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Acronym – An abbreviation formed from the initial letters of words and pronounced as a word, e.g. NASA |
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Blend – A word formed combining two or more words to create a new word (meaning is a combination of the two originals) |
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Borrowing – Introducing a loan word from one language into another |
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Clipping – The creation of a new word with the same word class and denotation by dropping one syllable or more (called a truncation) e.g. Thurs, spec, flu. |
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Code shifting – When speakers switch between more than one language or variety in a situation. |
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Coinage – The construction and addition of new words to the word stock |
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Collocation – A recognisable group of words that frequently occur together. |
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Colloquialism – An informal word, phrase or pronunciation, often associated with informal speech |
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Deixis – A word or phrase (such as this, that, these, those, now, then) that points to the time, place, or situation in which language is being used. |
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Derivation – A term to describe words that are formed by adding affixes to create new words eg slow + ness |
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Double negative – The use of two negatives (= words that mean "no") in the same phrase or clause |
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Ellipsis – The omission of part of a sentence that can be understood by the context. |
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Exclamation – The tone communicated by the use of an exclamation mark. |
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Exclamative – Used to express strong feelings, strong emphasis or emotion. |
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Filler – Words, usually with no semantic value, which are inserted into speech either from habit or to give a participant thinking time as they search for a word. |
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Initialism – A word formed from the first letters of a sequence of words pronounced letter by letter. |
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Logogram – When graphic units are associated with words/actions eg emoticons, x etc. |
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Neologism – The creation of a word from existing lexical items eg electracy – the skills and facility needed to make full use of the communicative potential of new electronic media. |
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Non-standard – Language that does not conform to the standard prestige form which is used as a linguistic norm. |
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Obsolete words – Words that are no longer in use. |
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Register – A style of language used in a particular context defined in terms of mode, tenor and field. |
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Semantic Change – Changes in word meaning over time. |