The Minor Parts of Speechprepositional phrase: phrase consisting of a prepostion and NP.
progressive: an aspect of a verb phrase signaled by be + Ving.
quantifier: words such as someone, something whose referents are often
vague. See indefinitness.
referring noun phrase: a NP that denotes a particular entity or set of enti-
ties. See attributive noun phrase.
reference: the entities, qualities, situations, or events identified by (the use
of) linguistic expressions.
reflexive pronoun: a pronoun ending in -self or -selves that functions as the
head of a NP, e.g., I hurt myself. See intensive pronoun.
relative clause: a subordinate clause that modifies a head noun; often in-
troduced by a wh-word or that.
relative pronoun: in traditional grammar, a wh-word or that introducing
a relative clause.
specific: property of articles whereby they designate particular members of
a class. See generic.
structure word: See function words.
subjunctive: in traditional grammar, the mood of a sentence used to indi-
cate wishes, contrary-to-fact conditions, probability, possibility, etc.
subordinating adverbial conjunction (sac): conjunction such as when, if,
because, etc. that introduces a subordinate adverbial clause.
subordinating conjunction: a function word such as if, when, because,
that, who, etc., that connects two clauses, making one of secondary gram-
matical status, specifically a modifier or a complement.
truncated passive: a passive sentence without a by-phrase.
wh-question: a question beginning with a wh-word that asks for more in-
formation than just yes or no. See information question, yes-no question.
wh-word: a function word such as who, why, which that introduces ques-
tions, relative clauses, and nominal clauses.
yes-no question: a question that can be appropriately answered with yes or
no. See information question, wh-question.