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Glossary
In the language-related analyses in yoastseo, we use various specialized terms from fields such as linguistics or writing style manuals. In addition to these terms, we have created terms of our own during that have their special meaning within the yoastseo analysis. This glossary provides an overview of these terms.
Comparatives and superlatives are forms of an adjective. They are used to indicate how much of a feature described with the adjective something/someone has, relative to others. The comparative indicates more of the feature, while the superlative indicates the most of the feature.
| Base | Comparative | Superlative |
|---|---|---|
| nice | nicer | nicest |
| green | greener | greenest |
| big | bigger | biggest |
Possessive forms are forms of noun. They indicate that the noun is the owner of something. In English, they are formed by adding 's at the end of the noun. For example, in the phrases below, the 's indicates that the first noun is the possessor of the second noun:
the dog's ball
my friend's husband
the building's walls
Function words are words that carry little meaning on their own, though they are very common and crucial for forming sentences. For example, the function words that were used in the previous sentence are:
are, that, little, on, their, own, though, they, very, and, for.
As you can see, there is a lot of them in just one sentence, but they are not helpful in giving us an idea in what the sentence was about.
Transition words are words or phrases that help you to structure your text. They help you to make nice and clear transitions between ideas. Below are some examples of transition words:
| Sentence | Transition word |
|---|---|
| First of all, all cats are cute. | first of all |
| Some cats are nevertheless cuter than others. | nevertheless |
| For example, kittens are cuter than adult cats. | for example |
When a passive verb construction is used, it indicates that the subject of the sentence is a recipient of an action. By contrast, when active voice is used then the subject is the one performing the action. Below are some examples of passive voice, contrasted with the active voice.
| Active voice | Passive voice |
|---|---|
| The girl loves the cat. | The cat is loved by the girl. |
| The man eats the avocado. | The avocado is eaten by the man. |
| The government passes bills. | Bills are passed by the government. |
An auxiliary verb is a 'helper' verb - it is used next to the 'main' verb to form certain grammatical constructions, such as tense or voice. Passive voice is formed with the help of an auxiliary in many languages. In English, that auxiliary is a form of the verb 'to be'.
| Passive sentence | Auxiliary |
|---|---|
| The cat is loved by the girl. | is |
| Bills are passed by the government. | are |
The participle is the 'main' verb in a passive voice construction in many languages.
| Passive sentence | Participle |
|---|---|
| The cat is loved by the girl. | loved |
| Bills are passed by the government. | passed |
Periphrastic passives are passives formed using an auxiliary and a participle. This is how passive voice is formed in, for example, English, Spanish, and German.
Morphological passives are formed by simply changing the form of the main verb, without the need for an auxiliary verb. This is the case in languages like Turkish and Russian.
(in the context of our passive voice analysis)
The passive voice analysis in languages with periphrastic passives works by searching for an auxiliary and a participle in a sentence part. Only if both the auxiliary and the participle are in the same sentence part, rather than simply in the same sentence, are they marked as forming a passive. This is because auxiliaries and participles are not always used to form passives; they also have other functions. By restricting the scope within which to look for the auxiliary and participle, we are maximising the chances that the two actually 'belong' together, i.e. that they are forming a passive.
Therefore, sentences are split by characters or words that are unlikely to come between a passive participle and auxiliary. For example, it is unlikely to have characters like brackets or colons separate a passive participle and an auxiliary. Same goes for certain conjunctions, like 'because' or 'when'. Below are some examples of auxiliaries and participles that do not form a passive and that belong to different sentence parts.
| Sentence | Sentence part divider |
|---|---|
| Here is an opinion: grilled vegetables are better than meat. | : |
| The tennis player is happy because she has won the match. | because |
| I am hungry and drunk. | and |
Direct precedence exceptions are a category of words used to split sentences into parts. However, the important thing is that they are only used to split the sentence if they directly precede the participle.
Indirect precedence exceptions are words that split the sentence if the word is found anywhere between the auxiliary and the participle (in languages where the participle always follows the auxiliary).