LG352 Glossary of terms
(Page references are to the Booklet for the undergraduate version of these modules. Please
ignore them!)
absolute: use of a transitive verb without a direct object (e.g. I have eaten)
accomplishment: an action or process that has a ‘culmination’ which marks the
completion of the event; e.g. write an essay
non-accomplishments are activities or processes that can, in principle, go on for
ever; e.g. dance, laugh, increase.
active: see passive
accusative: the case which is assigned in English to the direct object of a verb or
preposition, also in some cases to the subject of an infinitive or gerund; see also
Case.
accusative+infinitive (Acc+inf): constructions in which the subject of the infinitive has
accusative case; I consider him to be intelligent (also called ECM constructions);
see also ‘for…to’ infinitives.
adjunction: a means of combining two phrases XP and YP, so that when XP is adjoined to
YP the result is a larger phrase of the category YP. This is the configuration we have
assumed for modifiers; e.g. adjunction of the AdvP very quickly to the VP leave the
room gives
[VP [AdvP very quickly] [VP left the room]] (left adjunction) or
[VP [VP left the room] [AdvP very quickly]] (right adjunction)
adnominal use of adjective: when the adjective is used as a modifier of the noun, typically
between the determiner and the noun in English; e.g. the black dog. The term
‘attributive’ is also sometimes used for this use. (contrast predicative)
alternation: a pattern of variation in the syntactic properties of verbs which is common to
a significant number of verbs of a particular type; e.g.
dative alternation: I gave the book to John vs I gave John the book
locative alternation: I loaded hay on the cart vs I loaded the cart with hay
causative/inchoative alternation: I opened the door vs the door opened
argument: a phrase which denotes a participant in a relation; e.g. the verb put in John put
the book on the table this morning has 3 arguments (John, the book and the table),
but this morning is not an argument of put.
aspect: the way in which a situation is distributed over time (as opposed to tense which
situates a situation in time relative to the speech time). This is partly determined by
the meaning of the verb (lexical aspect): states vs events; accomplishments vs
non-accomplishments (pp11-12). Further aspectual distinctions are (pp19-21):
punctual: a single event is presented as occurring at a point in time, without regard
to its internal structure.
progressive: the event is seen as being in progress at a point in time (the reference
time)
habitual: does not refer to a single event, but repetition of an event over a
protracted period of time. This is the normal interpretation of the simple present
with non-stative verbs (e.g. John writes poems); in the past, this interpretation can
be signalled by used to (or would when there is an expression of frequency which
quantifies over reference-times: He would often smile at me)
auxiliary: traditionally, a verb which accompanies a non-finite form of another verb to
express notions like tense, aspect or modality. In English, auxiliaries have
distinctive syntactic properties; e.g. they can be negated directly by not (or n’t) and
can be inverted with the subject in questions (pp13-16). It is hypothesised that
auxiliary verbs raise to the T position, whereas lexical verbs remain in their VP.
These properties are shared by copular uses of be and, for some British speakers,
‘possessive’ have.
backshifting: use of a past tense form in a subordinate clause which is triggered by the past
tense of the main clause; e.g. in reported speech: Mary said that she liked John.
(p22)
Case: inflection on nouns, determiners etc. in some languages (like Latin, German,
Russian) that indicates the syntactic function of the DP. In English, Case is only
visible with pronouns (he vs him); however, it is assumed that all DPs (other than
‘adverbial’ DPs) must be assigned a Case feature. The basic positions in which Case
is assigned are:Nominative: subject of a finite clause
Accusative: object of a transitive verb or preposition
clause: informal term for a part of a sentence which has the same form as a simple
sentence. The clearest cases are finite clauses, which can be used as sentences in
their own right: e.g. John thought that [Bill had left]. However, infinitival and
gerundive expressions are also considered to be clauses: John tried [to read the
book], John remembered [closing the door].
cognate object: looks like a direct object, but the verb is intransitive!: He died a sudden
death. It must contain the ‘event’ noun corresponding to the verb, and is usually
accompanied by an adjective which is interpreted in the same way as an adverb
modifying the verb (cf. He died suddenly).
complement: a phrase (other than the subject) which denotes a participant in the relation
described by the head. Usually follows the head in English (except in compounds
like lorry-driver). In the X' framework, it combines with the head X to form X'.
complementiser: a grammatical word that introduces a complement clause (that, whether,
if and with an infinitive for). Also the position to which the auxiliary raises in
inverted constructions (e.g. questions).
control: the relation between PRO and the element in the main clause that it refers to; e.g.
in [John hopes [PRO to win]], it provides a formal way of capturing the intuition
that John is the ‘understood’ subject of both hope and win. (see PRO)
copular: subclass of verbs that express a relation between an entity and a property. The
clearest example is be in examples like He is happy or He is a teacher. Other
copular verbs include become, remain and some uses of grow, seem and get.
count / non-count: a distinction between common nouns which affects the types of
determiner they can occur with (p. 39). Non-count (or ‘mass’) nouns can occur in
the singular without an overt determiner. It is partly a semantic distinction in that
count nouns normally denote ‘things’ whereas non-count nouns denote
‘substances’, but this meaning difference is not always obvious, particularly with
abstract nouns, and there are many cross-linguistic differences; e.g. advice is noncount but its French counterpart conseil is count. Many nouns can be used as both
count and non-count nouns, depending on what they refer to.
definite / indefinite: a semantic distinction expressed by the determiner.
definite: the hearer is expected to identify the referent uniquely
indefinite: the hearer is not expected to identify the referent; the referent is a new
entity introduced into the discourse (pp45-46)
determiner (D): item which determines the way in which the referent is picked out from
the class of items denoted by the noun. In the framework assumed in this module
(the DP hypothesis), the determiner is the head of what is traditionally called a
‘noun phrase’: i.e. the book is a DP. (pp42-44)
Pronouns can be analysed as determiners which occur without a following noun.
do-support: insertion of the auxiliary do in constructions which require an auxiliary for
syntactic reasons: e.g. Did he leave?, Yes, he did, He did not leave (p14)
distributive: a type of universal quantification in which there is a separate event for every
member of the quantified set: e.g. The teacher talked to each of the students denotes
several events of ‘talking’ (distributive interpretation) whereas The teacher talked to
all of the students allows a non-distributive interpretation where there is only one
event involving all of the students. I have also used this term for certain types of
habitual sentences which involve quantification over events (Whenever I see Mary,
she smiles) (p21)
ECM (Exceptional Case-marking): assignment of accusative case to the subject of an
infinitive by a transitive verb in the higher clause: e.g. I consider [him to be clever]
(see Accusative+infinitive) (pp29-30)
ellipsis: omission of a phrase whose content can be recovered from the context; e.g. VPellipsis I thought he would resign and he has (= … and he has resigned)
epistemic: relating to the beliefs of the speaker or hearer. Epistemic modals are those
which convey the degree to which the speaker is committed to the truth of the
proposition; e.g. He may be working ‘It is possible that he is working’ (in contrast
to root modality: You may leave ‘You are permitted to leave’)
epithet adjective: adjective which is used to express an attitude towards the referent of the
noun; e.g. dratted, poor (when expressing sympathy).
extension(al): the extension of a word is the set of things that the word can refer to; e.g. the
extension of dog is the set of dogs, the extension of black is the set of black things.
An extensional approach to meaning is one which analyses meaning in terms of the
sets of things to which words denote. (contrast intension(al))
event: a situation which changes over time (opposite of state)
finite: the form of the verb which is marked for tense (past or present). By extension, a
finite clause is a clause whose verb is finite; e.g. [I think [that he has left]] consists
of two finite clauses.
focus: the part of the sentence that expresses the most important information, typically new
information; e.g. in passive sentences the by-phrase (when present) is usually the
focus ‘Hamlet’ was written by Shakespeare.
‘for…to’ infinitive: infinitival clause introduced by the complementiser for, which assigns
accusative Case to the subject of the infinitive: I arranged for him to meet me
generic reference: where a DP refers not to a particular entity but to the whole class
described by the noun. It can be expressed in English by:
No determiner (with plural count noun or singular non-count noun): I like
chips/bread, Lions are carnivores, Petrol is expensive
the + singular count noun: The lion is a carnivore (p47)
I have also used this term (loosely) for habitual sentences of the type Mary teaches
French where teaches French denotes an activity which is typical or characteristic
of Mary. (p21)
gerund: often misleadingly defined as the ‘noun form of the verb’; more accurately it is the
non-finite form of the verb which is marked by the suffix –ing (as in I like watching
TV) it is usually distinguished from the present-participle used to form the
progressive (I am watching TV). True gerunds function like verbs (they can be
modified by adverbs and take direct objects: I regret accidentally destroying the
evidence). So called ‘nominal gerunds’ behave like nouns and can be analysed as
‘event’ nouns which happen to have the form V+ing (I regret the accidental
destroying of the evidence – cf … the accidental destruction of …). (pp63-64)
gradable / non gradable: a distinction which applies primarily to adjectives and adverbs.
Gradable adjectives/adverbs describe a property which can hold to different degrees
and can be modified by degree adverbs like very, rather, etc.
head: the item in a phrase whose category determines the category of the entire phrase; e.g.
the verb is the head of VP.
hyponymy: a semantic relation between words which is based on subsets: X is a hyponym
of Y if everything that can be described by X is also a member of the set described
by Y, but not vice-versa; e.g. sparrow is a hyponym of bird.
impersonal construction: sentence whose subject is an item which does not refer to
anything: It is easy to solve this problem, There is a cat in the garden
inchoative: verb (or use of a verb) which describes a change of state without reference to a
cause: The plant died, The door opened (see also alternation).
infinitive: the uninflected, tenseless form of the verb, typically introduced by to. Cases
without to are often called ‘bare infinitives’ (e.g. He might leave, We let him leave).
intension(al): Roughly, the intension of a word is its definition in terms of more primitive
concepts. An intensional approach to meaning is one which decomposes the
meaning of words or phrases by means of features or some form of paraphrase; e.g.
man = [+male, +human, +adult] or, informally, teacher = ‘someone who teaches’
(contrast extension(al))
intensional adjective: adjective which modifies some part of the meaning of a noun, as in
beautiful writer with the interpretation ‘someone who writes beautifully’.
intransitive: a verb which doesn’t take a direct object
inversion: informal term for reversal of the normal subject-verb order, e.g. in questions (Is
he here?).
middle construction: a bit like passive constructions in that the subject denotes something
that would normally be the object of the verb, but the verb is in the active form:
This shirt washes in cold water (cf. This shirt can/should be washed in cold water).
They resemble the inchoative use of verbs which can also be used transitively (The
door opened), but can be distinguished by the following properties:
(i) they involve the participation of an implicit Agent (cf One can wash this shirt…)
(ii) they usually have a modal or habitual interpretation; i.e. they do not refer to a
single specific event.
modifier: a word or phrase which modifies another word or phrase by restricting the set of
things it refers to or by adding further information about the referent (see
adjunction; contrast complement)
negative polarity item: a word or phrase which can only occur in negative sentences and
in a few other contexts such as questions and if-clauses; e.g. any in I don’t have any
money; Do you have any money?; If I had any money, I would lend it to you vs *I
have any money. Many idioms show this property: He won’t lift a finger to help us
vs *He will lift a finger to help us (possible only with a literal interpretation)
nominative: the case which is assigned to the subject of a finite clause
number: the distinction between singular and plural
object: traditional term for the complement of a verb (usually a DP). Direct object: DP not
introduced by a preposition; Indirect object: DP introduced by a preposition
participle: inflected form of the verb used in conjunction with an auxiliary to encode voice
or aspect:
past-participle: with have expresses present-perfect, pluperfect etc. (often this is
identical to the simple past form, He danced vs He has danced, but is distinct with
many irregular verbs (saw vs seen, broke vs broken). With be, it expresses passive
voice: The money was stolen (by the janitor)
present-participle: V+ing, used with be to express progressive aspect.
particle: a term often used rather loosely for short words with a grammatical function
whose syntactic category is unclear!
partitive constructions: define an indefinite sub-part of a definite set; e.g. many of those
books (contrast with quantitative constructions: many books)
passive: construction with be (or get) and the past-participle in which the arguments of the
verb are reorganised in the following way:
Subject of active sentence is suppressed or introduced by by
Direct object of active sentence becomes subject of passive
John sent the letter (active sentence)
The letter was sent (by John) (passive sentence)
In English, an indirect object (object of a preposition) can become the subject of a
passive under certain conditions (‘prepositional passive’):
John was talked to (by the teacher)
phrasal verb: traditional term for cases like look up consisting of a verb and a ‘particle’
which can follow either the verb or the direct object: He looked up the number or
He looked the number up. Arguably, the ‘particle’ is a preposition which lacks a
complement and, in this case, can be placed next to the verb (cf. non-idiomatic
cases like He put the book down vs He put down the book.
pied-piping: a process where additional material is dragged along when an item moves;
e.g. in a question like Who did you talk to? only the wh-item has been moved, but
an alternative (in more formal style) is to ‘pied-pipe’ the preposition along with it:
To whom did you talk?
polarity: the opposition between negative and affirmative
pluperfect: expressed by the past tense of have with the past participle (He had already
left); locates the event before a reference time in the past (E→R, R→S)
predicate: in traditional grammar, the predicate is the part of the sentence which says
something about the subject entity (corresponding roughly to VP). Also used as a
cover term for words or phrases which describe a property of an entity or a relation
between entities (e.g. verbs are ‘predicates’ in this sense, but so are adjectives,
prepositions and even common nouns).
predicative use of adjectives: when the adjective (or AP) occurs as the complement of a
copular verb: He is / seems / became rich. cf adnominal.
present-perfect: expressed by the present tense of have with the past participle (He has
already left); presenting a past event from the perspective of the present (E→R,
R=S)
PRO: the term / symbol used to represent the implicit subject of an infinitive or gerund.
Typically it is understood as referring to the same entity as some DP in the main
clause (e.g. Johni tried [PROi to leave]) – see control. Sometimes it can refer to
something implicit in the meaning of the main clause, e.g. the Experiencer of
‘pleasure’ in It was pleasant to see you; sometimes it can have ‘arbitrary reference’
determined by context; e.g. ‘people in general’ or ‘whoever hunts foxes’ in It’s
cruel to hunt foxes but the addressee or some other particular person who is being
talked about in It was stupid to do that. Unlike overt DPs, PRO does not require
Case.
progressive aspect: formed by be with the present-participle; presents an event as being in
progress at a particular reference-time.
projection: see X-bar syntax
punctual aspect: (sometimes called ‘perfective aspect’) event is presented as a complete
whole, without regard to its internal structure.
quantifier: subclass of determiners, which indicate quantity: some, many, several, few, and
numerals. Universal quantifiers: all, both, each, every
quantifier-floating: process which allows some universal quantifiers to be
detached from the phrase which they quantify: The students have all passed the
exam (cf. All the students have passed the exam)
quantitative construction: see partitive
R (reference time): a notional point in relation to which event times can be defined; may
be identical to the event time or the speech time, or distinct from both; e.g. the
pluperfect (John had left) indicates that the event took place before some reference
time, which in turn precedes the moment of speech.
referent: the entity that a word or phrase refers to.
relative clause: a clause which modifies a noun (or NP)
root modal: modal which indicates a disposition to bring about or prevent an event.
deontic (permission/obligation): You may/must leave now
dynamic (or conative) (ability/willingness): He can swim; I will help you
(contrast epistemic modality)
S (‘speech time’ or ‘moment of speech’): the time at which a sentence is uttered (i.e.
‘now’)
subject: the argument of a verb which is not a complement. More concretely, the phrase
which precedes the verb (in declarative sentences), determines the agreement
inflection of the verb and occurs in the Nominative form when it is a pronoun. By
extension, this term is sometimes used for arguments of other categories (e.g. event
nouns) which have a similar structural position and interpretation (e.g. the enemy’s
destruction of the city by analogy with The enemy destroyed the city).
subject-raising: process which raises the subject of an infinitive to the subject position in
the higher clause, as in John seems to like Mary, where John is interpreted as if it
was the subject of like but has no semantic relation to the verb seem in the main
clause (cf. It seems that John likes Mary). (contrast control)
specific / non-specific reference: a distinction which applies mainly to indefinite DPs.
Specific: the speaker has a particular referent in mind even though the speaker is not
expected to identify it: John bought a cat.
Non-specific: the speaker has no particular referent in mind and, indeed, there may
be nothing in the real world that satisfies the description: John wants to buy a cat / a
unicorn.
specificational adjective: adjectives which have a similar function to determiners.
Identifying the referent: same, other, latter, last, next, and ordinal numerals (first,
second, etc.)
Expressing quantity: numerous, single, sole, many, several, and cardinal numerals
(one, two, etc.)
Many of these adjectives can also function as determiners. (pp48-49)
Specifier: probably best thought of as the name of a structural position rather than a
grammatical function. The Specifier combines with an X' to form an XP
[XP Spec X']. Informally it is the position to the left of the Head which completes
the phrase. Not all categories allow or require a Specifier. The Specifier positions
we have assumed in this module are:
Specifier of TP: surface position of the subject (p7)
Specifier of VP: underlying position of the subject (in an active sentence) (p7)
Specifier of DP: position of a ‘possessive’ DP (where D is –’s ) (p43)
Specifier of NP: underlying position of the ‘subject’ of a noun (p43)
Specifier of CP: the position to which wh- items raise (in relative clauses and
questions) (p60)
state: a situation which doesn’t change over time. A stative verb is a verb that denotes a
state (e.g. exist, know, resemble); typically they do not allow the progressive form.
subordinating conjunction: traditional term for words which introduce a subordinate
clause: because, while, since, before, after, etc. These can be analysed as
prepositions which take a clause as their complement. This traditional category also
includes complementisers: that, whether, if and (with an infinitive) for.
tense: grammatical means of situating an event or state in time, usually by the inflection of
the verb, though some would argue that will is a future tense marker even though it
is not an inflection.
theta-role: for the purposes of this module, theta-roles are simply rough labels which
enable us to characterise semantic relations independently of grammatical relations;
e.g. Agent (the performer of the action), Experiencer, Goal (place to which
something moves), etc.
topic: phrase which denotes the person, thing, etc. being talked about. Often, but by no
means always, this corresponds to the subject of the sentence; e.g. Shakespeare
wrote ‘Hamlet’ is most likely a statement about Shakespeare, but ‘Hamlet’ was
written by Shakespeare is a statement about ‘Hamlet’ – but this can be changed by
stress, e.g. SHAKESPEARE wrote ‘Hamlet’. Topicalisation: a process which places
a phrase at the beginning of the sentence, where it can be interpreted as a topic:
‘Hamlet’ I haven’t read;
‘tough’ construction: a construction with certain adjectives and nouns in which the subject
is interpreted as the object of the infinitival complement: John is easy to please, this
film is fun to watch (so-called because tough is one of the adjectives that allows this
construction).
transitive: a verb which takes a direct object
TSP (Temporal Sequence Principle): a principle which governs the order of referencetimes (R) within a narrative: R can remain static, or move forward in time, but
cannot be shifted back in time (p.21)
voice: a traditional term for the distinction between active and passive constructions; more
generally for systematic differences in the way in which arguments are expressed
by means of grammatical relations such as subject and object. Middle constructions
are considered by some linguists to constitute a further category of voice.
wh-item: words such as relative pronouns and interrogative pronouns, most of which begin
with wh- in English; e.g. what, which, who, when, where, … but also how.
wh-movement; the process which moves a wh-item or a phrase containing it to the
beginning of the clause (more precisely to the Specifier of the CP (Complementiser
Phrase)): What did you see?, the book which I read
X-bar syntax: an approach to syntactic structure which assumes that phrases are built up
from heads by a series of ‘projections’ according to general principles which are
(largely) independent of the category of the head (noun, verb, adjective etc.). In this
module, we have assumed the following pattern:
The head X combines with its complement (if there is one) to form an intermediate
projection, X-bar (written X' ): [X' X + (complement)]
X' combines (potentially) with a Specifier to form the maximal projection XP, or
‘complete phrase’, [XP (Specifier) + X']. (see also adjunction)