Introducing English Linguistics

bound morpheme
.
fricatives:
A manner of articulation associated with consonants such as /s/ in sip
and /z/ in zip in which the airstream is constricted in the oral cavity, lead-
ing to a certain degree of turbulence.
function:
See clause function.
function word:
Words such as the, very, and, and of that have little meaning by themselves,
but indicate grammatical relationships. For instance, when the is placed
before a noun, as in The office is closed, the marks the noun as definite and
specific
.
fusional:
A language containing a number of inflections that mark such distinc-
tions as case, number, and gender.
gender:
Inflections
or word forms indicating whether a word is masculine, femi-
nine, or neuter. Modern English has two genders marked only on pro-
nouns: masculine (e.g. he) and feminine (e.g. she). Pronouns such as I and
they are not considered neuter, but gender-neutral.
General American
A variety of spoken American English that does not associate a speaker 
(GA):
with a particular region in the United States, social class, or ethnic 
group.
generic reference:
Reference to the class of something rather than to a specific member of
the class. In the sentence Dogs are good pets, the noun Dogs refers to the
class of dogs, not to a specific dog. Compare with specific reference.
genetic system
A system of language classification using the comparative method. 
of classification:
Languages are grouped into families that have parent and sibling lan-
guages. English is a member of the Germanic language family, a family
having many sibling languages, including not just English but German,
Dutch, and Swedish.
given information:
See old information.
grammar:
The study of rules of language at various levels of structure, from the
individual speech sound up to the level of the sentence. A grammar of
English, for instance, would contain all the rules necessary for studying
the structure of the English language.
grammatical gender:
A system of gender assignment in which gender is arbitrarily assigned. In
German, the word for girl, das Mädchen, is assigned neuter gender rather
than feminine gender, the actual gender of the noun. Compare with nat-
ural gender
.
grammatical
Meaning associated with the particular words and constructions in a 
meaning: