Page 15 - English Vocabulary In Use upper intermediet and advance

The names of English language words

The names of basic parts of speech in English

article adjective noun verb adverb preposition conjunction pronoun gerund
iJu.'4iJ J 1(

A good student works hard at her books and she enjoys learning.

Words relating to nouns
Look at the sentence An artist loves beauty; artist is countable, i.e. it has a plural form
(artists), but beauty is uncountable; artist is the subject of the verb as it describes who does
the verb; beauty is the object, i.e. what is affected by the verb.

Words relating to verbs
infinitive (to go) -ing form (going) past participle (gone)
Go (go, gone, went) is an irregular verb whereas live (live, lived, lived) is regular. Go is also
intransitive because it does not need an object, e.g. Has Luis gone? Make is transitive
because it is followed by an object - you make something.

Words relating to the construction of words
In the word, irregularity, ir- is a prefix, regular is a root and -ity is a suffix. Fat is the
opposite or antonym of thin and plump is a synonym of fat. A word family is a set of words
based on one root, e.g. word, wordy, to reword. A phrase does not include a main verb - 'in
a word' is an example of a phrase. A sentence has a main verb; it begins with a capital letter
and ends with a full stop.

Words relating to pronunciation

A syllable is the minimum sound unit of a language consisting of one vowel and any
consonants on either side. There are three syllables in the word 'minimum' (the first is mi,
the second is ni and the third is mum) and the stress is on the first syllable. Onomatopoeia
means forming words that sound like their meaning, e.g. moo, buzz.

Words and their associations
Register means a style of speaking or writing appropriate to a particular social situation.
Thus, slang is an extremely informal register and is only used by people who know each
other very well. Colloquial is an adjective referring to language that is suitable mainly for
conversation, e.g. He's a nice guy. Pejorative describes words which have a negative
association. Pig-headed is pejorative whereas determined, which is very close in meaning, is
not. Collocation refers to words which frequently occur together, e.g. torrential rain, auburn
hair.

Words describing punctuation

. full stop , comma 7 semi-colon ' apostrophe
- hyphen - dash ! exclamation mark ? question mark
( ) brackets " " inverted commas ANNE block capitals

8 English Vocabulary in Use