Understanding English Grammar: Key Components
Adjective
In grammar, an adjective is a “describing” word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified.
Nouns
Nouns are a part of speech typically denoting a person, place, thing, animal, or idea. In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition.
Adverb
An adverb is a word that changes or simplifies the meaning of a verb, adjective, other adverb, clause, or sentence.
Adverbs typically answer questions such as how?, in what way?, when?, where?, and to what extent?. This function is called the adverbial function, and is realized not just by single words (i.e., adverbs) but by adverbial phrases and adverbials.
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word (part of speech) that in syntax conveys an action (bring, read, walk, run, learn), an occurrence (happen, become), or a state of being (be, exist, stand). In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive.
Article
An article (abbreviated art) is a word (or prefix or suffix) that is used with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope.
Noun Phrase
A noun phrase or nominal phrase (abbreviated NP) is a phrase which has a noun (or indefinite pronoun) as its head word, or which performs the same grammatical function as such a phrase.[1] Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently occurring phrase type.
Noun phrases often function as verb subjects and objects, as predicative expressions, and as the complements of prepositions.
Adjective Phrase
An adjective phrase (or adjectival phrase) is a phrase whose head word is an adjective, e.g. fond of steak, very happy, quite upset about it, etc.[1] The adjective in an adjective phrase can initiate the phrase (e.g. fond of steak), conclude the phrase (e.g. very happy), or appear in a medial position (e.g. quite upset about it).
Adverbial Phrase
An adverbial phrase is a linguistic term for a group of two or more words operating adverbially, when viewed in terms of their syntactic function. Adverbial phrases (“AdvP” in syntactic trees) are phrases that do the work of an adverb in a sentence.
Verb Phrase
In linguistics, a verb phrase or VP is a syntactic unit composed of at least one verb and the dependents of that verb – objects, complements and other modifiers, but not including the subject. Thus in the sentence A fat man put the jewels quickly in the box, the words put the jewels quickly in the box may be considered a verb phrase – this consists of the verb put and its dependents, but not its subject a fat man.
Prepositional Phrase
In a sentence, prepositions show the relation of one word to another word. Prepositions require an object to complete them, typically a noun or a pronoun. A preposition and its object is called a prepositional phrase.
Conditionals
- Zero Conditional (type 0): This conditional refers to a situation that is always true (universal truths).
- First Conditional (type I): Is formed if + present simple + Simple future. It is used when a situation is real or possible.
- Second Conditional (type II): Addresses a hypothetical situation and is formed according to the conditional if + past simple + simple structure.
- Third Conditional (type III): Refers to a hypothetical situation in the past and is formed according to the structure: if + past perfect + perfect conditional.
Phrasal Verbs
- Separable Phrasal Verbs: Phrasal verbs are those in which a person can put the predicate in the middle of the action and the preposition.
- Inseparable Phrasal Verbs: Phrasal verbs are those in which the verb and the preposition always go together and not separated, i.e., the object pronoun is always placed after the preposition.