F
fact clause
In systemic–functional grammar, the See also fact clause is one of three types of projecting clause, distinguished from those that embody reported statements and thoughts, and involving See also verbal and mental process verbs. The fact clause projects its content impersonally, using either an extraposed IT-clause:
It is likely that it will rain.
Or a clause depending on nouns such as chance, case, proof/evidence, need/requirement (Halliday and Matthiessen Reference Halliday and Matthiessen2004). For example:
There’s a chance that it will rain.
It is the case that the skies are leaden.
The evidence is that the first drops are falling.
There’s now a requirement that all houses have rainwater tanks.
See further under See also projection, section 3.
In other grammars, fact clauses are treated as a subtype of nominal or See also complement clause. See further under See also complement clause, section 3.
FEWER and LESS
See under See also LESS, section 2.
finite
This word is used by Halliday and Matthiessen (Reference Halliday and Matthiessen2004) as a noun (See also the finite), to refer to the finite element of a verb phrase, which indicates tense or modality. It may be contained within a simple finite verb such as [the zoo] closed, but is often expressed through auxiliary or modal verbs in a typical verbal group (complex verb):
The zoo had been closed for a week.
The zoo will be closed for months.
The rest of the verbal group (been closed, be closed) is termed the predicator. Note that this makes the predicator nonfinite in Hallidayan grammar, whereas in other grammars it includes the finite verb. See further under finite verb and predicator.
finite clause
A See also finite clause contains a See also finite verb and its arguments, as well as other optional elements. For the essential patterns of finite clauses: SVO, SVA, etc., see See also clause, section 1.
finite verb
A See also finite verb is one which is normally marked for tense and accompanied by an explicit subject, as in:
The band marched steadily ahead.
Here the verb carries the past tense inflection, and is preceded by its subject (“the band”), as is usual in declarative clauses (see further under See also clause, section 1). These two factors (tense marking, specified subject) are not however visible for every finite verb, because of other factors in English morphosyntax. For example, verbs in the present tense do not carry tense marking unless they are the third person singular. Modal verbs are also unmarked for tense, as in
We march on Sunday and would like you to come.
Note also how in coordinated clauses with the same subject (in that case “we”), the subject is omitted from the second clause. See further under See also ellipsis, section 1.
➤ Compare See also nonfinite verb.
first person pronoun
The singular See also first person pronoun I is inflected for case, with ME as accusative/dative and MY for the genitive form, used as a determiner. For standard, idiomatic, and informal uses, see further under I and ME.
The plural See also first person pronoun WE is also inflected for case, with US as accusative/dative; and OUR for the genitive, used as a determiner. For exclusive/inclusive and other special uses, see further under WE and US.
FOR
This is one of the very common and highly See also grammaticized prepositions of English, because of its use in postmodifying phrases (a cure for malaria) and beneficiary phrases (brought it for him), and in various kinds of complementation, especially phrasal verbs. See further under preposition, section 1; phrasal verb and prepositional verb; and beneficiary.
FOR also has a minor role in modern English as a subordinator, as in:
His father warned him not to accept the offer, for no good would come of it.
In traditional grammar, FOR was sometimes regarded as a coordinator, and it shows some such properties in older narrative, in its ability to combine with other conjunctions:
For when he reached the house, he found the master was lying on the floor.
But it lacks most other coordinator properties, e.g. the ability to combine phrases, or to coordinate multiple clauses (see See also coordination, section 1).
formal agreement
See See also agreement, section 2.
frame semantics
Fillmore’s See also frame semantics (Reference Fillmore1976) developed a fresh dimension in the construction of meaning in sentences. He emphasized that word meanings are best understood in terms of the conceptual frameworks that support them, and that these See also frames are like stereotypical scenarios in which certain things are expected to occur. Individual words and phrases may evoke particular frames of real-life experience, and instantiate particular elements of them. Thus lexical semantics is interconnected with encyclopedic knowledge. Fillmore argued that this knowledge, acquired over the course of time, is what allows us to interpret sentences, and to extract the difference in meaning between similarly constructed examples, such as:
They bought the horse with the best pedigree.
They bought the horse with their lottery winnings.
Yet differentiating between them is no easy task for artificial intelligence, without recourse to frame elements and stock scenes associated with the frame. The challenge of detailing them is being tackled by extracting volumes of examples embodying a particular frame from large computer corpora, identifying the frame elements, and using them to interpret the syntax and semantics of sentences in text.
free relative
These are relative clauses with no lexical head in the main clause, but functioning as a nominal constituent within it.
Whatever they do is likely to succeed.
Whoever comes last will miss out on cake.
What you say I can scarcely believe.
In the first two examples, the See also free relative functions as the subject of the main clause; in the third as its object. See further under See also nominal relative clause.
Note that some free relatives are actually adverbial in their relationship with the main clause, e.g.:
I’ll go wherever you go.
They will come whenever you call.
FROM
This is one of the very common, highly grammaticized prepositions of English, used freely in expressing spatial relations (from A to B), and found in many phrasal and prepositional verbs. See further under preposition, section 1; and phrasal verb and prepositional verb.
fronting
In declarative sentences the default word order has the subject first, followed by the finite verb and its complement: SVO, SVA, SVC (see See also clause, section 1). But it’s not at all uncommon for other constituents, especially adverbs and adverbial adjuncts, to be moved to the front of the sentence, ahead of the subject. For example:
This See also fronting of any constituent to the beginning of the sentence puts the spotlight on it, and topicalizes it, shifting attention from the subject “they” to the temporal issue (“next time”). See further under topic, topicalization, and topical progression, section 3.
See also Fronting of constituents of the unmarked clause may be achieved through See also clefting, using hypotaxis to alter their order. Thus:
In the first example, the adverb “yesterday” is the focus of the prefatory main clause (an IT-cleft) and the rest subordinated. In the second the object is prefigured in the WHAT of a nominal relative clause, ahead of the main clause. In both cases, fronting is marked by a particular syntactic frame (see further under clefting). In the second case, the object also gains extra emphasis by means of the end weight attached to being in final position. See further under end weight.
In conversation, See also fronting of the clausal object or complement may be achieved simply by promoting it to the start of the clause, as in:
Raw egg for breakfast I can’t stand.
Wonderful it was indeed!
While the fronted position gives the object prominence, it is further emphasized in left-dislocation, when underscored by means of a resumptive pronoun in its normal clause position. See for example:
The last owner, I heard he had moved overseas.
full stop
1 End of sentence punctuation
The See also full stop is both the regular punctuation mark for the end of a sentence, and the occasional marker of certain kinds of abbreviated words. In North America the term See also period is used to refer to both functions.
The See also full stop at the end of a sentence effectively works in conjunction with the capital letter with which the first word of the next sentence begins. Together they provide a compound signal for marking sentence boundaries. This also means that the full stop cannot appear in mid-sentence where it otherwise would, as when marking the end of a quoted sentence. Instead it is replaced there by a comma, as in:
The director said “It’s my last day,” as he dashed off to the pub.
The full stop marks the end of a declarative sentence, whether it is syntactically complete, or a fragment: “It’s my last day. Today.”
2 Other sentence-final punctuators
In sentences with interrogative syntax the final See also full stop is normally replaced by a question mark, and in those with exclamative syntax by an exclamation mark. However, these default practices may be varied according to the pragmatic function of the sentence: see further under See also punctuation, section 2.
3 Full stop as punctuator of abbreviated words
Abbreviated words are usually punctuated with See also full stops if they are words whose last few letters have been clipped, e.g. cont. (“continued”), fig. (“figure”), incl. (“included/including”). For other types of clipping which do not take full stops, see further under clipping. In American English full stops/periods are also applied to words which have been abbreviated by omission of their middle letters, while retaining one or more letters at each end, as in dept. (“department”), Dr. (“Doctor”), hwy. (“highway”). In British English these contractions do not take full stops (see further under contraction (2)). Initialisms rarely have full stops these days in either British or American English, thus:
BBCIOURSIUNICEF
See further under See also acronym.
4 When the full stop as word punctuator occurs sentence-finally
Note that when an abbreviation punctuated with a See also full stop occurs at the end of a sentence which would itself be marked with a full stop, only one is used, as in:
Please let me know the cost of the airfare, all taxes incl.
However when the sentence ends in a question mark or exclamation mark, the abbreviatory full stop is included: Could you tell me the cost of the airfare, all taxes incl.?
full verb
This is the term used by Quirk et al. (Reference Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvik1985), among others, for See also lexical verbs. See See also lexical verb.
functional grammar
See (1) See also lexical–functional grammar (LFG) and (2) See also systemic–functional grammar (SFG).
fused head
This term is used by Huddleston and Pullum (Reference Huddleston and Pullum2002) to refer to various constructions in which one NP is syntactically or notionally embedded in another. They include:
- partitive NPs consisting of a quantitative pronoun followed by an OF-phrase with another pronoun, where the oblique determines number agreement with the following verb, as in
Some of us like rhubarb cheesecake.
All of it has gone.
- appositional structures which are restrictive, for example the poet Tennyson. See further under apposition, section 2.
- NPs in which an adjective serves as an elliptical head, as in:
The rich suffer as much as the poor.
In this case the adjective can be said to be fused with the notional NP head “people.” See further under noun phrase, section 1.
fused participle
See under See also gerund-participle, section 3.
fused relative clause
This is the name used by Huddleston and Pullum (Reference Huddleston and Pullum2002) for relative clauses headed by WHAT, for example:
What the garden needed most was more rain.
Such clauses are called See also nominal relative clauses by Quirk et al. (Reference Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvik1985): see further under See also nominal relative clause.
futurate
This term is applied to the present tense used with future reference, as in:
My plane leaves at noon tomorrow.
As in that example, the See also futurate is usually underpinned by a temporal adverb or adverbial phrase referring to future time.
future
In traditional grammar, English was said to have a future tense for referring to future time by combining WILL or SHALL with a lexical verb, as in will/shall speak. These compound forms provided the third tense, contrasting with the simple present and past verb forms (speak/spoke). This gave English the three tenses found in modern Romance languages such as French and Italian, where they are all marked by contrasting sets of inflections. Because English is a Germanic language, it has only two tenses marked by inflection: past and present: see further under tense, sections 1 and 3.
Yet English grammarians from the late C17 on recognized that the “future tense” formed with WILL and SHALL expressed more than simple futurity, and in fact held variable shades of prediction and intention/volition. This awareness produced the prescriptive rules about the complementary roles of WILL and SHALL with the different grammatical persons (first, second, third): see further under WILL and SHALL, section 1. In fact these distinctions prefigure some aspects of modality recognized in modern grammar. See further under modality and modal verb, section 3.
There are multiple ways of referring to future time in the English verb phrase, for example:
be about tobe bound tobe going tobe likely to
These various periphrastic modals all refer to events which are expected to happen, with individual orientations to them (see further under See also auxiliary verb, section 4). It is also possible to refer to future time by means of the present progressive or the simple present tense: see further under See also futurate.
