Glossary ablaut

prefix – bound morpheme that immediately precedes the root or stem.

preterite – a morphological form usually expressing past tense.

refix – bound morpheme that precedes the root or stem.

register – the varieties of language used in particular social situations, for example formal vs. colloquial.

relative particle – an element which has the function of a complementiserused to introduce a relative clause.

resolution – the feature in Old English poetry where two light syllables havethe same effect as one heavy syllable.

schwa – the reduced vowel found, for example, in the first syllable of ‘about’ orthe last syllable of ‘butter’.

standard language – an regularised and institutionalised variety of a languageused in administration, education, etc.; see also focussed.

stem – term used for the base of the word forms of a lexeme (involving the addition of inflectional affixes only, not derivational ones).

stranding – when an element is left unattached to or moved out of its construction.

subjunctive – see mood.

subordination – where one syntactic unit is dependent upon another.

suffix – bound morpheme that follows the root or stem.

suffixoid – an element which shares the properties of a suffix and an independentword, and whose morphological status is therefore uncertain.

suppletion – phenomenon whereby one lexeme is represented by two ormore different roots, depending on the context; for example, the verb ‘go’ isrepresented by ‘went’ in the past tense and ‘go’ elsewhere.

syllable – consists of a vowel and its immediately preceding and following consonants; hence onset describes the preceding consonant(s) and coda the following ones, while the central vowel element(s) are the nucleus.

syncope – the loss of an unstressed vowel.

tense – grammatical category exhibited by verbs, closely associated with time. In English, a distinction between present and past tenses is expressed inflectionally, e.g. ‘give’ and ‘wait’ versus ‘gave’ and ‘waited’.

umlaut – an historical process by which back vowels were fronted and frontvowels raised; the change is most easily observed in nouns such as foot ~feet.

velar – a sound produced by moving the back of the tongue against the softpalate or velum.

verb, contracted – a verb where the final consonant of the stem (preceding anyinflection) has been lost.

verb, preterite-present – a verb where the past tense has acquired a new present tense meaning, with the subsequent acquisition of a new set of past tense forms.

verb, inseparable, separable – where a prefix may either always remain withthe stem against prefixes which may be separated from their stem by a varietyof elements and word order type.

verb, weak and strong – the two major morphological groups of verbs in OldEnglish; the former relate to present-day verbs such as love, the latter to verbslike sing.

Verner’s Law – the series of changes in stops and fricatives which distinguishGermanic from most of Indo-European languages, first discovered by Karl Verner.

voice – the means by which relationships between the subject and the object areexpressed, hence the categories active and passive.

weight – the amount of phonological material contained in a word.