GLOSSARY

GLOSSARY 

ANAPHORA: An anaphor is an expression that must be interpreted via another expression (the ‘antecedent’), which typically occurs earlier in the discourse. The term ‘anaphora’ refers to this phenomenon

ANOMALY (semantic) We speak of semantic anomaly when interacting meanings in a grammatically well-formed expression intuitively do not ‘go together’ normally, as in plastic anxiety or feeble hypotenuses. Expressions like these are not necessarily uninterpretable; indeed, anomaly in a literal interpretation of an expression is often a sign that it is intended to be taken non-literally.

CATAPHORA: Words or phrases like pronouns are cataphora when they point forwards to something later on in the text.

COLLOCATION: This term is used in two main ways. The first use refers to any grammatically well-formed sequence of words that go together without oddness, such as an excellent performance.

DEIXIS: Words or phrases that can only be understood from the context of the text or utterance where they are found are deictic.

ELLIPSIS: Ellipsis is the omission of one or more words that are understood in the context, but which are required to make the sentence or utterance grammatically correct.

ENTAILMENT: A logical relation between propositions. A proposition P entails a proposition Q, if and only if the truth of Q follows inescapably from the truth of P.

FUNCTION: The purpose for an utterance or piece of language is its function, such as making a request, giving an order, complaining, giving a compliment, etc.  In teaching, a function like apologising may be chosen and the language used in various types of apologies taught so that students know how they can apologise in various situations.

IMPLICATURES: These are parts of the meanings of utterances which, although intended, are not strictly part of ‘what is said’ in the act of utterance.

PRAGMATICS: Pragmatics looks at aspects of meaning that are not found directly in the words and structures used, so  it looks beyond semantics at how we encode social conventions and interactions, and implied meanings into our language

UTTERANCE: An utturence is a complete unit of speech (what one speaker says before the next starts), ranging from a single word to the longest uninterrupted speech possible.

ADRIANA MARIA RODRIGUEZ CRUZ

FACULTY OF EDUCATION

B.A IN ENGLISH PROGRAM

adrianarodry@gmail.com