Terminology

A lot of the terminology we use on this site is best learnt in connection with English.

Noun

Words for people, places, or things, e.g. tree, arm, woman, knowledge.

Verb

Words for actions, states, or occurrences, e.g. go, see, know, want, find, happen.

Adjective

Words for attributes of nouns, e.g. red, large, complex, imaginary.

Adverb

Words that express manner, degree, or time, in relation to a verb, adjective, or adverb, e.g. quickly, gently, finally, fully, earlier, tomorrow.

Non-Past Tense

Form of a verb indicating action that takes place in the present or future, where the present/future distinction is only given by context, e.g. we are going (now / next month), I am coming to see you (and I'm already on my way / after I finish a few things at work).

Perfective

Form of the verb indicating a completed action, constructed in English with have and the past participle which often ends in -ed, e.g. he has lived in Darwin for 5 years.

Imperfective

Form of the verb indicating ongoing action, constructed in English with be and the present participle which ends in -ing, e.g. he was living in Darwin when....

Transitive

Type of verb which requires an object, or something that receives the action, e.g. help, drop, love, open, hit, kill, admire.

Intransitive

Type of verb which does not have an object, or something that receives the action, e.g. arrive, sleep, stand, die, cry, panic, appear, float.

Reduplication

Words and phrases constructed by repeating material, sometimes with modification, e.g. bye bye, zigzag, flip flop, fancy schmancy.

Polysemy

The situation when a word has two or more related meanings, e.g. mint (shrub, leaf, flavour, sweet), burn (action of burning something (verb), the result of burning (noun)).

Note that some English words are polysemous from a Bininj perspective, e.g. grandmother (i.e. mother's mother or father's mother, for which Kunwok has distinct words).

A related concept is homonymy, when two distinct words sound the same, regardless of how they might be written, e.g. write/right, two/to/too. Some homonyms are also homographs, e.g. bat (striking instrument, flying mammal), mint (plant/flavour, financial institution).