TopicalizationTopicalization is a mechanism of syntax that establishes an expression as the sentence or clause topic by having it appear at the front of the sentence or clause (as opposed to in a canonical position further to the right). This involves a phrasal movement of determiners, prepositions, and verbs to sentence-initial position. Topicalization often results in a discontinuity and is thus one of a number of established discontinuity types, the other three being wh-fronting, scrambling, and extraposition.
TelicityIn linguistics, telicity (tiːˈlɪsɪti; ) is the property of a verb or verb phrase that presents an action or event as having a specific endpoint. A verb or verb phrase with this property is said to be telic; if the situation it describes is not heading for any particular endpoint, it is said to be atelic. One common way to gauge whether an English verb phrase is telic is to see whether such a phrase as in an hour, in the sense of "within an hour", (known as a time-frame adverbial) can be applied to it.
Lexical aspectIn linguistics, the lexical aspect or Aktionsart (ʔakˈtsi̯oːnsˌʔaʁt, plural Aktionsarten [ʔakˈtsi̯oːnsˌʔaɐ̯tn̩]) of a verb is part of the way in which that verb is structured in relation to time. For example, the English verbs arrive and run differ in their lexical aspect since the former describes an event which has a natural endpoint while the latter does not. Lexical aspect differs from grammatical aspect in that it is an inherent semantic property of a predicate, while grammatical aspect is a syntactic or morphological property.
Arabic verbsArabic verbs (فِعْل ALA; () أَفْعَال ALA), like the verbs in other Semitic languages, and the entire vocabulary in those languages, are based on a set of two to five (but usually three) consonants called a root (triliteral or quadriliteral according to the number of consonants). The root communicates the basic meaning of the verb, e.g. ك-ت-ب ALA 'write', ق-ر-ء ALA 'read', ء-ك-ل ALA 'eat'. Changes to the vowels in between the consonants, along with prefixes or suffixes, specify grammatical functions such as person, gender, number, tense, mood, and voice.
Deponent verbIn linguistics, a deponent verb is a verb that is active in meaning but takes its form from a different voice, most commonly the middle or passive. A deponent verb has no active forms. This list may not be exhaustive. Ancient Greek verbs and Koine Greek grammar Ancient Greek has middle-voice deponents (some of which are very common) and some passive-voice deponents. An example in classical Greek is ἔρχομαι (, 'I come' or 'I go'), middle/passive in form but translated into English using the active voice (since English has no middle voice).
SupineIn grammar, a supine is a form of verbal noun used in some languages. The term is most often used for Latin, where it is one of the four principal parts of a verb. The word refers to a position of lying on one's back (as opposed to 'prone', lying face downward), but there exists no widely accepted etymology that explains why or how the term came to be used to also describe this form of a verb. Latin conjugation#Supine and Latin syntax#The supine There are two supines, I (first) and II (second).
Separable verbA separable verb is a verb that is composed of a lexical core and a separable particle. In some sentence positions, the core verb and the particle appear in one word, whilst in others the core verb and the particle are separated. The particle cannot be accurately referred to as a prefix because it can be separated from the core verb. German, Dutch, Afrikaans and Hungarian are notable for having many separable verbs. Separable verbs challenge theories of sentence structure because when they are separated, it is not evident how the compositionality of meaning should be understood.