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A syntactic expletive is a term used in formal linguistic theories. It is a term for a pronoun that is used at the start of a sentence or clause when the referent is not immediately known, but an argument for the verb is syntactically required. The basic meaning of the clause is made explicit after the verb.
Syntax was recognized as the focal point of language production, in which a finite set of rules can produce an infinite number of sentences. Subsequently, morphology (i.e. the study of structure and formation of words) and phonology (i.e. the study of organization of sounds in languages) were relegated in importance.
Performative utterance. In the philosophy of language and speech acts theory, performative utterances are sentences which not only describe a given reality, but also change the social reality they are describing. In a 1955 lecture series, later published as How to Do Things with Words, J. L. Austin argued against a positivist philosophical ...
In these typical, rather explicit cases of performative sentences, the action that the sentence describes (nominating, sentencing, promising) is performed by the utterance of the sentence itself. J.L. Austin claimed that performative sentences could be "happy or unhappy". They were only happy if the speaker does the actions he or she talks about.
In grammar, a conjunction (abbreviated CONJ or CNJ) is a part of speech that connects words, phrases, or clauses, which are called its conjuncts. That description is vague enough to overlap with those of other parts of speech because what constitutes a "conjunction" must be defined for each language. In English, a given word may have several ...
In English, the passive voice is marked by a subject that is followed by a stative verb complemented by a past participle. For example: The enemy was defeated. Caesar was stabbed. The recipient of a sentence's action is referred to as the patient. In sentences using the active voice, the subject is the performer of the action—referred to as ...
Sentence (linguistics) In linguistics and grammar, a sentence is a linguistic expression, such as the English example " The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." In traditional grammar, it is typically defined as a string of words that expresses a complete thought, or as a unit consisting of a subject and predicate.
Pleonasm. Pleonasm (/ ˈpliː.əˌnæzəm /; from Ancient Greek πλεονασμός (pleonasmós), from πλέον (pléon) 'to be in excess') [1][2] is redundancy in linguistic expression, such as in "black darkness," "burning fire," "the man he said," [3] or "vibrating with motion." It is a manifestation of tautology by traditional ...