Language under a Microscrope *Key Terms*

• Alliteration


  Repetition of initial consonant sounds
• Assonance


  Repetition of vowel sounds
• Rhythm


  The pattern created by the distribution of stressed and unstressed syllables
• Rhyme


  The correspondance of sounds within words
• Repetition


  Repetition of a word in speech or text
• Etymology


  The origin of the word, how it has travelled between languages
• Neologism


  New word or expression, or meaning of a word
• Coining


  The general term for creating new words
• Archaism


  Old fashioned language that isn't really used
• Obsolete


  Out-of-date and no longer in use
• Monosyllabic


  Having one syllable
• Disyllabic


  Having two syllables
• Polysyllabic


  Having many syllables
• Frequency


  How often that word appears in speech or writing
• Level of formality


  The formality or informality of the language used in a particular situation
• Specialist/ Subject specific


  Words that are mostly only used by people in that specific field due to their technicality or nicheness
• Denotational


  The explicit meaning of a word
• Connotational


  A feeling or idea that is suggested by a word but not explicitly mentioned
• Lexical Set


  A group of words which belong to the same category
• Synonymy


  Words with similair meanings
• Antonymy


  Words with opposite meanings
• Hyponymy


  The term for one thing being an example of a more general thing. "Car" is a hyponym of "vehicle." "Vehicle" is the superordinate term.
• Collocation


  Two or more words that co-occur in a language more often that would be expected by chance.
• Figurative lexis


  Figures of speech such as metaphors, similes, allusions used to go beyond the literal meanings of the words to give readers new insights.
• Open class


  Forms a constantly growing group. Tending to vary in syllable length and come from a wide range of languages, they contain the nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs
• Closed class


  Forms a group which rarely changes. Tending to be monosyllabic or disyllabic and come from old English, they contain most of the pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, determiners and auxiliary verbs
• Noun


  A person, place, thing, or idea
• Verb


  A words that expresses an action or state of being
• Adjective


  A word that modifies a noun or pronoun
• Adverb


  A word that modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb
• Pronoun


  A word that takes the place of a noun
• Conjunction


  A word used to join words or groups of words
• Preposition


  A word that positions a noun in time and space
• Determiner


  Positioned in front of nouns to add detail or to clarify
• Auxiliary verb


  A verb used in forming the tenses, moods, and voices of other verbs.
• Concrete noun


  Names a thing that can be seen, heard, smelled, touched, or tasted
• Abstract noun


  Names an idea, a feeling, a quality, or a characteristic
• Collective nouns


  Names a group of people, animals, or things
• Proper nouns


  Name specific People, places, and things
• Non-count nouns


  Names things that cannot be counted (water)