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Pam Peters

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CAN

This is the third commonest See also modal verb (after WILL and WOULD), used primarily to express “ability” and “possibility” (like COULD). It also serves as an alternative to MAY in questions seeking permission. The three meanings of CAN are illustrated in the following:

You can do it.

It can happen.

Can I help you?

See further under See also COULD; See also MAY; and See also modality and modal verb, sections 1 and 3.

capitalization

The use of capital letters interfaces with English grammar at several points:

an initial capital letter identifies the first word in a sentence (in combination with the full stop marking the end of the previous sentence).
an initial capital letter serves to mark words which are See also proper nouns, personal and geographical (Kenneth, Kenya), and all bar the function words in proper names when they are cited in full, as in Department of Foreign Affairs, the Hundred Years War: see further under proper noun and proper name.
in word formation, full capitalization is used to mark See also initialisms forged out of proper names, such as BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), as well as acronyms formed out of a string of common words: AIDS (“auto-immune deficiency syndrome”). However acronyms usually lose their capital letters once they become established. See further under acronym.

In other respects, See also capitalization is a feature of orthography and editorial practice, e.g. when used to mark the generic word of an abbreviated proper name, e.g. the Department/department as the second and subsequent reference to the Department of Agriculture.

capitonym

A See also capitonym is a word with the same spelling as another except that one is regularly capitalized and the other not (except at the start of a sentence), and they mean different things. For example: china “crockery” and China, the largest country in Asia; march “stride like a soldier” and March, the third month of the year. Capitonyms are a special type of homography: see further under homograph.

case

1 Grammatical case

The concept of See also case is borrowed from classical grammar, where it referred to the changing forms of nouns, pronouns, and adjectives, according to their grammatical roles in the syntax of a clause or sentence. The variant forms used to express case are illustrated in the following singular paradigm for one of the most common classes of noun in Latin:

The changing endings which make the distinct case forms for the noun are its See also inflections (see further under See also inflection).

In Old English, nouns were also marked by different inflections for their See also case, according to class they belonged to:

See further under See also genitive, See also nominative, See also accusative, See also dative.

2 Case in modern English nouns

The older English case endings illustrated above were whittled away over the centuries, so that now only the genitive inflection remains for English nouns, as when driver becomes driver’s in driver’s license. Its most important syntactic function is to show the relationship between two successive nouns. The first noun marked with ’s is in fact a determinative in the NP it forms with the second noun (see further under determinative). But the genitive inflection can also be attached to a longer NP, as in the Duke of Edinburgh’s birthday. This is part of the contemporary argument for regarding the ’s as a clitic rather than an inflection. See further under clitic.

English nouns no longer have any case marking to distinguish the nominative and accusative cases of nouns taking on subject and object roles respectively. Compare:

The driver saluted the policeman.

with

The policeman saluted the driver.

Because English nouns have the same form for subject and object roles, grammarians refer to it as the See also common case (see further under that heading).

3 Case and English word order

As the contrasting examples of section 2 show, subject and object roles are indicated in modern English through their place relative to the verb in the ordering of the clause, hence the canonical SVO of declarative clauses (see further under See also clause, section 1). In traditional English grammar, the functional role of the S is sometimes referred to as “nominative” and that of the O as “accusative,” but this is not aligned with any case markings. Likewise the direct and indirect objects were once distinguished by their case endings as accusative and dative, but now by their order (indirect before direct object):

The driver gave the policeman his license.

The policeman gave his license a quick look.

As those examples of “license” show, the noun acting as head of the object NPs is the same in form (= common case) whether it is the indirect object or direct object. Those roles go with their order of appearance following the verb. See further under object.

Clausal relationships are also indicated in modern English by means of function words such as prepositions. So the first sentence above could be rephrased as:

The driver gave his license to the policeman.

Here the indirect object has been paraphrased with a prepositional phrase so the “the policeman” becomes object of the preposition, not the verb. Again there is no case ending to mark the change – only the fact that “the policeman” follows the preposition “to,” which separates it from the verb. Thus function words such as prepositions serve to mark the boundaries between successive constituents in English sentences, and to indicate their roles within the clauses or constituent phrases. See further under See also prepositional phrase.

4 Case in English pronouns

In modern English it is only the personal pronouns which retain a modicum of case marking which varies according to their grammatical role. For example, WE is the nominative case, used whenever it appears as the subject of a clause, but it becomes us as the object of a clause or preposition, i.e. the accusative case. As possessor, we becomes our in the genitive case, although this is now treated independently as a determiner within the NP (see further under determiner). Similar case marking can be seen in the changes of form for the personal relative and interrogative pronouns: WHO, WHOM, WHOSE. In such cases it is still useful to identify the different forms by their traditional names (nominative, accusative, genitive), but they may equally be called by their functional roles: subjective, objective, possessive, used by Quirk et al. (1985).

5 Case in post-traditional English grammar

The reinterpretation of See also case, in terms of structural and semantic relations between nouns and their neighbors in the clause, has been taken much further in contemporary English grammars. This has generated a number of new approaches, including See also case grammar, generalized phrase-structure grammar, and lexical–functional grammar. It has also led to fresh analyses of other grammatical concepts, such as transitivity and verb valency (see further under those headings). Though their nomenclature varies, these approaches all help to explain how the location of nouns/NPs within the English clause establishes their grammatical roles and meaning, without any formal case marking.

case grammar

This theory of grammar, first proposed by Charles Fillmore (1968) postulates a set of semantic functions or thematic roles as grammatical primitives in formulating sentences (rather than syntactic rules). These semantic functions such as agent, patient, goal are the various deep cases which are realized in the NPs of the clause. The thematic roles of case grammar underlie more recent theories of grammar such as government–binding theory (GB) and its theta roles. See further under deep case, government–binding theory, and theta roles.

cataphora and cataphoric

See anaphora.

catenative verb

1 Catenative verbs and semi-auxiliaries

The category of See also catenative verbs has been recognized only quite recently in English grammars. Catenatives take other nonfinite verbs as their complements, hence the suggestion of “chaining together” embedded in their name. The catenatives underlined in seemed to grow, want to come look rather like semi-auxiliaries (as in used to grow, had to come), except that the to clearly belongs to the following infinitive in the case of catenatives, and has traditionally been associated with the semi-auxiliary (see further in section 4 below). The two differ also in the meanings they express (see section 3 below).

2 Complementation for catenatives

See also Catenative verbs can be complemented by either the TO-infinitive or an -ing participle, and in some cases both. The following examples show the two major types of complementation:

They seem to like the same things.

He began planning/to plan the summer holiday immediately.

I remember leaving the book on the table.

We love to visit/visiting your country.

The alternative constructions in some cases seem to carry slightly different nuances, in others their meaning is much the same.

➤ For more on the ing-participle, see gerund-participle.

3 Meanings expressed by catenatives: Types I, II, and III

See also Catenative verbs differ from semi-auxiliaries in the meanings they express. Instead of paraphrasing the senses of modal verbs, they provide a perspective on the verbal process (as do seem, begin), or express a mental or emotional perspective on it (as do remember, love). The first group like seem (Type I) includes:

The second group like remember (Type II) includes:

Some of these catenatives take only a TO-infinitive, some only an -ing participle, while a minority can take either. In all of them the subject of the catenative is the implied subject of the complementary verb.

Some modern grammars include a wider range of verbs than those just listed under the heading of catenatives. The Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (1985) included only the first group (Type I) shown above, whereas the Cambridge Grammar (2002) includes both Types I and II as simple catenatives. It allows also for a third group of complex catenatives (Type III), where a noun phrase comes in between the verb and the TO-infinitive. It serves as the object of the catenative as well as the rank-shifted subject of the complementary verb. For example:

She advised the parents to come.

Other complex catenatives are:

As is evident, these verbs can be used to communicate a particular kind of speech act, though they are not speech act verbs. See further under See also performative verb.

The Longman Grammar (1999) groups all three types (I, II, III) together with those which take a content clause as complement, and applies the term controlling verb to them. See further under complement clause.

4 Catenatives and auxiliary verbs

The separateness of the finite and nonfinite elements in catenative constructions like those illustrated above is part of Huddleston and Pullum’s (2002) argument that both primary and modal auxiliaries should be analyzed as heads of VP, rather than making them dependent auxiliaries. The infinitive complement to the auxiliary is treated as a subordinate nonfinite clause. See further under auxiliary verb, section 7.

causative verb

Some lexical verbs are See also causative in the sense that they express a notion of causation or facilitation in the act of setting something in motion. They include verbs with a range of interpersonal nuances such as:

When construed with a following NP + TO-infinitive, they detail who/what caused or facilitated something to happen, as in:

He allowed/compelled me to come.

The advertisement will encourage/require them to apply for the job.

Verbs like these are treated by some grammarians as part of the larger set of See also catenative verbs (see further under See also catenative verb, section 3).

Many types of causation are expressed through causative constructions formulated with the verbs have or get. For example:

She’ll have the committee endorse that decision.

We should get the house repainted.

In these cases, the subject of have/get is projected as prime mover(s) of the action, but it is actually carried out by some other party. That party is named in the first example (the committee), but left unnamed in the second example. Instead the object of the action verb (repainted) is raised, making it a passive construction. See further under raising; and get, section 4.

central determiner

See under See also determiner, section 3.

Chomsky

The name of Noam See also Chomsky is very much associated with American transformational–generative grammar, and its rule-based approach to the syntax of the clause. His foundation account can be found in Syntactic Structures (1957) and Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965). His work had a strong influence on both grammar and linguistics in the second half of the twentieth century. He is also known as a political activist. See further under transformational–generative grammar.

circumstance

In systemic–functional grammar, the See also circumstance(s) are the adverbial elements of the clause that contextualize the See also process and the roles of the See also participant(s). Their function, like that of the adverbial adjunct in other grammars, is to enhance, extend, elaborate, and project the action/process expressed by the verb (see further under adjunct, section 2). They consist of a single adverb or a phrase, especially a prepositional phrase, as illustrated in the list below. They contribute to the meaning of the clause in a variety of ways, expressing:

extent (distance, duration, frequency) e.g. through the winter
location (place, time) e.g. down by the river
manner (means, quality, comparison, degree) e.g. with a fork-lift truck
cause (reason, purpose, behalf) e.g. due to the lack of space
contingency (condition, default, concession) e.g. in case of emergency
accompaniment (comitative, additive) e.g. along with his cousin
role (guise, product) e.g. by way of an assistant
matter (topic) e.g. with respect to his employment
angle (source, viewpoint) e.g. according to his employer

Many of these types of circumstance are associated with particular types of verb process (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004). The first seven are all found with material and behavioral processes, the last two with verbal processes. See further under process and participant.

classical compound

For the morphological structure of neoclassical compounds, formed in English using Greek and Latin stems, see See also neoclassical compound.

classifier

In systemic–functional grammar, See also classifier is the term for the premodifer which comes immediately before the head of the noun phrase, and specifies the class to which the head noun belongs. For example, the underlined words in the following: a small beach house, the only surviving soldier from World War II. Other grammars refer to classifiers as categorial or defining adjectives: see adjectives, section 2.

clausal order

The order of items within the English clause has evolved over the course of its 1500-year history, and is now almost invariably SVO (subject + verb + object/adverbial/complement) in written declarative clauses. This SVO order is now used 99% of the time, where it was only 86% around 1400, and 48% in Old English (Fries 1940). The much lower rate in the Old English period correlates with the much more extensive marking of grammatical case on all nouns, pronouns, and determiners (see further under See also case). This meant that the same clausal relations – subject, object (direct/indirect) – could be expressed whatever the order of items. Their interpretation did not depend on their position relative to the verb, as in modern English. English See also clausal order (or “word order” as it is often called) is now essentially predetermined by the function of the clause: whether it is declarative (SVO), interrogative (VSO), or imperative (VO). However, the selection of items following the verb tends to be determined by the type of verbal process built into it. See further under See also clause, sections 1 and 2.

Note that some grammarians (e.g. Dixon and Aikhenvald 2002) prefer the term See also constituent order to See also clausal order or See also word order.

clause

1 Clause patterns in declarative clauses

The See also clause is the essential unit of English syntax. Any English sentence consists of one or more clauses with a set of grammatical constituents in a more-or-less fixed order. In declarative clauses (i.e. those that make a statement or proposition), there are seven essential patterns, correlating with different kinds of verb for which these are the obligatory constituents.

SV:

subject + verb

He escaped.

SVO:

subject + verb + object

He took his bag.

SVA:

subject + verb + adverbial

He went away.

SVC:

subject + verb + complement

He became a sailor.

SVOO:

subject + verb + object (indirect) + object (direct)

He sent her a letter.

SVOA:

subject + verb + object + adverbial

He put it in the post.

SVOC:

subject + verb + object + complement

He made it his duty.

These are the kernel structures of declarative clauses, each of which can be elaborated with other optional adverbial (A) elements, as discussed further below. Each pattern tends to correlate with particular types of verb:

SV:: verbs that describe movement or a continuing action
They departed. They were singing.
SVO:: verbs that express an impact on something/someone else
I carried the suitcase. They drove me.
SVA:: verbs that detail an action in space/time, or the way it was carried out
We ran down the road. The rain started unexpectedly.
SVC:: verbs that link what follows back to describe the subject
Jane is a good teacher. John seems very knowledgeable.
SVOO:: verbs that describe the transmission of something/person to another
He gave her the book. She sent him a thankyou note
SVOA:: verbs that describe the placement of objects
She put it in the corner. They threw it out of the window.
SVOC:: verbs that attach a mental or verbal assessment to something/someone
They thought it unwise. They named us their representatives.

Note that the V in all these patterns is See also finite (see See also finite verb). All of them contain the S + V sequence, whatever the structure after the verb. In traditional English grammar, this broad generalization is captured by the notion of See also subject and predicate (S + P), though there’s considerable variation within the See also predicate. Predicates may be simple or complex, as the structural patterns show. See further below (section 3) for obligatory and optional elements of finite declarative clauses.

➤ For the different types of See also transitivity embodied in the different clause patterns, see further under See also transitivity, sections 1, 4, and 5.

➤ For the analysis of clause constituents in terms of arguments of the verb, see under valency, section 2.

2 Variation of standard clause patterns

The S + V (S + P) pattern of declarative clauses holds for well over 99% of modern English sentences (see See also clausal order). Nowadays the only variations in declarative clause word order are to be found in specialized inversions, such as:

object (NP) fronting, associated with See also topicalization in spoken discourse: Horror movies I avoid.
See further under See also topic, topicalization, and topical progression, section 3.
adverbial fronting, as in
Here comes the bus. (AVS)
Hardly had they arrived [when . . .] (AVSv)
Never have I seen so many penguins. (AVSvO)
So do they all. (AVS)
See further under See also inversion.
verb fronting in certain types of See also subjunctive, as in:
Were I still a student, [I would . . .] (VSAC)
May he forgive you. (VSvO)
Should we become a republic, [Australians would be able to . . .] (VSvC)
See further under See also subjunctive, section 4; and See also hypothetical.

Note that the fronted verb in those examples is usually an auxiliary or modal verb (annotated as V), while the lexical verb with which it combines is annotated as v (see further under auxiliary verb, section 1; and modality and modal verb).

Those variations apart, the form of the English See also clause changes regularly when it is not a statement, as when it poses a question or issues a command:

Question:
Command:

In the interrogative syntax used in those questions, the verb element is prioritized over the subject. The commands illustrate the use of imperative syntax, where the subject is usually omitted: see further under interrogative and imperative.

Note that the function of the clause is not necessarily aligned with the syntax in which it is formulated. Thus Could you open the window? is more likely to be a gentle directive than a question, despite its interrogative syntax. See further under command.

3 Obligatory and optional elements of the finite clause

The clause patterns shown above are the minimal structures required for the type of verb used. But many a clause consists of rather more than the obligatory elements, usually adverbial extras. These can be located at almost any point within the clause structure, depending on the type of adverbial. In everyday English they commonly occur as the first or last element:

Tomorrow I’ll go to the market by car. (ASVAA)

Optional adverbials, especially modal or stance adverbials, may also occur in the middle of the core structure:

I certainly will go to the market tomorrow. (SAVAA)

They may indeed appear in the midst of a compound verb phrase, making it discontinuous:

I’ll certainly go to the market tomorrow. (SVAvAA)

For more on the mobility of adverbs and adverbials within the clause, see under See also adverbial, section 4.

4 Types of finite clause

(i) Main and subordinate clauses Clauses can be typed according to their status in the syntactic hierarchy. At the highest level is the main clause (known in traditional grammar as the principal clause). The lower clauses are termed subordinate by Quirk et al. (1985) and Huddleston and Pullum (2002): whereas they are dependent clauses for Biber et al. (1999) and Halliday and Matthiessen (2004). So in the sentence: They rode bicycles along the track until it petered out in the sand, the structure is as follows:

They rode bicycles along the track (main clause) until it petered out in the sand. (subordinate clause)

Like the main clause, the subordinate clause has an expressed subject and a finite verb marked for tense or modality, but its status is (usually) signaled by the presence of a subordinator (or complementizer/relativizer): here it’s “until”. In this case the main clause could stand alone as an independent clause in a simple sentence (see further under sentence, section 1). However a main clause whose dependent clause is embedded as its complement cannot be an independent clause. Rather it is a matrix clause, as in:

He knew (main clause, matrix clause) that she was well qualified for the job. (subordinate clause complement)

Note that See also matrix clauses can also be See also subordinate clauses, as in:

We discovered (main clause) he knew (subordinate clause, matrix clause) that she was well qualified for the job. (subordinate clause complement)

A close relationship between a main clause and its subordinate(s) can also be seen when the latter is a relative clause attached to the subject, as in:

The job which was advertised did not mention professional experience.

Here the underlined embedded clause (subordinate) is very closely tied to the subject of the main clause. In fact it is a See also defining or See also restrictive relative clause (see further under See also relative clause, section 3). Note that the term embedding associated with subordinate clauses is applied more and less broadly by different grammarians. See further under embedded clause.

(ii) Subtypes of subordinate clause English grammarians usually identify four main types of subordinate clause:

complement clauses or content clauses (traditionally called noun clauses or nominal clauses): see further under complement clause
relative clauses (in traditional grammar adjectival clauses): see further under relative clause
adverbial clauses: see further under adverbial clause
comparative clauses: see further under comparative clause

The most diverse of the four groups is the adverbial clause, although Huddleston and Pullum (2002) suggest that much of its diversity can be analyzed in terms of a preposition + content clause complement, which goes with an enlarged conception of prepositions: see further under See also preposition, section 4.

Two other very specific types of subordinate clause are the See also comment clause and the See also fact clause: see further under those headings.

5 Nonfinite clauses

The clause patterns discussed in the previous sections all involve a subject and a finite verb, in accordance with the traditional definition of a clause. Yet modern English sentences often include dependent clause-like structures with nonfinite verb parts, as underlined in:

They wouldn’t have wanted their children not to be there.

Being an anxious person, she kept the doors locked.

The office was tidy, papers piled neatly and books stacked in rows on the shelves.

The nonfinite clauses underlined in those sentences contain several kinds of nonfinite verbs: See also infinitive “be,” present participle “being,” and past participles “piled, stacked.” By this they become dependents of the finite verb in an adjoining clause. They often borrow their grammatical subject from the adjoining clause. In the first sentence it is extracted from the object of the preceding finite clause; in the second sentence from the subject of the clause following. Only in the third sentence do the nonfinite clauses have their own independent subjects. Nonfinite clauses can also serve as constituents within a main clause, as in:

Having my photo taken took less time than I expected.

In this case the nonfinite clause is itself the subject of the clause.

➤ For the structuring of clauses into complex and compound sentences, see under See also sentence, section 1; See also subordination; and See also coordination.

clause complex

In systemic–functional grammar this refers to the syntactic structure created by one or more subordinate clauses and the main clause. See See also clause, section 4.

clefting

See also Clefting is a marked way of formulating a simple statement, so that one particular constituent is foregrounded in a separate clause, creating a See also cleft sentence. For example:

We met them at the airport.

becomes

It was at the airport that we met them.

They need a lot of support.

becomes

What they need is a lot of support.

or

A lot of support is what they need.

In each case, one or more constituents of the simple sentence is/are extracted (as underlined), and foregrounded in the complex sentence that paraphrases it. The cleft sentence divides otherwise integrated elements of the predicate to underscore the mutual relationship between them. Note that clefting can also occur in questions, as in:

Was it at the airport that we met them?

The examples illustrate three different types of clefting:

the See also IT-cleft sentence
the See also pseudo-cleft sentence, and not too surprisingly
the See also reverse(d) pseudo-cleft sentence

Of the three types, See also IT-clefts are by far the most common (Biber et al. 1999). See further under See also IT-cleft sentence and See also pseudo-cleft sentence.

clipping

This term refers to the process of abbreviation by which shorter new words are formed by cutting off a part or parts of the full word. The clipped form may then be

the front end of a word, e.g. exam from “examination,” lab from “laboratory”
the back end of a word, e.g. bus from “omnibus,” phone from “telephone”
the middle, e.g. flu from “influenza,” fridge from “refrigerator”

Of the three types, the first is by far the most common (Quirk et al. 1985).

See also Clipping contrasts with See also contraction, whereby a new word is derived from the front and back ends of the base without much of the middle, e.g. dept for “department.” See further under contractions (2).

Note that See also clippings may themselves serve as bases for fresh derivations, and so hypocoristic forms such as footie, cabbie are derived from the clipping of “football,” “cab-driver.” See further under base and hypocoristic.

clitic

A See also clitic is a linguistic item which attaches itself to another word, either to its start, as a See also proclitic, or to its end, as an See also enclitic. It is a word, rather than a suffix, but cannot be stressed when bound to another. English has few See also proclitics, apart from the reduced form of DO which attaches itself to the start of a question, as in:

D’you want another suggestion?

English does have a number of See also enclitics, especially among modal verbs which are contracted and bound with pronouns, for example will, reduced to ’ll in forms like I’ll, we’ll, etc. Another very common English enclitic is the contracted negator n’t, which is bound to auxiliary and modal verbs as in isn’t, haven’t, don’t, won’t. See further under contractions (1).

Modern grammarians note that the genitive ending (’s) could be regarded as a clitic when it attaches itself to noun phrases, as in the lord of the mansion’s privilege. This is however a relatively rare construction, and the ’s does not represent a reduced word there (as it does in Dave’s returned).

closed class

See under See also word class, section 3.

closed condition

See IF.

closed question

This is one of the several terms for the question that requires a “yes” or “no” answer. See further under See also question, section 3.

closure

Borrowed from cognitive psychology, the term See also closure is used in information-oriented approaches to grammar to refer to the completing of a given syntactic unit, and the sense of completeness it gives to listeners or readers of the sentence. It comes up in analyses of sentence structure, e.g. complex sentences in which the main clause is postponed (especially See also left-branching sentences). See further under See also left- and right-branching sentences.

The need for See also closure also explains the practical limits on the use of recursive structures, e.g. the theoretically open-ended string of adjectives used to premodify a noun, as in:

that very remarkable blue-green irridescent satiny Thai-silk . . . fabric.

Every additional premodifying adjective delays the closure of the NP and the delivery of its head noun, which taxes the listener’s or reader’s short-term memory. The same holds for using multiple postmodifying relative clauses, although an unlimited number can in theory be attached to a preceding noun, as in the nursery rhyme:

This is the dog that chased the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

In both examples, the reiteration of a given element of the syntactic structure draws attention to its recursive possibilities, as well as the need for closure. See further under See also recursion and recursiveness.

cognate object

See also Cognate objects are the noun equivalents of the verb, which allow some intransitive verbs to be used transitively, as in the following:

She dreamed an embarrassing dream.

He is singing a wonderful song.

They died a painful death.

In all those examples, the cognate object is premodified by means of an adjective, which heightens the process that is projected by the verb. See further under See also modifier; and See also transitivity, section 1.

cognitive grammar

This is a one of the several late C20 grammars which distances itself from the rule-based approaches of transformational–generative grammar, and finds the basis of grammar in integrating it with semantics. Founded by Langacker (1987), See also cognitive grammar draws on psychological approaches to the way the brain processes language to explain its structure, postulating symbolic units and recurring image schemas which bond with each other to establish patterns of understanding and reasoning to be used in communicating.

cohesion

Connected discourse has the property of See also cohesion, i.e. its sentences are meshed together to create continuous meaning. Cohesion is achieved by a variety of cohesive mechanisms, including reiteration, reference, substitution, and ellipsis (Halliday and Hasan 1976). All these mechanisms make anaphoric connections with things mentioned elsewhere, usually earlier in the text, whether by repeating a key word, or finding an alternative to refer to the same thing (= coreference). Even ellipsis relies on something being fully articulated before, on which the ellipted reference depends. See further under anaphora and ellipsis.

Some cohesive devices are the grammatical or function words of the language, e.g. personal and demonstrative pronouns, conjuncts and conjunctions, and the definite article the. These provide coreference as well as certain logical connections. Other cohesive devices are lexical words which form chains of coreference in the text, through semantically and morphologically related words: words related by their meaning, such as grisly, gruesome; and by form: destroy, destruction. Words that tend to co-occur on the same context, e.g. gardener, plant, shrubs, also contribute to lexical cohesion in a text. See further under collocation, section 2.

cohyponym

See hyponymy.

collective noun

This the term for the type of noun that refers to a group rather than an individual member of it, e.g. army, committee, flock, herd. These collective nouns may be followed by singular or plural agreement: see agreement, section 5.

The term See also collective noun is also sometimes used to refer to collectives which have no plural inflections but are always found with plural agreement, e.g. people, police.

Note that both these types of collective nouns are defined by their patterns of agreement within the clause. Compare See also mass nouns, which are distinguished within the noun phrase by their inability to take plural inflections or be predetermined by a/an, and are always construed in the singular. See further under count noun, mass noun, and countability.

colligation

As originally coined by Firth (1957), See also colligation referred to the tendency of particular grammatical categories, e.g. adjective and noun, to occur together. The term was then little used until the 1990s, since when it has acquired a variety of extended applications to other co-occurrence relationships, as between a particular word or set of them and a grammatical category (Hoey 1997). Many researchers into colligation took advantage of the data produced by computerized concordances, which brought to light examples such as the fact that the word birthday tends to be preceded by a personal pronoun (Esser 1999). Others found colligation in the strong tendency for certain nouns to be used as either subjects or as objects, or in prepositional phrases. More extended patterns of colligation were identified as elements of pattern grammar (Hunston 2001), e.g. the way the word downside is very often preceded by “on the,” or flanked by “the,” and “of.” Thus more generally, particular words may provide a kind of “lexical priming” for certain others in the contexts in which they appear (Hoey 2005).

The term See also colligation has been further extended by those associated with the COBUILD project to the semantic preferences shown by particular words, and their tendency to associate with a particular semantic category or set of semantically related words. One example is the verb cause, which mostly colligates with words expressing a negative notion such as difficulties, problems, trouble, etc., and only rarely with delight, enjoyment, pleasure, etc. This tendency for particular words to combine with either positively or negatively charged words is known more generally as semantic prosody.

➤ Compare See also collocation.

collocation

1 Collocation as the juxtaposition of certain words

The use of the term See also collocation as the conventional juxtaposing of certain words was introduced by J. R. Firth (1951). It highlights the syntagmatic relationship between pairs of words, e.g. the particles used regularly in certain phrasal verbs, e.g. arrive at, defer to, diverge from. There is no particular reason why these words should pair up in modern English. The particles are simply selections from a circumscribed set which appear by convention in those pairs and seem to form a semantic unit. Likewise there are particular adverbs required by convention for certain verbs, for example: fall flat, go quiet; dead set, sorely missed. All these examples show that there are collocational restrictions on what goes with the verbs and adjectives in each set.

When two (or more) words are frequently juxtaposed in a text, they are not necessarily See also collocations. Corpus-based research can identify numerous high-frequency pairs such as in the, of the (bigrams); triplets such as by means of, in no way (trigrams); quartets such as from the fact that, in the first place (tetragrams); etc. These lexical bundles, as Biber et al. (1999) call them, are not necessarily grammatical units, nor do they necessarily show any idiomaticity to make them collocations.

2 Co-occurrence relationships among words in text

In systemic–functional grammar, the term See also collocation is applied to the fact that words belonging to a given semantic field often appear together in texts (written or spoken) that focus on issues in that field. For example, the following words:

cutdigfertilizergreenplantshrubsoiltreeweed

tend to co-occur in texts about gardening. Though many words in such collocating sets are nouns, they can also be verbs and adjectives, as the garden set shows. Words related by collocation in a semantic field are scattered through it, and contribute to the lexical cohesion of a text (see further under cohesion). The strength of the association between words associated by co-occurrence can be measured by mutual information statistics. See further under mutual information.

colon

This punctuation mark now has a limited role in relation to the grammar and information structure within sentences. The See also colon is simultaneously a separator, in that it marks the boundary between a specific set of words, and a connector, in that it indicates that what follows is a relevant extension to what went before. This applies in both its major syntactic functions:

setting off a set of examples used to illustrate a previous concept, as in:
The treasurer is responsible for all records of financial activity: invoices of fees due, receipts of payments for meetings and workshops, payments of the Society’s creditors.

Note the use of asyndetic coordination of the items in such cases, to avoid ambiguity with lower-level coordination within an item (see further under coordination, section 7). An alternative would be to use semicolons between each item.

separating the words quoted, or the text of a sign from the preceding quotative device, as in:
Last week the Minister said: “No further concessions can be made to the mining industry.”
A sign on her office door read: Only I know where I am.

This is one of several ways of punctuating direct speech. See further under See also quotation.

combining form

1 Combining forms in neoclassical compounds

Ordinary English compounds, e.g. database, houseboat, consist of parts that also function as independent words or free morphemes (see further under bound morpheme and free morpheme). The parts of neoclassical compounds, e.g. geography, psychology, differ in being bound morphemes, called combining forms. As those examples show, combining forms are often meaningful parts of classical loanwords, but they cannot stand alone – or at least not with the same meaning: the psych(o)- of psychology refers to the mind, not to a deranged person. For the non-etymological joining vowel in compounds such as psychology, see under neoclassical compound.

Being bound, combining forms have something in common with affixes in their positional preferences, and tend to be attached either at the front (like a prefix), or at the end (like a suffix). This is evident in the most productive examples, so that bio-, electro-, geo-, hydro-, etc. always form the first base of the compound, and -cracy, -icide, -ology, -scope, etc. always the second. One of the few counterexamples is graph-/-graphy, which preserves the Greek root meaning “writing” in the first component of graphology, graphite and in the second of geography, hydrography, paleography, etc. Another is arch(a)e- and -arch(y), where the meanings of the two combining forms have diverged, so that arch(a)e- typically means “first” or “beginning,” and -arch(y), “ruler” or “rule.” Yet both sets of variants in fact derive from the same Greek root, the verb archein meaning “be first; rule.”

2 Combining forms and affixes

See also Combining forms have much more specific meanings than affixes (see further under affixes). However not all grammarians agree on individual examples, such as micro-, pseudo-, as to whether their semantics are sufficiently generic to put them in the class of affixes or not. They are categorized respectively as a prefix of “size” and a pejorative prefix by Quirk et al. (1985), but as combining forms by Huddleston and Pullum (2002). On this hangs whether the words they form are to be classed as complex words or compounds: see further under word, section 6.

3 Dual roles for English combining forms

Some English combining forms do double as affixes, and thus contribute to the formation of both compounds and complex words. For example, -self in myself etc. is usually deemed a suffix and set solid with its base, whereas its counterpart self- in self-control is classed as a combining form, and very often hyphenated in dictionaries. The reverse holds for the English affix in, which is set solid as a prefix in inroad, instep, but usually hyphenated like a combining form in noun compounds like break-in, sleep-in.

comma

1 The comma as a syntactic separator

The primary function of the See also comma is to separate the core structure of the sentence from its periphery. Yet the use of a comma is discretionary in many sentences, depending on their length and internal constituency. The comma’s appearance with the various grammatical units and constructions listed below does not mean that it is mandatory in them, but in principle it can be used to separate:

two coordinated clauses:
The thieves disappeared into the back of the shop, and managed to escape with the cash through the loading dock.
For the deletion of the subject in the second clause, see See also coordination, section 6.
a main clause and a following subordinate clause:
The delivery will come on Friday morning, if you can guarantee there will be someone there to receive it.
a preliminary adverbial phrase or clause before the main clause:
Before it turns to rain, let’s try to do some gardening.
Before the first drop of rain, we should plant out those bulbs.
Research shows that writers are more inclined to use a comma in such cases with a preliminary clause, and with a preliminary adverbial phrase consisting of five words or more (Meyer 1990).
the nonrestrictive (or supplementary) relative clause introduced by which, as in:
The officer handed in his resignation, which predated the incident.
See further under See also relative clause, section 3.
a parenthetical clause following the main clause:
The idea was not new, I think.

2 Paired commas

These are used to separate a parenthesis or other supplementary material used in mid-sentence:

The idea was not, I think, a new one.

The paired commas set the parenthetical material apart from the host sentence. Yet when a parenthetical clause appears initially, most grammarians regard it as a matrix clause and no comma is used at all: I think the idea was not a new one. When the clause appears finally, the full stop or other final punctuation covers for the second comma:

The idea was not a new one, I think.

Paired commas are also used to mark off an appositional phrase following the clause constituent to which it refers:

My visit to Bangkok, city of temples, was cooled by a thunderstorm.

See further under See also apposition, section 1.

Note that where the supplementary material might be marked off with paired commas, the first comma but not the second is sometimes omitted.

In cases like this where the name is omitted, simply add coded initials.

This suggests an asymmetry with paired commas, in that the comma which marks the second boundary is weightier than the first (Huddleston and Pullum 2002).

3 Sets of commas and the “serial” comma

Sets of commas are regularly used to coordinate items in a series, as in:

They came complete with paints, canvas, easels, and thermoses of hot coffee.

These commas are effectively See also asyndetic coordinators (see further under See also asyndeton and asyndetic). The presence/absence of the final comma in such a series is a matter of editorial convention (= the “serial” comma). In American editorial style the use of the serial comma is mandatory, whereas in British style it is discretionary, to be decided on the semantic relationship between the last two items in the series.

Note that a set of commas is no longer required in a series of attributive adjectives, e.g. shiny new sports car: see further under adjective, section 2).

4 The comma splice

This phrase refers to use of commas in the asyndetic coordination of clauses, especially by novice writers. For example:

The problems of civil war were not encompassed by the UN, international conflicts were its terms of reference.

There are of course multiple ways in which those two clauses could have been linked, but the use of a comma is generally felt to be too slight, and in need of supplementing by an additional conjunction or heavier punctuation mark. This use of the comma as asyndetic coordinator of separate clauses is nevertheless accepted when they are short, as in I came, I saw, I conquered. The use of a comma before however, so, yet and other marginal coordinators between consecutive clauses is also asyndetic coordination, whether those words are seen as coordinators or conjunctive adverbs: see further under conjunct, conjunction, section 4; and adverb, section 3.

5 Reduced use of commas

The comma is now less freely used in editing English language texts than formerly. As discussed above, many of its applications are discretionary, especially in shorter sentences whose structure is unambiguous. This reduced use of commas is in line with the contemporary trend to use less punctuation generally. See further under See also punctuation, sections 2 and 3.

command

This is one of the four functional types of sentence recognized in traditional English grammar, along with the statement, question, and exclamation (See also sentence, section 3). Like them, the See also command has its characteristic syntax, i.e. the imperative, as in

Quick march!

Consider the likely outcome.

Take it away!

See further under See also imperative.

Note that polite commands and directives may also be formulated as questions, using the fronted modal of interrogative syntax:

Would you mind waiting.

Could you please shut the door.

Why don’t you open the window.

The third example, formulated as an open question, is more common in American English than British or Australian (see further under See also question, sections 2 and 3). In all such cases where the sentence’s function and syntactic form diverge, the final punctuation mark can be selected to confirm the function rather than conform to the syntax. In the examples above it can be seen in the use of the simple full stop rather than a question mark. See further under See also question mark and See also exclamation mark.

comment

For the use of See also comment as the complementary term to See also topic in relation to information delivery within the sentence, see See also topic, topicalization, and topical progression, section 1.

comment clause

This is a term for various kinds of parenthetical clause very often found in conversation, which comment on the propositional content of the main clause, or the speaker’s sense of his/her own communicative style. The most common type of See also comment clauses are quasi-formulaic mini-clauses, such as:

These can be inserted almost anywhere in a sentence.

We’d like to come, you know.

It’s likely, I think, they’ll accept our offer.

Such comment clauses are just loosely related to the main clause, and treated as a kind of stance or modal adjunct by most grammarians (Quirk et al. 1985; Biber et al. 1999; Halliday and Matthiessen 2004). See further under See also modality and modal verb, section 5.

Apart from the quasi-formulaic See also comment clauses, the term is applied by Quirk et al. (1985) to include a variety of other finite and nonfinite clauses with similar commenting functions. They include:

those introduced by AS: as I said, as they say, as it appears, as is common knowledge
those introduced by a WHAT-clause juxtaposed to the main clause, as in What’s more surprising he didn’t let us know.
those introduced by a TO-infinitive: to be fair, to be honest, to be precise
those expressed with an -ing clause: loosely speaking, speaking frankly
those expressed with an -ed participle: put simply, said another way

Sentences with a formulaic comment clause can be usually be reformulated, so that it becomes the main clause rather than subordinate to it. Compare the following pairs of sentences:

We’d like to come, you know.

You know we’d like to come.

It’s unlikely, I think.

I think it’s unlikely.

But the tentativeness of the meaning of the comment clause is then replaced by a more explicit cognitive meaning. This demonstrates how comment clauses typically function as See also hedging devices. See further under See also intensifier and downtoner.

common

In English grammar this descriptor may refer to:

the default type of nouns like bird, grass, road, window, which designate a class of object, and contrast with proper nouns, which are the names of specific individuals. See further under common noun.
the case of a noun in subject or object role: see See also common case.
the gender attributable to nouns which may be followed by the masculine, feminine, or neuter pronoun: see under See also gender, section 4.

common case

English nouns no longer show their grammatical case when functioning in subject or object roles within a sentence – unlike most of the personal pronouns. Compare the nouns in the following examples with the pronouns which would be their substitutes:

The student submitted the assignments on time. (S/he) (them) The assignments were submitted by the student on time. (They) (her/him)

The nouns in the example sentences remain the same (as singular or plural) despite their changed syntactic roles as subject or object of verb/preposition. These cases (nominative/accusative) are not marked externally, as with the matching personal pronouns. The form of the noun (singular or plural) which goes with all those syntactic roles is its See also common case.

Yet English nouns do show their case when it comes to the possessive/genitive case, by means of an apostrophe plus s: student’s assignment, time’s winged chariot.

See further under See also apostrophe (1); See also case, section 3; and See also personal pronoun, section 4.

common noun

Ordinary nouns are termed See also common because they provide the name for instances of very large classes of objects: book, chair, dog, house, light, as well as more general concepts such as business, information, pleasure, traffic, work. Though they are often used to refer to a particular instance or case, they can be redeployed infinitely to refer to others of the same kind. Common nouns include count nouns like book, chair, etc., and mass nouns like information, traffic. See further under count noun, mass noun, and countability.

See also Common nouns contrast with See also proper nouns which serve to name

a particular person e.g. Arnold, Confucius, Homer, Jane, Matthew, Sibelius
a particular nationality or cultural group e.g. African-American, Amish, Arab, British, Celtic, Hebrew, Islamic, Israeli
a particular place or geographical feature: Cambridge, Everest, France, Indonesia, Kilimanjaro, Manhattan

See further under See also proper noun and proper name.

As the examples above show, See also common nouns are written in lower case, whereas proper nouns are distinguished by an initial capital letter. See further under See also capitalization.

➤ For other grammatical aspects of common nouns, see under See also noun, section 3.

comparative

➤ For the comparative forms of adjectives, see adjective, section 3.

➤ For the comparative forms of adverb: see adverb, section 4.

➤ For comparative clauses and the comparative element, see next entry.

comparative clause

1 Comparative clauses in traditional and modern grammar

In traditional grammar, the term See also comparative clause could be applied to any subordinate clause involving comparison, including:

They talked as if they had always been friends.

They talked as easily as long-term friends do.

The two sentences are similar but not identical in their structure. While the comparison in the first begins with the complex subordinator as if, in the second it is anticipated by the comparative adverb as easily in the matrix clause. The first sentence presents a self-contained adverbial clause of comparison; the second, a complement licensed by the comparative adverb of the main clause. Only the second is now called a comparative clause.

2 The comparative element

The “standard” of comparison is the comparative element or comparative phrase in the matrix clause, and can be almost any constituent of it apart from the verb:

More voters were expected to register than did in the last election. (Subject)

The candidates seemed better prepared than they were last time round. (Complement)

We distributed more how-to-vote pamphlets than we expected. (Object)

The volunteers worked more cooperatively than they had in the past. (Adverb)

While there is typically one comparative element, it is possible to have two or more:

My father knows more Swedish than my mother does German.

She has forgotten more placename histories than I ever knew.

The last example with its three standards of comparison in matched structures actually uses the verb as one of them.

3 Ellipsis and reduction in comparative clauses

Almost all See also comparative clauses show ellipsis of one or more elements of the matrix clause, with a gap where the comparative element might otherwise be repeated, as in each of the first four examples in section 2. In the final example with three comparative elements, just one (the object) is ellipted. The examples all show other kinds of lexical reduction, e.g. the use of personal pronouns to replace the more explicit subjects of the matrix clause (they in the second and fourth examples); and use of the auxiliaries BE, DO, and HAVE as pro-forms for the full or more explicit verb phrase. Corpus-based research shows that the auxiliaries, along with modal and quasi-modal verbs, make up more than 70% of all verbs in comparative clauses with than, and about 60% of those with as . . . as (Peters 1996). One other type of verb frequently found in the comparative clause is the mental process verb, e.g. expected, knew, as in two of the examples above.

The most radical kind of See also ellipsis in comparative clauses is that of the copular BE in examples such as:

Her daughter is younger than him.

This form of comparison is sometimes fully formulated as:

Her daughter is younger than he is.

This prompted traditional grammarians to postulate an elliptical comparative clause in all such cases, and to argue for the maintenance of the subject pronoun even when there was no verb, as in:

Her daughter is younger than he.

The argument for preferring the subject pronoun here and the “elliptical clause” explanation was interconnected with the view that than was a conjunction rather than a preposition (see further under than). The fact that the object pronoun is most common in spoken discourse added a stylistic justification for preferring the “elliptical clause” + subject pronoun in comparative clauses in formal writing. This position is also enshrined in the various comparative deletion rules of transformational grammar. However, many kinds of comparison are expressed through phrases and nonfinite clauses, especially in fiction and academic prose, as found in research associated with the Longman Grammar (1999).

4 Equal and unequal comparisons

See also Comparative clauses are taken to include those which express either the equivalence or nonequivalence of two items, with characteristic patterns of conjunctions. Those expressing equivalence are usually formulated with the subordinator as, as in the following examples:

We left the house as early as we could.

The sun was just as strong as we had experienced in the mountains.

It was the same answer as/that we’d heard before.

The third example presents a small point of variation, where as is sometimes paraphrased by that. For the question as to whether that is a relative pronoun or a subordinator, see under relative pronoun, section 2.

In unequal comparisons, the nonequivalence of the comparative element with whatever is being compared in the See also comparative clause is expressed either (i) through the use of differ, different etc. (ii) through a comparative form of the pronoun, determiner, adjective, adverb; or (iii) through negation of the comparative element:

It was a different answer from/than the one we’d heard before.

The visitors drank more than anyone had expected.

The joke created less amusement than it had before.

The sun was stronger than we had experienced at lower latitudes.

We left the place more quickly than our predecessors had done.

They did not leave the house as/so clean as we did.

The comparative element in all but the first and last examples involves either inflected comparative forms (e.g. more/less, stronger) or an analytic form (e.g. more quickly): see further under adjective, section 3; and adverb, section 4. These comparative adjectives/adverbs set up a scale of superiority and inferiority within the comparative clause. Corpus-based research shows that superior comparisons (with MORE, etc.) are far more common than inferior ones (with LESS). Note that the negative formulation of nonequivalence in the last example allows either AS or SO in the comparative element.

Sentences expressing excess or sufficiency also suggest levels of comparison, for example:

The plan encountered such resistance that it was discontinued.

The reception room was so hot that everyone took their coats off.

The room was hot enough that everyone took their coats off.

In these examples, the element marked by “such,” “so,” and “enough” sets up a kind of comparative element like that of other See also comparative clauses. They are discussed together by Quirk et al. (1985), though with the comment that comparisons of excess or sufficiency also resemble adverbial clauses of result (see under See also adverbial clause, section 1). Note that the use of a THAT-clause to complement “enough” in the third example is better established in American than British English: see further under ENOUGH.

5 Correlative comparative construction

This construction correlates two scalar comparisons, as in:

The more questions she asks, the less he responds.

He responds less, the more questions she asks.

In this case the two comparatives express a proportional decrease (less) in the matrix clause against an increase (more) in the comparative clause. The first version is syntactically marked, with the fronted clause prefaced by THE; it is also the more common of the two constructions, according to Huddleston and Pullum (2002).

complement

1 A structure required to complete a phrase or clause

The term See also complement has multiple applications in English grammar. They have in common the fact that they refer to a structure which is usually obligatory, required by the syntax of the clause, and/or lexically determined by the head of the phrase, whether it is a:

noun phrase, e.g. an attempt to raise standards
verb phrase, e.g. rely on their understanding
adjectival phrase, e.g. fond of speculating
prepositional phrase, e.g. without their enthusiasm

Note that the nonfinite clause complements shown with to and of are licensed by the particular noun and adjective, and cannot be interchanged. Compare the alternative complement clause types available for some catenative verbs (section 4 below).

2 Complement of the clausal subject or object

The See also complement is most narrowly defined as the constituent which predicates something about the subject in an SVC clause or the object in an SVOC clause, as in:

He was very helpful.

They found him very helpful.

In each case, the C (complement) may be either an adjectival phrase (as shown), or a noun phrase (a helpful person). Both are predicate complements. Yet the way the complement attaches itself to the clausal subject or object serves to distinguish two of the seven essential clause patterns: see further under clause, section 1.

3 Any obligatory postverbal element of a clause

Some grammars use See also complement to refer to the constituent that is required to complete the clause, whether it is nominal, adverbial, or adjectival, and used to detail the object, subject, or the verb.

He helped the accident victim.

He brushed the broken glass away.

He was very helpful. He was a helpful person.

The term See also complement is thus applied in some grammars to the third element in all three essential clause patterns: SVO, SVA, SVC, so that all are SVC. The corollary is that SVOA and SVOC structures are deemed to require two types of complement (SVCC), which loses some specificity. However some specificity is gained by the fact that the obligatory adverbial can be distinguished from any optional ones (i.e. See also adjuncts) in the notation. So the structure of a sentence/clause such as:

The bird flew off over the hill into the distance.

can be analyzed as SVCAA, to show that only the first adverbial (“off”) is obligatory: see further under See also adjunct, section 4.

4 Nonfinite complement for catenative verbs

The term See also complement is regularly used for various nonfinite clauses attached to catenative verbs. Many take the form of a TO-infinitive or an -ing form (or in some cases both), as shown below for the verbs seem, begin, remember, love:

They seemed to be expecting the performers.

They began to run. They began running.

They remembered to take their ID.

They loved to hear stories. They loved hearing stories.

Where both types of complement are possible, there can often be slight differences in meaning. Note also that some catenatives take nonfinite clauses formed with a past participle, as in:

They wanted it removed.

See further under See also catenative verb.

5 Obligatory structure following prepositional verbs

Examples of this type of See also complement can be found in the NP objects of prepositional verbs, as underlined in:

Will the dog answer to that name?

This play differs from the last one she wrote.

I know we can rely on your diplomacy.

See further under See also phrasal verb and prepositional verb.

6 Non-subject participants in the clause

The term See also complement is used in Halliday and Matthiessen (2004) to refer to the non-subject See also participants in the clause, i.e. the objects (direct and indirect) of the verb. This is based on the principle that either of them could be used as the subject NP in reconfiguration of the clause. Compare:

The clown gave the children balloons.

The children were given balloons by the clown.

The balloons were given to the children by the clown.

But the term is also used for the predicative complement of the subject (= section 2 above) – whether it is nominal or adjectival. See further under See also object and See also participant.

➤ Note finally that the complement for certain verbs and nouns may take the form of a finite See also complement clause, on which see next entry, section 2.

complement clause

1 Complement clauses to complete a matrix clause

Modern English grammars use the term See also complement clause instead of the traditional See also noun clause (or See also nominal clause), or See also content clause (Huddleston and Pullum 2002), to refer to the range of subordinate clauses, finite or nonfinite, required to complete the structure of the higher clause. The name See also complement clause foregrounds the syntactic bonding between a subordinate clause and the matrix clause. Examples are underlined in the following:

The minister said that an announcement would be forthcoming.

That he was about to make an announcement was clear to all.

As the examples show, the complement clause may serve as object or subject in the matrix clause. The use of the complement clause as clausal object (i.e. post-predicate), shown in the first example, is far more common than as subject (pre-predicate), shown in the second, according to Biber et al. (1999). In their research on the Longman corpus, they found that the most common controlling verbs taking object complement clauses are think, say, know, see, find, believe, feel, suggest, show. The subordination of the following complement clause is marked by the presence of if, that, or whether as complementizer (see further under complementizer).

2 Verb-complement clauses and noun-complement clause

See also Complement clauses are particularly frequent with words that embody mental and verbal processes, both verbs and nouns. Compare:

They claimed that the food was inedible.

Their claim that the food was inedible was dismissed.

The syntactic bonding between the matrix and the See also verb-complement clause in the first example is clearly stronger than that of the head noun and See also noun-complement clause in the second.

3 Extraposition of complement clauses

Pre-predicate See also complement clauses are not very common. Instead they are almost always rephrased with the aid of a dummy it subject and extraposed beyond the predicate of the matrix clause. Compare:

That an announcement would be made was clear to all.

It was clear to all that an announcement would be made.

As the second example shows, the extraposed complement clause typically goes with an adjective expressing an impersonal stance or attitude to its contents (Biber et al. 1999). By contrast, adjectives that express some human affective value (e.g. afraid, amazed, grateful, worried) or personal certainty (confident, positive, sure) are likely to be construed with a human subject in the matrix clause which prefaces the extraposed complement clause, as in

I was positive that an announcement would be made.

Post-predicate (extraposed) complement clauses are very common in conversation, while pre-predicate complement clauses are mostly found in academic prose, and to a lesser extent in news writing. See further under See also extraposition.

4 Finite and nonfinite complement clauses and controlling verbs

The complement clauses discussed above have all been finite (THAT) clauses. Yet because of the interchangeability of finite and nonfinite complements with many controlling verbs, modern grammarians use the term complement clause for all types. They include:

THAT-clauses: They requested that he come

TO-infinitives: They requested him to come

wh-clauses: We remembered where we put the key

-ing forms: We remembered bringing the key

See further under See also controlling verb.

complementarity

This is the sense relation between complementary antonyms such as pass/fail etc. See further under antonyms.

complementizer

1 Complementizers as a special set of subordinators

The term See also complementizer is used by grammarians such as Biber et al. (1999) to refer to the small set of subordinating conjunctions which preface a complement clause, primarily THAT, but also IF, WHETHER, and wh-words functioning in the subordinator role:

They claimed that it was freshly baked.

We wondered if/whether it was freshly baked.

We asked where it was baked.

Other grammarians (Huddleston and Pullum 2002) refer to these complementizers as See also subordinators. See further under See also subordinators, section 1; and See also wh-word.

Note that TO acts as a complementizer for nonfinite complement clauses: see complement clause, section 4.

2 Zero complementizer

Complement clauses can be juxtaposed to the matrix clause without any explicit complementizer, i.e. with See also zero complementizer. This works only where the complementizer would have been that. It is also constrained by underlying rules relating to the head, especially if it is a noun; but less so if it is a verb or adjective. The closeness of the complement clause to the head is an additional factor (Kearns 2009). Use of the zero complementizer is everywhere a feature of spoken discourse, in fact the norm there (Biber et al. 1999). By contrast, retention of that as complementizer is characteristic of academic prose.

➤ Compare the use of the See also zero relativizer for that as relative pronoun for the object of the relative clause. See further under relativizer.

complex catenative

This is a type of catenative which licenses an NP before the following nonfinite verb. Compare

We’d love you to come.

We’d love to come.

The first sentence is a See also complex catenative, the second a simple catenative. See further under catenative verb, section 3.

complex conjunction

See under See also subordinator, section 2.

complex determiner

See under See also determiner, section 6.

complex preposition

See under See also preposition, section 3.

complex sentence

See under See also sentence, section 1.

complex transitivity

See under See also transitivity, section 4.

complex word

For the distinction between See also complex words and See also compounds, see under See also word, section 6.

compound preposition

See under See also preposition, section 3.

compound sentence

See under See also sentence, section 1.

compound verb

In traditional grammar this term was applied to several aspects of verb formation, including:

1
verb phrases which consisted of a combination of one or more auxiliary verbs and a main verb, e.g. am working, will be going, could have been motivated. See further under auxiliary verb, section 1; and verb phrase, section 1.
2
verbs which consisted of a main verb plus a particle, e.g. give up, refer to, turn off. See further under phrasal verb and prepositional verb.
3
verbs consisting of two free elements, e.g. downgrade, handpick, shortlist. See further under compound word, section 5.

Only the third application remains current.

compound word

1 Compounds as lexical units

Compounds are structured combinations of pre-existing elements of the language, as in airborne, classroom, overturn, worldwide. As in those cases, they typically consist of two bases, i.e. free-standing elements of the lexicon – or free morphemes (see bound morpheme and free morpheme). Compounds function as a single unit within the grammar of the clause, usually taking on the word class of their second base. They are usually associated with the open word classes, and are thus compound nouns/adjectives/verbs/adverbs. But there are also a few among the closed classes, including compound pronouns (e.g. myself, nobody), compound determiners (e.g. whatever, whichever), and compound prepositions (e.g. into, upon). See further under word class, sections 2 and 3.

Although the examples of compounds above are all written without a hyphen or space between their two components, many compounds do have them, as shown in the examples below.

compound nouns: car park, daylight-saving, makeover, videotape
compound adjectives: childlike, home-made, icy-cold, three-legged
compound verbs: baby-sit, cold-shoulder, overcome, snowball
compound adverbs: downtown, online, overseas, upmarket

Whether they are hyphened, spaced, or set solid as a single word, compounds are perceived as having a unitary meaning, which modifies the meanings of its individual components. Thus the “park” in car park is unlike that referred to in national park. The unity of compounds is often expressed by the fact that the first component is more strongly stressed than the second. Though grammatically dependent, the first is semantically the more crucial of the two bases, and called the determinant (Marchand 1960). The difference can be heard in the contrastive stress of car park versus the more equal stress on both components of national park.

2 Compounds and inflections

Noun and verb compounds can be inflected with the regular suffixes of the word class to which they belong, whatever their setting. So the tense inflections (regular or irregular) are added/inserted into compound verbs according to their second element (baby-sat, cold-shouldered), and the plural -s suffix is simply added to nouns, whether they are spaced or set solid: car parks, videotapes, and whatever their usual plural is, regular or not: still lifes, sabretooths, walkmans. The only exceptions are noun compounds which are (i) derived from phrasal verbs, e.g. goings-on, passers-by; (ii) formal titles, e.g. editors-in-chief, ladies in waiting; or (iii) formed according to foreign phrase patterns, e.g. aides de camp, poets laureate. In all three cases the head noun is usually pluralized, not the last word. See further under plural, section 4.

3 Compound nouns (or noun compounds)

These often consist of two nouns, e.g. car park, daylight-saving, snowball, where the first term acts as a modifier of the second (the base). The first noun is usually singular and generic in sense, although very occasionally it is pluralized, as in burns unit. In principal the two nouns are free morphemes, except in neoclassical compounds such as geography, histology, both of whose parts are combining forms (see further under combining form).

Other compound nouns consisting of free morphemes are combinations of:

adjective + noun, e.g. blackboard, hothouse, redhead
noun (subject) + verb (base), e.g. landslide, rainfall, toothache
noun (object) + verb (base), e.g. book review, haircut, handshake

Many compound nouns consisting of noun + verb use inflected forms of the verb, especially -er, -ing, as in:

The -ing form as verbal noun also serves as the first element in noun compounds:

cooking appledining roomspending money

Note also that some compound nouns are combinations of a verb base and particle, corresponding to a phrasal verb:

breakthroughmakeuptakeawayworkout

All such compounds may be said to be endocentric, i.e. they contain within themselves a reference to the object or phenomenon they represent – as take does in takeaway, and money in spending money. A small but distinctive group of English noun compounds differ radically in being exocentric, i.e. they refer only obliquely to the person or object they represent. For example: hardback (a book format), loudmouth (a noisy person), scatterbrain (someone who can’t concentrate). These are traditionally known as bahuvrihi compounds.

4 Compound adjectives (or adjective compounds)

Typically, these consist of an adjectival head preceded by an adverbial element, as in:

air-tightduty-freeoven-readyrock-hardworldwide

Many other compound adjectives involve an inflected verb, preceded by its object or an adverbial, as in:

Almost all compound adjectives are hyphenated.

5 Compound verbs

These are often derived from combinations of a particle + verb:

bypassoffloadoutsourceovertakeunderstudy

Others are derived by conversion from pre-existing noun compounds. They simply add verb inflections, as with adjective + noun combinations such as:

blacklistfasttrackshort-changewhitewash

A special subgroup of compound verbs are based on See also backformations of pre-existing compounds, as with ghost-write, lip-read, sleep-walk, spray-paint. See further under backformation.

6 Compound adverbs

The least common of the four grammatical types of compound is the compound adverb. Most are condensed prepositional phrases with locative or quasi-locative meanings that serve as adverbial adjuncts:

downtownofflineoverlandundergroundupstream

Other compound adverbs are combinations of two adverbs or adverb + preposition:

hereaftermeanwhilethereuponthroughoutwhenever

Their typical role is as conjuncts. See further under adverb, section 3.

concord

See under See also agreement, section 1.

concrete noun

See See also noun, section 1.

conditional

This term originates in the grammar of romance languages such as French, where it refers to a particular set of verb forms which express a conditional aspect, usually translated into English with the aid of the modal verb WOULD. Thus the French verb je voudrais with its conditional inflection -ais is “I would like.”

In English grammar, the term See also conditional is usually applied to sentences with a clause introduced by if, as in:

If it rains tomorrow, I won’t do the washing.

Clauses introduced by if may express an open condition, as in that example, or an unlikely or impossible condition. See further under IF and apodosis.

conjugation

The term See also conjugation refers to any of the multiple paradigms of Latin and Greek verbs, each with a characteristic stem vowel to which the inflections for tense, person, and number were added. The term is not usually used in reference to the paradigms of verbs in Germanic languages such as English. Instead they were classified as See also strong and weak, now usually irregular and regular respectively. See further under irregular verb and regular verb.

conjunct

This is a term for the subclass of adverbs including also, however, therefore, yet, whose logical meanings connect with elements of the previous clause or sentence (see adverb, section 3). The meanings of conjuncts are like those of conjunctions, but they do not provide a syntactic link with the preceding clause. Compare:

The visitor arrived with her suitcase. She also brought her dog.

The visitor arrived with her suitcase, and she brought her dog.

Thus conjuncts and See also coordinators can provide the same logical connections between two clauses, in this case an additive relation (see further under coordination, section 2).

The interplay between See also conjuncts and coordinators can also be seen when coordinators take on the role of a conjunct at the start of a sentence, as in:

The visitor brought her dog without a lead. But it behaved remarkably well.

But quite often appears as conjunct at the start of a sentence to signal that a contrasting idea is about to follow. More than 20% of the instances of but in written material of the British National Corpus were sentence-initial. Conjuncts play an important part in cohesion, especially in written discourse: see further under cohesion.

Note that while See also conjunct is the name used for this type of adverb by Quirk et al. (1985), it is a See also linking adverb for Biber et al. (1999), and See also connective adverb for Huddleston and Pullum (2002).

conjunction

1 From traditional word class to coordinators and subordinators

See also Conjunctions as a traditional word class included a variety of words whose function is to join successive phrases or clauses together into a single syntactic unit. For example:

These examples illustrate the two major types of conjunction:

coordinators (and, but, or)
subordinators (although, since, when, where)

The coordinating conjunction joins phrases and clauses so as to make them of equal status. The subordinating conjunction marks the two phrases/clauses as unequal, with the second subordinated to the first. With these large syntactic differences in the conjunctive bond forged by these words, most English grammarians now treat coordinators and subordinators as separate word classes. Note that Huddleston and Pullum (2002) treat most subordinators as prepositions. See further under word class; coordinator; and subordinator, section 1.

For See also complex conjunctions such as even if, even though, just as, etc., see under subordinator, section 2.

2 Polysemous and ambivalent conjunctions

Some conjunctive devices are grammatically polysemous, amenable to more than one conjunctive role. For example the wh-adverbs (WHEN, WHERE) can be used as subordinating conjunctions in both adverbial and relative clauses. See for example:

They went where no man had gone before. (adverbial clause)

We visited the place where they had died. (relative clause)

See further under See also relative adverb and See also relative pronoun, section 4.

The ubiquitous THAT is also a polysemous conjunction because it functions as the subordinator in complement (noun) and adverbial clauses; and as an alternative to the relative pronouns WHICH, WHO, and WHOM in relative clauses, as was recognized in traditional grammar. The three roles are illustrated below:

They said that it was warm enough to eat outside. (prefacing a complement clause)

We were so exhausted that we didn’t argue. (prefacing an adverbial clause)

The jackets that we were offered would have kept out polar winds. (prefacing a relative clause)

In modern English grammar, the THAT in the first example is now referred to as the complementizer and in the third the relativizer. Note that these two roles are sometimes difficult to separate, in ambiguous sentences like:

The proposition that few understood was accepted by the media.

In that example, “that” could be interpreted as relativizer (“the proposition which few understood . . .”) or complementizer (“the proposition (suggesting) that few understood . . .”). The ambivalence of THAT between these roles contributes to the argument that it should be analyzed as a complementizer when it serves as a relative pronoun (i.e. relativizer) in sentences like:

The man that we met at the station was a friend from way back.

See further under See also complementizer; See also relativizer; and See also relative pronoun, section 2.

3 Zero conjunction

The grammatical connections between clauses in compound and complex English sentences are not always identified by means of See also conjunctions, either coordinators or subordinators. In a set of coordinated clauses such as I came, I saw, I conquered, there are no overt markers of coordination. This use of zero conjunction all through a series of coordinated clauses or phrases is known as asyndeton (see further under coordination, section 7). Asyndetic coordination is normal in a set of three or more grammatical units (clauses, phrases, or words) for all but the last two items. For example:

The travelers arrived, took showers, changed their clothes and had a meal.

Where zero conjunction is most common in English grammar is as an alternative to that, in both its complementizer and relativizer roles: see further under those headings.

The use of zero conjunction in See also complement clauses such as the one underlined in I said I would come, makes them reversible: I would come, I said. This raises the further question as to whether the sentence structure is paratactic (a kind of asyndetic coordination) rather than hypotactic (i.e. subordination). See further under parataxis.

4 Marginal and incipient conjunctions

Despite the fact that See also conjunctions are essentially a closed class, new members are grammaticalizing out of adverbs, especially conjuncts, most notably hence, however, so, therefore, thus, yet. For example:

Too many people had called in, hence we decided to postpone our visit.

As non-central members of the coordinator class, they tend to be edited out of formal writing by adjustments to the punctuation (see See also punctuation, section 2). But they are used to coordinate main clauses in everyday speech and writing (Huddleston and Pullum 2002), representing combinations with AND (and so, and thus, etc.) as analogues of BUT. See further under HOWEVER; SO, section 3; and YET, section 3.

5 Correlative conjunctions

These are discontinuous pairs of words which draw attention to additive and alternative forms of coordination. The most familiar pairs are both . . . and, neither . . . nor/or, either . . . or, all of which use a determiner to highlight the first coordinate, as in:

The recipe contains both eggs and milk.

Neither his religious training nor the advice of friends could dissuade him.

We could have lunch on either Tuesday or Wednesday.

The use of either . . . or emphasizes the disjunctive meaning of or: see coordination, section 4.

Other correlative pairs consist of combinations of NOT and adversative or negative coordinators:

not (only) with but (also), as in:
They did not come but sent their apologies.
They not only brought food for the picnic but hired an umbrella for shade.
not or other negative adverbs with nor, as in:
They did not forget her kindness, nor would they criticize her.
Their health could never be restored nor their self-confidence repaired.

While the correlative conjunctions illustrated so far all form coordinated sentences, others work to highlight subordination, as underlined in the following examples:

Rather would you die than admit defeat.

We did it not so much out of sympathy as to show . . .

Just as they sow, so shall they reap.

Hardly had we arrived than/when we had to leave.

The faster they pedal, the more power they generate.

Other correlative subordinators identified by Quirk et al. (1985) include the obligatory pairs found in comparative sentences, in structures like: as beautiful as, less/more beautiful than; see further under comparative clause, section 4.

The whether . . . or pair may also be regarded as correlative subordinators, since the two words are obligatory in conditional-concessive clauses such as:

Whether we buy or we sell, there’s not much money in it.

Compare the use of whether in subordinate interrogative clauses:

Do you know whether the shops are open today (or will be tomorrow)?

In the latter case the or-clause is optional.

conjunction group

In systemic–functional grammar, this is the term for a See also complex conjunction, especially subordinators such as as soon as, in case, if only, just as. See further under subordinator, section 2.

connective adverb

See conjunct.

connotation and denotation

These are different aspects of the meaning of a word. While See also denotation is what the word refers to (i.e. its See also referential meaning), See also connotation is the associative meanings that go with it. For example, the word mansion denotes a place of residence, but its connotations are that it is a large and luxurious house, affordable only by those with a very large financial base. Some words are imbued with affective connotations, e.g. positive or negative ones. Thus interfere is negatively toned, whereas intervene has positive connotations about entering into someone else’s problem. The tendency for certain words to associate with ones expressing either positive or negative affect is referred to by some as semantic prosody (Sinclair 1987).

Note that some words consist almost entirely of affective See also connotation, with very little clear-cut See also denotation, notably adjectives such as fabulous, super, wonderful. Euphemistic words and expressions e.g. go to the bathroom are also largely connotation, and exist mostly to mask their denotation (Allan and Burridge 1991).

constituent and constituency

See immediate constituent analysis.

constituent order

See clausal order.

construction grammar (CxG)

The term See also construction grammar covers a set of theories in which language is analyzed as consisting of an inventory of constructional units in which form and meaning are semiotically integrated, rather than consisting of atomic syntactic units and the rules that combine them into meaningful propositions. The constructions may be lexically fixed, like many idioms, or more abstract vehicles where a form is paired with a conventionalized meaning, e.g. the clausal schema [S V O(i) O(d)] expresses the semantic content X CAUSES Y TO RECEIVE Z. Construction grammars share many of the conceptual categories of cognitive linguistics, but are increasingly oriented towards usage-based models and inductive learning. The fact that construction grammar engages with meaning allows for natural integration of grammatical inquiry with semantic, pragmatic, and discourse research.

➤ Compare See also cognitive grammar.

constructional grammar

1
A type of grammar that elaborates on immediate constituent analysis (Hockett Reference Hockett and Jakobson1961).
See See also immediate constituent analysis.
2
An alternative name for See also construction grammar: see previous entry.

contact clause

This term was used by Jespersen (1927) to refer to the type of relative clause which is expressed without a relative pronoun (i.e. with See also zero relativizer for the object of the relative clause). The relative clause is typically a See also defining relative clause, and juxtaposed directly with the main clause, hence the name See also contact clause. For example:

It’s the issue we were just talking about.

See further under See also relative pronoun, section 5; and See also relative clause, section 3.

content clause

This term coined by Jespersen (1927) is used in some modern English grammars for the See also noun clause, or subtypes of it. In Huddleston and Pullum (2002), See also content clause is used for subordinate clauses embedded in reported speech: she said that they would come, and for interrogative (wh-) clauses: she asked whether they would come. Other grammarians refer to these as (verb-) complement clauses: see further under complement clause, section 2.

content word

See under See also word, section 5.

continuous

See aspect.

contraction (1)

In everyday talk we commonly run adjacent words together to form See also contractions, as in:

I’ll go tomorrow if they can’t.

The words contracted are usually function words in the utterance, either auxiliaries or modal verbs, or the negator NOT. The core sets are as follows:

See also Contractions with auxiliaries/modals

See also Contractions with NOT

As is clear in the first set, some contracted verbs would be ambiguous out of context, e.g. those for the past tense of HAVE and WOULD. However the accompanying verb usually serves to disambiguate the two. Compare I’d said with I’d say (where the first I’d is clearly a contraction of HAVE, and the second a contraction of WOULD).

Beyond these standard contractions, widely used in speech, there are many which occur ad hoc with other subjects, especially existential THERE, prop-IT, demonstrative and interrogative pronouns, but also short and longer NPs. For example:

There’s no time like the present.

It’s raining.

That’s right.

Who’d have thought it?

The word’s getting around.

The Head of Department’s on his way.

Note also the one contraction of a pronoun with a verb, in let’s: see under LET-imperative. Such contractions are termed enclitics by grammarians: see further under clitic.

contraction (2)

The term See also contraction is also used to refer to the type of word abbreviation in which the first and last letters at least are retained, but much of the middle is cut out, e.g. hwy for “highway.” In British editorial practice, these are punctuated differently from other abbreviations by not being given full stops. Compare the use of stops with clipped forms such as cont. for “continued,” and see further under clipping.

control verb

This term is used in See also government–binding theory for verbs which take a nonfinite verb complement. It includes those where the subject is the same for both verbs, as in we wanted to go back; and those where they are different as in we expected him to go back. The first example shows “subject control,” the second “object control.” The term control verb covers both simple and complex types of catenative verb: see further under catenative verb, section 3.

➤ Compare See also controlling verb.

controlling verb

This is a cover term used by Biber et al. (1999) to refer to the range of verb types that take a See also complement clause, finite or nonfinite. See also Controlling verb thus includes:

verbs which take THAT-clauses as complements, typically referring to verbal communication: confirm, hint, postulate, say
verbs which take WHAT-clauses as complements, typically referring to mental processes: guess, know, understand, wonder
verbs which take TO-infinitives as complements, i.e. catenative verbs, simple and complex (see catenative verb, section 3)
verbs which take -See also ing complements, especially begin, go, keep, start, stop (see catenative verb, sections 2 and 3).

Note that many of the See also controlling verbs listed above can take more than one type of complement clause.

➤ Compare See also control verb.

convergent

See grammatical metaphor.

converse

This term refers the relationship between antonyms such as father/son and inside/outside. See further under antonymy.

conversion

1 Process of conversion

This is the grammarians’ name for a very common wordforming process of modern English, whereby a word takes on an additional grammatical role without any suffix to show its derivation. Compare the following:

Most adjectival compounds are hyphenated.

Most adjectival compounds are hyphened.

The verbs in those sentences are both derived from the noun hyphen, but they show alternative processes of word formation with it, both of which are listed in dictionaries. The first adds the suffix -ate to the stem to mark it as a verb, while the second has the same stem as the noun from which it was derived, and no derivational suffix. It does however take on the inflectional suffix associated with the past participle of any English verb, which shows the grammatical role to which it has been “converted” (see further under suffix). The verbs illustrate two of the basic processes in English derivational morphology: adding to the stem of an existing word, and using it as is. The third, i.e. cutting the stem back to derive a new word, is discussed under clipping and backformation.

This process of See also conversion is as old as Shakespeare, who made free use of it in the comment “It beggars belief.” Conversion has added fresh dimensions to many words in the history of the language, and it happens naturally in spontaneous conversation. In fact it supplies some of the most durable lexical innovations in English (Ayto 1996). Some conversions are disputed as illegitimate formations, perhaps because of the lack of formative addition to the word’s stem (see further below, section 3).

2 Alternative nomenclature

Apart from See also conversion, various terms for referring to this wordforming process can be found in accounts of modern English grammar. Others which foreground the word’s shift from one word class to another are functional shift and grammatical transfer. Morphologists often use terms which focus on the lack of derivational suffixes used in the process, hence zero derivation or zero affixation. There are some theoretical arguments against those (see Huddleston and Pullum 2002), yet from the descriptive point of view they identify the process more exactly for the layperson; and unlike terms involving shift and transfer, there is no suggestion of a permanent change in word class, which is certainly not entailed in the process.

See also Conversion is the term preferred by Quirk et al. (1985) and Huddleston and Pullum (2002) for this wordforming process. They apply it to cases where the change of grammatical role is not indicated in any change to the (written) form of the stem – as well as cases where the change is reflected in phonological differences, either in (i) the sound associated with the spelling or (ii) the stress pattern.

(i)
The nouns house and abuse both have a final voiceless sound /s/, whereas the verbs are both pronounced with voiced sounds /z/. The noun mouth and its verb counterpart differ in exactly the same way. Most such words are derived from Old English.
(ii)
The nouns ally and present are both stressed on the first syllable, whereas their verb counterparts are stressed on the second syllable. Most such words are derived from Latin or French, including:
Only when these words are inflected as nouns or verbs is their conversion evident in writing.

3 Direction of conversion

The See also conversion of nouns to verbs is more frequently seen and heard than the reverse, and can be found with a wide range of loanwords as well as native English vocabulary. Examples of such See also denominal verbs can be seen in oil the wheel, nurse the patient, bottle the wine, muzzle the dog, position the house. Compare the more limited range of deverbal nouns, seen in a big ask, a good catch, a thorough search, their every want, which are typically derived from simple verbs which go back to Old English. Despite their numbers, the denominal use of verbs, as in access the library, impact (on) the population, are more often questioned by conservative language users than deverbal nouns. The conversion of verb participles to attributive adjectives as in melted snow, freezing temperatures is so common as to pass unnoticed.

See also Conversions involving interchange between adjectives and nouns can be seen in various See also de-adjectival nouns such as comic, daily, express, final, professional, supernumerary. The reverse process, whereby nouns function as adjectives is far more common – if we focus on their use to premodify the head noun in the NP, as in marble pillar, iron bar, cotton wool, vegetable garden, i.e. attributive use (see adjective, section 5). Yet most grammarians (Quirk et al. 1985; Huddleston and Pullum 2002) comment that these nouns (cotton, iron, vegetable, etc.) do not qualify as adjectives unless they can also be used predicatively. Very few examples satisfy this test: The garden was vegetable sounds ungrammatical, and The pillar was marble is very marginal. Adjectives can however take on the full verb role, as in The river dried up, even inflected adjectives as in They lowered the barrier.

Although conversion usually involves the open-class words of English, there are a few examples involving the closed classes, e.g. prepositions: ins and outs, conjunctions: ifs and buts, pronouns: them and us. See further under word class, section 3.

4 Conversion within the same word class

The term See also conversion is extended by some (e.g. Quirk et al. 1985) to cases where words change their subcategory within a particular grammatical class. For example:

nouns which are technically See also proper nouns may be used as common nouns, as in:
a real Hitler
a garage full of Bentleys
several Davids
Other nouns shift from being See also count nouns to See also noncount/See also mass nouns, or vice versa. Thus turkey as a count noun refers to a bird, but as a noncount noun refers to a type of meat. Butter is usually a noncount noun as the generic substance to spread on bread, but becomes a count noun when one speaks of the choice of butters in the supermarket. (See further under noun, section 4.)
verbs sometimes shift from See also transitive to See also intransitive roles, or vice versa. Thus the transitive verbs eat and sell may be used intransitively:
Have you eaten yet?
The book is selling well.
The second type of construction (typically used with a third person subject), is discussed further under See also ergative. By contrast, intransitive verbs may be construed transitively, for example:
boil the kettlerun the bath
Some such cases are more common in one variety of English than another. Thus transitive use of cater and protest, as in cater a party, protest the war, are both typical of American rather than British English.
adjectives may shift from being essentially nongradable to gradable, as when someone is described as very English or rather art deco. A now-established example of this kind is the much debated unique. See further under absolute, section 1.

coordination

1 The syntax of coordination

See also Coordination is the syntactic joining of two or more clauses or phrases as grammatical equals. The coordinates are usually the same type of grammatical unit, e.g.

verb phrases, as in We danced and sang all the way.

noun phrases, as in They enjoyed morris dancing and folk singing.

It is however possible for grammatically unlike units to be coordinated, provided they are functionally similar, as in:

He was exuberant and in the best of health. (adjectival phrase, prepositional phrase)

Coordination is also known as See also parataxis, except where this term is reserved for coordination without the use of See also coordinators: see further under See also parataxis.

➤ See also Coordination contrasts with See also subordination, in which clauses are syntactically linked as unequal in status: see See also subordination.

2 Semantic aspects of coordination

The individual coordinators normally used to mark coordinated structures signal a variety of semantic relationships between the coordinates: additive (with AND), alternative (with OR), adversative (with BUT), negative (with NOR). These are like those of conjunctive adverbs: see under adverb, section 3.

Yet See also coordination can carry other kinds of meaning along with its connective function. For example, the use of BUT can carry the sense of concession or condition:

They will come but would have to be on the road by noon.

The use of and can convey a resultative meaning, as in:

He won a scholarship and never looked back.

This resultative meaning is more explicit in various incipient/marginal conjunctions, e.g. hence, so, therefore. See further under conjunction, section 4.

3 Unitary or segregated coordinates with AND

The coordinator AND can conjoin items in several kinds of relationship:

as a unitary concept, where the two coordinates are an integrated unit, as with bed and breakfast, fish and chips, hammer and sickle. On the agreement of the verb with unitary coordinates, see agreement, section 8.
as persons in a reciprocal or mutual relationship or participating jointly in an action, as in Janice and Tom are close friends, Albert and his wife played duets.
as segregated items, as in Joe and Richard passed the exam, about which independent predications could be made: Joe passed the exam, Richard passed the exam.

The segregation of the coordinates may be underscored by the use of correlative conjunctions (see conjunction, section 5):

Both Joe and Richard passed the exam.

Segregated coordination may also be emphasized by the use of See also distributive words:

Joe and Richard each gained a pass.

Note the alternative term distributive coordination used for segregated coordination by Huddleston and Pullum (2002), and their use of joint coordination for coordinates in a unitary or reciprocal relationship.

➤ On the agreement of the verb and subsequent pronouns/determiners with distributive subjects see See also agreement, section 4.

4 Disjunctive coordination with OR

The coordinates joined with OR are typically an either/or choice, as in

Will you have your coffee black or with cream?

Disjunctive coordination like that does not invite the answer “both,” and is therefore exclusive disjunction. Compare inclusive disjunction, as in

Your fitness can be improved by jogging or swimming.

where both coordinates (jogging, swimming) are valid suggestions. This may be underscored by the use of correlative conjunctions, as in:

Either jogging or swimming would improve your fitness.

Note that as subject of the clause, disjunctive coordinates typically take singular agreement, especially if they are exclusive. However when inclusive, they can become a notional plural, with notional agreement in the accompanying plural verb. See further under agreement, sections 2 and 8.

5 Grammatical case of pronouns in coordinated phrases

In principle, the case of any personal pronouns (i.e. nominative or accusative) in a coordinated phrase reflects that of the phrase itself within the clause, as its subject, or as object of the verb or complement of a preposition, etc. For example:

Jackie and I waved him goodbye. (subject phrase/nominative pronoun)

He waved goodbye to Jackie and me. (phrase complement to preposition/accusative pronoun)

See further under See also case. In everyday discourse, the case of the pronoun varies somewhat (Wales 1996), especially when it is the second coordinate, as in:

Jackie and me waved him goodbye.

He waved goodbye to Jackie and I.

See further under See also I and ME, sections 2 and 3.

6 Ellipsis in coordination

In coordinated sentences, elements that might otherwise be repeated, are omitted or ellipted. This affects the subject, especially if it would otherwise appear as a personal pronoun, and auxiliary and modal verbs. See for example:

The new dean came with lots of energy and [he] enthused us all. (ellipsis of pronoun)

The dean was ready to develop projects and [was] experienced in using the media. (ellipsis of auxiliary verb)

Coordinated sentences which do repeat auxiliary verbs and insert pronouns in the second clause tend to sound emphatic, and the repeated items rather redundant. The ellipsis itself provides the necessary See also cohesion: see further under See also cohesion.

7 Syndetic, asyndetic, and polysyndetic coordination

See also Coordination is usually marked by the use of a See also coordinator between the clauses, phrases, or items coordinated. This is especially true of two items, although if there are more than two, it is customary to use commas between earlier items in the series, and a coordinator only between the last two. See for example:

We wanted a day with blue skies, low humidity, and a light breeze.

(On the presence/absence of a comma before the final AND, see comma, section 3.) The use of AND as an explicit marker of conjunction in a series is formally known as syndetic coordination. It is the most common and least stylistically marked form of coordination (Quirk et al. 1985).

A set of coordinated items can be articulated without any coordinator at all, as in:

We wanted a day with blue skies, low humidity, a light breeze.

This is asyndetic coordination, which suggests the open-endedness of the series. The contrasting option is polysyndetic coordination: repeating the coordinator between each coordinated item:

We wanted a day with blue skies and low humidity and a light breeze.

Polysyndetic coordination naturally tends to emphasize and add rhetorical weight to the series.

coordinator

This is the term for the small group of connecting words from the traditional category of conjunctions, also known as coordinating conjunctions. They include AND, OR, BUT, NOR, whose syntactic role is to join phrases or clauses and assign equal status to both:

The See also coordinator AND is the commonest of the four in all registers of discourse, by the evidence of the Longman corpus (Longman Grammar 1999). BUT is most frequent in fiction writing and in conversation, while OR is most common in academic prose. NOR is quite rare by comparison with all the others. Marginal and incipient coordinators such as however, yet, can substitute for BUT: see conjunction, section 4.

Coordinators express distinctive semantic relations between the grammatical units they conjoin, including an additive, alternative, adversative, and negative relationship, as illustrated in the examples above. Grammarians such as Peterson (2009) note that other semantic relations such as condition and consequence can be carried by coordinators such as BUT and AND. This contributes to the argument for marginal conjunctions such as so, therefore being accepted as coordinators rather than subordinators: see further under coordination, section 2.

Note that See also coordinators may express either a unitary or a segregated/disjunctive relationship, according to the nature of the coordinates and the sentence predication: see coordination, sections 3 and 4.

➤ For See also correlative See also coordinators such as both . . . and, either . . . or, see conjunction, section 5.

copula

In English grammar this usually refers to the verb BE in its role as the link between subject and complement, in clauses like:

Today is a great day.

The theatre was unusual.

Though it has little semantic content, the See also copula provides the finite predicator needed to operate the clause. See further under See also copular verb.

copular verb

A See also copular verb serves to link the subject of the clause with its complement. The verb BE is the prototype, and the commonest by far in all kinds of discourse, including both academic and fiction writing (Biber et al. 1999). But most grammarians extend the term copular verb to a variety of other linking verbs. They may express a current state, as do:

appearkeepremainseemstay

Or a process or result:

becomecomegetgrowproveturn

Or sensory perceptions of things:

feellooksmellsoundtaste

Data from the Longman corpus (Biber et al. 1999) showed that the frequency and distribution of these copular verbs varies with the type of discourse. In conversation, the resultative get and sensory verb look are the most common, whereas in academic prose the resultative become is the commonest by far. In fiction the sensory verbs look and feel outnumber the rest.

See also Copular verbs are distinguished from both transitive and intransitive verbs in the Comprehensive Grammar (1985) by the SVC clause pattern that they instantiate (see further under clause, section 1). Yet many of those listed above also function as intransitive and/or transitive verbs. For example:

It was growing dark.

He grew in stature.

They grow vegetables.

See further under See also transitivity, section 5.

Note that Huddleston and Pullum (2002) restrict the term See also copular to clauses where BE is used to form SVC structures. Those formed with other verbs they call complex transitives. Their terms for the first two types of copular verbs listed above (those expressing a state, and a process or result) are non-agentive static and dynamic intransitive respectively.

Alternative names for copular verbs (other than BE) are intensive verb, linking verb, relational verb.

coreference

This term refers to the relationship between two NPs that refer to the same entity. It holds between a pronoun and the NP which is its antecedent, as in:

The eagle tried to catch a salmon which was too heavy for it to carry.

In that sentence the subject NP “the eagle” and the pronoun “it” are coreferential.

See also Coreference is an important aspect of See also cohesion in texts, achieved through a variety of See also pro-forms including pronouns (see further under See also cohesion). In expository and straight narrative texts, these are typically in the third person; whereas in narratives which tell the story through dialogue, the first and second person pronouns are used as well. Coreferentiality is more complex, and can involve switching between third person reference and first or second person pronouns (Stirling 2010). Two examples of this kind of coreferencing are shown by the underlined in:

The hunter(1) pointed his spear at the kangaroo(2) with the murmur “Now I(1) have you(2).”

Coreference is also a crucial factor in See also apposition, where synonymous paraphrases are used to explain and detail the same referent. See further under See also apposition, section 1.

correlative comparative clause

See See also comparative clause, section 5.

correlative conjunction

See See also conjunction, section 3.

COS or ’COS

These are the abbreviated forms of BECAUSE, commonly heard in informal conversation.

COULD

This is a common modal verb, used to express past See also ability and epistemic possibility. See further under modality and modal verb, sections 1 and 3; and compare CAN.

count noun, mass noun, and countability

1 Count and mass nouns

Within the noun phrase, the head noun may be constructed as a See also count noun or a See also mass noun. Count nouns are items consisting of one unit or more than one,and they normally have a singular and a plural form:

berry/berrieslarva/larvaenucleus/nucleitax/taxesthought/thoughts

Singular count nouns are prefaced by a variety of determiners, including A, AN, or THE. When pluralized, they can be used without any determiner at all. The presence of the singular determiners (A, AN) or plural inflections shows that they are countable.

See also Mass nouns such as education, furniture, honesty, keenness, mud differ in their semantics and their grammar. They are unbounded concepts, whether they are concrete or abstract nouns, as the examples show. Lacking plural forms, they are always construed in the singular, either without a preceding determiner, or else with THE or one of a quite restricted set of determiners (see under determiner, section 4). Mass nouns are like the typical collective noun, in that they always take singular agreement. In everyday texts, mass nouns occur less often than count nouns (Biber et al. 1999).

➤ For more on the various types of nouns, see under See also noun, sections 1, 5, and 6. For plural-only nouns like police, scissors, trousers, see under agreement, section 5.

2 Countability

The terms See also count noun and See also mass noun might suggest that See also countability is an inherent property of some nouns and not others, as in all the examples so far. Yet some English nouns enjoy dual usage as count or mass nouns according to the context. So for example, turkey can be heard used as a mass noun when served as meat on the festive table (Would you like some turkey?). Meanwhile the person buying it out of season will probably have to ask for a frozen turkey (focusing on the individual bird as a count noun). So the same noun may be used countably or noncountably, according to the meaning intended. The noun damage is ordinarily used as a mass noun, while in legal contexts it becomes a count noun, as when damages must be compensated for. The countability of some nouns depends on the variety of English. So accommodation is a mass noun in British English, but can be used countably in American English, as when booking accommodations at your holiday destination.

Alternative terms for noncountable/noncountably are uncountable/uncountably. Mass nouns are also known as noncount or uncount nouns in some grammars and dictionaries.

cute quotes

See quotation marks.

CxG

See construction grammar.

Book contents

C

Information

C

CAN