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English Irregular Verbs
The English language has many irregular verbs, approaching 200 in normal use – and significantly more if prefixed forms are counted. In most cases, the irregularity concerns the past tense (also called ''preterite'') or the past participle. The other inflected parts of the verb – the third person singular present indicative in ''- '', and the present participle and gerund form in ''-ing'' – are formed regularly in most cases. There are a few exceptions: the verb ''be'' has irregular forms throughout the present tense; the verbs ''have'', ''do'', and ''say'' have irregular ''- '' forms; and certain defective verbs (such as the modal auxiliaries) lack most inflection. Irregular verbs in Modern English include many of the most common verbs: the dozen most frequently used English verbs are all irregular. New verbs (including loans from other languages, and nouns employed as verbs) usually follow the regular inflection, unless they are compound formations from an existing irreg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List
A list is a Set (mathematics), set of discrete items of information collected and set forth in some format for utility, entertainment, or other purposes. A list may be memorialized in any number of ways, including existing only in the mind of the list-maker, but lists are frequently written down on paper, or maintained electronically. Lists are "most frequently a tool", and "one does not ''read'' but only ''uses'' a list: one looks up the relevant information in it, but usually does not need to deal with it as a whole".Lucie Doležalová,The Potential and Limitations of Studying Lists, in Lucie Doležalová, ed., ''The Charm of a List: From the Sumerians to Computerised Data Processing'' (2009). Purpose It has been observed that, with a few exceptions, "the scholarship on lists remains fragmented". David Wallechinsky, a co-author of ''The Book of Lists'', described the attraction of lists as being "because we live in an era of overstimulation, especially in terms of information, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vowel Gradation
In linguistics, apophony (also known as ablaut, (vowel) gradation, (vowel) mutation, alternation, internal modification, stem modification, stem alternation, replacive morphology, stem mutation, or internal inflection) is an alternation of vowel (quality) within a word that indicates grammatical information (often inflectional). Description Apophony is exemplified in English as the ''internal'' vowel alternations that produce such related words as * sng, sng, sng, sng * bnd, bnd * bld, bld * brd, brd * dm, dm * fd, fd * l, l * rse, rse, rsen * wve, wve * ft, ft * gse, gse * tth, tth The difference in these vowels marks variously a difference in tense or aspect (e.g. ''sing/sang/sung''), transitivity (''rise/raise''), part of speech (''sing/song''), or grammatical number (''goose/geese''). That these sound alternations function grammatically can be seen as they are often equivalent to grammatical suffixes (an ''external modification''). Compare the following: The vowel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Standard English
In an English-speaking country, Standard English (SE) is the variety of English that has undergone codification to the point of being socially perceived as the standard language, associated with formal schooling, language assessment, and official print publications, such as public service announcements and newspapers of record, etc. All linguistic features are subject to the effects of standardisation, including morphology, phonology, syntax, lexicon, register, discourse markers, pragmatics, as well as written features such as spelling conventions, punctuation, capitalisation and abbreviation practices. SE is local to nowhere: its grammatical and lexical components are no longer regionally marked, although many of them originated in different, non-adjacent dialects, and it has very little of the variation found in spoken or earlier written varieties of English. According to Peter Trudgill, Standard English is a social dialect pre-eminently used in writing th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British English
British English is the set of Variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United Kingdom, especially Great Britain. More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England, or, more broadly, to the collective dialects of English throughout the United Kingdom taken as a single umbrella variety, for instance additionally incorporating Scottish English, Welsh English, and Northern Irish English. Tom McArthur (linguist), Tom McArthur in the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford Guide to World English acknowledges that British English shares "all the ambiguities and tensions [with] the word 'British' and as a result can be used and interpreted in two ways, more broadly or more narrowly, within a range of blurring and ambiguity". Variations exist in formal (both written and spoken) English in the United Kingdom. For example, the adjective ''wee'' is almost exclusively used in parts of Scotland, north-east England, Northern Ireland, Ireland ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American English
American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken language in the United States and, since 2025, the official language of the United States. It is also an official language in 32 of the 50 U.S. states and the ''de facto'' common language used in government, education, and commerce in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and in all territories except Puerto Rico. Since the late 20th century, American English has become the most influential form of English worldwide. Varieties of American English include many patterns of pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and particularly spelling that are unified nationwide but distinct from other forms of English around the world. Any North American English, American or Canadian accent perceived as lacking noticeably local, ethnic, or cultural markedness ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Analogy
Analogy is a comparison or correspondence between two things (or two groups of things) because of a third element that they are considered to share. In logic, it is an inference or an argument from one particular to another particular, as opposed to deduction, induction, and abduction. It is also used where at least one of the premises, or the conclusion, is general rather than particular in nature. It has the general form ''A is to B as C is to D''. In a broader sense, analogical reasoning is a cognitive process of transferring some information or meaning of a particular subject (the analog, or source) onto another (the target); and also the linguistic expression corresponding to such a process. The term analogy can also refer to the relation between the source and the target themselves, which is often (though not always) a similarity, as in the biological notion of analogy. Analogy plays a significant role in human thought processes. It has been argued that analogy li ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semivowel
In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel, glide or semiconsonant is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of a syllable. Examples of semivowels in English are ''y'' and ''w'' in ''yes'' and ''west'', respectively. Written in IPA, ''y'' and ''w'' are near to the vowels ''ee'' and ''oo'' in ''seen'' and ''moon,'' written in IPA. The term ''glide'' may alternatively refer to any type of transitional sound, not necessarily a semivowel. Classification Semivowels form a subclass of approximants. Although "semivowel" and "approximant" are sometimes treated as synonymous, most authors use the term "semivowel" for a more restricted set; there is no universally agreed-upon definition, and the exact details may vary from author to author. For example, do not consider the labiodental approximant to be a semivowel. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, the diacritic attached to non-syllabic vowel lett ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Vowel Shift
The Great Vowel Shift was a series of English phonology, pronunciation changes in the vowels of the English language that took place primarily between the 1400s and 1600s (the transition period from Middle English to Early Modern English), beginning in southern England and today having influenced effectively all dialects of English. Through this massive vowel shift, the pronunciation of all Middle English Vowel length, long vowels altered. Some consonant sounds also changed, specifically becoming silent; the term ''Great Vowel Shift'' is occasionally used to include these consonantal changes. The standardization of English spelling began in the 15th and 16th centuries; the Great Vowel Shift is the major reason English spellings now often deviate considerably from how they Phonemic orthography, represent pronunciations. Notable early researchers of the Great Vowel Shift include Alexander John Ellis, Alexander J. Ellis, in ''On Early English Pronunciation, with Especial Referenc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grammatical Conjugation
In linguistics, conjugation ( ) is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection (alteration of form according to rules of grammar). For instance, the verb ''break'' can be conjugated to form the words ''break'', ''breaks'', and ''broke''. While English has a relatively simple conjugation, other languages such as French and Arabic or Spanish are more complex, with each verb having dozens of conjugated forms. Some languages such as Georgian and Basque (some verbs only) have highly complex conjugation systems with hundreds of possible conjugations for every verb. Verbs may inflect for grammatical categories such as person, number, gender, case, tense, aspect, mood, voice, possession, definiteness, politeness, causativity, clusivity, interrogatives, transitivity, valency, polarity, telicity, volition, mirativity, evidentiality, animacy, associativity, pluractionality, and reciprocity. Verbs may also be affected by agreement, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old Northern French
Old Norman, also called Old Northern French or Old Norman French (), was one of many varieties of the ''langues d'oïl'' native to northern France. From the region of what is now called Normandy, the language spread into England, Southern Italy, Sicily and the Levant. It is the ancestor of modern Norman, including the insular dialects (such as Jèrriais), as well as Anglo-Norman. Old Norman was an important language of the Principality of Antioch during Crusader rule in the Levant. History When Norse Vikings from modern day Scandinavia arrived in Neustria, in the western part of the then Kingdom of the Franks, and settled the land that became known as Normandy, these North-Germanic–speaking people came to live among a local Gallo-Romance–speaking population. In time, the communities converged, so that ''Normandy'' continued to form the name of the region while the original Norsemen were largely assimilated by the Gallo-Romance people, adopting their speech but still contr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old English Language
Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th century, and the first Old English literature dates from the mid-7th century. After the Norman Conquest of 1066, English was replaced for several centuries by Anglo-Norman (a type of French) as the language of the upper classes. This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era, since during the subsequent period the English language was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into what is now known as Middle English in England and Early Scots in Scotland. Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian or Ingvaeonic dialects originally spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. As the Germanic settlers became dominant in England, their language re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Verbs
Verbs constitute one of the main Part of speech, parts of speech (word classes) in the English language. Like other types of words in the language, English verbs are not heavily inflection, inflected. Most combinations of Grammatical tense, tense, Grammatical aspect, aspect, Grammatical mood, mood and Grammatical voice, voice are expressed periphrasis, periphrastically, using constructions with auxiliary verbs. Generally, the only inflected forms of an English verb are a third person singular present tense form ending in ''-s'', a past tense (also called preterite), a past participle (which may be the same as the past tense), and a form ending in ''-ing'' that serves as a present participle and gerund. Most verbs inflect in a simple regular verb, regular fashion, although there are about 200 English irregular verbs, irregular verbs; the irregularity in nearly all cases concerns the past tense and past participle forms. The copula (linguistics), copula verb ''be'' has a larger numb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
