Understanding Spanish Grammar: Verbs, Phrases, and Clauses
Reflexive and Reciprocal Verbs
Reflexive: The subject performs the same action on themselves. In this case, the direct object (CD) and indirect object (CI) will replace the subject as the object of the action (SE). Reciprocal: The plural subject performs the action mutually. For example, “They groom and kiss each other.”
Pronominal Verbs
A pronominal verb is combined with a pronoun. When the pronoun is suppressed or changed, the meaning may change. However, it cannot always be combined in the third
Read MoreUnderstanding Verbs, Prepositions, Conjunctions, and Adverbs
Verb: It is the word that expresses actions, states, or processes located in time (past, present, and future). Verbs are variable words, meaning they have different forms. The set of all verb forms is called conjugation.
Verbal Accidents: The person, number, and tense. Mood denotes the speaker’s attitude toward what is said.
Verb Moods
- Indicative Mood: Presents the action of the verb as something that actually happens.
- Subjunctive Mood: Displays the verbal action as if it were possible, desirable, or
Morphosyntactic Features: Categories, Phi-Features, and Syntax
Morphosyntactic Features and Word Classes
Morphosyntactic features affect the semantics of words. Minimal sets: nouns can be singular or plural. Two ways of thinking of morphosyntactic features: car [-plural] vs. cars [+plural]. A feature is present or absent in a word = privative features. Or binary valued: car [number: singular] vs. cars [number: plural]. A feature has one of two values. Not all features have the same properties (semantic effect or morphology). Category features: allow us to classify
Read MoreEnglish Sentence Structure and Phrase Types: A Comprehensive Analysis
1. English Phrases
Every phrase is a combination of at least two words, which enter into certain relations, but these relations do not comprise a grammatical form. Structuralists Bloomfield and Hockett divide phrases into two definite types: endocentric phrases and exocentric phrases. This distinction, which is made on the basis of their respective distributional properties, defines the whole sum of every linguistic environment in which a certain element of the language can appear. Because of this,
Read MoreUnderstanding the Fundamentals of Linguistics
1. The Concept of Function
The objective of a function is to meet someone or something. If language is a communication tool, the role to be fulfilled is to enable the communication link between sender and receiver, i.e., its objective is to establish communication. All the elements of a language play this mission and will be called functional elements. The language that focuses its efforts on studying the elements of the language from the perspective of the role, with the main axis of communication,
Read MoreAdjectives, Language Functions, and Punctuation Marks
Adjectives: Describing Words
The adjective is a kind of word that indicates a quality of the noun. Regarding gender, many adjectives are marked by morphemes, but others do not support change. The number is formed with -s and -es. Expressing a quality can be done with more or less intensity; this is called the degree. There are three degrees: positive, comparative, and superlative. The adjective is classified according to the meaning it contributes to the noun: specifying and explanatory.