of interlanguagethan the study of naturally occurring speech or writing
can provide.elicited imitation n
an elicitation procedurein which a person has to repeat a sentence which
he or she sees or hears. When people are asked to repeat a sentence which uses
linguistic rules which they themselves cannot or do not use, they often make
changes in the sentence so that it is more like their own speech. Elicited imita-
tion can be used to study a person’s knowledge of a language. For example:
stimulus sentence elicited imitation
Why can’t the manclimb over Why the man can’tclimb over the
the fence? fence?
elision nelide v
the leaving out of a sound or sounds in speech. For example, in rapid speech
in English, suppose is often pronounced as [spchz], factory as [efæktri] and
mostly as [cmchsli].
see also ellipsis, epenthesis
ELL n
an abbreviation for English Language Learner
ellipsis nelliptical adj
the leaving out of words or phrases from sentences where they are unnecessary
because they have already been referred to or mentioned. For example,
when the subject of the verb in two co-ordinated clauses is the same, it may
be omitted to avoid repetition:
The man went to the door and (he) opened it. (subject ellipsis)
Mary ate an apple and Jane (ate) a pear. (verb ellipsis)
see also elision
ELT n
an abbreviation for English Language Teaching. It is used especially in
Britain to refer to the teaching of english as a second languageor
english as a foreign language. In north American usage this is often
referred to as tesol.
embedded sentence n
see embedding
embedding nembed v
(in generative grammar) the occurrence of a sentence within another
sentence.
elicited imitation