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English Grammar
English grammar is the body of rules that describe the structure of expressions in the English language. This includes the structure of words, phrases, clauses and sentences. A text that contains more than one sentence is no longer in the realm of grammar, but is instead is in the realm of discourse.
The grammar of a language is approached in two ways: descriptive grammar is based on analysis of text corpora and describes grammatical structures thereof, whereas prescriptive grammar attempts to use the identified rules of a given language as a tool to govern the linguistic behaviour of speakers. This article predominantly concerns itself with descriptive grammar.
There are historical, social and regional variations of English. Divergences from the grammar described here occur in some dialects of English. This article describes a generalized present-day Standard English, the form of speech found in types of public discourse including broadcasting, education, entertainment, government, and news reporting, including both formal and informal speech. Although British English, American English and Australian English have several lexical differences, the grammatical differences are not as conspicuous, and will be mentioned only when appropriate.
Grammar is divided into morphology, which describes the formation of words, and syntax, which describes the construction of meaningful phrases, clauses, and sentences out of words.
Verbs
Verbs form the second largest word class after nouns. According to Carter and McCarthy, verbs denote "actions, events, processes, and states." Consequently, "smile," "stab," "climb," "confront," "liquefy," "wake," "reflect" are all verbs.
Verbs have the following features which aid in their recognition:
- They usually follow the (grammatical) subject noun phrase (in italics): "The real raw-knuckle boys who know what fighting means enter the arena without fanfare."
- They agree with the subject noun phrase in number: "The real raw-knuckle boy / boys who knows / know what fighting means enters / enter the arena without fanfare."
- They agree with the subject noun phrase in person: "I / He, the real raw-knuckle boy who knows what fighting means, enter / enters the arena without fanfare", and
- They can express tense:"The boys entered the arena without fanfare."
Regular and irregular lexical verbs
Verbs are divided into lexical verbs and auxiliary verbs. Lexical verbs form an open class which includes most verbs. For example, "dive," "soar," "swoon," "revive," "breathe," "choke," "lament," "celebrate," "consider," "ignore" are all lexical verbs.
A lexical verb is said to be regular if its base form does not change when inflections are added to create new forms. An example is:
- Base form: climb
- Present form: climb
- -s form: climbs
- Present participle: climbing
- Past form: climbed
- Past/passive participle: climbed.
Irregular verbs are ones in which the base form changes; the endings corresponding to each form are not always unique.[18] Examples are
- Base form: catch
- Present form: catch
- -s form: catches
- Present participle: catching
- Past form: caught
- Past/passive participle: caught
and
- Base form: choose
- Present form: choose
- -s form: chooses
- Present participle: choosing
- Past form: chose
- Past/passive participle: chosen.
The verb "be" is the only verb in English which has distinct inflectional forms for each of the categories of grammatical forms, with even the present form differing from the base form:
- Base form: be
- Present form: am, are
- -s form: is
- Present participle: being
- Past form: was, were
- Past/passive participle: been.
Auxiliary verbs
Auxiliary verbs constitute a closed class and their purpose is to add information to other lexical verbs, such as (a) aspect (progressive, perfect, habitual), (b) passive voice, (c) clause type (interrogative, negative), and (d) modality.
The auxiliary verbs "be" and "have" are used to form the perfect, progressive and passive constructions in English: see #Verb phrases below. Examples (the auxiliary is in boldface and the lexical verb is italicized):
- Aspect (progressive): "'She is breathing Granny; we've got to make her keep it up, that's all—just keep her breathing."
- Aspect (perfect): "'Yes, I want a coach,' said Maurice, and bade the coachman draw up to the stone where the poor man who had swooned was sitting."
- Passive voice: "When she was admitted into the house Beautiful, care was taken to inquire into the religious knowledge of her children."
The auxiliary verb "do" is used in interrogative and negative clauses when no other auxiliary verb is present:
- Clause type (interrogative): (Old joke) Boy: "Excuse me sir, How do I get to Carnegie Hall?" Man on street: "Practice, Practice, Practice."
- Clause type (negative): "The loud noise did not surprise her."
For some but not all sources, "used (to)" is an auxiliary verb:
- Aspect (habitual): "We used to go there often."
Modal verbs form a closed sub-class of the auxiliary verbs, consisting of the core modals ("can," "could," "shall," "should," "will," "would," "may," "might," "must") and semi-modals ("had better", "ought to", "dare", "need"). Modals add information to lexical verbs about (a) degrees of possibility or necessity (b) permission or (c) ability. Examples:
- Ability: "Before the snow could melt for good, an ice storm covered the lowcountry and we learned the deeper treachery of ice."
- Certainty: "Eat your eggs in Lent and the snow will melt. That's what I say to our people when they get noisy over their cups at San Gallo ..."
- Expressing necessity: "But I should think there must be some stream somewhere about. The snow must melt; besides, these great herds of deer must drink somewhere."
Modal verbs do not inflect for person or number. Examples:
- Person: "I/you/she might consider it." "He dare not go." "He need not go."
- Number: "I/we/she/they might consider it"
History of English verbs
Some examples of suffixes that have been used to form verbs include "-ate" ("formulate"), "-iate" ("inebriate"), "-ify" ("electrify"), and "-ise" ("realise"). These suffixes are not a certain indicator that a given word is a verb: "chocolate" is a noun, "immediate" is an adjective, "prize" can be a noun, and "maize" is a noun. Prefixes can also be used to create new verbs. Some examples are: "un-" ("unmask"), "out-" ("outlast"), "over-" ("overtake"), and "under-" ("undervalue").Just as nouns can be formed from verbs by conversion, the reverse is also possible:
- "so are the sons of men snared in an evil time"
- "[a national convention] nosed parliament in the very seat of its authority"
Verbs can also be formed from adjectives:
- "To dry the old oak's sap, and cherish springs."
- "Time's glory is to calm contending kings"
Adjectives
According to Carter and McCarthy, "Adjectives describe properties, qualities, and states attributed to a noun or a pronoun." As was the case with nouns and verbs, the class of adjectives cannot be identified by the forms of its constituents. However, adjectives are commonly formed by the addition of a suffix to a noun. Examples: "-al" ("habitual," "multidimensional," "visceral"), "-ful" ("blissful," "pitiful," "woeful"), "-ic" ("atomic," "gigantic," "pedantic"), "-ish" ("impish," "peckish," "youngish"), "-ous" ("fabulous," "hazardous"). As with nouns and verbs, there are exceptions: "homosexual" can be a noun, "earful" is a noun, "anesthetic" can be a noun, "brandish" is a verb. Adjectives can also be formed from other adjectives through the addition of a suffix or more commonly a prefix: weakish, implacable, disloyal, irredeemable, unforeseen. A number of adjectives are formed by adding "a" as a prefix to a verb: "adrift," "astride," "awry."
- Gradability
Adjectives come in two varieties: gradable and non-gradable. In a gradable adjective, the properties or qualities associated with it, exist along a scale.[ In the case of the adjective "hot," for example, we can speak of: not at all hot, ever so slightly hot, only just hot, quite hot, very hot, extremely hot, dangerously hot, and so forth. Consequently, "hot" is a gradable adjective. Gradable adjectives usually have antonyms: hot/cold, hard/soft, smart/dumb, light/heavy. Some adjectives do not have room for qualification or modification. These are the non-gradable adjectives, such as: pregnant, married, incarcerated, condemned, adolescent (as adjective), dead, and so forth.
In figurative or literary language, a non-gradable adjective can sometimes be treated as gradable, especially in order to emphasize some aspect:
- "When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with a forward child, understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room."
A non-gradable adjective might have another connotation in which it is gradable. For example, "dead" when applied to sounds can mean dull, or not vibrant. In this meaning, it has been used as a gradable adjective:
- "... the bell seemed to sound more dead than it did when just before it sounded in open air."
Gradable adjectives can occur in comparative and superlative forms. For many common adjectives, these are formed by adding "-er" and "-est" to the base form: cold, colder, coldest; hot, hotter, hottest; dry, drier, driest, and so forth; however, for other adjectives, "more" and "most" are needed to provide the necessary qualification: more apparent, most apparent; more iconic, most iconic; more hazardous, most hazardous. Some gradable adjectives change forms atypically: good, better, best; bad, worse, worst; little, less, least; some/many, more, most.
Adjective phrases
- Forms
An adjective phrase may consist of just one adjective, or a single adjective which has been modified or complemented.
Adjectives are usually modified by adverb phrases (adverb in boldface; adjective in italics):
- "... placing himself in a dignified and truly imposing attitude, began to draw from his mouth yard after yard of red tape ..."
- "Families did certainly come, beguiled by representations of impossibly cheap provisions, though the place was in reality very expensive, for every tradesman was a monopolist at heart."
- "... of anger frequent but generally silent, ..."
An adjective phrase can also consist of an adjective followed by a complement, usually a prepositional phrase, or by a "that" clause.Different adjectives require different patterns of complementation (adjective in italics; complement in bold face):
- "... during that brief time I was proud of myself, and I grew to love the heave and roll of the Ghost ..."
- "... her bosom angry at his intrusion, ..."
- "Dr. Drew is especially keen on good congregational singing."
Examples of "that" clause in the adjective phrase (adjective in italics; clause in boldface):
- "Was sure that the shrill voice was that of a man—a Frenchman."
- "The longest day that ever was; so she raves, restless and impatient."
An adjective phrase can combine pre-modification by an adverb phrase and post-modification by a complement, as in (adjective in italics; adverb phrase and complement in boldface):
- "Few people were ever more proud of civic honours than the Thane of Fife."
- Attributive and predicative
An adjective phrase is attributive when it modifies a noun or a pronoun (adjective phrase in boldface; noun in italics):
- "Truly selfish genes do arise, in the sense that they reproduce themselves at a cost to the other genes in the genome."
- "Luisa Rosado: a woman proud of being a midwife"
An adjective phrase is predicative when it occurs in the predicate of a sentence (adjective phrase in boldface):
- "No, no, I didn't really think so," returned Dora; "but I am a little tired, and it made me silly for a moment ..."
- "She was ill at ease, and looked more than usually stern and forbidding as she entered the Hales' little drawing room."
Adverbs
Adverbs typically modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs. They perform a wide range of functions and are especially important for indicating "time, manner, place, degree, and frequency of an event, action, or process." Adjectives and adverbs are often derived from the same word, the majority being formed by adding the "-ly" ending to the corresponding adjective form. Recall the adjectives, "habitual", "pitiful", "impish", We can use them to form the adverbs:
- "habitually": "... shining out of the New England reserve with which Holgrave habitually masked whatever lay near his heart."[49]
- "pitifully": "The lamb tottered along far behind, near exhaustion, bleating pitifully."[50]
- "impishly": "Well," and he grinned impishly, "it was one doggone good party while it lasted!"[51]
Some suffixes that are commonly found in adverbs are "-ward(s)" and "-wise":[48]
- "homeward": "The plougman homeward plods his weary way."[52]
- "downward": "In tumbling turning, clustering loops, straight downward falling, ..."[53]
- "lengthwise": "2 to 3 medium carrots, peeled, halved lengthwise, and cut into 1-inch pieces."[54]
Some adverbs have the same form as the adjectives:[48]
- "outside":
- "straight"
Some adverbs are not related to adjectives:[48]
- "quite": "Mr. Bingley was obliged to be in town the following day, and ... Mrs. Bennet was quite disconcerted."[59]
- "too": "... like a child that, having devoured its plumcake too hastily, sits sucking its fingers, ...."[60]
- "so": "... oh! ... would she heave one little sigh to see a bright young life so rudely blighted, ...?"[61]
Some adverbs inflect for comparative and superlative forms:[48]
- "soon"
-
"well"
- "Valrosa well deserved its name, for in that climate of perpetual summer roses blossomed everywhere."[65]
- "'I'm afraid your appearance in the Phycological Quarterly was better deserved,' said Mrs. Arkwright, without removing her eyes from the microscope ..."[66]
- "Who among the typical Victorians best deserved his hate?"[67]
[edit] Adverb placement
Adverbs are most usually placed at the end of a phrase. Time adverbs (yesterday, soon, habitually) are the most flexible exception. "Connecting Adverbs", such as next, then, however, may also be placed at the beginning of a clause. Other exceptions include "focusing adverbs", which can occupy a middle position for emphasis. "[68]
[edit] Adverb phrases
- Forms
An adverb phrase is a phrase that collectively acts as an adverb within a sentence; in other words, it modifies a verb (or verb phrase), an adjective (or adjective phrase), or another adverb.[69] The head of an adverb phrase (roman boldface), which is an adverb, may be modified by another adverb (italics boldface) or followed by a complement (italics boldface):[69]
- "Yet all too suddenly Rosy popped back into the conversation, ...."[70]
- "Oddly enough, that very shudder did the business."[71]
- "The Stoics said, perhaps shockingly for us, that a father ceases to be a father when his child dies."[72]
An adverb phrase can be part of the complement of the verb "be." It then usually indicates location (adverb phrase in boldface; form of "be" in italics):[69]
- "'... it is underneath the pink slip that I wore on Wednesday with my Mechlin.'"[73]
- "... north-by-northeast was Rich Mountain, ..."[74]
Adverb phrases are frequently modifiers of verbs:[69]
- "They plow through a heavy fog, and Enrique sleeps soundly—too soundly."[75]
- "Sleepily, very sleepily, you stagger to your feet and collapse into the nearest chair."[76]
Adverb phrases are also frequently modifiers of adjectives and other adverbs (modifier in boldface; modified in italics):[69]
- (adjectives) "Then to the swish of waters as the sailors sluice the decks all around and under you, you fall into a really deep sleep."[77]
- (adverbs) "'My grandma's kinda deaf and she sleeps like really heavily."[78]
Adverb phrases can also be modifiers of noun phrases (or pronoun phrases) and prepositional phrases (adverb phrases in boldface; modified phrases in italics):[69]
- (noun phrase): "She stayed out in the middle of the wild sea, and told them that was quite the loveliest place, you could see for many miles all round you, ...."[79]
- (pronoun phrase): "... the typical structure of glioma is that of spherical and cylindrical lobules, almost each and everyone of which has a centrally located blood vessel."[80]
- (prepositional phrase): "About halfway through the movie, I decided to ..."[81]
Adverb phrases also modify determiners (modifier in boldface; modified in italics):[69]
- "The devil knows best what he said, but at least she became his tool and was in the habit of seeing him nearly every evening."[82]
- "Nearly if not quite all civilized peoples and ourselves above almost all others, are heavily burdened with the interest upon their public debt."[83]
- Functions
According to Carter and McCarthy, "As well as giving information on the time, place, manner and degree of an action, event, or process, adverb phrases can also have a commenting function, indicating the attitude and point of view of the speaker or writer towards a whole sentence or utterance."[84] Examples:
- "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."[85]
- "Astonishingly, she'd shelled every nut, leaving me only the inner skin to remove."[86]
Adverb phrases also indicate the relation between two clauses in a sentence.[84] Such adverbs are usually called "linking adverbs." Example:
- "... they concluded from the similarities of their bodies, that mine must contain at least 1724 of theirs, and consequently would require as much food as was necessary to support that number of Lilliputians."[87]
[edit] Prepositions
Prepositions relate two events in time or two people or things in space.[84] They form a closed class.[84] They also represent abstract relations between two entities:[84] Examples:
- ("after":) "We came home from Mr. Boythorn's after six pleasant weeks."[88]
- ("after":) "'That was done with a bamboo,' said the boy, after one glance."[89]
- ("to":) "I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life, ..."[90]
- ("between" and "through":) "Between two golden tufts of summer grass, I see the world through hot air as through glass, ..."[91]
- ("during":) "During these years at Florence, Leonardo's history is the history of his art; he himself is lost in the bright cloud of it."[92]
- ("of":) "When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrances of things past."[93]
Prepositions are accompanied by prepositional complements;[94] these are usually noun phrases.[94] In the above examples, the prepositional complements are:
- preposition: "after"; prepositional complement: "six pleasant weeks"
- preposition: "after"; prepositional complement: "one glance"
- preposition: "to"; prepositional complement: "the seas"; preposition: "to"; prepositional complement: "the vagrant gypsy life";
- preposition: "Between"; prepositional complement: "two golden tufts of summer grass,"; preposition: "through"; prepositional complement: "hot air"; preposition: "as through"; prepositional complement: "glass."
- preposition: "during"; prepositional complement: "these years at Florence."
- preposition: "of"; prepositional complement: "sweet silent thought"; preposition: "of"; prepositional complement: "things past."
[edit] Prepositional phrases
A prepositional phrase is formed when a preposition combines with its complement.[95] In the above examples, the prepositional phrases are:
- prepositional phrase: "after six pleasant weeks"
- prepositional phrase: "after one glance"
- prepositional phrases: "to the seas" and "to the vagrant gypsy life"
- prepositional phrases: "Between two golden tufts of summer grass," "through hot air" and "as through glass."
- prepositional phrase: "During these years at Florence."
- prepositional phrases "of sweet silent thought" and "of things past."
[edit] Conjunctions
According to Carter and McCarthy, "Conjunctions express a variety of logical relations between phrases, clauses and sentences."[94] There are two kinds of conjunctions: coordinating conjunctions and subordinating conjunctions.[94]
- Coordinating
Coordinating conjunctions link "elements of equal grammatical status."[94] The elements in questions may vary from a prefix to an entire sentence.[94] Examples:
- (prefixes): "The doctor must provide facilities for pre- and post test counselling and have his own strict procedures for the storing of that confidential information."[96]
- (words): "'No, I'll never love anybody but you, Tom, and I'll never marry anybody but you--and you ain't to ever marry anybody but me, either."[97]
- (phrases): "Can storied urn or animated bust back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?"[98]
- (subordinate clauses): "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.[99]
- (independent clauses): "Well, I think you're here, plain enough, but I think you're a tangle-headed old fool, Jim."[100]
- (sentences): "He said we were neither of us much to look at and we were as sour as we looked. But I don't feel as sour as I used to before I knew robin and Dickon."[101]
A correlative conjunction is a pair of constituent elements, each of which is associated with the grammatical unit to be coordinated.[94] The common correlatives in English are:
-
"either ... or":
- "The clergyman stayed to exchange a few sentences, either of admonition or reproof, with his haughty parishioner ...."[102]
- "...; for I could not divest myself of a misgiving that something might happen to London in the meanwhile, and that, when I got there, it would be either greatly deteriorated or clean gone."[103]
- "neither ... nor":
-
"both ... and"
- "There was no mistaking her sincerity—it breathed in every tone of her voice. Both Marilla and Mrs. Lynde recognized its unmistakable ring."[106]
- "There messages have both ethical and pragmatic overtones, urging women to recognize that even if they do suffer from physical and social disadvantages, their lives are far from being determined by their biology."[107]
- "Not only ... but also"
- Subordinating conjunctions
Subordinating conjunctions relate only clauses to one another. They make the clause in which they appear into a subordinate clause.[110] Some common subordinating conjunctions in English are: (of time) after, before, since, until, when, while; (cause and effect): because, since, now that, as, in order that, so; (opposition): although, though, even though, whereas, while; (condition): if, unless, only if, whether or not, even if, in case (that), and so forth.[110] Some examples are:
- (time: "before"): "Perhaps Homo erectus had already died out before Homo sapiens arrived.[111]
- (cause and effect: "in order that"): "In order that feelings, representations, ideas and the like should attain a certain degree of memorability, it is important that they should not remain isolated ..."[112]
- (opposition: "although"): "Ultimately there were seven more sessions, in which, although she remained talkative, she increasingly clearly conveyed a sense that she did not wish to come any more."[113]
- (condition: "even if"): "Even if Sethe could deal with the return of the spirit, Stamp didn't believe her daughter could."[114]
BLOG R. SYAUFINA RATNADARYASIH LAINNYA
English Grammar
English grammar is the body of rules that describe the structure of expressions in the English language. This includes the structure of words, phrases, clauses and sentences. A text that contains more than one sentence is no longer in the realm of grammar, but is instead is in the real...
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