Glossary

case

a grammatical category that is related to the grammatical or semantic function of a noun or pronoun.

complex sentences

express a specific relationship between two (or more) situations in two (or more) clauses

constructions

learned pairings of form and function that allow speakers to apply their linguistic knowledge to new situations and experiences.

content words

express a specific meaning about the referent of an utterance, such as an object (noun), the quality of the object (adjective) an action or state (verb) or how the action unfolds (adverb) (cf. function words).

function words

express a grammatical or structural pivot for content words in a sentence, examples include determiners (‘a’, ‘the’), conjunctions (‘and’, ‘then’) prepositions (‘under’, ‘over’), pronouns (‘I’, ‘her’), auxiliary verbs (‘be’, ‘do’), modals (‘may’, ‘will’), qualifiers (‘very’, ‘just’) and question words (‘what’, ‘how’).

morphemes

the smallest unit of meaning in a language that cannot be decomposed into smaller units of meaning. They usually come in two forms. Unbound morphemes like the word ‘walk’ are meaningful on their own and bound morphemes which only appear with other morphemes like ‘ed’.