see, look, watch
The verb see implies perceiving something with
the eyes; the verb look implies
making an effort to see; and the verb watch
implies both making an effort to see and observing an action or process for
a purpose:
We saw them
coming towards us.
We looked for them but could not see them.
We watched them for two weeks.
When there is
emphasis on conscious effort, look or
watch should be selected. Thus, we
may see a person, a play or a
performance; but we look at a book
because we are in control; and watch television
because we are in control and also because a process is taking place.
See
can be used in the simple present to imply a wider range of perceptions:
I see (i.e. I understand) what you mean.
Hear is
similar to see in that it has a
related verb listen (to) which
implies conscious effort:
I listened but I could hear nothing.
and it can be
used to imply ‘believe, understand’:
I hear he has left the company.
semantic change
Semantic change refers to a
process by which words alter their meanings. Thus silly meant ‘holy’ and the county of Suffolk was referred to as Silly Suffolk because of its many fine
churches. There are several types of semantic
change:
1
amelioration, when the associations of a
word improve. Minister meant ‘one who
served or ministered to someone else’ but now implies ‘one in orders’ or ‘a
high ranking government official’.
2
deterioration,
when the
meanings become less pleasant or lose some of their former glory. Lust used to mean ‘pleasure’ and not
‘sexual desire’; pretend used to mean
‘claim’ rather than ‘claim falsely’ or ‘make believe’; and tart (possibly from sweetheart)
meant ‘one who is loved’ and not ‘one who is
promiscuous’.
3
generalisation,
when the
meaning of a word moves from the specific to the general. Thus pow-wow was extended in meaning from an
Algonquian doctor, to the group around the doctor and to any group meeting for discussion.
4
narrowing, when a meaning becomes more
specific. Girl originally meant ‘a
young person, either male or female’.
5
radiation, where a number of meanings
develop from one central meaning. Chip, for
example, can be a small piece of wood, potato or silicon.
6
concretisation,
where an
abstraction is concretised, as when holiness,
honour, majesty or worship are
used as terms of address or reference.
This is for
you, your Holiness.
7
euphemism, when words for death,
disease, bodily functions are avoided and replaced by idioms which are either
pleasant circumlocutions:
go to one’s eternal reward (die) or
humorous:
cash in one’s chips (die)
8
folk
etymology, where
a false understanding can cause a shift of meaning. Pantry, for example, is derived from Latin panis meaning ‘bread’ but was associated with pans and so thought of as a place where pans were kept. And the US
place name Picketwire is a folk
etymology of Purgatoire (Purgatory).
Semantic change is inevitable in a language that is widely used, and
puristic attempts to halt it are unrealistic.
See: etymology, euphemism, folk etymology,
propaganda, purist.
semantics
Semantics is the branch of linguistics devoted to the study of
meaning. The main areas studied are:
1 polysemy, that is, words can have more than one
meaning. We can have a key that opens
doors, a piano key, a typewriter key and a key (i.e. a solution) to a mystery.
2
synonymy, that is, different words
appear to have essentially the same meaning,
thus
big and large;
regal, royal and kingly.
3
antonymy, that is, certain words
appear to be opposites, thus good and
bad; high and
low.
4
semantic
features, that
is, certain words can be shown to contain identical information. Thus cow and bull are both nouns, both animate, both adult and both bovines. They differ essentially in that cow is female and bull male. Many words can be
analysed into
semantic features and such a technique is useful in explaining metaphor. If,
for example, a man is described as squeaking,
we notice that squeaking is appropriate to mice. A mouse shares many
semantic features with a man, the essential difference being that a mouse is
not human. Thus, the metaphor dehumanises the man. Linguists often refer to one
unit of meaning (e.g. adult) as a sememe.
5
hyponymy, that is, the meanings of
some words are included in the meanings of others, thus the meaning of vegetable is included in the meaning of potato.
6
idioms, that is, certain
combinations of words have meanings which differ from the combination of their
individual elements. Thus take off meaning
‘imitate’ cannot be deduced from the meanings of take+off.
See: antonym, idioms, polysemy, synonym.
sentence
The simplest
definition of a sentence is that it
begins with a capital letter and ends with a full stop:
Thanks.
Up we go.
A sentence is a
grammatically independent unit which can express a statement, a command, a
wish, an exclamation or a question. Sentences occur in the written medium and
correspond loosely to speech utterances. An utterance is produced by a specific individual at a specific time
and in specific circumstances. It can thus be affected by non- linguistic
factors such as fatigue, interest or mood. A sentence, on the other hand, is an
idealisation which linguists impose on language data. We can illustrate the relationship
between an utterance and a sentence as:
utterance is to performance as sentence is
to competence
Sentences
can be subdivided in various ways: 1 A major
sentence contains a finite verb:
Don’t do that.
whereas a minor sentence does not:
Out.
Minor sentences
are common in advertising and are spoken with the same intonation pattern as
major sentences. Minor sentences are sometimes called elliptical or incomplete
because we can usually supply a
word or group of words to convert them into a major sentence:
[Get] out.
2
Sentences can occur as statements:
I like playing baseball
questions:
Is he not
coming?
commands or imperatives:
Come here at
once.
exclamations:
You haven’t
lost again!
3
Sentences can be considered in terms of their
syntactic simplicity. A simple sentence
is one which contains only one verb phrase:
The pound has sunk in value against all major
currencies.
A compound sentence consists of two or
more simple sentences joined by co-ordinating conjunctions such as and, but, or:
The pound has
sunk in value but it is still worth
95% of its 1984 value.
A complex sentence consists of two or more
clauses, one of which is syntactically
more important than the other(s). In other words, in a complex sentence we have
one or more dependent clauses:
The pound sank
because it was not supported.
A dependent clause is also referred to as a subordinate clause and an embedded
sentence.
A minor sentence can be simple: [Put it] Over here.
compound:
[Put
it] Over here or [put it] over there. or complex:
[Put it] Over
here where everyone can see it.
See: clause,
speech and writing, utterance.
serial verbs
Some languages, like English,
can have several full verbs co-occurring in a sequence:
I want to try to learn to swim.
‘Come kiss me, sweet and twenty.’
Such chains are known as serial verbs. They occur also in many
African languages. In Yoruba, for example, we find:
Ra a fun mi. (Buy it for me. lit. Buy it
give me).
Sare lo. (Run away. lit. Run go).
and
English-related pidgins and creoles in
the Atlantic region use serial verbs for several purposes such as:
1 to indicate location:
Bringam kam putam hia. (Bring it come put it here.)
I bin rich di haus. (He past
run reach the house.) 2 to indicate when an action almost occurred (inceptive aspect):
A bin wan 
brok ma
fut. (I almost fell and broke my leg.)
3 to stress the commencement of an activity:
Yu go bigin
stat tren dat bif. (You shall begin to start and train that animal.)
See: aspect, pidgins and creoles.
sexist language
Sexist language refers to sexual prejudice made overt in language. All
societies have prejudices. Western society tends to associate female beauty
with slimness whereas until recently Nigerian Igbos associated it with fatness.
Many
societies stereotype roles and relationships, often along sexist lines. In
English- speaking communities, for example, the following stereotypes are
frequently assumed:
1 that
women talk more than men.
2
that women and men talk about different
things, women discussing cooking, families, homes, men; men concentrating on
business, sport, women and work.
3
that women are more phonologically correct
than men.
4
that women use more intensifiers, such as absolutely, quite. 5 that women are good listeners.
6 that
men can keep secrets.
7 that
women are poor drivers.
8 that
men are mechanically minded.
9 that
women choose cars for their colour.
10 that
men choose cars for their mechanical performance.
11 that
girls are better at languages and subjects depending on memory. 12 that boys
are better at mathematical and scientific subjects.
Some stereotypes are based at least partly on truth but many
stereotypes are the result of prejudice, not fact.
Apart from stereotypes, there are a number of ways in which users of
English are linguistically conditioned along sexist lines:
1
Except for words that by definition refer to
females (mare, mother) and
occupations traditionally held by females (nurse,
secretary), English defines everyone as male. This is clear from an
examination of early arithmetical problems:
If a man can walk ten miles in two hours,
how many miles will four men
walk in twelve hours?
from terms for
the average person:
John Doe
the man in the
street
the
personification of a country:
Uncle Sam
and the fact
that, unless prefixed by lady/woman, nouns
such as:
beggar
doctor
writer
tend to imply men.
2
Patriarchal assumptions are reinforced by
encyclopaedias and schoolbooks which tell us, for example, that:
Man is the
highest form of life on earth.
Britannica
Junior Encyclopaedia, 1971
and describe the activities of our forefathers. (The word foremothers does not exist.)
3
Women usually take on men’s surnames and
nationality after marriage with the result that history tends to be the story
of men rather than both men and women.
4 Words
with negative overtones which apply to both sexes as did:
courtesan harlot prostitute
whore
often lose their reference to
men.
5 There
are many names which reduce women in age, status or humanity:
babe bird broad chick doll
dame
and few male equivalents,
although recently:
toy boy
has come into the language to
refer to a young man ‘adopted’ as a successful older woman’s companion.
6
Verbs of attribution in novels are often sexist.
Women chatter and scream, men
thunder or roar.
7
He/his are often used when he or she, his or her are implied:
Everyone must
do his best.
If a person works hard, he can achieve anything.
8 Man is an extremely productive suffix:
chairman
congressman
and, although person
can be substituted for man, many
people use chairperson to refer to a
woman and chairman to refer to a man.
See: prejudice, racist language.
shibboleth
The word shibboleth derives
from a Hebrew word shibboleth meaning
‘stream’. In the Book of Judges 12:5ff. we learn how the Gileadites tested
people to find out if they were Ephraimites:
Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for
he could not frame to pronounce it right.
Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of
Jordan…
Today, shibboleth tends to refer to a
linguistic usage regarded as capable of marking one group out from another.
Thus, the pronunciation of the eighth letter of the alphabet is a shibboleth in
Northern Ireland where Catholics say haitch
and Protestants aitch; and the
preference for lift as opposed to elevator could be enough to distinguish
a Briton from an American.
Sierra Leone English
Sierra Leone (Lion Mountain) was named
by the Portuguese in 1460. The British traded with the coastal Sierra Leoneans
from the late sixteenth century and bought the land around modern Freetown as a
home for ex-slaves. In 1787, 351 former slaves were shipped from Portsmouth and
they were joined in Freetown by 1,131 Africans who had remained loyal to the
British during the American War of Independence. Freetown became a Crown Colony
in 1808 and gradually this status was extended to the rest of Sierra Leone. The
country gained its independence in 1961 and today has a population of
approximately 3.7 million.
English is the official language of Sierra Leone. It is used in
education, government, commerce and international dealings. As well as English,
however, Sierra Leone has another lingua
franca, Krio. This is an English-related creole which is the mother tongue of the quarter of a million
descendants of the Freetown settlers and is widely used throughout Sierra
Leone. Krio has been used for religious instruction, song, drama, poetry and
political persuasion and its status has been enhanced by the publication of a
dictionary in 1980. The following text is a translation into Krio by Freddie
Jones of a verse from Wilhelm Busch’s Max
und Moritz:
Dεm kin se, εn misεf gri,
It has
frequently been stated Man 
lan pas ABC. People must be
educated.
Wetin go pliz 
insεf
Not alone the A, B, C,
Na if wi bεtε wisεf.
Heightens man’s humanity.
Rayt εn rid o,
Not just simple reading,
writing
we gεt sεns 
no.
Makes a person more inviting.
The Krio people
were of commercial and educational influence throughout West Africa from the
late eighteenth century and may well have modified and reinforced the various
English-related pidgins throughout West Africa.
In Sierra Leone we thus find a continuum of Englishes, from the
standard language, through mother-tongue-influenced varieties and
Krio-influenced forms, to Krio.
See: African English, pidgins and
creoles, West African English.
simile
Simile comes from the Latin word similis (like). The word is applied to a
figure of speech that overtly expresses a likeness between two beings, objects
or ideas:
He’s like a cat with two tails.
The face was
like a jail door with the bolts pulled out. Duty is as enduring as life.
The comparison
usually involves the words as or like and often combines unequal
partners, such as ‘human’+‘inanimate’:
She was as fit as
a fiddle.
or
‘human’+‘animal’:
She’s as crafty as a bee/fox.
There is
often a play on the ambiguity of the shared word, so that in the following:
He was as game as a pheasant.
She was as nutty as a fruitcake.
game suggests both ‘bird that is hunted’
and ‘resolute’ and nutty implies both
‘full of nuts’ and ‘crazy’.
There are
regional preferences in similes. The following, for example, are characteristic
of northern England:
as daft as a
brush (crazy)
as thick as two short planks (unintelligent)
whereas Australians might use:
as awkward as a pig with a prayerbook like a koala up a gum tree
West Africans:
as quickly as
fire in a Harmattan wind
It passed like Christmas. (very
quickly) and Americans:
as corny as Kansas in August
as phoney as a three-dollar bill
When a comparison is implicit
rather than overt, it is called a metaphor. Thus:
He bellowed
like a bull.
is a simile, whereas:
John bellowed from morning
until night.
is a metaphor.
See: figurative
language, imagery, metaphor.
since
The word since
can be used as an adverb:
She joined the
firm in 1970 and has worked there ever since.
a subordinating conjunction, implying time or reason:
He has wanted
to be an astronaut since he was
seven.
You weren’t
invited since you hate parties.
and as a preposition:
We have been
here since May 14.
In all uses of since except those where it is
equivalent to because, since involves
looking at a time from a point in the past.
When since functions as a subordinating
conjunction, there are certain restrictions on its use. It can co-occur with:
1 the present perfect:
She has written poetry since she was a child.
2 the
past perfect:
They had lived there ever since they moved to town.
3 the
present tense in the pattern ‘It is+length of
time+since’:
It’s two years since we had a holiday.
It’s ages since we went on a picnic.
4
the past tense in the pattern ‘It was/had
been+length of time +since’:
It was almost six years since he had
written.
It had been two days since they had heard from the climbers.
It
does not normally co-occur with a negative:
*It’s ages since we didn’t get a morning paper.
See: ago.
Singapore English
Singapore, a former British colony and
an independent republic since 1965, consists of a 570-square kilometre island
and 60 smaller islands at the tip of the Malay Peninsula. Its population of 2.6
million (with a literacy rate of 86.8%) is made up chiefly of Chinese (76.1%),
Malays (15.1%) and Indians (6.5%).
Of Singapore’s four official languages (English, Mandarin, Malay and
Tamil), English is predominant in both the official and private sectors. It is
the medium of instruction in all schools (where students are also required to
study their mother tongues as a second language) and in tertiary institutions.
Because of the educational, social and ethnic diversity of the population (most
of whom can speak some form of English), Singapore English exhibits a
correspondingly wide range of linguistic features. The description here applies
essentially to the English of young, educated Singaporeans.
Phonology
1 Singapore
English is non-rhotic.
2
Rhythmically it is syllable-timed in that all
syllables (stressed or unstressed) occur at equal intervals. Syllables that are
marked by stress in mother-tongue English are distinguished by loudness and/or
length rather than by pitch; unstressed syllables usually do not undergo vowel
reduction; and liaison across words is rare. These features combine to produce
the staccato effect many scholars have noticed in Singapore English.
3
The differences in both length and quality are largely neutralised in the pairs
and 
so that pairs of words such as seat/sit, fool/full, pat/pet, cart/cut and
port/pot are virtually indistinguishable.
4
The RP diphthongs and are reduced to long monophthongs
/e/, /o/, /ε/ and respectively as in day /de/, no /no/, dare /dε/ and door
5
The dental fricatives /θ/ and /ð/ are often
replaced by /t, d/, so that thin becomes 
and
this 
6
There
is little distinction
between voiced and unvoiced consonants in word-final
position, with the unvoiced
consonants being preferred. Thus shelve sounds
like shelf, ridge like rich and cause like course.
7
Word-initial /p, t, k/ are weakly
aspirated. In word-final position, they are often replaced by a glottal stop,
thus sit
is often and pick 
8 Consonant clusters
tend to be simplified especially
in word-final position,
with opt
becoming
ask /as/ and sixth 
Vocabulary
1 Words
have been adapted from the indigenous languages:
makan (from Malay=to eat)
towkay (from Hokkien=shop-owner, businessman)
2
More widespread are English expressions which
have acquired a local meaning:
fellow (person, not exclusively male) follow
(come/go with someone) as such (therefore,
as a result) last time (formerly, in
the past)
Grammar
1
There is a tendency to foreground the topic
of the sentence:
This book I
have read already.
My friend, he can speak five languages.
and for indirect or embedded
questions to echo the word order of direct questions:
Do you know
what is the problem?
2 Different
tenses often co-occur in sequence:
If you miss the plane you
would be sorry.
I think he
would succeed.
3 Some
speakers use progressive and perfective forms where the simple present or past
form is expected:
I am having a
terrible headache.
He is very rich. He had
bought another house recently.
4 Some
uncountable, especially concrete, nouns are treated as countable:
a chalk chalks
an equipment
equipments a luggage luggages
5 There
are some differences in the use of prepositions:
They requested
for more money.
He emphasised
on the importance of hard work.
6 Is it?/isn’t it? tend to be used as universal tags:
You’re
British, isn’t it?
The show
starts at 8, is it?
7 The -ed
suffix is sometimes added or deleted from an
adjective:
a matured person a tensed feeling a terrace house ice water
See: Chinese English, English in the Indian
Sub-Continent, Malaysian English, stative and dynamic.
slang
The etymology of the word slang is
unknown but it refers to words and phrases peculiar to a particular group and
often regarded as non-standard and inferior. There are two main kinds of slang:
1
items such as bitch (woman), bite the dust (die),
godfather (one who pays the bills), let the grass grow under your feet (waste
opportunities), moll (low-class
female) which have existed for centuries.
2
items such as amen wallah (clergyman), fab (wonderful), long-shore
lawyer
(unscrupulous lawyer), pillshooter
(doctor), wing (penny) which are
relatively ephemeral.
Slang is often witty and expressive but is usually inappropriate in
writing and in formal speech.
There are many motives for using slang, including humour, originality,
desire for exaggeration, euphemism and wish to identify with a particular
sport, trade, school, religion or ethnic group.
ethnic
group:
gaujo (Gypsy word for
non-Gypsy) The main subvarieties of slang are:
1 abbreviations:
sarky (sarcastic)
tranny (transistor radio) 2
back slang:
one>no
two>oot
3 borrowings:
imshee (go away/let’s go, from Arabic)
plonk (cheap wine, from French)
4 coinages:
dingbat
thingamajig
5 compounds:
bees-knees (best)
bigshot (important
person) 6 euphemisms:
blooming/ruddy (bloody)
darn (damn) 7 exaggeration:
fantabulous mind-blowing
8 onomatopoeia:
kerplop
wham
9 phrases
or sentences:
Get lost! (Off you go!)
take the mickey (tease) 10
rhyming slang/Cockney slang:
plates (of meat)=feet titfer (tit for tat)=hat
11 suffixation, also known as
‘Pig Latin’. Suffixes like iggy/aggy are
attached to all words. This technique is favoured by children:
I’lliggy goiggy outiggy
withiggy youiggy.
See: colloquial
English, jargon.
SO
So can occur as:
1 an intensifying
adverb:
I’m so tired.
He drives so slowly that even cyclists pass him!
2
a conjunction which can be used with
and without and: It was snowing heavily (and) so we went by train.
The sentence
without and tends to be less formal. So also co-occurs with that to introduce clauses of purpose:
We saved hard so that they could have a good
education.
and result:
We worked hard
so that they could have everything
they wanted.
That, like and, tends to be dropped in informal or
colloquial styles.
3 a colloquial sentence modifier:
So there you are!
4
in spoken questions to belittle a statement:
He’s very
rich. So?/So what?
5
as a verb phrase substitute when combined
with BE, DO, HAVE and the modal auxiliaries:
He wants to
walk to the North Pole although to do so
(i.e.
to walk to the North Pole) will use up
all his resources.
If you’re
going, then so am I.
6 as a
clause substitute:
They’ll be
pleased to see us—at least, I hope so.
(i.e.
they’ll be pleased to see us).
7 in the
form so-and-so it occurs as a
uncomplimentary noun phrase substitute:
That so-and-so has done it again!
8 so-so is used colloquially to mean ‘not very well’:
How is she
today? Just so-so.
See: as, pro forms, substitution, such.
sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics concentrates on the
study of language in society. It examines how and why people use particular
languages or particular forms of language in their interactions with others. As
well as studying the variety that exists in all languages, sociolinguistics
also describes the information speakers may unwittingly provide with regard to
their age, sex, education, regional and perhaps ethnic origins.
See: linguistics, variable.
solecism
Solecism is the term used to describe
incorrect usage in grammar or idiom. It occurs in both speech and writing:
He gave it to John and I. (John and me)
She don’t want trouble. (doesn’t)
Poets
occasionally deviate from the norms of grammar:
The world is
charged with the glory of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil…
G.M.Hopkins, ‘God’s Grandeur’ but poetic
deviations are not regarded as solecisms.
See: deviation.
sound symbolism
Every language has a set of
words in which there seems to be a direct link between the form of a word and
its meaning. Such a link is known as sound
symbolism. In English, for example, words like cuckoo and peewit imitate
the call of the birds they represent; bang,
wallop suggest the noises that are made when different objects collide; and
certain sounds can suggest exertion or weight (the -ump in lump, pump, thump),
light and movement (fl- and gl- in flame, flicker, gleam, glimmer), and repetitiveness (-er and -le in stammer, twinkle).
See: onomatopoeia, synaesthesia, word formation.
South African English
South Africa has a population of
approximately 35 million, 67% ‘Black’, 19% ‘White’, 11% ‘Coloured’ (or ‘Mixed
Race’) and 3% Indian. The White community is made up of Afrikaners and English
speakers, and since South Africa ceased to be a member of the Commonwealth in
1961 the Afrikaner community has been increasingly dominant.
English is one of the two official languages of the country and the
varieties of English used match the social, racial and political divisions in
the country. Mother-tongue English, in both its standard and nonstandard forms,
reflects the British origins of most speakers; Afrikaans English is the variety
used by people whose mother tongue is Afrikaans and it is affected by Afrikaans
in phonology, vocabulary and syntax; the English of the Black community
reflects individual mother tongues and the influence of Afrikaans; the English
of the Coloured people is also affected by Afrikaans and tends to show traces
of Malay; and the English of the Indian community is similar to Indian English
in other parts of the world but has absorbed a number of elements from
Afrikaans. The variety of English described is the prestige form of mother-tongue English (SAE).
Phonology
1 SAE is non-rhotic.
2 
There are the same number of phonemes in SAE and RP although there is a tendency for the
vowel sounds 
and
to converge thus making pairs like par,
paw, and cart, caught homophones.
3 Diphthongs tend to be shorter than in RP with some speakers
replacing 
by /a:/ and 
by
/e/:
You can’t drive /dra: v/ there /ðe/.
4 The vowel 
is usually replaced
by schwa in unstressed syllables. Thus villages and
villagers are homophones for many speakers.
5
The vowel sound /ε/ in yes is often replaced by 
or by
a diphthong 
6 The consonants /p, t, k/ are less
strongly aspirated than in RP.
Vocabulary
Apart from the vocabulary
common to all varieties of mother-tongue English, SAE has adopted words from
Afrikaans:
boer (farmer)
stoep (veranda) from African
languages:
assegai (spear)
indaba (meeting)
from Malay:
babotie (savoury minced meat)
sjambok (hide whip)
from Portuguese:
mealie (maize)
piccanin (child)
and Indian languages have
provided words for specifically Indian foods such as biriani
and tandoori.
Grammar
1 With frequently occurs at the end of a sentence:
Do you want it with?
2
Lend seems to be replacing borrow:
Can I lend that book, please?
3
Check you is a colloquial equivalent
of I’ll meet you:
Check you at Stuttaford’s at 12.
4 Man occurs as a general term of friendly address to both
women and men:
You should have seen me, man!
5
Shame is widely used as an empathy
formula:
He broke his
leg. Shame!
See: African
English, Southern African English.
Southern African English
In our account
of Southern African English, we shall
include nine countries, namely Angola, Zambia, Malawi, Lesotho, Zimbabwe,
Mozambique, Namibia, Botswana and Swaziland, which together have an estimated
population of over 40 million. (South
African English is examined separately.) This area includes the following
main varieties of English:
(a) mother-tongue English
(b) standard
Southern African English
(c) Portuguese-influenced English
(d)
Indian-influenced English.
Our description
will focus on (b), which is the prestigious variety of the area.
Phonology
1 There are
many similarities between the English of East and Southern Africa, the most
marked of which is the tendency to raise the vowel sound in back so that back and beg differ
mainly in terms of the final consonant.
2
Southern African English is non-rhotic.
3
There are fewer vowel contrasts than in Received Pronunciation.
In particular, length distinctions are rarely preserved and so there is
a tendency to merge:
/i/ and so that leave
and live are both /liv/
/æ/
and /ε/ so that bat and bet are both /bεt/
and 
so that cot and cut are both 
/u/ and 
so that fool and full are both /ful/
4
Central vowels are avoided. Schwa is often
replaced by /a/ and /з/ by /e/ so that Rita
is realised as /rita/ and church as
/t∫et∫/.
5
There is a tendency to devoice /b, d, g/ when
they occur in word-final position. This tendency may have been reinforced by
speakers exposed to Afrikaans- or German- influenced English.
6
/θ, ð/ are usually replaced by /t, d/ and,
occasionally, by /s, z/.
7
Intrusive vowels tend to break up consonant clusters at the beginning and
end of words:
/sipriŋ)/ for spring
/tεnεts/ for tenths
Vocabulary
1
Words have been adopted from local languages:
mamba (snake)
shamba (farm)
2 Others
have been given modified meanings. borrow
can mean ‘lend’, refuse ‘deny’ and
touch ‘call at’:
He would not borrow
me the money.
I told him he
was guilty but he refused it. I want
to touch the hospital.
Grammar
1 New phrasal verbs occur:
I can’t cope up with these
problems.
We should discuss about this.
2 There
is a tendency to use one for the
indefinite article:
I stay in one lovely hostel.
One lady told me.
See: African
English, East African English, South African English.
speaker orientation
Speaker orientation is a term used to indicate
the fact that language choice often refers to
location
in terms of proximity or non-proximity to the speaker:
Take this book. (i.e. the one close to the speaker)
Take that book. (i.e. the one not close to the speaker)
Bring the book here. (i.e. the book should be
carried to the speaker)
Take the book away. (i.e. the book should be carried away from the
speaker).
Time is also expressed in
terms of now (close in time to the
speaker) and then (remote from the
speaker):
We all have a comparatively easy life now.
There was no electricity then.
Often, when a
speaker wishes to make a story more immediate, he shifts it from the past to
the ‘historic present’:
Did you hear the one about Seamus O’Shaughnessy, the man who knew
everybody? Well there was this Japanese and he’s a millionaire, you see, and he wants to travel…
There is also a rough correlation between the use of come (+ into/to) and pleasantness and the use of go (+from/off) with unpleasantness:
come into money/one’s own/come good
go into exile/retreat/go grey
See: bring, location.
speciality, specialty
There is considerable overlap in the meanings and uses of these words,
with speciality being more widely
used in the UK and specialty in the
USA. In both countries speciality can
mean:
1
a particular quality or skill
2
a branch of knowledge in which one specialises
3
in the UK, it can also mean a product for
which a person or place is renowned, but this meaning is carried by specialty in the USA:
Chicken
chasseur was the speciality of the
house. (UK)
Chicken
chasseur was the specialty of the
house. (USA)
The related
term specialism is used in both
countries for both the act of specialising in a particular branch of learning
and for the field of specialisation:
My own
particular specialism is Icelandic
sagas.
but speakers
of US English often use specialty with
this meaning too:
Icelandic
literature is my specialty.
See: UK and US words.
speech and writing
Most speakers equate language with
speech and this equation is no more
harmful than the useful fallacy that the sun rises in the east and sets in the
west. It is important to realise, however, that language is an abstract system
which can be realised in a variety of mediums, the most frequently occurring of
which are speech and writing.
Mother-tongue speech and writing differ in a variety of ways:
Speech Writing
involves sound involves
marks on a surface produced by vocal
organs produced by hand+tool perceived by ear perceived
by eye
organised in time organised in
space
usually spontaneous usually prepared
usually transitory usually
more permanent
acquired
effortlessly acquired with effort
addressee usually present addressee usually absent
message
aided by gestures message must be
made explicit marked by hesitations,
slips syntactically smoother
utterances linked by association sentences linked by
logical progression
Speech is the
primary medium in the sense that it is acquired first and apparently without
effort. It is also the most frequently used language medium throughout the
world and the only medium in many communities. Writing develops in a society
when speech is no
longer adequate
to fulfil all its linguistic needs. Writing permits easier and wider
dissemination of knowledge and ideas.
speech in literature
The
representation of speech has traditionally been a feature of literature. Drama,
in particular, is heavily dependent on speech forms because it is intended to
have an aural as well as a visual effect, but poetry, stories and the novel all
use approximations to speech in an attempt to reflect and recreate life.
Drama, short stories and the novel often appear to use naturalistic
speech involving hesitations, slips of the tongue, false starts, non-sequiturs,
changes of direction in mid- sentence, and regional and dialectal forms. A
close study of speech in literature will
show, however, that a sensitive writer only uses enough features of speech to
create an idiolectal illusion. An overuse of nonstandard forms or features of
hesitation could result in confusion for the reader or viewer.
Writers know that readers understand the idiosyncrasies of speech. It
is usually only necessary to indicate the background and nature of a character
and to rely on the understanding and imagination of the reader. This may be
done by the use of idiosyncratic words or phrases, a few spelling or syntactic
modifications and by the use of
attributive verbs such as complained,
enthused, rushed, stammered. In live speech, conversation can often have
little significance or value (other than phatic
communion) but in literature speech must not only create the illusion of
life, it must also reveal character, impart essential information to the reader
and advance the narrative.
The language of literature is not limited to direct and indirect
speech. Many stylisticians have drawn attention to the continuum from narrative to speech, a continuum which
includes stream of consciousness, where
thoughts, speech and narrative are interwoven.
See: direct speech, reported speech, stream of consciousness.
spelling
Spelling involves the forming of words
with letters according to convention and accepted usage. Many people have
commented on the fact that English spelling is often irregular. Knight, for example, sounds the same as night, and read can, depending on usage, rhyme with both bead and bed. George
Bernard Shaw once pointed out that ghoti could
spell fish if we took the sound gh has in enough, the sound o has
in women and the sound ti has in motion. Many attempts have been made to reform English spelling.
During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, English scholars changed
spellings so as to make spelling conform to etymology. Thus dette became
debt to show that it derived from
Latin debitum and dout became doubt (Latin dubitum). Three centuries later, Noah
Webster tried to reform US spelling. He ironed out many inconsistencies but
many more remained.
Spelling and pronunciation diverge in three main
ways:
1 Many
words have silent letters:
dumb gnash
knot honest ptarmigan psalm
2
There are many ways of spelling the same sound, or
/k/ for example:
aye guy high I my Thai rye cat choler kettle khaki
3
Different sounds often have the same
spelling, -ough or s for
example:
bough cough though through tough days sing sugar
Because of
Webster’s work and the prestige of his dictionaries, a number of differences
exist between UK and US spellings. The most commonly-occurring differences are:
1 Common abstract nouns end in -our
in the UK and -or in the USA.
Both countries use -or for people and
for medical/scientific nouns:
USA UK USA UK
behaviour behavior governor
governor colour color pallor pallor
rumour rumor tremor tremor censor censor
2 Many
nouns which end in -re in the UK have
-er in the USA. Both countries use -er for people, for medical/scientific
terms and for many verbs:
centre center adviser/or adviser/or litre liter cater cater metre meter peter out peter out theatre theater
3 Many verbs end in -ise in the UK and in -ize in the USA:
apologise apologize realise realize
philosophise philosophize
Many users of UK English
also use -ize, especially for synthetic verbs such as colonize and transistorize. In addition, both UK and US users have -ise in a number of verbs including advertise, arise, chastise, circumcise and
comprise.
4 We
often find consonants doubled before the morphological endings -ed, -ing, -or/- er in UK English:
councillor councilor travelling traveling kidnapped
kidnaped
Usually, the doubling is optional
in US English, although many Americans follow the rule that a consonant is
doubled after stressed short vowels:
rebelling rebuffing
5 US
English prefers -ense where UK
English has -ence although both forms
occur in US English:
defence defense/defence pretence pretense/pretence
licence license/licence
Both countries have:
immense incense intense
6
Often, words or morphemes which end in l in UK English have ll in the USA: fulfil/fulfilment
fulfill/fulfillment skilful
skillful instal/instalment install/installment
although fulfil, instal and skilful are marginally acceptable in US English. 7 The UK causative
morpheme en- is often replaced by in- in the USA:
enclose inclose/enclose ensure insure/ensure endorse
indorse/endorse
8 The UK
spellings -ae-/-oe- are regularly
replaced by -e in US English:
anaemia anemia diarrhoea diarrhea anaesthesia anesthesia foetus fetus
haemorrhage hemorrhage manoeuvre maneuver
9
A number of words ending in -ogue in the UK are regularly -og in the USA, although the ogue spelling is also found:
analogue analog dialogue dialog
catalogue catalog
10
The following miscellaneous list includes the
words which normally have different spellings in the UK and the USA:
aluminium aluminum moult molt
analyse analyze moustache mustache artefact artifact plough plow buses busses/buses programme program
|
carcase |
carcass |
sulphur |
sulfur |
|
cheque |
check |
tyre |
tire |
|
draught |
draft |
waggon |
wagon |
|
mould |
mold |
woollen |
woolen |
11 UK
English uses more hyphens in word compounding than is common in US English:
Co-operate cooperate money-bags moneybags
12
Some informal US spellings are popular,
especially in advertising, but are not acceptable in formal contexts in either
country:
donut tonite tho thru
13
The following words frequently cause spelling
problems in both countries:
accommodation
biased (UK, US), biassed (US)
nerve-racking (not *nerve wracking)
Bluish parallel
Caribbean pejorative
Commitment preferable
Committee preferred
Desiccate pronunciation
Desperate pus
Diphthong putrefy
duly (not *duely) pygmy
Ecstasy questionnaire
embarrassment queuing/queueing
Exaggerate rarefied (UK, US), rarified (US)
forebear (ancestor) reconnaissance
Forehead seize
Grievous separate
hi(gh)jack silhouette
Honorary soliloquy
Humorous stationary (still)
Khaki stationery (paper)
Idiosyncrasy supersede
liquefy/liquify tying (not *tieing)
Massachusetts vaccination
Mediterranean weird
Mortgage wintry
See: -able, -ise, problem pairs, problem words, pronunciation, UK
and US words, spelling pronunciation.
spelling pronunciation
Spelling
pronunciation involves
a change in pronunciation in response to a word’s spelling. Catholic was once pronounced Catolic, hotel was ’otel and soldier was sojar,
but now such
pronunciations would be regarded as nonstandard. More recently, words like often and soften or castle and apostle are having the t reintroduced. The t in often is perfectly
acceptable and, in time, the others may also become standard.
Occasionally,
pet forms of names can indicate earlier pronunciation:
Anthony pronounced Antony gave Tony Elizabeth pronounced Elizabet gave Betty
Overseas learners of English
often use spelling pronunciations including mizzled
instead of misled and Ex-mass because of Xmas; and an increasing number of English users are pronouncing porpoise and tortoise to rhyme with noise instead
of with the second syllable of purpose.
See: speech and writing, spelling.
split infinitive
A split
infinitive involves the use of a modifier between the to and the verbal part of the
infinitive:
to really like it
Infinitives in English are often but not always preceded by to:
I asked him
to sing we listened to him sing
we wanted him to go we
watched him go
and so the most useful definition
of an English infinitive is as a verb form, identical with the imperative form
of the verb:
Imperative Infinitive
Be quiet! be
Have a rest! have
frequently co-occurring with to and capable of functioning as a
nominal:
To feel is human.
although always maintaining
certain characteristics of a verb:
To feel tired is
human.
To feel a fool is human.
In many languages, the infinitive
is marked morphologically and is usually translated by the infinitive including
to:
Latin French English
amare aimer to love
amo j’aime I love amamus nous aimons we love
The infinitive could not be
split in Latin or French and so the belief grew that the English infinitive
should not be split. This belief ignored two facts:
1 English infinitives are different from French
infinitives in both form and usage: French English
Je veux aller chez
moi. I want to go home. Puis-je aller chez moi? May I go home?
2 English speakers and writers
have been inserting modifiers between to and
the infinitive since the fourteenth century.
Contemporary usage permits a modifier
between the to and the infinitive:
to fully
intend
especially in
speech and informal writing styles. There is still a lot of prejudice, however,
against split infinitives and
although this prejudice is illogical and grammatically unfounded, it is best to
avoid split infinitives in formal contexts.
See: ‘chestnuts’, purist.
spoonerism
A spoonerism involves the unintentional
transposition of the initial sounds of two (or occasionally more) words:
Tonight there
will be widespread low-fying log.
Unintentional
spoonerisms are usually meaningless. The weather forecaster who made this slip
actually claimed to have said low flying
log and the term spoonerism is
often applied to meaningful and usually humorous transpositions: .
I love riding
on a well-boiled icicle. (well-oiled bicycle)
The film was
full of thud and blunder. (blood and thunder)
The term is
derived from the name of the Reverend W.A.Spooner (1844–1930) who was well
known for his eccentric behaviour. As well as producing sentences such as:
You have tasted two worms…(wasted two terms)
he is also
reported to have been so agitated at the beginning of a journey that he kissed
the porter and gave his wife sixpence!
See: metathesis.
Sri Lankan English
Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon, is a large
island off the coast of south-west India with a population of just over 15 million.
It was a British Colony between 1802 and 1948, when it gained its independence,
and for most of this time it was governed as part of the Indian Empire.
There are two large language groups in Sri Lanka. Approximately
three-quarters of the population speak a variety of Sinhalese and 21% are
Tamils, originally from the south of India. Apart from the linguistic
differences, the Sinhalese are mostly Buddhist, the Tamils Hindu, and religious
and political rivalry have exacerbated linguistic differences.
When Sri Lanka became independent in 1948 three languages were widely
used (English, Sinhala and Tamil) with English being the preferred language of
higher education. In 1972 Sri Lanka became a republic and attempted to replace
English by Sinhala and Tamil in commerce, education and politics. The quality
of English deteriorated, but recently Sri Lanka has stressed the value of
English as a lingua franca and it is
being reintroduced into higher education.
See: English in the Indian Sub-Continent.
Standard English
Standard or
prestige varieties of language exist in most communities where one variety may
be regarded as most expressive, most authoritative or most easily comprehended.
Standard English is the term given to
the spectrum of Englishes taught in schools, described in grammars and dictionaries, used
by the media and written with relatively little variation throughout the
English-speaking world. (Occasionally the term General American English is used as a synonym for standard US
English.)
Standard English developed from a regional dialect spoken in and around London in the fifteenth century.
Prestige varieties had existed before this time but from the fifteenth century
people outside London began to write in a variety that approximated not to
their own speech but to the norms of educated speakers in the London region.
This dialect was further enhanced by the establishment of printing
houses in London towards the end of the fifteenth century and by the publishing
of literature and the Bible in the London
dialect. By the middle of the sixteenth century a written
standard had
emerged and the
vocabulary and syntax of this standard were spread throughout England, and
eventually the world, by education, travel and, more recently, by the media.
The existence of a standard written language did not entail a spoken
standard. All educated speakers could write caught
but some might pronounce it to rhyme with short while others rhymed it with shot. Standardised pronunciations only became widespread with the introduction
of universal education and because of the influence of radio, films and
television.
Standard English is not absolutely clearcut and discrete. It
comprehends varieties which allow a speaker to indicate friendship or
formality, casualness, intimacy or aloofness. Formal spoken styles are often
close to written norms, with fewer reductions and weak forms than are found in
colloquial speech.
See: accent,
dialect, network norms, pronunciation.
stative and dynamic
Verbs in
English are often subdivided into stative
or dynamic depending on whether
they can occur with the progressive.
Dynamic verbs occur with the progressive; stative verbs do not:
I sing a lot. I’m singing in the rain.
I know a lot. *I’m knowing you
well.
Stative verbs
normally express states (BE, SEEM),
senses (HEAR, SEE) and mental processes (KNOW, REMEMBER), whereas dynamic verbs
tend to express action (DANCE, WALK). The majority of verbs in English are
dynamic.
Although the terms stative and
dynamic are usually applied to verbs,
adjectives can be subdivided in a similar way:
1 stative verbs do not normally occur in imperative structures and
certain adjectives appear to be similarly restricted:
Sing a song.
*Resemble your father.
Be happy. *Be short.
2 stative verbs
do not normally occur with the progressive, nor do certain adjectives:
He is dancing.
*He is owning a house.
He is being patient. *He is
being drunk.
The majority of
adjectives in English are stative:
*He is being
fat/old/thin.
See: adjective, dynamic, verb.
stream of consciousness
The term stream of consciousness was coined by
William James in 1890. It refers to a representation of the continuous and
controlled flow of thoughts and sensations. The term stream of consciousness is modern, but many of the techniques
associated with it are to be found in soliloquies (in which a character
attempts to express and explain his innermost thoughts) and in interior
monologues (in which the mental processes of a character are presented).
Analyses of the writings of novelists such as James Joyce, Virginia
Woolf and J.D.Salinger suggest that the linguistic features most commonly found
in stream-of- consciousness novels are:
1 a
preference for nominal sentences. Verbs reinforce time, and so:
the arrival of
the train
is preferred
to:
The train
arrived.
2 use of short
sentences, often minor sentences, with exclamations, free association and few
linkage markers such as because, thus.
3 modification of usual word order, with foregrounding of objects, complements and adverbials:
A frightened man he saw. Tired and weary he was.
On a night train to hell he
sat.
4
reduction of subject pronouns:
Hits the
bottom! Hard. Where to plant it? Over there in the corner.
5
reduced anaphoric references (pronominal
references, auxiliary verbs) help to create the impression of disjointed thoughts.
6
use of untransformed embeddings:
Wondered will
she come.
instead of:
He wondered if she would come. ‘Will she come?’ he wondered.
7 extensive
use of features found in intimate speech: unfinished sentences, unexplained
shifts in subject matter, reduced forms (I’m,
won’t), interrogatives and repetitions.
8
word play, including ambiguity, coinages and
the revival of early meanings.
9
sound patterns, including sound symbolism, onomatopoeia, alliteration and
assonance.
See: speech
in literature.
stress
The term stress is used to indicate the degree of
prominence given to a syllable. In English, certain syllables are produced with
more force than others and these are called stressed
syllables. Syllables which receive less stress are called unstressed syllables. In a word like delightful, for example, -light- receives more stress than either
de- or -ful.
Stress can be used to differentiate
meanings:
the 'White House the 'white 'house
word classes:
'conduct (noun) con'duct (verb) and to
highlight one part of the sentence:
Mary ran the
business. (It was Mary and not someone else.)
Mary ran the business. (She didn’t sell it.)
Structuralists postulated
four degrees of stress for English, primary,
secondary, tertiary
and weak, illustrated by the compound:
elevator operator
1 4 3
4 2 4 3 4
but for most purposes the binary division of stressed and unstressed is
adequate.
English has been described as a stress-timed
language, whereas languages like French and Yoruba have been called syllable-timed. In syllable-timed
languages, all syllables are produced at equal intervals of time, with the
stresses occurring randomly. In stress-timed languages, however, the stresses occur
at regular intervals with a random number of syllables occurring between
stresses. This pattern of regular stresses and varying numbers of syllables can
be illustrated from poetry:
The garden
flew round with the angel, (x/x//xx/x)
The angel flew
round with the clouds, (x/x//xx/)
And the clouds flew round and the clouds flew round (xx/x/xx/x/)
And the clouds flew round with the clouds. (xx///xx/)
Wallace Stevens, ‘The Pleasures
of Merely Circulating’
The dichotomy
between stress-timed and syllable-timed languages is not as absolute as has
been suggested. Many Africans and Asians, for example, speak English as if it
were a syllable-timed language.
See: emphasis, metre, strong and weak
forms, syllable.
strong and
weak forms
Many words in
English have two pronunciations in connected speech, depending on whether they
are stressed or not. Thus, the and in
bread and butter would be pronounced
strongly and in full /ænd/ if one wished to emphasise that both would be
required, but reduced to /n/ in most contexts. The fully pronounced form is
called strong and the reduced form weak.
Many grammatical words (articles, auxiliaries, conjunctions, pronouns,
prepositions) have both strong (or accented or stressed) and weak (or
unaccented or unstressed) forms. The following list comprehends the most
frequently-used examples in the language. Non- rhotic and rhotic varieties are provided:
Word Strong
form Weak form
A 
Am /æm/ And /ænd/
Are 
As /æz/ 
At /æt/ 
Be /bi/ 
been /bin/ 
But 
Can /kæn/ 
could
Do /du/
does 
For
from 
Had /hæd/ 
Has /hæz/ 
have /hæv/ 
He /hi/ 
Her 
Him 
His 
Is 
/z/
must
Not 
Of 
shall /∫æl/
She /∫i/ 
some
than
/ðæn/
The /ði/
To /tu/ 
Us 
was 
We /wi/ 
were 
will 
would 
You
/ju/ 
The terms strong and weak are also applied to verbs.
Irregular verbs such as DO and SEE,
which form their past tense and past participles by means of vowel (and
consonant) changes, are called strong:
do did done
see saw seen
Verbs which
form their past tense and past participle by the addition of -ed/-d/-t are called weak:
look looked looked love loved loved
All newly
formed verbs (e.g. computerise) are
weak and a number of strong verbs are becoming weak. THRIVE patterned like
DRIVE:
thrive throve thriven
but thrived is now acceptable for both the
past tense and the past participle.
See: stress, syllable, verb.
structuralism
The term structuralism is usually applied to
linguistic analyses which describe languages in terms of their forms (e.g. boy, boys, boy’s) and functions (e.g. noun, subject). Often
the classification is hierarchical, which means that one may organise English
in terms of:
phonemes e.g. /z/ morphemes
e.g. -es lexemes e.g. match-es
phrases e.g. with the matches
clauses e.g. as he played with the matches
sentences e.g. He
talked as he played with the matches.
Structuralist
approaches to language flourished until the early 1960s. They were accurate and
useful but were limited in that they concentrated on surface structure.
Structuralists paid little attention to meaning and especially to the facts
that structures which were superficially similar could have very different
underlying meanings:
She advised me
what to say (i.e.
I was to say it).
She asked me what to say (i.e. she was to say it).
and that
structures could look very different but have very similar underlying meanings:
John admired
Mary.
Mary was admired by John.
Structuralism is also applied by
scholars to the notion that all human behaviour, including friendship, religion
and storytelling, can be analysed in terms of a network of recurring and
interconnecting themes and relationships.
See: grammar, transformational grammar.
style
Style may
be regarded as a distinctive method of writing or speaking. It thus involves
selection from all the available options in a language. The selection may
include choice of vocabulary (calculation,
estimation, sums, tally), phrase (absolutely
delighted, as pleased as Punch, over the moon, very pleased), sentence
structure (simple, compound, complex, active or passive) as well as imagery, punctuation and rhetorical
devices. Indeed, any linguistic choice is inevitably a stylistic choice since
it affects the style of an utterance or a passage.
A person’s style may be described as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ according to its
effectiveness in achieving the purpose of the writer or speaker. If, for
example, a speaker wishes to be friendly but uses formal structures and polysyllabic
vocabulary, his intentions may well be misunderstood.
Stylistic choices may be deliberate and conscious (James Joyce once
claimed that he spent an entire day working on the word order of two sentences) or automatic and unthinking (as in
many everyday communications). Every speaker has a unique style or idiolect which may vary with time and
circumstances. Similarly, many writers can be identified by their individual
techniques. Keats, for example, often uses the verb cloy and juxtaposes the nouns pleasure
and pain.
As well as individual
styles, there are also genre styles
such as those associated with journalism, advertising or scientific English. Subvarieties of English with their associated
styles are studied and taught as English
for Specific Purposes.
See: journalese, scientific English,
stylistics.
stylistics
Stylistics is the branch of linguistics that studies the use of
language in specific contexts and attempts to account for the regularities that
mark language use by individuals and groups. For example, a stylistic analysis
may reveal the characteristic features of popular journalism and explain the
lexical and syntactic choices in terms of readership, conventions and the
exigencies of time and space.
Literary stylistics is concerned with the linguistic choices that
distinguish genres (poetry, drama and the novel, for example) and with the ways
in which individual writers exploit language. This is both a linguistic and a
literary exercise, since language is the medium of literature and style contributes to meaning. Literary
stylistics serves as a bridge between linguistic and literary disciplines.
See: deviation, rhetoric, style.
subject
In English, the subject is a major constituent of a sentence. In finite sentences, it is
the NP which:
1 normally precedes the predicate in declarative sentences:
The book was written in four days.
2 normally
occurs within the predicate in interrogative
sentences:
Was the book written in four days?
3 agrees
with verbs in the present tense and with BE in both past and present:
The man sings well. The men sing well.
The book was
written quickly. The books were written quickly.
The most
frequently-occurring subjects are: 1 noun
phrases:
The cars raced round
and round.
2 pronouns:
They ran away.
3
proper names:
John Smith III arrived on time.
4 -ing forms:
Dancing is good for
you.
5 to forms:
To err is human.
6 nominalisations (nouns derived from other parts of
speech):
Their conversion surprised us
all.
Ifs and buts are not enough.
7 finite
clauses:
That Joan is a genius is obvious.
This sentence is less common than
an equivalent using an anticipatory it:
It is obvious that Joan is a genius.
Subjects occur in active
sentences:
The rat ate the malt.
in passive sentences:
The malt was eaten.
and in sentences with a copula:
Rats are rodents.
So essential are subjects to
declarative sentences that we have dummy
subjects (i.e. subjects without much meaning) in sentences like:
It is
raining/snowing. (What is it?)
There are three
twos in six. (Where?) Subject pronouns occur in tag questions:
He was late, wasn’t he?
See: noun,
noun phrase, object.
subjunctive
Grammars that were based on Latin models classified the verb phrase according to three categories:
1 declarative/indicative:
He eats fish.
2 imperative/command:
Eat that fish.
3 subjunctive (the verb form used in
subordinate clauses).
In English,
there is usually no difference between the form of the verb used in main and subordinate clauses:
I never eat fish.
I said that I
never eat fish.
However, there are three types
of construction where the verb used may be classified as subjunctive:
1 in hypothetical statements:
If I were you…
If this be proven…
2 in a
number of formulas:
Be that as it may
Long live the Queen! So be it!
3
in formal statements involving that clauses:
I request that he be extradited.
We suggest that she be remanded in custody.
In English, the meaning that is
carried in some languages by the subjunctive (doubt, suggestion, wishing) is often
carried by modal verbs.
See: modality,
mood.
subordination
When clauses or sentences are linked, they may be of equal syntactic
status in which case they are co-ordinated:
John was tired
but he carried on.
or one clause
or sentence may be dependent on the other, in which case we say it is
subordinate to the main clause:
Although John was tired, he carried on.
Subordinate (also called dependent) clauses are introduced by subordinating conjunctions (also called subordinators). These are function words
like although, if, since, when, until, which
introduce adverbial clauses:
I’ll do it if he asks me.
that and
what, which introduce noun clauses:
That he was honest was obvious.
She always
said what she meant.
and that, which, who, whom, which introduce relative (adjectival) clauses:
The letter that I posted last week has still not
arrived.
