Engels: Tekst en Communicatie 2 – Critical vocabulary HTAT – Anna Gagiano – 2019-2020 –
Uantwerpen – Toegepaste Taalkunde
accent refers to the sounds people make when they
speak
adjective Describes the qualities of people and things.
Words like 'rich', 'green', 'old', 'hopeless' are X.
An attributive X occurs before a noun: 'the
*black* box'; a predicative X occurs after a verb:
'the student is *intelligent*'.
adverb Indicates the place, manner, degree or
frequency of an event or action. X have many
different functions and can have different
positions in a clause. For example:
'*Unfortunately*, we were late for the
meeting'; 'The team reacted to the decision
*angrily*'.
affixation The process of adding an affix or morpheme to
a word to create a different form of that word
(for example: 'cat' --> 'cats'), or to create a new
word with a different meaning ('tank' -->
'tanker')
affordances Things that are made possible. For example, a
website can be read by many people
simultaneously.
affricate a consonant characterised as having both a
fricative and a stop manner of production
allusion A reference to another work of literature,
person, or event
anaphoric reference X points backwards; for example, the
grammatical word 'he' in the following
sentence: 'I saw the man. *He* was wearing a
black jacket'.
approximant a consonant, such as a glide or liquid, produced
with an obstruction in the vocal tract, less than
that associated with the obstruents or nasals
but greater than that associated with the
vowels
arbitrary Having no real connection beyond that of social
convention
article The definite X is 'the' and it commonly refers to
things which are known or can be identified. For
example: 'I'll meet you at *the* cinema'. The
indefinite X is 'a(n)' and is commonly used to
refer to things which are not definite or specific.
For example: 'Can you lend me *a* pen?'
assonance Created when vowel sounds are repeated to
produce internal rhyming within phrases or
sentences. For example, 'the carts *rolled*
down the *old road*'.
blend Occurs when shortened forms of words are
combined to form a single new word. For
example: 'smog' (a X of *sm*oke and f*og*);
'blog' (a X of we*b* and *log*).
1
, Engels: Tekst en Communicatie 2 – Critical vocabulary HTAT – Anna Gagiano – 2019-2020 –
Uantwerpen – Toegepaste Taalkunde
bound morphemes X occur as single words and normally only
acquire meaning when joined to the free
morpheme. For example: 'unfriendly' is a word
made up from three morphemes - a free
morpheme 'friend' and two X 'un' and 'ly'.
cataphoric reference X points forwards; for example, the word 'here'
in the following sentence: '*Here* is the nine
o'clock news'.
clause Part of a sentence. A X normally consists of a
subject and a verb, and a main X must contain a
verb indicating tense (also called a finite X). E.g.:
'I went to Vietnam on holiday' is a main X. Main
X can be joined by a co-ordinating conjunction
such as 'and' or 'but'. E.g.: 'We decided not to
have a holiday abroad this year *and* to stay at
home'. A subordinate X cannot normally form a
sentence on its own. Subordinate X are
dependent on main X. A main X and a
subordinate X are commonly joined together
with a subordinating conjunction such as
'although', 'because' or 'when'. E.g.: 'We
decided to take the dog for a walk, although it
was raining.' Subordinate X can also be non-
finite. E.g. '[Entering the hall in a large black
hat,] she was obviously trying to be the centre
of attention.'
cohesion A term which describes the patterns of
language created within a text, mainly within
and across sentence boundaries or speaking
turns. X can be both lexical and grammatical. A
cohesive text is one in which the smaller lexical
and grammatical parts of the text collectively
organise the larger units of the text such as
paragraphs or conversational turns between
speakers.
collocation Two or more words that often go together. E.g.:
'lean' and 'meat' or 'fat' and 'cheque' occur
together more frequently than by chance and
more frequently than other possible patterns
and combinations such as 'skinny' and 'meat' or
'heavy' and 'cheque'. Certain words keep closer
company with some words than with others.
comparative reference Involves reference within a text when one thing
is compared to another; for example, 'Ann is
*stronger* than William'.
concordance line A line of text from a corpus, showing where the
searched item occurred within a sentence or
utterance
conjunction Links words, phrases, clauses and sentences.
The two main types of X are coordinating X and
subordinating X. Coordinating X are words such
2