Glossary of English Grammar Terms
This glossary of English grammar terms
relates to the English language. Some terms here may have additional or
extended meanings when applied to other languages. For example,
"case" in some languages applies to pronouns and nouns. In English, nouns
do not have case and therefore no reference to nouns is made in its definition
here.
Term
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Definition
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one of two voices in English; a direct form of
expression where the subject performs or "acts" the verb; see also passive voice
eg: "Many people eat rice" |
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adjective clause
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adjunct
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word or phrase that adds information
to a sentence and that can be removed from the sentence without making the
sentence ungrammatical
eg: I met John at school. |
word that modifies a verb, an
adjective or another adverb
eg: quickly, really, very |
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adverbial clause
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dependent clause that acts like an adverb and
indicates such things as time, place or reason
eg: Although we are getting older, we grow more beautiful each day. |
statement that expresses (or claims to
express) a truth or "yes" meaning; opposite of negative
eg: The sun is hot. |
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antecedent
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word, phrase or clause that is
replaced by a pronoun (or other substitute) when mentioned subsequently (in
the same sentence or later)
eg: "Emily is nice because she brings me flowers." |
appositive
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noun phrase that re-identifies or describes
its neighbouring noun
eg: "Canada, a multicultural country, is recognized by its maple leaf flag." |
determiner that
introduces a noun phrase as
definite (the) or indefinite (a/an)
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feature of some verb forms that
relates to duration or completion of time; verbs can have no aspect (simple),
or can have continuous or progressive aspect
(expressing duration), or have perfect or perfective aspect (expressing
completion)
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verb used with the main verb to help indicate something such
as tense or voice
eg: I do not like you. She has finished. He can swim. |
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unmarked form of the verb (no
indication of tense, mood, person, or aspect) without the particle
"to"; typically used after modal auxiliary verbs; see alsoinfinitive
eg: "He should come", "I can swim" |
|
basic form of a verb before
conjugation into tenses etc
eg: be, speak |
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form of a pronoun based on its
relationship to other words in the sentence; case can be subjective, objective or possessive
eg: "I love this dog", "This dog loves me", "This is my dog" |
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causative verb
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verb that causes things to happen such
as "make", "get" and "have"; the subject does
not perform the action but is indirectly responsible for it
eg: "She made me go to school", "I had my nails painted" |
group of words containing a subject
and its verb
eg: "It was late when he arrived" |
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form of an adjective or adverb made
with "-er" or "more" that is used to show differences or
similarities between two things (not three or more things)
eg: colder, more quickly |
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part of a sentence that completes or
adds meaning to the predicate
eg: Mary did not say where she was going. |
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noun that is made up of more than one
word; can be one word, or hyphenated, or separated by a space
eg: toothbrush, mother-in-law, Christmas Day |
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compound sentence
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sentence with at least two independent clauses; usually joined by a conjunction
eg: "You can have something healthy but you can't have more junk food." |
concord
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word that joins or connects two parts
of a sentence
eg: Ram likes tea and coffee. Anthony went swimming although it was raining. |
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word that has meaning in a sentence,
such as a verb or noun (as opposed to a structure word, such as pronoun or auxiliary verb);
content words are stressed in speech
eg: "Could you BRING my GLASSES because I've LEFT them at HOME" |
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verb form (specifically an aspect) indicating actions that are in
progress or continuing over a given time period (can be past, present or
future); formed with "BE" + "VERB-ing"
eg: "They are watching TV." |
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shortening of two (or more) words into
one
eg: isn't (is not), we'd've (we would have) |
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thing that you can count, such as
apple, pen, tree (see uncountable noun)
eg: one apple, three pens, ten trees |
|
illogical structure that occurs in a
sentence when a writer intends to modify one thing but the reader attaches it
to another
eg: "Running to the bus, the flowers were blooming." (In the example sentence it seems that the flowers were running.) |
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declarative sentence
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sentence type typically used to make a
statement (as opposed to a question or command)
eg: "Tara works hard", "It wasn't funny" |
relative clause that contains information
required for the understanding of the sentence; not set off with commas; see
also non-defining clause
eg: "The boy who was wearing a blue shirt was the winner" |
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pronoun or determiner that indicates closeness to
(this/these) or distance from (that/those) the speaker
eg: "This is a nice car", "Can you see those cars?" |
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part of a sentence that contains a
subject and a verb but does not form a complete thought and cannot stand on
its own; see also independent clause
eg: "When the water came out of the tap..." |
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word such as an article or a possessive adjective or other adjective that
typically comes at the beginning of noun phrases
eg: "It was an excellent film", "Do you like my new shirt?", "Let's buy some eggs" |
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saying what someone said by using
their exact words; see also indirect speech
eg: "Lucy said: 'I am tired.'" |
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noun phrase in a sentence that
directly receives the action of the verb; see also indirect object
eg: "Joey bought the car", "I like it", "Can you see the man wearing a pink shirt and waving a gun in the air?" |
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question that is not in normal
question form with a question mark; it occurs within another statement or
question and generally follows statement structure
eg: "I don't know where he went," "Can you tell me where it is before you go?", "They haven't decided whether they should come" |
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verb form that has a specific tense,
number and person
eg: I work, he works, we learned, they ran |
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"if-then" conditional structure used for future
actions or events that are seen as realistic possibilities
eg: "If we win the lottery we will buy a car" |
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fragment
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incomplete piece of a sentence used
alone as a complete sentence; a fragment does not contain a complete thought;
fragments are common in normal speech but unusual (inappropriate) in formal
writing
eg: "When's her birthday? - In December", "Will they come? - Probably not" |
function
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purpose or "job" of a word
form or element in a sentence
eg: The function of a subject is to perform the action. One function of an adjective is to describe a noun. The function of a noun is to name things. |
tense* used to describe things that
will happen in the future at a particular time; formed with WILL + BE +
VERB-ing
eg: "I will be graduating in September." |
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tense* used to express the past in the
future; formed with WILL HAVE + VERB-ed
eg: "I will have graduated by then" |
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tense* used to show that something
will be ongoing until a certain time in the future; formed with WILL HAVE
BEEN + VERB-ing
eg: "We will have been living there for three months by the time the baby is born" |
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tense* used to describe something that
hasn't happened yet such as a prediction or a sudden decision; formed with
WILL + BASE VERB
eg: "He will be late", "I will answer the phone" |
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noun form of a verb, formed with
VERB-ing
eg: "Walking is great exercise" |
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adjective that can vary in intensity
or grade when paired with a grading adverb ; see also non-gradable adjective
eg: quite hot, very tall |
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hanging participle
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helping verb
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form of verb used when giving a
command; formed with BASE VERB only
eg: "Brush your teeth!" |
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pronoun does not refer to any specific
person, thing or amount. It is vague and "not definite".
eg: anything, each, many, somebody |
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group of words that expresses a
complete thought and can stand alone as a sentence; see also dependent clause
eg: "Tara is eating curry.", "Tara likes oranges and Joe likes apples." |
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noun phrase representing the person or
thing indirectly affected by the action of the verb; see also direct object
eg: "She showed me her book collection", "Joey bought his wife a new car" |
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indirect question
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saying what someone said without using
their exact words; see direct speech
eg: "Lucy said that she was tired" |
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base form of a verb preceded by
"to"**; see also bare infinitive
eg: "You need to study harder", "To be, or not to be: that is the question" |
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inflection
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change in word form to indicate
grammatical meaning
eg: dog, dogs (two inflections); take, takes, took, taking, taken (five inflections) |
common word that expresses emotion but
has no grammatical value; can often be used alone and is often followed by an
exclamation mark
eg: "Hi!", "er", "Ouch!", "Dammit!" |
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(formal) sentence type (typically
inverted) normally used when asking a question
eg: "Are you eating?", "What are you eating?" |
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pronoun that asks a question.
eg: who, whom, which |
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verb that does not take a direct object; see also transitive verb
e.g. "He is working hard", "Where do you live?" |
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inversion
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any reversal of the normal word order, especially placing the auxiliary
verb before the subject; used in a variety of ways, as in question formation,
conditional clauses and agreement or disagreement
eg: "Where are your keys?","Had we watched the weather report, we wouldn't have gone to the beach", "So did he", "Neither did she" |
verb that has a different ending for
past tense and past participle forms than the regular "-ed"; see
also regular verb
eg: buy, bought, bought; do, did, done |
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lexicon, lexis
|
all of the words and word forms in a
language with meaning or function
|
lexical verb
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verbs that connect the subject to more
information (but do not indicate action), such as "be" or
"seem"
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main clause
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any verb in a sentence that is not an auxiliary verb; a main verb has meaning on its own
eg: "Does John like Mary?", "I will have arrived by 4pm" |
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auxiliary verb such as can, could, must, should
etc; paired with the bare infinitive of a verb
eg: "I should go for a jog" |
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modifier
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word or phrase that modifies and
limits the meaning of another word
eg: the house => the white house, the house over there, the house we sold last year |
sentence type that indicates the
speaker's view towards the degree of reality of what is being said, for
example subjunctive, indicative, imperative
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unit of language with meaning; differs
from "word" because some cannot stand alone
e.g. un-, predict and -able in unpredictable |
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verb that consists of a basic verb +
another word or words (preposition and/or adverb)
eg: get up (phrasal verb), believe in (prepositional verb), get on with (phrasal-prepositional verb) |
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form which changes a "yes"
meaning to a "no" meaning; opposite of affirmative
eg: "She will not come", "I have never seen her" |
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nominative case
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relative clause that adds information but is not
completely necessary; set off from the sentence with a comma or commas; see defining relative clause
eg: "The boy, who had a chocolate bar in his hand, was still hungry" |
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adjective that has a fixed quality or
intensity and cannot be paired with a grading adverb; see also gradable adjective
eg: freezing, boiling, dead |
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non-restrictive relative clause
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another term for non-defining relative clause
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part of speech that names a person, place,
thing, quality, quantity or concept; see also proper noun and compound noun
eg: "The man is waiting", "I was born in London", "Is that your car?", "Do you like music?" |
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noun clause
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clause that takes the place of a noun
and cannot stand on its own; often introduced with words such as "that,
who or whoever"
eg: "What the president said was surprising" |
any word or group of words based on a
noun or pronoun that can function in a sentence as a subject, object or
prepositional object; can be one word or many words; can be very simple or
very complex
eg: "She is nice", "When is the meeting?", "The car over there beside the lamppost is mine" |
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thing or person affected by the verb;
see also direct object and indirect object
eg: "The boy kicked the ball", "We chose the house with the red door" |
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one of two voices in English; an indirect form of
expression in which the subject receives the action; see also active voice
eg: "Rice is eaten by many people" |
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tense used to talk about an action,
event or situation that occurred and was completed in the past
eg: "I lived in Paris for 10 years", "Yesterday we saw a snake" |
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tense often used to describe an
interrupted action in the past; formed with WAS/WERE + VERB-ing
eg: "I was reading when you called" |
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tense that refers to the past in the
past; formed with HAD + VERB-ed
eg: "We had stopped the car" |
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tense that refers to action that
happened in the past and continued to a certain point in the past; formed
with HAD BEEN + VERB-ing
eg: "I had been waiting for three hours when he arrived" |
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verb form (V3) - usually made by adding "-ed" to the base
verb - typically used in perfect and passive tenses, and sometimes as an
adjective
eg: "I have finished", "It was seen by many people", "boiled eggs" |
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verb form (specifically an aspect); formed with HAVE/HAS + VERB-ed (present perfect) or HAD + VERB-ed (past perfect)
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grammatical category that identifies
people in a conversation; there are three persons: 1st person (pronouns I/me,
we/us) is the speaker(s), 2nd person (pronoun you) is the listener(s), 3rd
person (pronouns he/him, she/her, it, they/them) is everybody or everything
else
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multi-word verb formed with a verb +
adverb
eg: break up, turn off (see phrasal verbs list) NB: many people and books call all multi-word verbs "phrasal verbs" (see multi-word verbs) |
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phrase
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two or more words that have a single
function and form part of a sentence; phrases can be noun, adjective, adverb, verb or
prepositional
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position
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grammatically correct placement of a
word form in a phrase or sentence in relation to other word forms
eg: "The correct position for an article is at the beginning of the noun phrase that it describes" |
positive
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basic state of an adjective or adverb
when it shows quality but not comparative or superlative
eg: nice, kind, quickly |
adjective (also called
"determiner") based on a pronoun: my, your, his, her, its, our,
their
eg: "I lost my keys", "She likes your car" |
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part of speech that typically comes before a
noun phrase and shows some type of relationship between that noun phrase and
another element (including relationships of time, location, purpose etc)
eg: "We sleep at night", "I live in London", "This is for digging" |
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-ing form of a verb (except when it is
a gerund or verbal noun)
eg: "We were eating", "The man shouting at the back is rude", "I saw Tara playing tennis" |
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tense usually used to describe states
and actions that are general, habitual or (with the verb "to be")
true right now; formed with the basic verb (+ s for 3rd person singular)
eg: "Canada sounds beautiful", "She walks to school", "I am very happy" |
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tense used to describe action that is
in process now, or a plan for the future; formed with BE + VERB-ing
eg: "We are watching TV", "I am moving to Canada next month" |
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tense that connects the past and the
present, typically used to express experience, change or a continuing
situation; formed with HAVE + VERB-ed
eg: "I have worked there", "John has broken his leg", "How long have you been in Canada?" |
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tense used to describe an action that
has recently stopped or an action continuing up to now; formed with HAVE +
BEEN + VERB-ing
eg: "I'm tired because I've been running", "He has been living in Canada for two years" |
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progressive
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word that replaces a noun or noun
phrase; there are several types including personal pronouns, relative pronouns and indefinite pronouns
eg: you, he, him; who, which; somebody, anything |
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noun that is capitalized at all times
and is the name of a person, place or thing
eg: Shakespeare, Tokyo, EnglishClub.com |
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standard marks such as commas, periods
and question marks within a sentence
eg: , . ? ! - ; : |
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quantifier
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question word
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pronoun that indicates that two or more
subjects are acting mutually; there are two in English - each other, one
another
eg: "John and Mary were shouting at each other", "The students accused one another of cheating" |
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reduced relative clause
(also called "participial relative clause") |
construction similar to a relative clause, but containing a participle instead of a finite verb; this construction is possible only
under certain circumstances
eg: "The woman sitting on the bench is my sister", "The people arrested by the police have been released" |
pronoun ending in -self or -selves, used
when the subject and object are the same, or when the subject needs emphasis
eg: "She drove herself", "I'll phone her myself" |
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verb that has "-ed" as the
ending for past tense and past participle forms; see also irregular verb
eg: work, worked, worked |
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adverb that introduces a relative clause; there are four in English: where, when, wherever, whenever;
see also relative pronoun
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dependent clause that usually starts with a relative pronoun such as who or which, or relative adverb such as where
eg: "The person who finishes first can leave early" (defining), "Texas, where my brother lives, is big" (non-defining) |
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pronoun that starts a relative clause; there are five in English: who, whom, whose, which, that;
see also relative adverb
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reported speech
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restrictive relative clause
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"if-then" conditional structure used to talk about an
unlikely possibility in the future
eg: "If we won the lottery we would buy a car" |
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largest grammatical unit; a sentence
must always include a subject (except for imperatives) and predicate; a written sentence starts with a
capital letter and ends with a full stop/period (.), question mark (?) or
exclamation mark (!); a sentence contains a complete thought such as a
statement, question, request or command
eg: "Stop!", "Do you like coffee?", "I work." |
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series
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list of items in a sentence
eg: "The children ate popsicles, popcorn and chips" |
split infinitive
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situation where a word or phrase comes
between the particle "to" and the verb in an infinitive; considered
poor construction by some
eg: "He promised to never lie again" |
Standard English (S.E.)
|
"normal" spelling,
pronunciation and grammar that is used by educated native speakers of English
|
word that has no real meaning in a
sentence, such as a pronoun or auxiliary verb (as opposed to a content word, such as verb or noun); structure
words are not normally stressed in speech
eg: "Could you BRING my GLASSES because I've LEFT them at HOME" |
|
fairly rare verb form typically used
to talk about events that are not certain to happen, usually something that
someone wants, hopes or imagines will happen; formed with BARE INFINITIVE
(except past of "be")
eg: "The President requests that John attend the meeting" |
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subordinate clause
|
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affix that occurs after the root or stem
of a word
eg: happiness, quickly |
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adjective or adverb that describes the
extreme degree of something
eg: happiest, most quickly |
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subject-verb-object; a common word order where the subject is followed by the
verb and then the object
eg: "The man crossed the street" |
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syntax
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sentence structure; the rules about
sentence structure
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special construction with statement
that ends in a mini-question; the whole sentence is a tag question; the
mini-question is a question tag; usually used to obtain confirmation
eg: "The Earth is round, isn't it?", "You don't eat meat, do you?" |
|
form of a verb that shows us when the
action or state happens (past, present or future). Note that the name of a
tense is not always a guide to when the action happens. The "present
continuous tense", for example, can be used to talk about the present or
the future.
|
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"if-then" conditional structure used to talk about a
possible event in the past that did not happen (and is therefore now
impossible)
eg: "If we had won the lottery we would have bought a car" |
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action verb that has a direct object
(receiver of the action); see also intransitive verb
eg: "The kids always eat a snack while they watch TV" |
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thing that you cannot count, such as
substances or concepts; see also countable nouns
eg: water, furniture, music |
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usage
|
way in which words and constructions
are normally used in any particular language
|
referring to Verb 1, Verb 2, Verb 3 -
being the base, past and past participle that students typically learn for
irregular verbs
eg: speak, spoke, spoken |
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question using a WH-word and expecting
an answer that is not "yes" or "no"; WH-questions are
"open" questions; see also yes-no question
eg: Where are you going? |
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order or sequence in which words occur
within a sentence; basic word order for English is subject-verb-object or SVO
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question to which the answer is yes or
no; yes-no questions are "closed" questions; see also WH-question
eg: "Do you like coffee?" |
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"if-then" conditional structure used when the result
of the condition is always true (based on fact)
eg: "If you dial O, the operator comes on" |
* note that technically English does not
have a real future tense
** some authorities consider the base form of the verb without "to" to be the true infinitive
** some authorities consider the base form of the verb without "to" to be the true infinitive
Grammar Quizzes
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