Glossary 361
Kana The collective term for hiragana and katakana..
Kanji The Japanese version of Chinese characters. Note that not all kanji
exist in the Chinese character set, and not all Chinese characters exist
in the Japanese character set..
Masculine A word or part of phrase that is associated with being used
predominantly by men. Contrast to ”effeminate”..
Mimesis A word that illustrates an aspect of the sensible world. An ex-
ample is the Japanese ”kira kira” which represents a sparkling or in-
termiĴently shining state. Compare to ”onomatopoeia”..
Modifier A word or part of phrase that modifies or narrows down the
definition of another word or part of phrase..
MoodFor verbs, mood is that aspect of a verb that indicates how it re-
lates its own subphrase to the rest of the sentence, or subphrases. In
English, common moods are ”imperative”, ”subjective”, and ”indica-
tive”..
Negative A word or part of phrase that states (”asserts”) something is
”not”..
Nominaliser A word or part of phrase that changes the grammatical role
of other words or parts of phrase into the one played by nominals
(nouns)..
Nominalising Turning a word or part of phrase into a nominal..
Nominals The class of words that act as nouns..
Noun A word class that is used to name a person, place, thing, quality, or
action..
Onomatopoeia A word that illustrates a sound made by something, such
as the word ”thunk” in the phrase ”The rock went ’thunk’ as it hit the
floor”. Compare to ”mimesis”..
Operative A word that is used to illustrate that something is in effect, or
that something is being affected somehow..
Ordinal A number representing some place in an ordered sequence or
list..