Category Archives: English Language Arts

“indirect question: 1. A question as reported in indirect speech: e.g. where he was in I asked where he was. 2. An utterance with the force of a question which is not in an interrogative form. Thus, the sentence I would like to know his name has the form of a declarative (1); but it might be uttered as an indirect question, with the same intention, in this respect, as ‘What is his name?’ Compare indirect speech act.”

Excerpted from: Matthews, P.H., ed. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

“Attributive: Indicating modifying of a noun (usually preceding it); not following a copulative verb, e.g., ‘the imposing woman.’”

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.