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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, '' i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Complementizer
In linguistics (especially generative grammar), a complementizer or complementiser (list of glossing abbreviations, glossing abbreviation: ) is a functional category (part of speech) that includes those words that can be used to turn a clause into the subject (grammar), subject or object (grammar), object of a sentence (linguistics), sentence. For example, the word ''that'' may be called a complementizer in English language, English sentences like ''Mary believes that it is raining''. The concept of complementizers is specific to certain modern grammatical theories. In traditional grammar, such words are normally considered conjunction (grammar), conjunctions. The standard abbreviation for ''complementizer'' is C. Category of C C as head of CP The complementizer is often held to be the syntactic head (linguistics), head of a full clause, which is therefore often represented by the abbreviation CP (for ''complementizer phrase''). Evidence of the complementizer functioning as the h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
The Cambridge Grammar Of The English Language
''The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language'' (''CamGEL''The abbreviation ''CamGEL'' is less commonly used for the work than is ''CGEL'' (and the authors themselves use ''CGEL'' in their other works), but ''CGEL'' is ambiguous because it has also often been used for the earlier work ''A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language''. This article uses the unambiguous form.) 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 8,000 times. Background In 1988, Huddleston published a very critical review of the 1985 book ''A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language''. He wrote: [T]here 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 re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
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. Overview This article describes a generalized, present-day Standard English – forms 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 minor compared to the 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 re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
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 Proposition, complete proposition. But this Semantics, 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 (grammar), subject and a English verbs, 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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Otto Jespersen
Jens Otto Harry Jespersen (; 16 July 1860 – 30 April 1943) was a Danish linguist who worked in foreign-language pedagogy, historical phonetics, and other areas, but is best known for his description of the grammar of the English language. Steven Mithen describes him as "one of the greatest language scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries." Early life Otto Jespersen was born in Randers in Jutland, to Jens Bloch Jespersen (1813–70) and Sophie Caroline Bentzien (1833–74). He was one of nine children. As a boy, he was inspired by works of the Danish philologist Rasmus Rask and the biography of Rask by ; and with the help of Rask's grammars taught himself some Icelandic, Italian, and Spanish. Academic life and work Jespersen entered the University of Copenhagen in 1877 when he was 17, initially studying law but not abandoning his language studies. In his first year at university, he attended a lecture course by on the history of Evolutionism since the Greeks; th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
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] [Amazon] |
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. Early life and education Huddleston was born in Cheshire, England, and attended Manchester Grammar School. Upon leaving school, he spent two years in the military completing National Service before enrolling at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, with a scholarship, where he graduated in 1960 with a First Class Honours degree in Modern and Medieval Languages. After graduating from Cambridge, Huddleston earned his PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Edinburgh in 1963 under the supervision of Michael Halliday. Academic career Huddleston held lectureships at the University of Edinburgh, University College London, and the University of Reading. In 1969, he moved to the University ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
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 University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...: on the grammar of scientific English with Rodney Huddleston (1964–1967), and on Linguistics and En ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
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 Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ... 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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Geoffrey K
Geoffrey, Geoffroy, Geoff, etc., may refer to: People * Geoffrey (given name), including a list of people with the name Geoffrey or Geoffroy * Geoffroy (surname), including a list of people with the name * Geoffroy (musician) (born 1987), Canadian singer and songwriter Fictional characters * Geoffrey the Giraffe, the Toys "R" Us mascot * Geoff Peterson, an animatronic robot sidekick on ''The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson'' * Geoff, a character from the cartoon series ''Total Drama'' * Geoff, Mark Corrigon's romantic rival on ''Peep Show (British TV series), Peep Show'' Other uses * Geoff (Greyhawk), a fictional land in the World of Greyhawk ''Dungeons & Dragons'' campaign setting See also * Galfrid * Geof * Gofraid/Goraidh * Godfrey (name) * Gottfried * Godefroy (other) * Goffredo * Jeffery (name) * Jeffrey (name) * Jeffries * Jeffreys * Jeffers * Jeoffry (cat) * Jeff {{disambiguation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
English Determiners
English determiners (also known as determinatives) are words – such as ''the'', ''a'', ''each'', ''some'', ''which'', ''this'', and numerals such as ''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 *''man ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
