Glossary ablaut

mutation – see umlaut.

negative concord – negation falls not only on a verb phrase but also on anyother appropriate element in the clause, as in non-standard present-day English I didn’t see nothing.

nominal – belonging to the word class ‘noun’, or having the characteristics of anoun.

nominative case – grammatical case exhibited by a noun phrase functioning

as the subject of the verb, and usually (but by no means always) expressing semantically the agent of the action that the verb denotes.

nucleus – see syllable.

number – grammatical category associated especially with nouns. In English, ‘plural’ and ‘singular’ numbers are distinguished inflectionally (e.g. ‘cats’ versus ‘cat’). In Old English there was also a dual category, occasionally usedwith pronouns and adjectives.

onset – see syllable.

orthography – the spelling system of a language.

parataxis – where two syntactic units are linked together by juxtaposition andwithout any conjunction.

paradigm – the set of forms associated with a noun or an adjective in forming adeclensional class, or with a verb in a conjugational class.

person – grammatical category associated especially with pronouns, identifyingindividuals in relation to the speaker and hearer. English distinguishes ‘firstperson’ (I, we), ‘second person’ (you) and ‘third person’ (he, she, it, they).

phoneme – the minimal unit in the sound system of a language. Collectively, thecontrasting sounds in any given language.

phonology – area of grammar concerned with how speech sounds function to distinguish words in a language (and in languages generally). The scope of phonology includes how sounds are related, how they are combined to form syllables and larger units, and how relationships between syllables are indicated by features such as stress.