The document discusses the key parts of speech and grammar in the English language. It notes that English grammar includes rules for word structure, phrases, clauses, and full texts. It identifies eight main word classes - nouns, determiners, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions. Nouns form the largest class and verbs the second largest. The document also provides examples and definitions of several of these parts of speech.
2. English grammar is the way in which
meanings are encoded into wordings in the
English language. This includes the structure
of words, phrases, clauses, and sentences,
right up to the structure of whole texts.
3. There are historical, social,
cultural and regional
variations of English.
Divergences from the
grammar described here
occur in some dialects.
There are differences in
grammar between the
standard forms of British,
American, and Australian
English, although these are
more minor than
differences in vocabulary
and pronunciation.
4. Eight "word classes" or
"parts of speech" are
commonly distinguished in
English: nouns,
determiners, pronouns,
verbs, adjectives, adverbs,
prepositions, and
conjunctions. Nouns form
the largest word class, and
verbs the second-largest.
Unlike many Indo-
European languages,
English nouns do not have
grammatical gender.
5. Nouns
There are many common suffixes used to form
nouns from other nouns or from other types of
words, such as -age (as in shrinkage), -hood
(as in sisterhood), and so on, although many
nouns are base forms not containing any such
suffix (such as cat, grass, France). Nouns are
also often created by conversion of verbs or
adjectives, as with the words talk and reading (a
boring talk, the assigned reading).
Pronouns
Pronouns have traditionally been
regarded as one of the parts of speech,
but some modern theorists would not
consider them to form a single class, in
view of the variety of functions they
perform. Subtypes include personal
pronouns, reflexive and reciprocal
pronouns, possessive pronouns,
demonstrative pronouns, relative
pronouns, interrogative pronouns, and
indefinite pronouns
Determiner
also called determinative (abbreviated
DET), is a word, phrase, or affix that
occurs together with a noun or noun
phrase and serves to express the
reference of that noun or noun phrase in
the context. That is, a determiner may
indicate whether the noun is referring to a
definite or indefinite element of a class, to
a closer or more distant element, to an
element belonging to a specified person
or thing, to a particular number or
quantity, etc. Common kinds of
determiners include definite and indefinite
articles (like the English the and a or an),
demonstratives (this and that),
possessive determiners (my and their),
quantifiers (many, few and several),
numerals, distributive determiners (each,
any), and interrogative determiners
(which).
6. 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. In many
languages, verbs are inflected
(modified in form) to encode tense,
aspect, mood, and voice. A verb may
also agree with the person, gender or
number of some of its arguments,
such as its subject, or object. Verbs
have tenses: present, to indicate that
an action is being carried out; past,
to indicate that an action has been
done; future, to indicate that an
action will be done.
Adjective
In linguistics, an adjective
(abbreviated adj) 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
Adverb
An adverb is a word that modifies a
verb, adjective, determiner, clause,
preposition, or sentence. Adverbs
typically express manner, place,
time, frequency, degree, level of
certainty, etc., answering questions
such as how?, in what way?, when?,
where?, and to what extent?.
7. Prepositions and
postpositions
together called adpositions
(or broadly, in English,
simply prepositions),[1] are
a class of words used to
express spatial or temporal
relations (in, under,
towards, before) or mark
various semantic roles (of,
for)
8. Because Spanish and English are Indo-European languages — the two
have a common origin from several thousand years ago from somewhere
in Eurasia — they are alike in ways that go beyond their shared Latin-
based vocabulary. The structure of Spanish isn't difficult for English
speakers to understand when compared with, for example, Japanese or
Swahili.
Both languages, for example, use the parts of speech in basically the
same way. Prepositions (preposiciones) are called that, for instance,
because they are "pre-positioned" before an object. Some other languages
have postpositions and circumpositions that are absent in Spanish and
English.
Even so, there are distinct differences in the grammars of the two
languages. Learning them will help you avoid some of the common
learning mistakes.