autosegmental phonology n
a theory of phonology that does not view representations as merely a linear
string of segments but in terms of tiers, each of which is autonomous.
Autosegmental phonology has been shown to be especially relevant for the
treatment of phonological tone^1.
auxiliary n
another term for auxiliary verb
auxiliary languagen
another term for lingua franca and artificial language
auxiliary verbn
also auxiliary
a verb which is used with another verb in a sentence, and which shows
grammatical functions such as aspect, voice^1 , mood, tense^1 , and person.
In English be,do, and have and the modal verbs like may,can, and willare
all auxiliaries. For example:
She isworking.
He didn’tcome.
They havefinished.
You maygo now.
Canyou manage?
They willarrive tomorrow.
The verbs working, come, finished, go, manage, and arrive in these sen-
tences are calledlexical verbs, or full verbs. Lexical verbs can be used as the
only verb in a sentence, e.g. She works at the factory. Be, do, and have can
also be used as lexical verbs, e.g. He is happy, She does computer studies at
university, and They have three children.
availability navailableadj
when people are asked to think of the words that can be used to talk about
a particular topic, they will be able to think of some words immediately.
Those words which they remember first and most easily are said to have a
high availability.
For example, when a group of secondary school children were asked to list
words for parts of the body, they included leg, hand, eye, nose, and ears.
These were the five most available words.
Available words are not always the most frequently occurring words in a
language. Availability has been used as a criterion for selecting vocabulary
for language teaching.
see syllabus design
availability