Introducing English Linguistics

tional
, and inflectional morphemes.
narrow transcription:
A phonetic transcription that captures all the phonetic features involved
in the articulation of consonants and vowels. For instance, even though
the words kit and skip contain the phoneme /k/, in kit, /k/ is aspirated and
would be transcribed narrowly as /k
h
/; in skip, /k/ is unaspirated and
would be transcribed as /k

/. Compare with broad transcription.
nasal:
A manner of articulation associated with consonants, such as /m/ in
moon, during whose articulation the air flows through the nasal cavity.
native language:
A language a person speaks from birth. Compare with foreign language
and second language.
natural gender:
A system of gender in which words marked for gender (such as he and she)
reflect the biological gender of the individuals to whom they refer. See
also grammatical gender.
new information:
Information introduced into a text that has not been introduced previously.
nominalization:
A noun derived from a verb: contain S containment; realize S realization.
non-finite verb:
An -ed or -ing participle that marks aspect on a verb and that typically
occurs with an auxiliary (e.g. have walked, is walking), or the base form of a
verb following the infinitive marker to (e.g. to walk, to jump).
non-literal speech act:
A speech act in which the speaker does not literally mean what he or she
says, as in I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.
non-rhotic:
A variety of speech in which post-vocalic /r/ is not pronounced. British
English is non-rhotic, while most varieties of American English are rhotic.
notional definitions:
Definitions that attempt to capture the meaning of grammatical con-
structions: a noun is a person, place, thing, or idea; a verb expresses
action or a state of being. Compare with formal definitions.
noun phrase:
A phrase having a noun as its head: the ugly