. Her book on the rise of the ''to''-infinitive in English is the standar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rodney Huddleston
Rodney D. Huddleston (born 4 April 1937) is a British linguist and grammarian specializing in the study and description of English. Huddleston is the primary author of ''The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language'' (), which presents a comprehensive descriptive grammar of English. After graduating from Cambridge in 1960 with a First Class Honors degree in Modern and Medieval Languages, Huddleston earned his PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Edinburgh in 1963 under the supervision of Michael Halliday. He held lectureships at the University of Edinburgh, University College London, and the University of Reading. He moved to The University of Queensland in 1969, where he remained for the rest of his career. He was the recipient of the first round of 'Excellence in Teaching' awards at the University of Queensland in 1988. In 1990 he was awarded a Personal Chair. He is currently an Emeritus Professor at the University of Queensland, where he taught until 1997. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Defective Verb
In linguistics, a defective verb is a verb that either lacks a conjugated form or entails incomplete conjugation, and thus cannot be conjugated for certain grammatical tenses, aspects, persons, genders, or moods that the majority of verbs or a "normal" or regular verb in a particular language can be conjugated for. That is to say, a defective verb lacks forms that most verbs in a particular language have. English Common defectives The most commonly recognized defective verbs in English are auxiliary verbs—the class of preterite-present verbs—''can/could'', ''may/might'', ''shall/should'', ''must'', ''ought'', and ''will/would'' (''would'' being a later historical development). Though these verbs were not originally defective, in most varieties of English today, they occur only in a modal auxiliary sense. However, unlike normal auxiliary verbs, they are not regularly conjugated in the infinitive mood. Therefore, these defective auxiliaries do not accept each other as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Hudson (linguist)
Richard Anthony Hudson FBA (born 18 September 1939) is a British linguist. He is best known for Word Grammar, a wide-ranging theory of syntax. Life Hudson is the son of the horticulturalist and bomb-disposal officer John Pilkington Hudson. He has lived in England for most of his life (with three years in New Zealand, 1945–1948). He studied linguistics at Loughborough Grammar School in Leicestershire (1948–1958), Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (1958–1961) and the School of Oriental and African Studies (Ph.D., 1961–1964). He worked with Michael Halliday as research assistant on two projects at University College London: on the grammar of scientific English with Rodney Huddleston Rodney D. Huddleston (born 4 April 1937) is a British linguist and grammarian specializing in the study and description of English. Huddleston is the primary author of ''The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language'' (), which presents a comp ... (1964–1967), and on Linguistics and Eng ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Postal
Paul Martin Postal (born November 10, 1936 in Weehawken, New Jersey) is an American linguist. Biography Postal received his PhD from Yale University in 1963 and taught at MIT until 1965. That year, he moved to the City University of New York. In 1967 he was appointed to a research position at IBM and he remained on their research staff until 1994. An important figure in the early development of generative grammar, he became a proponent of the generative semantics movement along with George Lakoff, James D. McCawley, and Haj Ross. In the 1970s, with David M. Perlmutter, he developed Relational Grammar. Later, with David E. Johnson, he developed Arc Pair Grammar. These non-transformational theories of grammar have had an indirect but major impact on modern syntactic analysis. Since his involvement with generative semantics, he has been a vocal critic of Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geoffrey K
Geoffrey, Geoffroy, Geoff, etc., may refer to: People * Geoffrey (name), including a list of people with the name * Geoffroy (surname), including a list of people with the name * Geoffrey of Monmouth (c. 1095–c. 1155), clergyman and one of the major figures in the development of British history * Geoffrey I of Anjou (died 987) * Geoffrey II of Anjou (died 1060) * Geoffrey III of Anjou (died 1096) * Geoffrey IV of Anjou (died 1106) * Geoffrey V, Count of Anjou (1113–1151), father of King Henry II of England * Geoffrey II, Duke of Brittany (1158–1186), one of Henry II's sons * Geoffrey, Archbishop of York (c. 1152–1212) * Geoffroy du Breuil of Vigeois, 12th century French chronicler * Geoffroy de Charney (died 1314), Preceptor of the Knights Templar * Geoffroy IV de la Tour Landry (c. 1320–1391), French nobleman and writer * Geoffrey the Baker (died c. 1360), English historian and chronicler * Geoffroy (musician) (born 1987), Canadian singer, songwriter and multi-instrum ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Determiners
English determiners (also known as determinatives) are words – such as ''the'', ''a'', ''each'', ''some'', ''which'', ''this'', and ''six'' – that are most commonly used with nouns to specify their referents. The determiners form a closed lexical category in English. The syntactic role characteristically performed by determiners is known as the determinative function (see ). A determinative combines with a noun (or, more formally, a nominal; see ) to form a noun phrase (NP). This function typically comes before any modifiers in the NP (e.g., ''some very pretty wool sweaters'', not ''*very pretty some wool sweaters''). The determinative function is typically obligatory in a singular, countable, common noun phrase (compare ''I have a new cat'' to *''I have new cat''). Semantically, determiners are usually definite or indefinite (e.g., ''the cat'' versus ''a cat''), and they often agree with the number of the head noun (e.g., ''a new cat'' but not *''many new cat''). Morp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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