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a class of word which is generally used to describe or modify a noun, such as cat; e.g. a sleepy small furry brown cat.

a class of word which is used to describe or modify a verb; for example, the verb purr can be modified by the adverb loudly: the cat purred loudly. Adverbs can also modify adjectives; the adverb absolutely can modify the adjective fabulous, in the phrase Absolutely Fabulous.

grammatical information contained in the verb phrase about the duration of an action; for example I was walking in contrast to I walked.

 a part of the verb phrase, separate from the lexical verb, which carries information about tense, mood and aspect. See page 67.

 a type of morpheme (such as -ed or -tion) which cannot stand on its own but must be attached to a free morpheme (such as pollute, to produce polluted, or pollution). See also derivational morpheme and inflectional morpheme.

a term which can be used generally to mean a group of similar things. See word class for a specific linguistic use of this term

a grammatical unit containing a main verb. A sentence has to contain at least one clause. There are various kinds of clauses. A main clause is one which contains a main

A clause is defined as an expression which contains (at least) a subject and a predicate, and which may contain other types of expression as well (e.g. one or more complements and/or adjuncts). In most cases, the predicate in a clause is a lexical main verb, so that there will be as many different clauses in a sentence as there are different lexical verbs.

This is a term used to denote a specific grammatical function. A complement is an expression which is directly merged with a head word, thereby projecting the head into a larger structure of essentially the same kind. In ‘close the door’, the door is the complement of the verb close; in ‘after dinner’, dinner is the complement of the preposition after; in ‘good at physics’, at physics is the complement of the adjective good; in ‘loss of face’, of face is the complement of the noun loss. As these examples illustrate, complements typically follow their heads in English. Thus, a complement has a close morphological, syntactic and semantic relation to its head.

1. A term used as a classification of the force (i.e. semantic type) of a clause which is used to make a statement (as opposed to an interrogative, exclamative or imperative clause).

1. A lexical entry is an entry for a particular word in a dictionary (and hence by extension refers to the set of information about the word given in the relevant dictionary entry).

and can stand on its own as a sentence. A subordinate clause needs to be attached to a main clause to be grammatically complete. One kind of subordinate clause, the relative clause, usually starts with a relative pronoun such as who, which, that, where.

1. An utterance which is not a complete sentence (in the sense that it does not constitute a clause). So, a phrase such as ‘A new dress’ used in reply to a question such as ‘What did you buy?’ would be a sentence-fragment (By contrast, a sentence such as ‘I bought a new dress’ would not be a sentencefragment, since it contains a complete clause.)

Expressions such as subject, specifier, complement, object, head and adjunct are said to denote the grammatical function which a particular expression fulfils in a particular structure (which in turn relates to the position  which it occupies and certain of its grammatical properties – e.g. case and agreement properties).

When used in conjunction with the progressive aspect auxiliary be, verb forms ending in -ing are progressive participles; in other uses they generally function as gerunds. In particular, -ing verb forms are gerunds when they can be used as subjects, or as complements of verbs or prepositions, and when (in literary styles) they can have a genitive subject  like my. Thus writing is a gerund (verb form) in a sentence such as ‘She was annoyed at [my writing to her mother]’, since the bracketed gerund structure is used as the complement of the preposition at, and has a genitive subject my.

The infinitive form of a verb is the (uninflected) form which is used (inter alia) when the verb is the complement of a modal auxiliary like can, or of the infinitive particle to. Accordingly, the italicised verbs are infinitive forms in sentences like ‘He can speak French’, and ‘He’s trying to learn French.’ An infinitive clause is a clause which contains a verb in the infinitive form. Hence, the bracketed clauses are infinitive clauses in: ‘He is trying [to help her]’, and ‘Why not let [him help her]?’ (In both examples, help is an infinitive verb form, and to when used with an infinitive complement is said to be an infinitive particle.) Since clauses are analysed as phrases within the  framework used here, the term infinitive phrase can be used interchangeably with infinitive clause, to denote a TP projection headed by the infinitive particle to (or by a null counterpart of the infinitive particle to).

1. In an expression such as tall men, it is traditionally said that the adjective tall modifies (i.e. attributes some property to) or is a modifier of the noun men. Likewise, in a sentence such as ‘Eat slowly!’, the adverb slowly is said to modify the verb eat (in the sense that it describes the manner in which the speaker is being told to eat).

nouns are hard to define. You may have heard them described as ‘names’ (e.g.

Shân, Joanna, language, or cat), but they can also refer to abstract concepts such as

emptiness, joy, and age. However, many words more usually thought of as verbs, or

even as adverbs or adjectives, can be used as nouns, and it is its syntactic behaviour

which makes a word a noun rather than anything else. Nouns can usually be singular or

plural, they can be modified by adjectives and they can be preceded by determiners.

For example, in the sentence ‘Have you read a good book?’, a is a determiner, good is an

adjective, and book is a noun. Similarly, in the sentence ‘Did you have a good swim?’,

swim is a noun, although in a different sentence it could be used as a verb (‘I swim

every Monday’).

a grammatical unit built around a noun. For example, car, the car, and the

red car are all noun phrases. See page 64.

a constituent of a clause, which is part of the predicate and follows the main

verb. In the sentence I ate the chocolate bar, I is the subject, ate is the main verb, and

the chocolate bar is the object.

For example, I hate eating bananas is a sentence: I is the subject, hateeating bananas is the predicate, and hate is the main verb. In contrast, eating bananas isnot a sentence because it does not contain a main, finite verb.

a class of words which include items such as in, on, over, through, out, etc.

pronouns pronouns are a word class which can replace nouns in a sentence. Examples

include she, I, you, them, him, its, theirs.

a grammatical unit consisting of at least one main clause, with a subject and

 refers to subject, verb, and object; the usual order, or arrangement, of grammatical

elements in English.

 a grammatical unit containing either a finite or non-finite verb.