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- ABLATIVE look up translate image
- See case.
- ABSOLUTE CONSTRUCTION look up translate image
- A noun phrase involving a non-finite form of the verb (present or past participle) which carries the meaning of a full clause, e.g. terminada la sesión = cuando se terminó la sesión. In Latin, such constructions were marked by the use of the ablative case.
- ACCENT look up translate image
- 1: an articulative effort giving prominence to one syllable over adjacent syllables. 2: a mark used in writing or printing to indicate a specific sound value, stress, or pitch, to distinguish words otherwise identically spelled, or to indicate that an ordinarily mute vowel should be pronounced. People with different accents might use an accent mark to indicate they accent a different syllable.
- ACCUSATIVE look up translate image
- See case.
- ACROLECT look up translate image
- See decreolisation.
- ACTIVE look up translate image
- asserting that the person or thing represented by the grammatical subject performs the action represented by the verb. In the last sentence, the subject "person or thing" performs the action "perform", so the sentence is in the active voice. In the last sentence, the subject "subject" performs the action "perform", so the sentence is also in the active voice. (Repeat the last sentence ad infinitum.)
A category of voice. See passive.
- ADJECTIVE look up translate image
- a word that serves as a modifier of a noun to denote a quality of the thing named, to indicate its quantity or extent, or to specify a thing as distinct from something else. It answers the questions "which?", "how many?", and "what kind of?", though probably not all three at once.
Traditionally, the part of speech which qualifies a noun. But in Spanish, adjectives are often used as nouns (el viejo 'the old man'), and in colloquial register sometimes as adverbs (va muy rpido 'it goes very quickly').
- ADSTRATE look up translate image
- Pertaining to the language of a culture which is equal in status: English loanwords in Spanish may be said to be an instance of adstrate influence.
- ADVERB look up translate image
- a word serving as a modifier of a verb, an adjective, another adverb, a preposition, a phrase, a clause, or a sentence, and expressing some relation of manner or quality, place, time, degree, number, cause, opposition, affirmation, or denial. It answers the questions "where?", "when?", or "how?", even if you didn't ask.
Traditionally, the part of speech which qualifies a verb: some important semantic classes of adverbs are manner, time, place. Adjectives are often said to be qualified by adverbs too: e.g. muy bien.
- ADVERSATIVE look up translate image
- Expressing opposition or contrast.
- AFFECTIVE look up translate image
- Used of suffixes in Spanish which express an attitude, such as affection or disparagement.
- AFFIX look up translate image
- A general term for a bound morpheme. An affix may be word-initial (prefix), e.g. desafortunado, word-internal (infix), e.g. cantaría, or word-final (suffix), e.g. fácilmente.
- AFFRICATE look up translate image
- A combination, or coarticulation, of a plosive and a fricative, e.g. Spanish ch.
- AGENT look up translate image
- The performer of a verbal action: in an active sentence, the agent is typically the subject of the sentence; in a passive sentence, the agent (the subject of the corresponding active sentence) is usually introduced by by in English and by por in Spanish.
The performer of a verbal action: in an active sentence, the agent is typically the subject of the sentence; in a passive sentence, the agent is usually introduced by by in English and by por in Spanish.
- AGUDA look up translate image
- An oxytone (q.v.).
- ALLATIVE look up translate image
- A case-function expressing the notion of 'motion towards'.
- ALLOMORPH look up translate image
- Cf. allophone. A variant form of a morpheme: -s and -es are allomorphs of the Spanish plural morpheme.
- ALLOPHONE look up translate image
- Cf. allomorph. A variant form of a phoneme. Allophones are in complementary distribution, i.e., they never form oppositions with one another. Allophones are determined by the phonetic context in which the phoneme appears: e.g. the /d/ phoneme in Spanish has the allophone [d] in initial position and the allophone [] in intervocalic position.
- ALVEOLAR look up translate image
- Pertaining to the alveolum, or ridge between the upper teeth and the palate.
- ALVEOLUM look up translate image
- See alveolar.
- AMELIORATION look up translate image
- The development of a more favourable meaning, e.g. Lat. casa 'hut' > Sp. casa 'house'.
- ANALOGY look up translate image
- Parallel development of a form. Analogy is particularly apparent when an irregular form regularizes, ie, develops in parallel with the regular (productive) forms of the language, e.g. vencer now has the past participle vencido rather than the medieval venudo. However, analogy can sometimes result in the irregularising of a regular form: andar has developed the irregular Preterite form anduve, presumably by analogy with other irregular Preterites in -u-e (tuve, supe, etc).
- ANALYTIC look up translate image
- See periphrastic.
- ANAPHORIC look up translate image
- Reference back to an element in the preceding discourse. See also cataphoric.
- ANTECEDENT look up translate image
- See relative clause.
- ANTONYM look up translate image
- An opposite: bueno and malo are antonyms.
- APHERESIS look up translate image
- Removal, or fall (of a sound), e.g. Lat. apotheca > Sp. bodega.
- APICAL look up translate image
- Pertaining to the tip of the tongue. The [s] of standard Spanish is an apico-alveolar sound. The tongue is often very slightly curved back ('retroflex').
- APOCOPE look up translate image
- The loss of final sounds. Primer is an apocopated form of primero.
- APODOSIS look up translate image
- The part of a conditional sentence which expresses the consequence: si tengo dinero comprar el libro. See also protasis.
- APPOSITION look up translate image
- a grammatical construction in which two typically adjacent nouns referring to the same person or thing stand in the same syntactical relation to the rest of a sentence. For example, in "the rally of the opposition Labor Party", "Labor Party" is in apposition with "opposition".
The juxtaposition of two nouns or noun-phrases which have the same syntactic function, e.g. Valladolid, lugar de nacimiento de Felipe II.
- ARCHIPHONEME look up translate image
- Oppositions between phonemes are neutralized in certain phonetic environments, e.g. the opposition of /n/ and /m/ before /p/. In such circumstances an archiphoneme is said to occur.
- ARTICLE look up translate image
- one of a small set of words or affixes (as a, an, and the) used with nouns to limit or give definiteness to the application. English has an indefinite article (a, an) and a definite article (the). Welsh has only a definite article. I'm sure whole articles have been written about articles.
A somewhat arbitrary grammatical category: a class of determiners, which have a complex range of semantic functions. Spanish and English have a definite and an indefinite article, respectively el/the and un/a.
- ASPECT look up translate image
- Impressionistically, relating to the way in which an action or state is viewed: continuous, repeated, within fixed limits, etc. The difference between the Imperfect and Preterite tenses in Spanish is usually thought of as an aspectual difference, though several other verb-forms, and especially the periphrastic verb-forms, have aspectual values.
- ASPIRATE look up translate image
- A sound chiefly consisting of the exhalation of breath, e.g. [h].
- ASSIBILATION look up translate image
- Articulated as a sibilant: /r/ is so articulated (approximating to [z]) in a number of dialects.
- ASSIMILATION look up translate image
- the process of conforming one sound to another to aid in pronunciation. For example, in the phrase "in Colorado", the "n" in "in" becomes palatalized because of the following "C". It may take you a while to assimilate this concept.
Making similar: sounds in close proximity often assimilate features of one another, and this can be an important factor in sound change. /n/ before /p/ is usually realised as [m] because it assimilates the labial features of the following consonant.
- ASSOCIATION look up translate image
- Relatedness of meaning.
- ASSONANCE look up translate image
- A rhyme based on correspondence of vowels alone, and characteristic of Spanish poetry (thus lado and llano assonate, with the vowel pattern a-o).
- ATELIC look up translate image
- See telic.
- ATONIC look up translate image
- Unstressed.
- ATTENUATION look up translate image
- A weakening (of meaning). Lat. teneo 'to hold' weakens to become the general verb of possession tener in Spanish.
- AUGMENTATIVE look up translate image
- A form which indicates largeness (e.g. the Spanish suffix -n).
- AUXILIARY look up translate image
- A verb used with another, non-finite, form of a verb to form a periphrasis.
- BACK VOWEL look up translate image
- A vowel articulated by the raising of the tongue towards the velum.
- BACK-FORMATION look up translate image
- The exploitation of a morphemic component not previously used in isolation. The OCast. adjective prieto is a back-formation from the verb apretar.
- BASILECT look up translate image
- See decreolisation.
- BILABIAL look up translate image
- See labial.
- BINARY look up translate image
- See opposition.
- BOUND look up translate image
- See morpheme.
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