Cambridge Grammar of English Hardback with cd-rom a comprehensive Guide

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541 Index for individual terms not in the Glossary

Glossary | 919

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Raised subject Refers to the placing of items as subjects of their clauses in order

to create different types of focus. Very often adjectives (easy, difficult, hard,

likely, certain, impossible

), verbs (seem, appear, look) and mental process verbs

in the passive (be found, be considered, be estimated) are involved:

To summarise our work

is impossible

.

(to summarise our work, the complement of impossible, is raised as the subject)

Jina’s 

quite difficult to understand

.

(Jina, the object of understand, is raised as the subject)

It seems 

that nobody does anything

.

(anticipatory it is raised as the subject)

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Focus; Subject

Rank-shifting Refers to the phenomenon where an item associated with a higher

rank in the grammar shifts to a lower rank. In the sentence Two people I know

have gone there.

, the clause I know modifies the head noun people, and is a

constituent (an embedded clause) of a subject noun phrase which is of a lower

grammatical rank.

Recipient of action Refers to the person or thing that is the affected participant

of an action. In the passive sentence Those houses were built by John Walton.,

those houses

is the recipient of action as well as the grammatical subject. The

agent is indicated by the by-phrase by John Walton.

In get- and have-pseudo-passive constructions, the grammatical subject is

typically the recipient, rather than the agent, of the action (The thief got

arrested. 

Mary had her watch stolen.).

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Pseudo-passive

Reciprocal, reciprocal verb, reciprocal pronoun A term that expresses a 

two-way relationship. A reciprocal use of a verb suggests that the coordinated

subjects are doing the same thing to each other (meet, divorce, kiss, separate,

fight

):

Frank and Diane 

met in 1979.

A reciprocal pronoun refers to a mutual relationship between people or things:

They hate 

each other/one another.

Reduced clause, reduced question Reduced clauses refer to incomplete clause

structures where verbs are ellipted:

A: Has he eaten the cauliflower?

B: Not all of it. (reduced clause)

Reduced questions refer to interrogative clauses where verbs are ellipted. 

A: You hungry? (reduced question)

B: Mm, a bit.

They occur in very informal, highly context-dependent situations, especially

when meaning is very clear.

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Ellipsis

920 | Glossary

Cambridge Grammar of English

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Reduplicative compound, reduplication A form of compound which involves

identical or near identical or rhyming bases. Reduplicative compounds are

often very informal in usage and are used in talk by or with children (goody-

goody, tick-tock 

(clock), bow-wow (dog), easy-peasy).

Reference, referent, referring expression Terms used to indicate how speakers

and writers refer to people, places, things and ideas. The broad distinctions are

endophoric (reference to situation within the text) and exophoric (reference to

situation outside the text). Endophoric references are divided into anaphoric

and cataphoric. The referent is the entities referred to: