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Nouns (common, proper, collective, concrete, abstract) Nouns name people, places, and things. Every noun can further be classified as common or proper. A common noun names general items. Go into the kitchen. What do you see? Refrigerator, stove, microwave, window, curtain, coffee maker, wallpaper, spatula, sink, faucet, plate--all of these things are common nouns. Leave the house. Where can you go? Mall, restaurant, school, post office, backyard, beach, Laundromat, supermarket, gas station--all of these places are common nouns. Go to the mall. Who do you see? Teenager, grandmother, salesclerk, police officer, toddler, mother, father, manager, janitor, shoplifter--all of these people are common nouns. The important thing to remember is that common nouns are general names. Thus, they are not capitalized unless they begin a sentence or are part of a title. Proper nouns, those that name specific things, are the class of nouns that require capitalization. Nouns name people, places, and things. Collective nouns, a special class, name groups [things] composed of members [usually people]. A concrete noun names something you can experience with at least one of your senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell). Most nouns are concrete nouns. Don't confuse a concrete noun with an abstract noun. Not all nouns are concrete. A second class of nouns is abstract. You cannot experience abstract nouns with your senses. Read this example: Diane pushed Reliable off of her lap to register her disapproval. Disapproval is an example of an abstract noun. What color is disapproval? You don't know because you can't see it. What texture is disapproval? Who knows? You can't touch it. What flavor is disapproval? No clue! You can't taste it! Does it make a sound? Of course not! Does it smell? Not a bit! |
Although most students never truly think about it, nouns and pronouns have case. Latin has five; German has four. English has three cases: nominative, objective, and possessive. Regardless of how a noun functions in a sentence, it doesn’t change form. Therefore, no one bothers to think whether a noun is in the nominative or objective case; it simply doesn’t matter to a neophyte. However, a noun does change form when it falls in the possessive case. A noun changes form in the possessive case by adding an apostrophe and an s or if the noun is plural by adding s and an apostrophe: The student’s book was found lying in the floor. Boys’ gym clothes may be found in the bookstore.
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Pronouns (Personal in Nominative and Objective Case, Possessive, Compound, Interrogative, Relative, Pronominal) pro-nom-i-nal (pro.nom'ə.n ə l) - adjetive- Of, pertaining to, like, or having the nature of a pronoun. [ <LL pronominalis <L pronomen. See PRONOUN.] pro.nom'i.nal.ly adv: Interrogative PronounsThe interrogative pronouns (who/which/what) introduce questions. (What is that? Who will help me? Which do you prefer?) Which is generally used with more specific reference than what. If we're taking a quiz and I ask "Which questions give you the most trouble?", I am referring to specific questions on that quiz. If I ask "What questions give you most trouble"? I could be asking what kind of questions on that quiz (or what kind of question, generically, in general) gives you trouble. The interrogative pronouns also act as Determiners: It doesn't matter which beer you buy. He doesn't know whose car he hit. In this determiner role, they are sometimes called interrogative adjectives. Pronominal adjective - The possessive case of a personal pronoun used attributively: my, your, his, her, its, our, their, whose, and, poetically. mine and thine.
Pro-noun (pro'noun) - n. A word used as a substitilte for a noun, as he, she, that. [<OF pronom <L pronomen < pro- in place of + nomen name, noun] A word used to take the place of one or more nouns is called a pronoun. Pronoun case. Adjective pronoun Any pronoun used like an adjective; as, that boy, this house, which man. Any demonstrative pronoun, any indefinite pronoun (except none), and any interrogative and relative pronoun (except who) may be used as an adjective pronoun. Demonstrative pronoun - A pronoun that directly points out its antecedents.
The same forms are used for all genders, persons, and cases. Indefinite pronoun A pronoun that represents an object indefinitely or generally. The principal indefinite pronouns are another, any, . both, each, either, neither, none, one, other, some, such. None and any are both singular and plural. Interrogative pronoun A pronoun that is used to ask a question.
Personal pronoun - A pronoun that shows by its form the person speaking, the person spoken to, or the person or thing spoken of.
Reflexive pronoun - A pronoun formed by adding -self or -selves to the oblique cases of the personal pronoun. They serve as an intensive: I, myself, was there; or a reference back to a personal pronoun where the same person is both subject and object: He hit himself
Relative pronoun - A pronoun that relates to an antecedent and introduces a qualifying clause: We found a boatman who ferried us.
Sometimes as and but are regarded as relative pronouns: Such men as survived the accident; There is not a man but remembers that day. The relative pronouns who (with its inflected forms whose and whom), which, and what, are identical in form with the interrogative pronouns but they undergo shifts of meaning, in interrogative use, often being indefinite and general in reference: What (if anything or of all possible things) is he talking about? But: He is talking about what (specifically) he knows best. These pronouns, when used to introduce an indirect question, are by nature both relative and interrogative: They asked what he wanted; whom he preferred as a colleague; which party he belonged to. Similarly, that is not only a demonstrative but also a relative pronoun and it makes a specific and limiting reference in either use. |
Adjectives (Descriptive, Limiting, Comparison of Adjectives) Adjectives modify a noun or pronoun. There are two basic categories of adjectives. They have very different functions:
comparative adjectives indicating similarity or equality FORMING THE COMPARATIVE AND SUPERLATIVE
Examples: a. A cat is fast, a tiger is faster but a cheetah is the fastest. b. A car is heavy, a truck is heavier, but a train is the heaviest c. A park bench is comfortable, a restaurant chair is more comfortable but a sofa is the most comfortable! The degrees of comparison are known as the positive, the comparative, and the superlative. (Actually, only the comparative and superlative show degrees.) We use the comparative for comparing two things and the superlative for comparing three or more things. Notice that the word than frequently accompanies the comparative and the word the precedes the superlative. The inflected suffixes -er and -est suffice to form most comparatives and superlatives, although we need -ier and -iest when a two-syllable adjective ends in y (happier and happiest); otherwise we use more and most when an adjective has more than one syllable.
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Verbs (Regular and Irregular, Transitive, Intransitive, Linking, Active and Passive Voice, Simple and Compound Tenses, Mood, Agreement of Verb with Subject) The verb is king in English. The shortest sentence contains a verb. You can make a one-word sentence with a verb, for example: "Stop!" You cannot make a one-word sentence with any other type of word. Verbs are sometimes described as "action words". This is partly true. Many verbs give the idea of action, of "doing" something. For example, words like run, fight, do and work all convey action. But some verbs do not give the idea of action; they give the idea of existence, of state, of "being". For example, verbs like be, exist, seem and belong all convey state. A verb always has a subject. (In the sentence "John speaks English", John is the subject and speaks is the verb.) In simple terms, therefore, we can say that verbs are words that tell us what a subject does or is; they describe:
There is something very special about verbs in English. Most other words (adjectives, adverbs, prepositions etc) do not change in form (although nouns can have singular and plural forms). But almost all verbs change in form. For example, the verb to work has five forms:
Of course, this is still very few forms compared to some languages which may have thirty or more forms for a single verb.
Verbs carry the idea of being or action in the
sentence.
As we will see on this page, verbs are classified in many ways. First, some verbs require an object to complete their meaning: "She gave _____ ?" Gave what? She gave money to the church. These verbs are called transitive. Verbs that are intransitive do not require objects: "The building collapsed." In English, you cannot tell the difference between a transitive and intransitive verb by its form; you have to see how the verb is functioning within the sentence. In fact, a verb can be both transitive and intransitive: "The monster collapsed the building by sitting on it." Although you will seldom hear the term, a ditransitive verb — such as cause or give — is one that can take a direct object and an indirect object at the same time: "That horrid music gave me a headache." Ditransitive verbs are slightly different, then, from factitive verbs, in that the latter take two objects. Verbs are also classified as either finite or non-finite. A finite verb makes an assertion or expresses a state of being and can stand by itself as the main verb of a sentence.
Non-finite verbs (think "unfinished") cannot, by themselves, be main verbs:
Another, more useful term for non-finite verb is verbal. In this section, we discuss various verbal forms: infinitives, gerunds, and participles. Simple TensesTense is the form a verb takes to indicate a particular time period. Roughly speaking, the tense indicates whether something happened in the past, the present or the future. Tense - (tens) n - A form of a verb that relates it to time viewed either as finite past, present, or future, or as non-finite. ►Sequence of tenses In inflected languages, the customary choice of tense for a verb that follows another in a sentence, particularly in reported or in direct discourse. ►The general principle of sequence of tenses in English is that present follows present and past follows past. Thus, the tense of the subordinate clause tends to shift back to agree with the tense of the main verb. "He wants to go," becomes, in indirect discourse, "They said that he –wanted to go." However, if continued, habitual, future, or universal action is expressed, the present tense may be retained in the subordinate clause: They told me that he is still in town; Columbus proved that the world is round. The present tense is also retained in the subordinate clause for emphasis: They just learned he is going after all. In subordinate clauses of purpose the general rule of tense sequence holds true: We are working so that we can go to Europe; we worked so that' we could go to Europe. In conditional sentences expressing a simple fact or open question, the main and subordinate verbs remain independent: If he said that, l can' t prove it. However, sequence of tenses is strictly observed in a highly improbable or contrary-to-fact statement. Time present is then expressed by the use of the past tense: If he had any sense, he wouldn't drive that car. Time past is expressed by the past perfect tense: If I had had my wits about me, I would have telephoned immediately. [<0F - tens <L - tempus time, tense]
Diagramming Sentences - Sentence Parts and Patterns Every year on the afternoon of December 24, you, a Christmas procrastinator, loaded down with sacks and boxes, walk from store to store, down endless aisles, your eyes scanning windows and racks to find the perfect presents for Mom, Grandpa, and Uncle Joe, but since you know in your heart of hearts that Uncle Joe will appreciate nothing you give him and that you will capitulate to necessity and buy Grandpa a fifth of Seagram’s, you concentrate on Mom, as you move into the aisle that you hope to be able to call the final stop of this holiday season.
The basic bones of this sentence are the subject and verb of each main clause (you walk and you concentrate) along with the coordinating conjunction but
The words to, from, and on are prepositions. Prepositional phrases consist of prepositions and their objects; thus, from store, to store, and on Mom are prepositional phrases. These prepositional phrases are adverbial in nature because they modify verbs. On the other hand, the prepositional phrase in the sentence The man on the roof is your father is adjectival because it modifies the noun man.
The noun procrastinator is said to be in apposition with the pronoun you. An appositive, which is usually a noun, is placed in a sentence to further identify or explain another word or words. The indefinite article a and the noun Christmas, a noun used here as an adjective, modify procrastinator. |
Verbals:
Infinitives and Gerunds and SequenceAlthough they are not, strictly speaking, verbs, infinitives and gerunds carry within them the idea of action. Combined with auxiliary verb forms, like verbs, they also express various shades of time.
◄Gerunds and infinitives can both function as the subject of a sentence:
◄It is not impossible for an infinitive to appear at the beginning of a sentence as the subject (as in Ib), but it is more common for an infinitive to appear as a Subject Complement:
◄Both of these verbal forms can further identify a noun when they play the role of Noun Complement and Appositive:
◄The infinitive is often a complement used to help define an abstract noun. Here is a very partial list of abstract nouns, enough to suggest their nature. Try following these adjectives with an infinitive phrase (their desire to play in the championship game, a motivation to pass all their courses, her permission to stay up late, a gentle reminder to do your work) to see how the phrase modifies and focuses the noun
◄Although we do not find many infinitives in this next category, it is not uncommon to find gerunds taking on the role of Object of a Preposition: She wrote a newspaper article about dealing with college recruiters. She thanked her coach for helping her to deal with the pressure. Two prepositions, except and but, will sometimes take an infinitive. The committee had no choice except to elect Frogbellow chairperson. What is left for us but to pack up our belongings and leave? ◄And, finally, both gerunds and infinitives can act as a Direct Object: Here, however, all kinds of decisions have to be made, and some of these decisions will seem quite arbitrary. The next section is about making the choice between gerund and infinitive forms as direct object. Verbs that take other verb forms as objects are called catenatives (from a word that means to link, as in a chain). Catenatives can be found at the head of a series of linked constructions, as in "We agreed to try to decide to stop eating between meals." Catenatives are also characterized by their tendency to describe mental processes and resolutions. (Kolln) Although it is seldom a serious problem for native English speakers, deciding whether to use a gerund or an infinitive after a verb can be perplexing among students for whom English is a second language. Why do we decide to run, but we would never decide running? On the other hand, we might avoid running, but we would not avoid to run. And finally, we might like running and would also like to run. It is clear that some verbs take gerunds, some verbs take infinitives, and some verbs take either. The following tables of verbs should help you understand the various options that regulate our choice of infinitive or gerund.
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Adverbs modify (describe) verbs, adjectives or other adverbs Adverbs modify (describe) verbs, adjectives or other adverbs.
Adverbs are words that modify
communicative intent of adverbs Adverbs answer these questions. Where? When? How? Why? and To what extent? KINDS OF ADVERBS - RELATIVE ADVERBS - The following adverbs can be used to join sentences or clauses. They replace the more formal structure of preposition + which in a relative clause:
Adverbs are an adjective which can modify a verb, a
clause, another adjective or a phrase.
Adjectives are generally turned into adverbs with the addition of a -ly suffix, though this is not a concrete rule. Examples of adverbs are:
Manner - Adverbs which answer the question How? Place - Adverbs which answer the question Where? Time - Adverbs which answer the question of When?
Number - Adverbs which answer the question of How Often or How Many?
Purpose - Adverbs which answer the question Why? Since adverbs are used to answer WHY questions, it might be assumed that the acquisition order of the communicative intent of manner, place, time, number, and purpose might well follow the same developmental order of question forms. If that is the case, then the resulting developmental order would be: Place - Answers Where questions Number - Answers How often or How many Manner - Answers How question Purpose - Answers Why question Time - Answers When question |
Prepositions, Conjunctions,
& Interjections
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Phrases, Clauses (Adjectival Clauses, Adverbial Clauses, Noun Clauses), Sentences (Simple and Compound Sentences, Complex and Compound-Complex Sentences) The Subjunctive in Adjectival Clauses - Adjectives are words that modify a noun, describing or limiting it. Examples of adjectives are: the new hat, the pretty dress, many intelligent students. An entire clause may serve an adjectival purpose, describing a noun or pronoun —the antecedent— in a sentence, for example:
Note that in all three examples above, there is an adjectival clause (the part in bold-faced tyope) that modifies or refers back to the word dress. That is, the antecedent in all three cases is dress, but in each case the situation is different: in number one, the antecedent is indefinite, that is, we don't know if such a dress exists; in number two, the antecedent is definite, that is, it definitely is portrayed as existing; in number three, the antecedent is negated, that is, its existence is denied or at least doubtful. Definition of Adverbial Clauses - an adverbial clause is a clause that has an adverb-like function in modifying another clause. Discussion - An adverbial clause is likely to be distinct in its syntax or verb morphology. Example (English) - He kept quiet in order to avoid trouble. Generic - An adverbial clause is a kind of |
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on the "scary bear" 
