| grammar | | |
| n. (cognition) | 1. grammar | the branch of linguistics that deals with syntax and morphology (and sometimes also deals with semantics). |
| ~ linguistics | the scientific study of language. |
| ~ descriptive grammar | a grammar that is produced by descriptive linguistics. |
| ~ prescriptive grammar | a grammar that is produced by prescriptive linguistics. |
| ~ syntax | studies of the rules for forming admissible sentences. |
| ~ morphology | studies of the rules for forming admissible words. |
| ~ descriptive linguistics | a description (at a given point in time) of a language with respect to its phonology and morphology and syntax and semantics without value judgments. |
| ~ head word, head | (grammar) the word in a grammatical constituent that plays the same grammatical role as the whole constituent. |
| ~ quantifier | (grammar) a word that expresses a quantity (as `fifteen' or `many'). |
| ~ grammatical category, syntactic category | (grammar) a category of words having the same grammatical properties. |
| ~ subject | (grammar) one of the two main constituents of a sentence; the grammatical constituent about which something is predicated. |
| ~ object | (grammar) a constituent that is acted upon.; "the object of the verb" |
| ~ grammatical constituent, constituent | (grammar) a word or phrase or clause forming part of a larger grammatical construction. |
| ~ clause | (grammar) an expression including a subject and predicate but not constituting a complete sentence. |
| ~ article | (grammar) a determiner that may indicate the specificity of reference of a noun phrase. |
| ~ modify, qualify | add a modifier to a constituent. |
| ~ parse | analyze syntactically by assigning a constituent structure to (a sentence). |
| ~ agree | show grammatical agreement.; "Subjects and verbs must always agree in English" |
| ~ dynamic, active | (used of verbs (e.g. `to run') and participial adjectives (e.g. `running' in `running water')) expressing action rather than a state of being. |
| ~ stative | ( used of verbs (e.g. `be' or `own') and most participial adjectives) expressing existence or a state rather than an action. |
| ~ active | expressing that the subject of the sentence has the semantic function of actor:.; "Hemingway favors active constructions" |
| ~ passive | expressing that the subject of the sentence is the patient of the action denoted by the verb.; "academics seem to favor passive sentences" |
| ~ attributive, prenominal | of adjectives; placed before the nouns they modify.; "`red' is an attributive adjective in `a red apple'" |
| ~ attributive genitive | a word in the genitive case used as an attributive adjective.; "an example of the attributive genitive is `John's' in `John's mother'" |
| ~ predicative | of adjectives; relating to or occurring within the predicate of a sentence.; "`red' is a predicative adjective in `the apple is red'" |
| ~ self-referent, reflexive | referring back to itself. |
| ~ coordinating, coordinative | serving to connect two grammatical constituents of identical construction.; "`and' in `John and Mary' or in `John walked and Mary rode' is a coordinating conjunction; and so is `or' in `will you go or stay?'" |
| ~ subordinating, subordinative | serving to connect a subordinate clause to a main clause.; "`when' in `I will come when I can' is a subordinating conjunction" |
| ~ copulative | syntactically connecting sentences or elements of a sentence.; "`and' is a copulative conjunction" |
| ~ contrastive | syntactically establishing a relation of contrast between sentences or elements of a sentence.; "disjunctive conjunctions like `but', `or', or `though' serve a contrastive function" |
| ~ main, independent | (of a clause) capable of standing syntactically alone as a complete sentence.; "the main (or independent) clause in a complex sentence has at least a subject and a verb" |
| ~ dependent, subordinate | (of a clause) unable to stand alone syntactically as a complete sentence.; "a subordinate (or dependent) clause functions as a noun or adjective or adverb within a sentence" |
| ~ descriptive | describing the structure of a language.; "descriptive grammar" |
| ~ prescriptive, normative | pertaining to giving directives or rules.; "prescriptive grammar is concerned with norms of or rules for correct usage" |
| ~ endocentric | fulfilling the grammatical role of one of its constituents.; "when `three blind mice' serves as a noun it is an endocentric construction" |
| ~ exocentric | not fulfilling the same grammatical role of any of its constituents.; "when `until last Easter' serves as an adverb it is an exocentric construction" |
| ~ finite | of verbs; relating to forms of the verb that are limited in time by a tense and (usually) show agreement with number and person. |
| ~ non-finite, infinite | of verbs; having neither person nor number nor mood (as a participle or gerund or infinitive).; "infinite verb form" |
| ~ illative | expressing or preceding an inference.; "`therefore' is an illative word" |
| ~ restricted, qualified | restricted in meaning; (as e.g. `man' in `a tall man'). |
| ~ unrestricted | not restricted or modified in meaning.; "unrestricted verbs are usually stronger than those qualified by adverbs" |
| ~ correlative | expressing a reciprocal or complementary relation.; "correlative conjunctions" |
| ~ weak | (used of verbs) having standard (or regular) inflection. |
| ~ strong | of verbs not having standard (or regular) inflection.; "`sing' is a strong verb" |
| ~ limiting | strictly limiting the reference of a modified word or phrase.; "the restrictive clause in `Each made a list of the books that had influenced him' limits the books on the list to only those particular ones defined by the clause" |
| ~ nonrestrictive | not limiting the reference of a modified word or phrase.; "the nonrestrictive clause in `I always buy his books, which have influenced me greatly,' refers to his books generally and adds an additional fact about them" |
| ~ syndetic | connected by a conjunction. |
| ~ asyndetic | lacking conjunctions. |
| ~ transitive | designating a verb that requires a direct object to complete the meaning. |
| ~ intransitive | designating a verb that does not require or cannot take a direct object. |
| ~ aoristic | of or relating to the aorist tense. |
| ~ nominal | pertaining to a noun or to a word group that functions as a noun.; "nominal phrase"; "noun phrase" |
| ~ nominative | serving as or indicating the subject of a verb and words identified with the subject of a copular verb.; "nominative noun endings"; "predicate nominative" |
| ~ accusative, objective | serving as or indicating the object of a verb or of certain prepositions and used for certain other purposes.; "objective case"; "accusative endings" |
| ~ genitive, possessive | serving to express or indicate possession.; "possessive pronouns"; "the genitive endings" |
| ~ scopal | of or relating to scope.; "scopal dependency" |
| ~ future | a verb tense or other formation referring to events or states that have not yet happened.; "future auxiliary" |
| ~ optative | relating to a mood of verbs in some languages.; "optative verb endings" |
| ~ subjunctive | relating to a mood of verbs.; "subjunctive verb endings" |
| ~ imperative | relating to verbs in the imperative mood. |
| ~ indicative, declarative | relating to the mood of verbs that is used simple in declarative statements.; "indicative mood" |
| ~ interrogative | relating to verbs in the so-called interrogative mood.; "not all questions have an interrogative construction" |
| ~ participial | of or relating to or consisting of participles.; "participial inflections" |
| ~ substantival | of or relating to or having the nature or function of a substantive (i.e. a noun or noun equivalent).; "a substantival constituent" |
| ~ gerundial | relating to or like a gerund.; "the gerundial suffix `-ing'" |
| ~ attributively | in an attributive manner.; "the genitive noun is used attributively" |
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