英语自考本科-英语语法-名词解释.doc

1 Predicative modal auxilityThe Predicative modal auxility is a category of modal auxiliary. The predictive meaning, rather homogeneous in nature, is concerned with the speakers assuption or assessment of probability and, in most cases, indicates the speakers confidence in the truth of his statement. For example, might, may, could,can.2. Anaphoric refernce Anaphoric refernce: refernce backwards in the text. A personal pronoun, for example, often has anaphoric reference, i.e. you have to look at the preceding context to see what it refers to. For example, ann was studying for her exams. She found it difficult to concentrate. In this example, she has anaphoric reference.3. Non-finite verbs: The non-finite verbs are so called because they are not marked for ttense of for subject-verb concord. We recognite three types of non-finite verbs: infinitive, -ing participle and ed participle.4. Extraposition The extraposition is defined as the replacement of the postponed item by a substitute form.5. TextThe term text refers to a unified passage. A text may be spoken or written, prose or verse, dialogue or monologue. It may be anything from a single proverb to a whole play, from a momentary cry for help to all-day discussion on a committee.6. participles Participles belong to non-finite verb type. There are two kinds of participles: -ing participle and ed participle.7. What is dangling participle? When the subject of a participle is not expressed, it is normally understood to be the subject of the main clause. We call this kind of participle dangling participle.8. What is “fronting”? “fronting” is a term which refers to the removal of an item from its unmarked post-subject position to the marked pre-subject position. As fronting moves into the initial position an item which does not usually belong there, such a grammatical device disturbs the expected route of information flow and inevitable brings about unusualness, i.e. “this man over there people in the vicinity have a very low opinion of.”9. Define “ellipsis” The basic principle of ellipsis is leaving out something understood and hence produces imcomplete sentences with such a structure as to presuppose a preceding item. Ellipsis, somehow like substitutions, sets up cohesion on the basis of structural recoverability with reference to the linguistic context. Here are three types of ellipsis:nominal: why give me two cups of coffee? I only asked for one.a. Verbal:A: have you seen him before? B: yes, I have.b. clausal: A: will it rain tomorrow? B: perhaps.10. Determiners Determiners refer to words which are used in the premodification of a noun phrase and which typically precede any adjectives that premodify the head word.11. the major function of prepositions The major function of prepositions is to connect nouns, verbs andadjectives to other parts of the sentence, e.g. I get uo early in the morning.12. disjunct Disjuncts convey a comment on the content of the clause to which they are peripherally attached.13. adjuntAdjunt is a word or a group of words which we add to a clause to say something the circumstances of an event or situation, for example, when, where or how it occurs.14. What is double relative clause? It is used to cover all the verb forms that express assumptions contrary to the given fact or not likely to be materialized, and becomes a far less important verbal category than was suggested.15. CoordinationCoordination is realized by coordinators which join units at the same level.16.SubordinationSubordination is realized by subordinators, involves the linking of units at different levels so that they form a hierarchy. A subordinator introduces a subordinate clause which is attached to the main clause.18. Double genitiveDouble genitive, also referred to as the “post genitive”, is also called because it is a combination of the genitive and the of-phrase, such as a friend of my brothers.21.noun classesNoun classes include proper nouns and common nouns.Common nouns include countable nouns and mass nouns.Countable nouns include concrete nouns and abstract nouns.22. Proper nounsProper nouns denote individual persons, places,etc. a proper noun normally begins with a capical letter, has no plural form and cannot occur after an article.23. Mass nounsNouns cannot take plural are called mass nouns.24. Collective nounCollective nouns refer to a group of people, animal and things, which are usually countable.25. Union nounIt is also called partitive, is a very special class of words that is used to specify the quantities measures and shapes of the modified noun such as: piece, batch, bunch, item, etc.26. Plural invariablesNouns are always occur in plural form.27. Plural compoundsThree tendencies are at work in the inflection of compounds for plural: pluralize the last element, pluralize the first element and plurize both first and the last elements.28. Singular invariablesSingular invariable are normally invariable singulars, proper nouns and mass nouns belong to singular invariables.29. Alternative questions: Those questions that suggest two (or more) alternatives and usually imply that one of them could be true.30. How-exclamations: Exclamations that are led by the adverb how. It highlights the adjective, adverb, or verb in exclamations.31. Foreign plurals：They are words borrowed from some other languages which still take their original forms of plural，Most often，they are from-Latin，French，Greek：alumna-alumnae，index-indices，plateau-plateaux，analysisanalyses，etc.32. Genitives Forms or construction used to denote possession, measurement or source.Example: Johns car; a moments digression; the resistance of Iraq33. Non-progressive verbs verbs that cannot occur in the progressive aspect.34. Tense Any one of the inflected forms in the conjugation of a verb that indicates the temporal location of an event or a state of affairs.35. AspectAspect reflects the way in which the verb action is regarded or experienced with respect to time.36. Get-passive and be-passiveGet-passive is far less popular than be-passive. The reasons are: first, get-passive is generally avoided in forma syle, and even in informal English it is far less frequent than be-passive. Second, semantically, get-passive is typically used to refer to an event, rather than a state; to denote the consequence rather that the rocess, of an event; and to lay emphasis on what happens(usu. Unfavorably) to the subject as a result of the event, rather than who actually causes the event.37. pseudo-passive:A pseudo-passive sentence is passive in form but active in meaning. Its ed-participle is adjectivalized so that it becomes a subject complement. As an adjective, it can occur in a comparative construction, with a variety of prepositional phrases other than by-phrase, and with other link verbs besides be and get.38. Voice: A property of verbs or a set of verb inflections indicating the relation between the subject and the action expressed by the verb.39. Mood: A set of verb forms or inflections used to indicate the speakers attitude toward the factuality or likelihood of the action or condition expressed. In English the indicative mood is used to make factual statements, the subjunctive mood to indicate doubt or unlikelihood, and the imperative mood to express a command.40. be-passive：The passive made up of auxiliary be + v-ed. For example: The book was written by Hamilton.be-subjunctive: 41. Allomorph An allomorph is an indistinctive variant of a morpheme.42. The be-subjunctiveIt is formally marked by the use of the base of the verb; that is , the verb invariably occurs in the base form free from the concord constraints with the subject and from the tense agreement with other verbs. For example: It is important that the boss handle it in person. 43. Modal auxiliary: One of a set of English verbs, including can, may, must, ought, shall, should, will, would and etc., that are characteristically used with other verbs to express mood or tense.44. The bare infinitive?The infinitive, which occurs as a verb in the base form without to is called bare infinitive.Preposition: In some languages, a word placed before a substantive and indicating the relation of that substantive to a verb, an adjective, or another substantive, as English at, by, in, to, from, and with.45. Concord:It also termed agreement, can be defined as the relationship between two grammatical units such that one of tem displays a particular feature that accords with a displayed feature in the other.46. Statements: Statements in the form of simple sentences are the foundation stone of all the english sentences. Their primary function is to convey information, in a positive way or in a negative. There are two major types of statements on a polarity-positive statement and negative statement.47. Assertion: An assertive sentence is either an interrogative sentence or a negative sentence. It is associated to assertive words.48. Non-assertion: A non-assertive sentence is either an interrogative sentence or a negative sentence. It is associated to non-assertive words and negative words.49. A negative statement A negative statement basically exoresses the speakers negative attitude toward his proposition. The negation of a statement can be accomplicated by inseting a variety of negative words, among which “not” is by far the most commonly used either in writing or in speaking.50. Transferred negation Transferred negation refers ti the shift if nagation from the subordinate clause, where it semantically belongs to, the main clause. It normally occurs with such verbs as think, believe, suppose, imagine and expect, that is, verbs that express “opinion”.51. Semi-negatives Semi-negatives refer to words which are negative in meaning but no in appearance. They include seldom, rarely, scarcely, hardly, barely, little, few,etc. their similarities to the ordinary negative items are such that they are followed by non-assertive rather than assertive words and that they are followed by positive than negative tag questions.52. Yes-no questions They are so called because they can be answered by a simple “yes” or “no”. they challenge the validity of the proposition by way of asking for confirmation or denial of the statement they contain. They are normally spoken with a final rising tone.53. Non-finite clauses The non-clasuses are the ones that leave subjects unsaid and verbs in non-finite forms54. Wh-questions They covers all questions that normally begins with wh-series of words, i.e. what, when, why, who, whose, which and how. Spoken with a final falling tone, they are sometimes called “information questions” because they require some specific information in the reply. Rather, they ask for details about a part of it.55. Alternative Questions They fall into two subclasses: one is formed on the basis of yes-no quedtions; the other on the basis of wh-questions. They suggest two alternatives and usually imply that one of them could be true. They expect one of the suggested answers.56. Tag questions They are also called “disjunctive questions”. A tag question normally consists of a statement and a question tag. The tag is a yes-no question cut the statement. Contration is the norm in a negative tag.57. Commands Commands are also called directives. It is used by the speaker or writer when they intends to get thing done. They typically take the form of an imperative sentence and the main verb in an imperative sentence takes the base form and the sentence generally goes with a subject. Negative imperatives are generally formed by adding “dont” in the intial position and substituting non-assertive word for assertive word where applicable.58. Exclamations There are two major types if exclamations: what-exclamations and how-exclamations. They are very emotional; they express the extent of our impression of something, typically our surprise, excitement, amazement, disappoinment, hatred and so on. They are followed by an exclamation mark.59. What-exclamations It is kind of exclamation which is introduced by what, “what”, a determiner in a what-exclamation, helps to identify the idea expressed by the noun phrase where it belongs. The what-noun phrase can be object, complement, adverbial or even subject. The what-noun phrase can be a singular countable noun and it can also be a plural or an uncountable noun.60. How-exclamation This exclamation is introduced by how.”how” is an adverb. It high-lights the adjective, adverb, or verb in exclamations.61. Morph A morph is the realization of an orthographic form in writing or a phonetic form in speaking of a morpheme.62. Morpheme A morpheme is the minimal distinctive grammatical unit, and is the lowest unit in grammatical hierachy. Morphemes are actually abstract elements of analysis. What occurs is an orthographic form in writing termed “morph” which realizes the morpheme.63. Free morpheme A free morpheme is a morpheme that has a meaning of its own and can be used independently. A free morpheme can be a simple word or the root of a derivative.64. Finite clauses The finite clauses are the ones that have subjects and finite verbs as predicates.65. Bound morpheme A free morpheme is a morpheme that doesnt have a meaning of its own and cant be used independently. Bound morphemes only posses additional or grammatical meanings.66. Simple sentence The simple sentence is a sentence that contains one clause.67. Compoud sentence The compoud sentence is a sentence that contains more than one clause, usually joined by conjunctions like and, or, but, etc.68. Complex sentence The complex sentence is a sentence that contains more than one clause that are joined together by subordinating one to another.69. Noun phrasesThe noun phrase can be classified partly by its external function and partly by its internal structure. The head word of a noun phrase is typically a noun of a pronoun, which may be premodified and/or postmodified by a variety of items on various levels ranging from word to phrase.70. Common nouns They can be classified into countable nouns and mass nouns, of which, countable nouns may take singular and plural forms.71. Countable nouns They refer to the nouns that can take plural forms.72. Number Number is one of the imporatnt criteria in diatinguishing classes of nouns. In terms of number, some nouns are variable and some are usually not.73. Irregular plurals By definition, irregular plurals are unpredicable form the form of corresponding singulars, which means that generalization is usually not applicable and that the plurals have to be tlisted and learned as individual lexical units. The general types of irregulat plurals include: nouns with irregular spelling or pronunciation of both, nouns with zero plurals and nouns that take foreign plurals.74. Unit nouns Unit nouns, also referred to as “partitives”, are a very special class if words that are used ti specify the quantities of the modified noun. They are especially used to indicate the plural notion of a mass noun. But unit nouns also modify countable nouns by referring to numble, measure, shape, etc.75. Co-occurrence of determiners They mean determiners may no-occur in the premodification of a noun phrse; that is, two of more determiners may modify one and the same head word. In such cases, each determiner take a relatively fixed position on the sequence.76. Articles As a derterminer, it premodifies a head noun. In the english language, there two articles: the definite article “ the” and the indefinite article “a(n)”. the two terms indicate some of the semantic implications of article usage.77. Zero articlesIt means nouns that use plural forms and go without an article.78. Forms of genitive The genitive is generally formed in writing by adding “s” to singular nouns and to the plural nouns that do not end in-s. plural nouns that end in s take apostrophe as genetive marker.79. Group genitive The group genitive is a term that refers the genitive formed by adding “s” to the last element of a postmodified or coordinates noun phrase. 80. Local genitiveThe genitive is sometimes used alone without a following noun. Nouns used in the local genitive are invariably nouns referring to persons and denoting residence, public buidings, places where business is conducted.81. Auxiliary vebs They do not comply with the definition of verb, because they are not used alone, except in elliptical sentences. But they share some of the verb characteristics, it si classified as a subdivision of verbs.82. Simple verb phrase A verb phrase that consists of a head wors only is referred to as a simple verb phrase.83. Complex verb phrase A verb phrase that has premodification is referred to as a complex verb phrase.84. Classification of verbs Verbs can be classified into lexical verbs and auxiliarues. Lexical verbs can be further divided into transitive, intransitive and copula verbs. And auxiliaries also can be further divided into primary and modal verbs.85. The simple present It is primarily used to express the present time and typically implies the sense of permence. Other uses of the simple present include reference to the past and to the future in appropriate contexts.86. The simple past tense It is primarily associated with reference to the past time. Other uses of the simple past include situations where it is used to express hypothesis, special attitudes, etc. in which case it may refer to the present of the future.87. Present progressiveThe present progressive may refer ti different temporal distinctions in different c