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541 Index for individual terms not in the Glossary

Glossary | 899

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Demonstrative Grammatical term for the items this, that, these, those. The

demonstrative specifies whether the referent is close or distant in relation to

the speaker:

This is not correct.

I’d like to have 

these not those.

Shall I put 

that into this box over here? 

Deontic A characteristic of modality which involves the use of a modal verb to

mark necessity, permission or obligation:

You 

may go now.

(permission)

I 

must be careful what I say.

(necessity/obligation)

In this book, terms such as necessity and obligation are used in preference to

deontic.

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Epistemic; Modality

Dependent clause Dependent clauses cannot stand alone, but depend on

another sentence constituent, typically a main clause. Subordinate clauses and

embedded clauses are dependent.

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Main clause

Derivation A main process of word formation by which one word is formed

(‘derived’) from another, most commonly by adding affixes to base forms. This

brings about a change of meaning (-able indicates that something is possible;

mid

- indicates the middle part of something) and/or grammatical class

(midnight, unfortunate, redo, readable, playful, hopeless).

Determiner Item which indicates the kind of reference a noun phrase has.

Determiners include words like a, the, some, my, his, each, those, which,

several

which express a range of meanings including definite/indefinite 

(the dining room, a ruler), possessive (my study, their children), demonstrative

(this box, that man, these teenagers), quantifier (some milk, every citizen), and

numeral (two soldiers, the second birth).

Deverbal noun

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Delexical verb

Diminutive A form with an affix which has the meaning of ‘small’ or ‘little’. A

diminutive is used either literally or as a term of endearment (-let: leaflet,

booklet

; -ling: duckling, darling; mini-: mini-cab, mini-skirt; -y: Johnny, doggy),

Directive

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Imperative

900 | Glossary

Cambridge Grammar of English

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Direct object Refers to the noun phrase indicating the entity directly affected by

an action: