Glossary 303Nominative. The inflectional case of I, he, she, we, they, who. Contrasts with
accusative.
Non-affirmative contexts. Negative, interrogative and certain related construc
tions where we can get expressions like at all which do not occur in positive
assertions. Notice: He didn't complain at all; Did he complain at all?; He com
plained at all.
Non-affirmative items. Words or expressions such as at all, ever, and modal need,
nonnally found in non-affirmative contexts: Yo u needn't go, but not You need
go.
Non-count noun. Noun denoting an entity that is uncountable; hence a noun unable
to combine with cardinal numerals: one fu rniture, two remains.
Non-finite clause. Subordinate clause headed by gerund-participle (his writing
it), past participle (having written it), or plain form in the infinitival construc
tion (to write it).
Non-personal. The gender of what as contrasted with who. See personal vs non
personal.
Noun. A category of lexemes that includes those denoting all kinds of physical
objects, such as persons, animals and inanimate objects. They prototypically
inflect for number (dog vs dogs), and head phrases functioning as subject or as
object of a verb or preposition (The dog barked, 1 fo und a dog, Give it to the
dog).
Number. The grammatical contrast of singular vs plural, as with most nouns (cat vs
cats).
Object. Internal complement in VP or pp with the fonn of an NP: Jill paid the bill.
Distinguished from predicative complement (Jill is a genius). Prototypically
corresponds to subject of the corresponding passive: The bill was paid by Max.
Old information. Infonnation assumed to be familiar to the addressee(s) via earlier
mention in discourse, features of the utterance situation, or (in some cases) back
ground knowledge.
Open conditional. Conditional characteristically neutral as to whether the condi
tion is or will be met: If he loves her he'll change leaves it open whether he loves
her or not.
Open interrogative clause. Interrogative clause characteristically used, in main
clauses, to ask an open question: Who said that? Contains at least one interrog
ative word.
Open question. A question with an open-ended set of answers: Who broke it? (with
an open-ended set of answers of the form X broke it, where X stands for some
person or persons).
Paradigm. The set of inflectional forms of a lexeme together with their grammat
ical labels (in the paradigm of verbs, preterite, 3rd person singular present
tense, etc.).
Partitive fused-head construction. NP construction with an explicit or understood
of phrase, denoting part of larger set or quantity: [Some of the photos] are great;
[some] are not.