Introducing English Linguistics

particular sentence or utterance. For instance, in the simple sentence I
wrote to my father, all the words have meaning: father means ‘male parent,’
the pronoun I refers to the speaker, and the SVO word order means that
the I of the sentence did the writing, not the father.
grammatical
A morpheme expressing some kind of grammatical relationship. The 
morpheme:
article the, for instance, indicates that the noun it precedes is definite.
The -ed on parked marks this verb as being in the past tense.
Glossary
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grammaticality:
The notion that an element of a language conforms to linguistic rules for
the language. The sentence We like pie is grammatical because it conforms
to rules of English syntax; the sentence We likes pies is ungrammatical
because it does not conform to rules of subject–verb agreement in English.
graphemes:
Individual orthographic characters used to write a language. The word
happy contains five graphemes: h, a, p, p, y.
head:
The part of a phrase that gives the phrase its name and upon which all
other members of the phrase are dependent. The construction the full-time
workers who worked for the company is a noun phrase because all construc-
tions in the phrase – the, full, time, and who worked ... – are dependent on
the head noun workers.
heavy syllable:
A syllable containing a tense vowel or ending in a consonant.
hierarchical
The manner in which linguistic constructions are grouped. The construction
structure:
British history teacher is ambiguous because the constructions in this noun
phrase can be grouped two ways. If British and history are grouped together,
the phrase refers to ‘a teacher of British history.’ If history and teacher are
grouped, the phrase refers to ‘a teacher of history who is British.’
honorifics:
In English, titles such as Sir, Doctor, Mrs., and Professor that show respect
towards the individual to whom they are addressed.
hyperanalysis
Creating a prescriptively incorrect form in an attempt to be correct. The 
(or hypercorrection):
use of I in between you and I is a hypercorrection because I is thought to be
more formal than me when it is coordinated with you. This assumption
has its origins in people being corrected as children to say You and I are
leaving early rather than Me and you are leaving early. However, in between you
and I, me is prescriptively correct because prepositions such as between take
object forms, not subject forms.
hypernym:
A word whose meaning would include the meaning of a more specific
word. For instance, the word flower is a hypernym of tulip because the
meaning of tulip is included in the meaning of the more general word
flower. Compare with hyponym.
hyponym:
A word whose meaning is included in the meaning of a more general
word. Because a magazine is a type of periodical, magazine would be a
hyponym of the more general word periodical. Compare with hypernym.
Also see co-hyponyms.
illocutionary act