| A | B |
|---|
| accommodation/mutual accomodation | the degree to which potential barriers to learning are addressed such that all students have equitable access to the curriculum. Conditions taht may affect a student's opportunity to learn include the (in)appropriateness of curricula, instructional strategies, materials, and facilities, as well as the skills and commitment of educational personnel (e.g., teachers, administrators, superintendents) to ensure the academic success of all students. |
| acculturation | The process of adjusting to a new culture that is different from one's home culture |
| affective filter | Controls the extent to which an individual itnernalizes input by converting it into learning. It has been compared to a ddefense mechanism because if it is raised it may negatively influence language acquisition, academic success, and classroom behaviour and action |
| assessment accommodation | A measure taht is taken to ensure that the results of a typically formal student assessment reflect only measurement of the targeted skills or knowledge rather than the student's language ability, level of aculturation, or testing finesse. |
| authentic assessment | Refers to assessments taht are generally developed directly from classroom instruction, group work, or related classroom activities and that provide an alternative to traditional assessment. Authentic assessments emphasize real-world problems, tasks, or applications taht are relevant to the student and his or her community |
| basic interpersonal communication skills (BICS) | the language ability needed for casual converstaion. This usually applies to the interpersonal conversation skills of CLD students (e.g,. playground language) |
| congnitive academic language proficiency (CALP) | The language ability needed for learning academic skills and concepts in situations in which contextual clues are not present and an abstract use of language is required |
| common underlying proficiency (CUP) | Refers to the conceptual knowledge taht acts as the foundation on which new skills are built. Both L1 and L2 facilitate the development of such fundamental cognitive patterns whithin individuals. The language biographies serve as a brdige, connecting new inforamtion whith previously acquired knowledge. |
| culturally and lingustically divers (CLD) | Preferred term for an individual or group of individuals whose cultrue or language differs from that of the dominat group |
| English language learner (ELL) | Individuals who are in the process of transitioning from a home or native language to English. However, CLD is the preferred term because CLD imphasizes both the cultrual and linguistic assets a student brings to the classroom |
| English cubmersion | Describes teh "sink-or swim" programmatic notion that no language services or accommodations should be provided to second language learners. Rather, students are expected to rapidly acquire the English language skills needed for full participation in the grad level classroom, with no additional language support. |
| formative assessment | A tool or strategy employed by grade-level and other teachers to determine what and how their sudents are learning so that instruction can be modified accordingly while it is sitll in progress |
| fund of knowledge | The knowledge, skills, and background experiences students and families have gained through prior socialization in a particular culture and as speakers of particular languages |
| limited English proficient (LEP) | A person who is in the process of acquiring English as an additional language. This tem is frequently used in governmnet documents. However, because LEP imphasizes inadequacies rather tahtn abilities, CLD is the preferred term |
| opportunity to learn | The degree to which potential barriers to learning are addressed such that all students have equitable access to the curriculum. Cinditions taht may affect a studen's opportunity to lean include tha (in)appropriateness of curricula, instructional startegies, materials, and facilities, as well as the skills and commitment of educationa personnel (e.g., teachers, adminitstrators, superintendents) to ensure the academic success of all students. |
| rebus cue | The use of a rebus picture to aid in the generation or interpretaion of text |
| rebus picture | A picture of symbol used to represent a syllable or word in text or puzzles |
| redesignation | Also referred to as reclassification,this term describes the process of determining the tansitional need of a student for additional or continuing participation in language services |
| reliability | The power of an assessment to gather consistent evidence of skills, regardless of the examiner, time, place, or other variable related to its administration |
| scaffolding | The use of supportin aids and activities that enable a student to perform tasks that would otherwise be too complex for his or her abilities. |
| schema | (pl.shemata) A memory framework that enables one to store declarative knowledge as interrelated concepts and ideas taht can be recalled as isolated facts or as structured associations. |
| silent period | The first stage, or preproduction stage, of the second language acquisiton process. During this period, a CLD student may comunicate in only nonverbal ways as he or she primarily listens to the new language and tries to understaand its patterns and rules before atempting production in that language |
| summative assessment | A tool or strategy employed by grade-level and other teachers to measure the knowledge or sills of students upon the completion of an instructional lesson, theme, or unit |
| validity | The ability of an assessment, process, or product to measure the knwoledge or skills it is intended to measure |
| encultruation | Culture is not inherited but rather learned through a process |
| encoulturations levels | consciously and uncounsciuly |
| conscious encoulturations | child is taught appropriate behaviours by those closest to him or her growing up |
| uncounscius encoulturation | behaviour is learned through the social interactions, experiences, texts, and observations taking place on a daily basis |
| intercultural orientation | move away from viewong one's own culture as the measure by which all others are judge. Teachers develop empathy and cultural sensitivity, allowing them to see the world through multiple lenses. Teachers should understand their own culture first to be able to understand others. |
| The aspects of culture quistionnaire | provides a series of questions aimed at developing a deeper understanding of culture. |
| cultural mediators | Teachers who are able to find the appropriate books, activities, participation sturctures, and classroom management systems best suited for the students. |
| academic disidentification | feeling of isolation and academic disidentification. Students who feel alienated from school because of a belief that their home culture and language are not valued often develop |
| grammatical competence | ability to master the language code (lexical items and rules of word formation, sentence formation, literal meaning, pronunciation, and spelling) |
| sociolinguistic competence | ability to appropriately use and understan language within a variety of contexts. (vocabulary and speech style to use in a specific situation) |
| competent listener | understands the meaning of varying forms of spoken and written language depending on the circumstances of its use. |
| discourse competence | The speaker and/or writer is able to organize his or her speech patterns to fit the purpose of the interaction. |
| strategic competence | been able to use different strategies (paraphrasing, asking questons, repeating words or phrases) to clarify meaning when miscommunication occurs. |
| alternative assessments | can supplement formal assessments and may also help refine or enhance currents assessment practices |
| inter-rater reliability | the degree to which a student's product or performance is rated the same by different raters or evaluators. |
| content validity | the extent to which the assessment tasks and items represent the doemain of knowledge and skills to be measured (especially regairding the most critical content) |
| Performance Based Assessments (P.B.A) | designed to create situations that tap into the depth as well as the breadth of student learning |
| Portfolio Assessments | authentically connect classroom instrudtion and the assessment of its impact on students. |
| peer assessments | requires students to consider how examples of other students' work meet the criteria |
| Rubrics | a frequent component of performance-based assessment but are also valuable in other contexts. |
| preinstructional assessment | generally referred to as preassessment, it invovles gathering information about the knowledge, skills, and capacities of students prior to participation in a new lessom or course of instruction |
| biopsychosocial | an adopted descriptor for the core aspects of human eperience |
| sociocultural dimension | involves some of the most critical precursors to academic success, including self-concept, self-esteem, social identity cultural identity, and student motivation |
| U-Curve hyopothesis | used to describe the process of acculuration |
| Grammar operates at three levels | Subsentential Level (morphology)- below sentence level- verb tenses have been described through the use of verb tense. |
| Subsentential Level (morphology | below sentence level- verb tenses have been described through the use of verb tense |
| Sentential Level (syntax) | deals with the word order and shows where the past progressive tense form of the verb is located |
| Suprasentential Level (discourse)- | important in communication and if often overlooked. |
| Grammar Rules | 1. Rules are not airtight formulations; they always have exceptions. |
| The Three Dimensions of Grammar | 1. Form – How is it used? (Accuracy) |
| Grammar can be implicitly | be taught to language students. ESL teachers might better think of what they do as teaching “grammaring” – a skill- rather than teaching grammar as an area of knowledge. (Remember- If a student can recite a rule but can’t apply it, we have failed in our “grammaring” efforts. |
| Multifaceted Teaching Approach- | Using different teaching techniques for teaching different aspects of the three dimensions |
| Ungrammatical | unacceptable to native speakers of English ( *Example – He no say. ) |
| Lexicogrammar | the words & grammatical sturctures of the target language |
| Verbs | word that denotes an action or state of being |
| transitive verb | require an object |
| ditransitive verb | which take two objects |
| linking verbs | where what follows the verb relates back to the subject |
| complex transitive verbs | where what follows the object relates to the object |
| prepositional verbs | require a prepositional phrase |
| Adjectives | word that describes the qualities of something |
| Adverbs | modify verb and contribute meaning to sentences |
| frequency adverbs | We visit our friends in Detroit often. |
| Pronouns | refer to or replace nouns within a text |
| Determiners | words that limit the nouns that follow them |
| Prepositions | connect words to other parts of a sentence and have a close relationship with the word that follows, usually a noun |
| Conjunctions | words that join |
| Simple Sentence | contains at least one subject and one verb and can stand alone as an independent clause. |
| Compound Sentence | consists of two or more clauses of equal importance |
| Complex Sentence | contains a main clause and one or more subordinate clauses. |
| Sentence Moods | Main: |
| Voice | Active voice- the subject functions as the theme and is most often an actor of some action |
| Background and Foregrounding | certain sentences provide background information while others function is the foreground to carry the main storyline. |
| Background and Foregrounding | Cohesion- texts, units of spoken or written language at this level, have an organizational structure of their own. |
| Register | level of formality of language |
| Genre- | refers to linguistic variation |
| Accomplishment verbs | are durative but have a well-defined end point: paint (a picture), make (a chair), build (a house), write (a novel), grow up. Achievement vebs also have a well-defined end point but have no duration: recognize, realize, lose, find, win the race. |
| Activity verbs | are durative and describe an ongoing action: run, walk, swim, live, study |
| Stative verbs | don not involve change but depict a stable situation: sensory perception (see, smell, hear, taste), mental perception (know, believe, think, understand, mean, doubt), possession (possess, have, own , belong), emotions, attitude, opinions (like, love, hate, dislike, want, desire, need, prefer, appreciate, doubt, feel wish), measurement (equal, measure, weigh, cost), relationship (contain, entail, consist of), description (be, resemble, sound, appear, seem, look) |
| Adjectives | describes or denotes the qualities of something. Commonly occur between a determiner and a noun, or after copular verbs. There are 2 types of adjectives; attributives that modify nouns (e.g. a good boy) and predicatives that complement nouns (e.g. He is good at soccer.). e.g. The old bucket sprang a leak.(attributive), He became angry at the very thought.(predicative) English adjectives have two inflectional morphemes for comparative and superlative: -er, -est (happy, happier, happiest |
| Adverbial subordinators | subordinating conjunctions, such as because and although, which join a subordinate clause to a main one |
| Adverbials | a group of words that denotes location, direction, time, place, manner, frequency, purpose, and reason: John runs (manner adverbials), John ran to the store (direction adverbial), John is at home (location), John eats lunch at noon (time), John eats lunch every day (frequency), John works to earn money (purpose), John works because he has to pay bills (reason) There are three syntactically possible types of adverbials: The boys left before their father could find them. (adverbial clause), The boys work very quickly.(adverbial phrase), and The boys eat lunch in the city.(prepositional phrase). There are three types of Adverbials: adverbial clause, adverbial phrase, prepositional phrase. The rule indicates that only one of the three choices must be selected. E.g. The boys left before the teacher could find them. (adverbial clause); The boys work very quickly. (adverbial phrase); The boys eat lunch in the park. (prepositional phrase) |
| Adverbs | modify verbs (play well), adjectives (very good), adverbs (very quickly), or whole sentences (Perhaps, he will come). Refers to direction, location, manner, time, and frequency. e.g. Jim pointed there(direction), Isable shops locally(location), She sang joyfully(manner), Soon Rachel will retire(time), We visit our parents occasionally(frequency) Adverbs are flexible in terms of their location in a sentence. Ch. 2 |
| Argument structure | a term used to describe the number of nouns or participants typically associated with a verb e.g. Milly jogs. (one argument), Lloyd drank the beer. (two arguments) Len game me a book. (three arguments) Bob put the vase on the table (three arguments) |
| Aspect | denotes whether or not the event has occurred earlier or is still in progress, English has two types of aspect: perfect and progressive aspects. The former consists of ‘have’ and ‘past participle’: have –en, and the latter consists of ‘be’ and ‘progressive suffix –ing’: be -ing e.g. I have been a teacher since 2000. (I began teaching in 2000 and am still a teacher.) e.g. Bob and Sue are living in Kentucky. (temporary, and the possibility of moving somewhere else) The core meaning of the perfect is “prior” and it is used in relation to some other point in time: present perfect refers to a time prior to now. Progress aspect portrays an even in a way that it is incomplete or some how limited. |
| Auxiliary verbs | traditionally called “helping verbs,” that co-occur with the main verb of in a verb phrase and express grammatical properties such as person, number, tense, aspect, and voice e.g. can, may, have, be Auxiliary is made up of either imperative mood (-imper) or tense (Tense) or a modal(T). The auxiliary of one-imperative English sentence must have either a modal or a tense marker (past or present), and it may have several optional components: phrasal modal (pm),and ht perfect (perf) and progressive (prog) aspects |
| Be Verbs | function as an auxiliary verb (serving tense and subject-verb agreement, the copular be behaves like an AUX and has operator function with regard to a formation of negation and question) & a copular (linking nonverbal predicates with their subjects). Have three distinct present-tense and two past-tense forms (am, is, are, was, were). e.g. Is he a teacher? I am happy. He is in class. |
| Closed Class | , minor word class, plays a more structural role in a sentence, normally no new words are added, consists of functions words such as auxiliary verbs, prepositions, pronouns, determiners, and conjunctions |
| Cohesion | linguistic mechanisms to establish order in texts. 5 linguistic mechanisms to have cohesion: i) reference (The boy wanted a new bike. One day, he…), ii) ellipsis (A: Who wrote the letter? B: Sam.), iii) substitution (I plan to enter college. If I do…), iv) conjunction (Peter needed some money. He, therefore, decided to get a job.), v) lexical cohesion (He was grateful for the money. He slipped the coins into his pocket and hurried down the street.) |
| Collective Nouns | a small number of nouns that refer to groups, take either singular or plural verb forms e.g. The family is together again. e.g. The family are all coming for the weekend. |
| Collocations | groups of words that occur together, words that go together in collocations still retain their lexical meaning, decipherable e.g. a raw deal, a king’s ransom, ask a question, statistically significant |
| Common Nouns | nouns referring to a kind of person, thing, or idea, divided into two subcategories – count nouns and noncount nouns e.g. food, clothes, radio |
| Complex sentence | contains a main clause and one or more subordinate or embedded clauses. e.g. I frequently call to Carol / because I want to stay in touch (a main clause + a subordinate clause). I argued / that it would be a mistake. (the embedded clause is included within the main clause) |
| Compound sentences | join 2 or more main clauses of equal grammatical importance. She read The Hungry Caterpillar and then the children asked questions. |
| Compounding | , putting together existing words to form a new lexical unit e.g. rain + coat = raincoat, rainbow, greenhouse, house arrest |
| Conjunctions | refer to words that join. There are coordinating conjunctions, such as and, but, and or, which join elements that are grammatically equal, and subordinating conjunctions, such as because and although, which join a subordinate clause to a main one. |
| Connotation | the emotional association with a word, cultural meaning Ch. 3E.g. Only, merely, just: denote :It is not more than X” e.g. It is only (neutral)/ merely (depreciative) / just (mildly) 50 cents. |
| Conversion | occurs when one part of speech is converted into another part of speech, without any derivational affixation e.g. I took the pits out of the dates -> I pitted the dates. I put butter on the bread -> I buttered the bread. |
| Coordination | the joining of two clauses of equal grammatical stature. e.g. He went to the party, but I stayed home. |
| Copular | : linking verbs. The copular verb links nonverbal predicates such as noun phrases, adjective phrases, and certain adverbials with their subjects. e.g. John is a teacher. The book is on the table. The weather seems good. Include be, which is most frequent and the semantically most neutral copula, and three types of copulas- perception copular (e.g. appear, seem, feel, look, smell, sound, taste), state copulas (e.g. lie, remain, rest, stand), change-of-state copulas (e.g. become, come, fall, get, go, come, grow, run, turn) |
| Correlatives | a pair of coordinating conjunctions used in ordered fashion. One is used immediately before each member of a pair of constituents. e.g. Either my sister or my brothers are going to do it. Neither … nor… |
| Denotation | : literal meaning, the dictionary definition or referential meaning of a word |
| Derivational affixes | affixes that combine with stem forms to derive new words, prefixes often change the meaning or suffixes usually change the part of speech of the word stem e.g. unimportant, washable |
| Descriptive grammar | A linguist’s description or model of the mental grammar, including the units, structures, and rules. An explicit statement of what speakers know about their language. Cf. prescriptive grammar, teaching grammar |
| Determiner | special class of words that limit (modify) the nouns that follow them such as articles (the, a, an), demonstratives (this, that, these, those), and possessive determiners (my, your, his, her, its, our, their). The determiner consists of three subcategories: predeterminers (all, both), core determiners (articles, demonstratives, possessives), postdeterminers (quantifiers like three, other) |
| Durative & Punctual Verbs | use of durative verbs implies that the action takes place over time (e.g. I sleep in the same room as my sister.) while punctual verbs mean that the action is momentary, having no duration. (e.g. kick, hit) |
| Embedding | when a dependent clause included within a main or independent clause e.g. I argued that it would be a mistake. |
| End Focus | tendency to place new information toward the end of a clause |
| Ergative or change-of-state verbs | verbs that occur both transitively and intransitively with little or no change of meaning. The direct object in the transitive sentence is the same as the subject of the verb in the intransitive one. e.g. John opened the door. The door opened. |
| Foregrounding and Backgrounding | foreground carries story; background gives the setting, add extra information, switches tense often (to continuous or present) The past tense is used for the foregrounded information, the present tense for the backround. e.g. Yesterday I went to the market.(Foregrounding) It has lots of fruit that I like.(Backrounding) I bought several different kinds of apples. (Foregrounding) I also found that plums were in season, (Foregrounding)… |
| Genre | refers to linguistion variation due to communicative purposes of language – e.g. recipe in cookbook vs. lecture on field methodology vs. Instructions from your doctor vs. song on foods of Honduras |
| Given/New Information | Given information is that which is assumed by the writer to be known by the reader while new information is “newsworthy” – not something the writer can take for granted that the reader knows. A common pattern of development in written texts is to introduce new information first in the rheme of one clause and then treat it as given information in the theme of a subsequent clause. |
| Grammaring | a skill |
| Historical Present | used to refer to certain past events in narration. “So he stands up in the boat and waves his arms to catch our attention.” It used the present tense to relate a past event and is very common in oral narrative. Acceptable in speaking or creative writing, but not in composition. |
| Homography | words that are spelled identically e.g. wind blowing vs wind the clock |
| Homophony | words that are pronounced the same e.g. there, their, they’re |
| Idioms | fixed expressions that have meanings that are difficult to retrieve from the lexical items themselves e.g. kick the bucket |
| Inflectional morpheme | a morpheme that simply adds some element of meaning required by the grammar and changes the form of a word without changing its basic part of speech. English has 8 inflectional morphemes. e.g. –ing, -ed, -en, -s(third person present singular or noun plural), ‘s, -er, -est |
| Intensifiers | adverbs that heightens or lowers the intensity of meaning of adjectives or adverbs. e.g. very good, really very nice clothes very quickly. Advl P (intens) n ADV: Adveribial contains an obligatory adverb, ADV, optionally preceded by one or more intensifiers (very much, very very much, so, really) |
| Lexical Phrases | groups of words that co-occur and serve specific functions (the difference from collocations), lexical units in which the grammatical form and lexical content are wholly or largely fixed but which are not true idioms e.g. by the way(serve the function of enabling the speaker to shift the topic in discourse), at any rate, as far as I know (can tell) |
| Lexicogrammar | the integrated system of grammar and lexicon, Lexicogrammar is a term used to refer to the study of vocabulary and structure as a system of meanings accompanied by forms through which meanings can be realized. Vocabulary and grammar come in one bag. It is better to conceive of grammar and lexicon as opposite poles of one continuum. That is, lexicon and grammar come along together. |
| Lexicon | a mental inventory of words and productive word derivational processes |
| Major Word Classes | are termed “major” because carry most of the content or meaning of a sentence, e.g. nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs. Also, called open class because new words are added as they are coined |
| Markedness: | exceptions from very typical, predictable |
| Minor Word Classes | plays a more structural role in a sentence, also called closed class in that normally no new words are added e.g. auxiliary verbs, prepositions, pronouns, determiners, and conjunctions |
| Modal | : tenseless auxiliaries that take no subject-verb agreement and no infinitive to before the following verb e.g. can, shall, will, may, could, should, would, might, must 1) Modals do not inflect: modal auxiliaries are distinguished from other auxiliaries verbs (be, have, do) as well as from ordinary verbs by their lack of these and their lack of subject-verb agreement. e.g. *He cans do it. 2) Modals directly precede a verb without the intervening infinitive to. e.g. I can go. vs I want to go |
| Modal-like forms | had better, had best (advice), would rather, would prefer (preference), would like (desire) |
| Mood | conveys the speaker’s attitude toward the factual content of the sentence. English sentences display three main moods – declarative, interrogative, and imperative – and two minor moods – exclamatory and subjunctive. e.g. Today is Friday.(declarative), What day is it today?(interrogative), Close the window, please.(imperative), What a beautiful day it is!(exclamatory), I wish I were going with you.(subjunctive) |
| Negative Particles | no, not, never, nor, neither, etc. Different languages tend to place their negative particles in different positions |
| Nonintervention Principle | the speaker or writer should ignore all plural forms in intervening prepositional phrases and expressions in s-v agreement e.g. I, together with my parents, am going to New York this spring break. |
| Nouns | Semantically a noun is the name of a person, place, thing, or idea. (e.g. Sam, Kentucky, turkey, democracy) Functionally, nouns serve as subjects of verbs, direct objects of verbs, subject noun predicates, object noun predicates, indirect objects of verbs, appositives, objects of prepositions, vocatives |
| Open Class | also called, major word classes, new words are added as they are coined, carry most of the content or meaning of a sentence, consists of content words such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs |
| Phrasal Modals | syntactically behave much more like ordinary verbs; apply the subject-verb agreement rule and require that a to infinitive precede the main verb. E.g. be able to, is going to, is about to, have, have got to, used to, is allowed to, is permitted to. However, they are distinguished from lexical verbs in speech in that they have assimilated with to (pronounce it as if it were part of a single word with the verb: gotta, gonna, hasta, hafta; more difficult to put an adverb between the verb and the to. E.g. ? I have often to study. / I try often to study. |
| Phrase & Clause | A phrase is a group of words that function together. e.g. The impatient customer (noun phrase)/ was acting very cranky (verb phrase). A clause is a group of words that contains a subject-verb relationship. Clauses that stand independently as a sentence is called independent, or main clauses; clauses that cannot are called dependent, or subordinate clauses. e.g. Although they live far apart(subordinate clause), they are still friends(independent clause |
| Phrase structure rules | principles of grammar that specify the constituency of syntactic categories and of phrase structure trees, e.g. VP -> V NP |
| Phrase structure tree | A tree diagram with syntactic categories at each node that reveals both the linear and hierarchical structure of phrases and sentences |
| Polysemy | a word with the same part of speech has a range of meanings e.g. He lives(=resides) in Kentucky vs He lives(=is alive). She is too soft with the students. vs This is a very soft pencil. |
| Pragmatics | deals with issues concerning the choices that users of a particular language make when using the forms of language in communication |
| Predicates | a predicate is the portion of a clause, excluding the subject, which expresses something about the subject. e.g. The book is on the table. |
| Prepositions | connect words to other parts of a sentence and have a close relationship with the word that follows, which is usually a noun. Usually, one word (at, from, to) but sometimes can be two or three (out of, on top of) Prepositions protytypically signal spatial relationships, but certain prepositions can signal the grammatical category of case, which depicts the role relationship between words: e.g. Marge gave a donation to charity. (dative case), The charity received a donation from Marge. (ablative case) |
| Pronouns | refer to or replace nouns and noun phrases within a text (“my aunt, she ...”) or as direct reference to an outside situation (“What was that?”). There are different types of pronouns: subject (I, you, she), object (me, you, him), reflexive (myself, himself, herself), possessive (mine, yours, his) and demonstrative (this, that, these). Number, person, and gender distinguish the forms. |
| Proper Nouns | names for unique individuals or places e.g. Sam, Kentucky, |
| Prototypicality | some of the features that are more central for membership in the class than others. e.g. an example of a prototypical verb of speech could be say, tell, speak, talk rather than shout or whisper |
| Proximity Rule | agreement should occur with the subject noun nearest to the verb. E.g. Either my sister or my brothers are going to do it. |
| Register | level of formality of language |
| Rheme | the remainder of the message in the clause that is followed by theme, The predicate in English is the rheme |
| Semantic Field | a cluster of words that cover a particular semantic area and can best be understood in relation to one another. E.g. beautiful, pretty, attractive, good-looking, handsome / The university students helped the local elementary school pupils with their homework. |
| Semantics | what a particular grammar structure means |
| Sentence Modifiers (sm) | sentence adverbs that modify an entire sentence such as “perhaps”, “maybe”, “yes”, and “no”. |
| Sentence | Sentence is made up of either subject and predicate or a sentence, optionally preceded by one or more sentence modifiers. E.g. Perhaps, he will get here by noon. |
| Simple sentence | contains at least one subject and one verb and can stand alone as an independent clause (e.g. they are still friends”) |
| Subject prominent language | the sentence is organized by grammatical word order (subject-verb-object). Typically mark subject-ver agreement. e.g. English, Spanish, Arabic |
| Subordination | joining a dependent (subordinate) clause to a main (independent) clause. |
| Syntax | how a particular grammar structure is constructed |
| Tense | refer to the time of an event’s occurrence. In the structural sense, English has types of tense marker: present and past. That is, English verbs are inflected for present and past, but not inflected for future. Still, English does have a number of ways to express the future, including will, be going to, be about to, simple present, and present progressive |
| Theme | provides the point of departure of the message, provides the framework for interpreting what follows. The subject in English is the theme. |
| Topic prominent language | organizes its syntax so that sentences have a topic-comment (or theme-rheme) structure, where the topic is the thing being talked about (predicated) and the comment is what is said about the topic. This structure is independent of the syntactic ordering of subject, verb, and object, never mark s-v agreement. e.g. Janpanese, Cantonese, Korean, Vietnamese |
| Verbs | Semantically, a verb is a word that denotes an action or state of being. Syntactially, verbs follow nouns and may be followed by adjectives, adverbs. Four inflections can be used with English verbs: -s of third person singular present, -ed of past tense verbs, -en of the past participle, -ing of the present progressive. Verbs carry tense and aspect. 6 types of verbs: intransitive verbs (Mavis smokes.), transitive verbs (I like music.), ditransitive verbs (I handed Max the documents.), linking verbs (We are teachers.), complex transitive verbs (They considered the project a waste of time.), prepositional verbs (Steve glanced at the headlines.) |
