Glossary ablaut

dual – see number.

endocentric (of a compound or derived word) – possessing a head. See alsoexocentric.

exocentric (of a compound or derived word) – lacking a head. For example, thenoun sell-out is exocentric because it contains no component that determinesits word class (‘sell’ being a verb and ‘out’ being an adverb).

experiencer – the animate entity affected by the action or state expressed bythe verb.

finite – used of verbs which have a subject, hence non-finite verbs lack a subject.

focus – in discourse, the element which is given the most communicativeimportance.

focussed – a norm to which speakers tend, rather than a fixed standard.

free morpheme, free allomorph – morpheme or allomorph that can standon its own as a word. A morpheme may have both free and bound allomorphs,e.g. wife is free but wive- is bound because it appears only in the plural wordform wives.

function word – word which has grammatical rather than lexical meaning.

geminate – a double or long consonant, similar to the medial sequence in PDEhat-trick.