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When the prefix "re-" is added to a monosyllabic word, the word gains currency both as a noun and as a verb. Most of the pairs listed below are closely related: for example, "absent" as a noun meaning "missing", and as a verb meaning "to make oneself missing". There are also many cases in which homographs are of an entirely separate origin, or ...
A crude example of such a rule is the pastoral idea of "verbizing one's nouns": that certain nouns, used in certain contexts, can be converted into a verb, conveying a related meaning. [ 22 ] Another clarification of polysemy is the idea of predicate transfer [ 23 ] —the reassignment of a property to an object that would not otherwise ...
In this case the number is marked overtly on the noun, and is also reflected by verb agreement. However: The sheep can run. In this case the number of the noun (or of the verb) is not manifested at all in the surface form of the sentence, and thus ambiguity is introduced (at least, when the sentence is viewed in isolation).
For example, the noun aerobics has given rise to the adjective aerobicized. [3] Words combine to form phrases. A phrase typically serves the same function as a word from some particular word class. [3] For example, my very good friend Peter is a phrase that can be used in a sentence as if it were a noun, and is therefore called a noun phrase.
Common nouns are defined as those that are neither proper nouns nor pronouns. [9] They are the most numerous and the most frequently used in English. Common nouns can be further divided into count and non-count nouns. A count noun can take a number as its determiner (e.g., -20 degrees, zero calories, one cat, two bananas, 276 dollars).
This example turns on the two meanings of German modern: the adjective meaning English 'modern', and the verb meaning 'to rot'. [8] The theme of the "picture exhibition" in the first clause lends itself to interpreting modern as an adjective meaning 'contemporary', until the last two words of the sentence:
Differences in scale are important to this meaning: for example, English grammar could describe those rules followed by every one of the language's speakers. [2] At smaller scales, it may refer to rules shared by smaller groups of speakers. A description, study, or analysis of such rules may also be known as a grammar, or as a grammar book.
A homograph (from the Greek: ὁμός, homós 'same' and γράφω, gráphō 'write') is a word that shares the same written form as another word but has a different meaning. [1] However, some dictionaries insist that the words must also be pronounced differently, [ 2 ] while the Oxford English Dictionary says that the words should also be of ...