The term notional is taken from notional grammar^2. A notional syl-
labus is contrasted with a grammatical syllabus or structural syllabus
(one which consists of a sequence of graded language items) or a situational
syllabus (one which consists of situations and the relevant language items
(see situational method)).
A notional syllabus contains:
a the meanings and concepts the learner needs in order to communicate
(e.g. time, quantity, duration, location) and the language needed to
express them. These concepts and meanings are called notions
b the language needed to express different functions or speech acts(e.g.
requesting, suggesting, promising, describing).
These notions and functions are then used to develop learning teaching
units in a language course.
see also communicative approachnoun n
a word which (a) can occur as the subject or object of a verb or the object
(complement) of a preposition (b) can be modified by an adjective (c) can
be used with determiners.
Nouns typically refer to people, animals, places, things, or abstractions.
see also adjectival noun, animate noun, collective noun, concrete
noun, countable noun, proper noun, parts of speech
noun clause n
another term for nominal clause
noun phrase^1 n
also NP
(in structuralist linguistics, generative grammarand related gram-
matical theories) a group of words with a noun or pronoun as the main part
(the head).
The noun phrase may consist of only one word (for example Gina in Gina
arrived yesterday) or it may be long and complex (for example, all the
words before must in: The students who enrolled late and who have not yet
filled in their cards must do so by Friday).
noun phrase^2 n
(in some traditional grammars) a participial (see participles) or
infinitive phrase which could be replaced by a noun or pronoun.
For example, the participial phrase mowing the lawn in:
George just hates mowing the lawn.
could be replaced by it:
George just hates it.
noun