Glossary

The surest way to identify adjectives is by the ways they can be used:

• before a noun, to make the noun’s meaning more specific (i.e. to modify the noun), or
• after the verb be, as its complement.

• The pupils did some really good work. [adjective used before a noun, to modify it]
• Their work was good. [adjective used after the verb be, as its complement]

Adjectives cannot be modified by other adjectives. This distinguishes them from nouns, which can be.

Adjectives are sometimes called “describing words” because they pick out single characteristics such as size or colour. This is often true, but it doesn’t help to distinguish adjectives from other word classes, because verbs, nouns and adverbs can do the same thing.

Not adjectives:

• The lamp glowed. [verb]
• It was such a bright red! [noun]
• He spoke loudly. [adverb]
• It was a French grammar book. [noun]

The surest way to identify adverbs is by the ways they can be used: they can modify a verb, an adjective, another adverb or even a whole clause.

• Usha soon started snoring loudly. [adverbs modifying the verbs started and snoring]
• That match was really exciting! [adverb modifying the adjective exciting]
• We don't get to play games very often. [adverb modifying the other adverb, often]
• Fortunately, it didn't rain. [adverb modifying the whole clause 'it didn't rain' by commenting on it]

Adverbs are sometimes said to describe manner or time. This is often true, but it doesn't help to distinguish adverbs from other word classes that can be used as adverbials, such as preposition phrases, noun phrases and subordinate clauses.

Not adverbs:

• Usha went up the stairs. [preposition phrase as adverbial: modifies leaves]
• She finished her work this evening. [noun phrase used as adverbial]
• She finished when the teacher got cross. [subordinate clause used as adverbial]

An Adverbial is a word or phrase that is used, like an adverb, to modify a verb or clause. Of course, adverbs can be used as Adverbials, but many other types of words and phrases can be used this way, including preposition phrases and subordinate clauses.

• The bus leaves in five minutes. [preposition phrase as adverbial: modifies leaves]
• She promised to see him last night. [noun phrase modifying either promised or see, according to the intended meaning]
• She worked until she had finished. [subordinate clause as adverbial]

Apostrophes have two completely different uses:

• showing the place of missing letters (e.g. I'm for I am)
• marking possessives (e.g. Hannah's mother)

• I'm going out and I won't be long. [showing missing letters]
• Hannah's mother went to town in Justin's car. [marking possessives]

A text has cohesion if it is clear how the meanings of its parts fit together. Cohesive devices can help to do this.

In the example, there are repeated references to the same thing (shown by the different combinations of bold, capitals, underlining and asterisks), and the logical relations, such as time and cause, between different parts are clear.

A visit has been arranged for YEAR 6, to the Mountain Peaks Field Study Centre, leaving school at 9.30am. This is an overnight visit. The centre has beautiful grounds and *a nature trail*. During the afternoon, THE CHILDREN will follow *the trail*.

A verb's Subject Complement adds more information about its Subject, and its Object Complement does the same for its Object.

Unlike the verb's object, its complement may be an adjective. The verb be normally has a Subject Complement.

• She is our teacher. [adds more information about the subject, she]
• They seem very competent. [adds more information about the subject, they]
• Learning makes me happy. [adds more information about the object, me]

Words or phrases are coordinated if they are linked as an equal pair by a coordinating conjunction (i.e. and, but, or).

In the examples below, the coordinated elements are shown in bold, and the conjunction is in red.

• Susan and Amra met in a cafe. [links the words Susan and Amra as an equal pair]
• They talked and drank tea for an hour. [links two clauses as an equal pair]
• Susan got on a bus but Amra walked. [links two clauses as an equal pair]

The difference between coordination and subordination is that, in subordination, the two linked elements are not equal.

Not coordination: They ate before they met. [before introduces a subordinate clause]

A determiner specifies a noun as known or unknown, and it goes before any modifiers (e.g. adjectives or other nouns).

Some examples of determiners are:

• articles (the, a or an)
• demonstratives (e.g. this, those)
• possessives (e.g. my, your)
• quantifiers (e.g. some, every).

• the home team [article, specifies the team as known]
• a good team [article, specifies the team as unknown]
• that pupil [demonstrative, known]
• Julia’s parents [possessive, known]
• some big boys [quantifier, unknown]

Contrast:

• *home the team, *big some boys [both incorrect, because the determiner should come before other modifiers]

A type of grapheme where two letters represent one phoneme. Sometimes, these two letters are not next to one another; this is called a split digraph.

• The digraph ea in each is pronounced /i:/.
• The digraph sh in shed is pronounced /ʃ/.
• The split digraph i–e in line is pronounced /aɪ/.

A word’s etymology is its history: its origins in earlier forms of English or other languages, and how its form and meaning have changed. Many words in English have come from Greek, Latin or French.

• The word school was borrowed from a Greek word σχολή (skholé) meaning 'leisure'.
• The word verb comes from Latin verbum, meaning 'word'.
• The word mutton comes from French mouton, meaning 'sheep'.

Reference to future time can be marked in a number of different ways in English. All these ways involve the use of a present tense verb. See also tense. Unlike many other languages (such as French, Spanish or Italian), English has no distinct ‘future tense’ form of the verb comparable with its present and past tenses.

• He will leave tomorrow. [present-tense will followed by infinitive leave]
• He may leave tomorrow. [present-tense may followed by infinitive leave]
• He leaves tomorrow. [present-tense leaves]
• He is going to leave tomorrow. [present tense is followed by going to plus the infinitive leave]

A letter, or combination of letters, that corresponds to a single phoneme within a word.

• The grapheme t in the words ten, bet and ate corresponds to the phoneme /t/.
• The grapheme ph in the word dolphin corresponds to the phoneme /f/.

Two different words are homophones if they sound exactly the same when pronounced.

• hear, here
• some, sum

A verb’s infinitive is the basic form used as the head-word in a dictionary (e.g. walk, be).

Infinitives are often used:

• after to
• after modal verbs.

• I want to walk.
• I will be quiet.

One word or phrase modifies another by making its meaning more specific.

Because the two words make a phrase, the ‘modifier’ is normally close to the modified word.

In the phrase primary-school teacher:

• teacher is modified by primary-school (to mean a specific kind of teacher)
• school is modified by primary (to mean a specific kind of school).

A word’s morphology is its internal make-up in terms of root words and suffixes or prefixes, as well as other kinds of change such as the change of mouse to mice.

Morphology may be used to produce different inflections of the same word (e.g. boy – boys), or entirely new words (e.g. boy – boyish) belonging to the same word family.

• dogs has the morphological make-up: dog + s.
• unhelpfulness has the morphological make-up: unhelpful + ness, where unhelpful = un + helpful and helpful = help + ful

A word that contains two or more root words is a compound (e.g. news+paper, ice+cream).

The surest way to identify nouns is by the ways they can be used after determiners such as the: for example, most nouns will fit into the frame “The __ matters/matter.”

Nouns are sometimes called ‘naming words’ because they name people, places and ‘things’; this is often true, but it doesn’t help to distinguish nouns from other word classes. For example, prepositions can name places and verbs can name ‘things’ such as actions.

• Our dog bit the burglar on his behind!
• My big brother did an amazing jump on his skateboard.
• Actions speak louder than words.

Not nouns:

• He’s behind you! [this names a place, but is a preposition, not a noun]
• She can jump so high! [this names an action, but is a verb, not a noun]

Nouns may be classified as common (e.g. boy, day) or proper (e.g. Ivan, Wednesday), and also as countable (e.g. thing, boy) or non-countable (e.g. stuff, money). These classes can be recognised by the determiners they combine with.

• common, countable: a book, books, two chocolates, one day, fewer ideas
• common, non-countable: money, some chocolate, less imagination
• proper, countable: Marilyn, London, Wednesday

An Object is normally a noun, pronoun or noun phrase that comes straight after the verb, and shows what the verb is acting upon.

• Year 2 designed puppets. [noun acting as Object]
• I like that. [pronoun acting as object]
• Some people suggested a pretty display. [noun phrase acting as Object]

Objects can be turned into the Subject of a passive verb, and cannot be adjectives (contrast with Complement).

Contrast:

• A display was suggested. [Object of active verb becomes the Subject of the passive verb]
• *Year 2 designed pretty. [incorrect, because adjectives cannot be objects]

A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that signals a distinct, contrasting meaning. For example:

• /t/ contrasts with /k/ to signal the difference between tap and cap
• /t/ contrasts with /l/ to signal the difference between bought and ball.

It is this contrast in meaning that tells us there are two distinct phonemes at work.

There are around 44 phonemes in English; the exact number depends on regional accents. A single phoneme may be represented in writing by one, two, three or four letters constituting a single grapheme.

• The word cat has three letters and three phonemes: /kæt/
• The word catch has five letters and three phonemes: /kaʧ/
• The word caught has six letters and three phonemes: /kɔ:t/

A phrase is a group of words that are grammatically connected so that they stay together, and that expand a single word, called the Head. The phrase is a noun phrase if its Head is a noun, a preposition phrase if its Head is a preposition, and so on; but if the Head is a verb, the phrase is called a clause. Phrases can be made up of other phrases.

• She waved to her mother. [a noun phrase, with the noun mother as its Head]
• She waved to her mother. [a preposition phrase, with the preposition to as its Head]
• She waved to her mother. [a clause, with the verb waved as its Head]

A possessive can be:

• a noun followed by an apostrophe, with or without s
• a possessive pronoun.

• Tariq’s book [Tariq has the book]
• The boys’ arrival [the boys arrive]
• That essay is mine. [I wrote the essay]

The relation expressed by a possessive goes well beyond ordinary ideas of ‘possession’. A possessive may act as a determiner.

• His obituary [the obituary is about him]

A prefix is added at the beginning of a word in order to turn it into another word.

Contrast suffix.

• overtake, disappear

A preposition phrase has a preposition as its Head followed by a noun, pronoun or noun phrase.

• He was in bed.
• I met them after the party.

Verbs in the present tense are commonly used to:

• talk about the present
• talk about the future.

They may take a suffix –s (depending on the subject).

See also tense.

• Jamal goes to the pool every day. [describes a habit that exists now]
• He can swim. [describes a state that is true now]
• The bus arrives at three. [scheduled now]
• My friends are coming to play. [describes a plan in progress now]

Pronouns are normally used like nouns, except that:

• they are grammatically more specialised
• it is harder to modify them.

In the examples, each sentence is written twice: once with nouns, and once with pronouns (in red). Where the same thing is being talked about, the words are shown in bold.

• Amanda waved to Michael. She waved to him.
• John’s mother is over there. His mother is over there.
• The visit will be an overnight visit. This will be an overnight visit.
• Simon is the person: Simon broke it. He is the one who broke it.

Punctuation includes any conventional features of writing other than spelling and general layout: the standard punctuation marks . , ; : ? ! - – ( ) “ ” ‘ ’ , and also word-spaces, capital letters, apostrophes, paragraph breaks and bullet points. One important role of punctuation is to indicate sentence boundaries.

• “I’m_going_out,_Usha,_and_I_won’t_be_long,”_Mum_said.

Classroom lessons, football commentaries and novels use different registers of the same language, recognised by differences of vocabulary and grammar. Registers are ‘varieties’ of a language which are each tied to a range of uses, in contrast with dialects, which are tied to groups of users.

• I regret to inform you that Mr Joseph Smith has passed away. [formal letter]
• Have you heard that Joe has died? [casual speech]
• Joe falls down and dies, centre stage. [stage direction]

A relative clause is a special type of subordinate clause that modifies a noun. It often does this by using a relative pronoun such as who or that to refer back to that noun, though the relative pronoun that is often omitted.

A relative clause may also be attached to a clause. In that case, the pronoun refers back to the whole clause, rather than referring back to a noun.

In the examples, the relative clauses are in red, and both the pronouns and the words they refer back to are in bold.

• That’s the boy who lives near school. [who refers back to boy]
• The prize that I won was a book. [that refers back to prize]
• The prize I won was a book. [the pronoun that is omitted]
• Tom broke the game, which annoyed Ali. [which refers back to the whole clause]

Morphology breaks words down into root words, which can stand alone, and suffixes or prefixes which can’t. For example, help is the root word for other words in its word family such as helpful and helpless, and also for its inflections such as helping. Compound words (e.g. help-desk) contain two or more root words. When looking in a dictionary, we sometimes have to look for the root word (or words) of the word we are interested in.

• played [the root word is play]
• unfair [the root word is fair]
• football [the root words are foot and ball]

A sentence is a group of words which are grammatically connected to each other but not to any words outside the sentence.

The form of a sentence’s main clause shows whether it is being used as a statement, a question, a command or an exclamation.

A sentence may consist of a single clause or it may contain several clauses held together by subordination or co-ordination. Classifying a sentence as a simple sentence, complex sentence or compound sentence can be confusing, because a ‘simple’ sentence may be complicated, and a ‘complex’ one may be straightforward. The terms single-clause sentence and multi-clause sentence may be more helpful.

• John went to his friend’s house. He stayed there till tea-time.
• John went to his friend’s house, he stayed there till tea-time. [comma splice]
  • This is a ‘comma splice’, a common error in which a comma is used where either a full stop or a semi-colon is needed to indicate the lack of any grammatical connection between the two clauses.
• You are my friend. [statement]
• Are you my friend? [question]
• Be my friend! [command]
• What a good friend you are! [exclamation]
• Ali went home on his bike to his goldfish and his current library book about pets. [single-clause sentence]
• She went shopping but took back everything she had bought because she didn’t like any of it. [multi-clause sentence]

Standard English can be recognised by the use of a very small range of forms such as those books, I did it and I wasn’t doing anything (rather than their non-Standard equivalents); it is not limited to any particular accent. It is the variety of English which is used, with only minor variation, as a major world language. Some people use Standard English all the time, in all situations from the most casual to the most formal, so it covers most registers. The aim of the national curriculum is that everyone should be able to use Standard English as needed in writing and in relatively formal speaking.

• I did it because they were not willing to undertake any more work on those houses. [formal Standard English]
• I did it cos they wouldn’t do any more work on those houses. [casual Standard English]
• I done it cos they wouldn’t do no more work on them houses. [casual non-Standard English]

A syllable is stressed if it is pronounced more forcefully than the syllables next to it. The other syllables are unstressed.

• about
• visit

Two words are synonyms if they have the same meaning, or similar meanings. Contrast antonym.

• talk – speak
• old – elderly

In English, tense is the choice between present tense and past tense verbs, which is special because it is signalled by inflections and normally indicates differences of time. In contrast, languages like French, Spanish and Italian have three or more distinct tense forms, including a future tense. (See also: future.)

The simple tenses (present and past) may be combined in English with the perfect and progressive.

• He studies. [present tense – present time]
• He studied yesterday. [past tense – past time]
• He studies tomorrow, or else! [present tense – future time]
• He may study tomorrow. [present tense + infinitive – future time]
• He plans to study tomorrow. [present tense + infinitive – future time]
• If he studied tomorrow, he’d see the difference! [past tense – imagined future]

Contrast three distinct tense forms in Spanish:

• Estudia. [present tense]
• Estudió. [past tense]
• Estudiará. [future tense]

A transitive verb takes at least one Object in a sentence to complete its meaning, in contrast to an intransitive verb, which does not.

• He loves Juliet.
• She understands English grammar.

A type of grapheme where three letters represent one phoneme.

• High /haɪ/
• pure /pjʊə/
• patch /pætʃ/
• hedge /hɛdʒ/

A vowel is a speech sound which is produced without any closure or obstruction of the vocal tract.

Vowels can form syllables by themselves, or they may combine with consonants.

In the English writing system, the letters a, e, i, o, u and y can represent vowels.

A word is a unit of grammar: it can be selected and moved around relatively independently, but cannot easily be split. In punctuation, words are normally separated by word spaces. Sometimes, a sequence that appears grammatically to be two words is collapsed into a single written word, indicated with a hyphen or apostrophe (e.g. well-built, he’s).

• headteacher or head teacher [can be written with or without a space]
• I’m going out.
• 9.30 am

The words in a word family are normally related to each other by a combination of morphology, grammar and meaning.

• teach – teacher
• extend – extent – extensive
• grammar – grammatical – grammarian