Cambridge Grammar of English Hardback with cd-rom a comprehensive Guide

main

subordinate

He failed the exam | 

although he worked hard.

Connector, connective

Û 

Conjunction

Continuous

Û 

Progressive

Contraction, contracted forms A phonologically reduced or simplified form

attached to the preceding word: I’ve is a contracted form of I have, haven’t is

contracted from have not, isn’t is contracted from is not.

Û 

Phonetics

Û

541 Index for individual terms not in the Glossary

Glossary | 897

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Conversion A process of word formation which involves a change in the

functioning of a word from one word class to another without adding an affix:

The film is an absolute 

must for all lovers of Westerns.

(conversion from verb to noun)

Can we 

microwave it?

(conversion from noun to verb)

Coordination, coordinator Expresses a relation between linguistic units that are

of equal grammatical status. Coordinators such as and, but, are used to link

coordinated constructions:

Kay

and

Stuart

got married last week.

Coordination is a principal way in which clauses are combined to form

sentences:

Jim brought me here

but

Phil’s taking me home

.

Correlative coordinators refer to conjunctions such as either … or or neither … nor:

I’ll 

either phone or email him about it. 

Copula(r) verb Verbs such as be, become, feel, remain, seem, smell, taste that

describe the states of people and things. A copular verb is used to link the

subject and the complement of a clause:

I

was

very excited

.

It

seems

strange

, doesn’t it really?

It

smells

a bit funny

.

Copy tag

Û 

Tag

Core modal verb These are can, could, may, might, will, shall, would, should,

must

, which are used to express various kinds of modal meaning, mainly

referring to degrees of certainty and degrees of obligation. Modal verbs have

only one form and do not indicate person, number, voice or aspect. They are

placed first in the verb phrase and are followed by a verb (either an auxiliary

verb or a lexical verb) in the base form:

I 

might see you later.

(speaker denotes a possibility, but not with certainty)

I 

must phone her to find out how long she’s staying.

(speaker states an obligation or necessity)

Û

Modality; Modal expressions; Semi-modal verb

Corpus A large collection of written text or transcribed speech which is stored

and processed by computer so as to serve as a basis for linguistic analysis and

description. 

Correlative

Û

Coordination, coordinator

898 | Glossary

Cambridge Grammar of English

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Count (or countable) A grammatical distinction of nouns that refers to objects,

people, animals and abstract entities that are treated as easily counted (a cat/two

cats

, one egg/three eggs). 

Count nouns are contrasted with non-count (or uncountable) nouns.

Declarative A clause type that is typically associated with statements to make

assertions and convey information. The word order in declarative clauses is

subject + verb + 

X

, where 

X

is any other element present (e.g. object or

complement):