finite clause

A finite clause contains a VP with a finite verb, that is, a verb that is marked for tense: He is a very generous person; Do you eat mussels? Imperative clauses (Sit down!) and subjunctive clauses (It's vital that she answer him) are finite clauses as well. (AEG Ch. 1)

finite verb, see finite clause

form (or form of a constituent)

The form of a constituent is determined by its head, which is the essential element of that constituent. For example, in the black cat, the head of the constituent is cat, which is a noun. The constituent the black cat is therefore referred to as a noun phrase (or NP). Similarly, really big is an adjective phrase (or AdjP), and quite frequently is an adverb phrase (or AdvP). (AEG Ch. 1)

formal agreement

There is formal agreement when the singular or plural form of the verb is determined by the morphological number of the head of the Subject NP: Her paper is interesting; Her papers are interesting. A non-NP Subject such as a clause (Seeing him makes me happy) always triggers a singular verb. (AEG Ch. 3)

formal criteria

Formal criteria are characteristics of a particular grammatical concept that relate to its form. For instance, the formal criteria which enable us to identify a word as a noun are that it can be inflected for plural (provided it is countable) and that it can be used in the genitive. An adjective is a word that can be used either attributively as a prehead or predicatively and can often be inflected in the comparative and superlative form: hot > hotter > hottest. A phrase is identified as an NP if the head is a noun: this is a formal criterion of an NP. (AEG Ch. 1)

free indirect speech

Free indirect speech refers to cases in which the narrator steps back and looks at situations from the perspective of one of the participants in the narrative. This translates into a very specific form with somewhat amalgamated features: She had known him for a long time – he was not going to like this. Although free indirect speech features in a self-standing clause (that is, it is not a subclause – hence the use of the term free), the tenses are those that would typically be used in a subclause embedded in main clause with (s)he said / thought / knew / etc: She knew he was not going to like this. (AEG Ch. 4)

function (or function of a constituent)

A constituent performs a specific function, either at the clausal level (often determined by the complements a verb takes) or at the phrasal level (in relation to the head of a phrase). In the sentence A couple of my friends went to Australia last month, the NP a couple of my friends fulfils the function of Subject at the level of the clause. In the sentence My keys are on the table, the NP the table is the Object of the Preposition on. This latter function is at the level of the phrase. In AEG we use the following labels to refer to the functions performed by constituents: Subject, Direct Object, Indirect Object, Prepositional Object, Subject Complement, Object Complement, Adjunct, and Object of a Preposition. (AEG Ch. 1)