English Language Structure & Conventions Terminology

Punctuation: marks used in writing to separate sentences and their elements and

• period, comma, parentheses, question mark, ellipsis

• exclamation point, semicolon, colon, dash, quotation marks

• pronoun, noun, adjective

• hyphen, brackets, braces, apostrophe,

Parts of speech: a category to which a word is assigned in accordance with its syntactic functions

• apostrophe, quotation marks, ellipsis

• syntax, morphology, punctuation, semantics

• noun, pronoun, adjective, determiner, verb

• adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection

Vocabulary: body of words used in a particular language and used or understood by a group of people

• compound: crosswalk, moonlight, butterfly

• all the words that a toddle understands

• period, comma, parentheses, question mark

• language used by particular group of people

Grammar: the whole system and structure of a language or of languages in general

• semantics: He was the single man at the event (Single as in has no significant other, or were there no other men at the event?)

• compound: crosswalk, moonlight, butterfly

• syntax: I went to the store. (correct syntax for past tense of go)

• morphology: play+ful+ly = playfully (meaningful word part)

• punctuation: I went to the store! (exclamation point to show emotion)

Discourse Patterns: the culture-bound logical arrangement of ideas in an expository text or of an oral presentation for informational purposes.

• Standard English: linear (communication is direct and doesn't digress or go off topic)

• Romance Language: (French, Spanish, Italian often digresses, it may start with the main point, but normally introduces extraneous details, viewed as adding to the richness of the communication)

• all the words that a toddler understands

Word Formation: creation of a new word by either adding on morphemes or changing the way the word is used in context

• punctuation

• prefixes: pre-, anti-, non-

• sufixes: -ous, -astic, -

• conversion: email (originally a noun, but often used as a verb

• compound: crosswalk, moonlight, butterfly

Sentence Patterns: patterns within a sentence made up of phrases and clauses determined by the presence and functions of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.

Patterns are most classified by the type of verb used.

• conversion: email (originally a noun, but often used as a verb)

• verb of BEING used as the main verb in the sentence (is, are, was, were, has been, have been, had been)

• LINKING VERB as the main verb in the sentence (smell, taste, look, feel, seem, become, appear, grow)

• ACTION VERB as the main verb in the sentence (see, jump, embrace, write, imagine, buy, plummet, think, etc.)