English grammar - the parts of speech

ENGLISH GRAMMAR IN A NUTSHELL

Warning: This is a brief summary of a subject about which big books have been written.

I. THE PARTS OF SPEECH

Nouns.  These are words that name people, places, things, concepts, etc.  More about them in parts II and III.

Pronouns.  These are basically placeholders for nouns in sentences.  They function grammatically just like nouns, but the things to which they refer are context-dependent.  They come in several flavors:

            Personal Pronouns:  I, we (1st person), you (2^nd person), he, she, it, they (3^rd person).

            Demonstrative Pronouns:  this, that, these, those.  (These words can also be used as adjectives.)

            Relative Pronouns:  who, which, that, in phrases such as “the man who won” and “the book that I read.”

            Interrogative Pronouns:  who, which, what used as question words, as in “Who is she?” and “What do you want?”

            There’s also the impersonal pronoun one, as in “One should get lots of sleep.”

Adjectives.  These are words that modify nouns, such as small, red, and important.  The articles a, an, and the are a particular type of adjective; they’re essential in English, but some languages (e.g., Hindi, Russian) get along without them.

Verbs. These are words that describe actions, states of being, etc.  (The action can be abstract as well as physical, as in the word “describe” in the previous sentence.)  More about them in parts II and III.

Adverbs. These are words that modify words other than nouns.  Usually they modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs, as the word “completely” does in these sentences:

                I agree completely.  (modifies the verb “agree”)

                Completely happy people are rare.  (modifies the adjective “happy”)

                It was completely badly done. (modifies the adverb “badly”)

Occasionally they can modify other parts of speech:

                He is really into Indian music. (“really” modifies the preposition “into”)

Many adjectives can be made into adverbs by adding –ly: complete, completely.

Prepositions. These are words such as in, on, for, by, with, from, to, about, etc.  A preposition is followed by a noun or pronoun (perhaps with modifiers) called its object.  The unit formed by a preposition and its object (with modifiers) is called a prepositional phrase.  Prepositional phrases modify other words in the sentence, that is, they function as adjectives and adverbs.  For example, “in the big room” is a prepositional phrase that can be used as follows:

                The table in the big room is round. (modifies the noun “table”)

                He stood in the big room.  (modifies the verb “stood”)

Conjunctions.  These are words such as and, but, or, because, although, etc., that join words or parts of sentences.  Some words can be used as either prepositions or conjunctions, such as after:

                I went home after lunch.  (preposition)

                I went home after I ate lunch.  (conjunction joining two clauses)

Interjections.  These are words such as oh, well, alas, etc., that can be stuck into a sentence but are structurally separate from the rest of the sentence.

II. SENTENCE STRUCTURE

Every complete sentence has a subject and a predicate.  The subject is a noun or pronoun, perhaps with modifiers; roughly speaking, it is what the rest of the sentence is about.  The rest of the sentence is the predicate.  In the following sentences, the subject is in italics and the predicate is in ordinary type:

                Few lions survive in India today.

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                The big man from Issaquah played the guitar beautifully.

                Cedar trees are common in western Washington.

The predicate always contains a verb (perhaps with modifiers), and it may contain other things depending on what kind of verb is there.  Here are the possibilities:

            Intransitive verbs require no further sentence material except perhaps for adverbs and prepositional phrases that modify them:

                John slept. 

                The boy stayed in the house.

            Transitive verbs require a direct object:

                John loves Mary.  (“Mary” is the direct object.)

                I will read the book tomorrow. (“book” is the direct object.)

Transitive verbs may also take an indirect object.  In the following sentence, “book” is the direct object and “me” is the indirect object.

                He gave me the book. 

Indirect objects can almost always be replaced by prepositional phrases with “to”:

                He gave the book to me.

            Copulative verbs (“copulative” means “linking”) are followed by adjectives or nouns that refer back to the subject, called predicate adjectives and predicate nominatives.  The main copulative verb is be, but become, seem, look, and other verbs can also function this way:

                John is very young.

                Mary is a dancer.

                The road became steep.

                Irene looks happy

In these sentences, “young,” “steep,” and “happy” are predicate adjectives that modify the subjects “John,” “road,” and “Irene,” while  “dancer” is a predicate nominative that describes the subject “Mary.”

            Compound subjects, predicates, and sentences:  The sentences discussed above are all quite simple.  More complicated sentences can be made by using conjunctions.  You can have a sentence with two or more subjects (a compound subject) and one predicate:

                Bob or Carol or Ted or Alice can help you.

You can also have a sentence with one subject and two or more predicates (a compound predicate):

                I ate dinner, felt tired, and went to bed.

(Note that this sentence has one transitive verb, one copulative verb, and one intransitive verb.)  Compound sentences are made up of two or more parts, each of which has its own subject and predicate.  The parts are called clauses.  Sometimes there are two or more clauses on a more or less equal footing:

                The book is good, but it is expensive.

Here “the book is good” and “it is expensive” are complete sentences by themselves, glued together with the conjunction “but.”  Sometimes the sentence has a main clause and one or more subordinate clauses that modify parts of the main clause:

                I read the book that you gave me.

                The rain came before I could get home.

Here the clause “that you gave me” modifies “book,” and “before I could get home” modifies “came.”  (Incidentally, in the clause “that you gave me,” the relative pronoun “that” is the direct object of “gave,” and “me” is the indirect object.)

III. INFLECTION, TENSES, ETC.

            Inflection is the general term for changing the form of a word depending on how it functions in the sentence --- for example, adding –s to a noun to make it plural, or adding –ed to a verb to make the past tense.  Inflection in English is a relatively simple matter; many languages employ much more elaborate inflections than English does.

            Inflection of nouns, pronouns, and (in some languages, but not English) adjectives is called declension.  (The verb corresponding to “declension” is decline.)  Declension is a matter of number, gender, and case.

            Number:  Singular and plural.  Most nouns form the plural by adding –s, but there are exceptions (e.g., mouse, mice).

            Gender:  The only place where gender rears its ugly head in English grammar is in the third person singular pronouns: he (masculine), she (feminine), and it (neuter).

            Case:  English has three cases: nominative, objective, and possessive.  The nominative is used for the subject of a sentence; the objective is used for objects of verbs and prepositions; the possessive is used to indicate possession.  English makes no distinction between nominative and objective for nouns, only for some of the personal pronouns and the relative or interrogative pronoun who:

                Nominative: I, we, you, he, she, it, they, who

                Objective:  me, us, you, him, her, it, them, whom

The possessive case for nouns is formed by adding an apostrophe-s (or just an apostrophe for plurals that already end in –s): Joan’s, students’.  Pronouns have distinct possessive forms:

                Possessive: my, our, your, his, her, its, their, whose

            (Footnote:  The pronoun you is grammatically plural, although it can refer to just one person.  English also has a second person singular pronoun, but it dropped out of common usage about 300 years ago: thou (nominative), thee (objective), and thy (possessive).)

            Inflection of verbs (for tense, mood, person, number, gender, etc.) is called conjugation.  Most English verbs have at most four distinct inflected forms besides the root form (the form you look up in a dictionary).  For the verb speak they are:

            speak (root form and present tense, except 3^rd person singular)

            speaks (present tense, 3^rd person singular)

            spoke (past tense)

            spoken (past participle)

            speaking (present participle)

The big exception is the verb to be, which has three forms in the present tense (am, is, are) and two in the past tense (was, were) as well as the participles been and being and the root form be.  The majority of English verbs form both the past tense and the past participle by adding –d or –ed.  (I deliberately chose an example where these forms are different.)  All English verbs form the present participle by adding –ing to the root form.

            The past participle serves two functions: It is used in forming the perfect tenses (see below), and it can be used as an adjective (e.g., the spoken word).  The present participle also has two functions: It is used in forming the progressive tenses (see below), and it can be used as an adjective (e.g., a growing boy, the shining light).  The form of the present participle can also be used as a noun (e.g., “Reading is fun”), but when so used, it is properly called the gerund.

While we’re at it, let’s mention the infinitive, which is formed by prefixing the word “to” to the root form: to speak.  The infinitive functions as a noun in sentences; for example, in “I like to swim,” “to swim” is the direct object of “like.”

            But inflection is only the beginning of the story of verb forms in English, which has a complex and subtle system of verb tenses.  This is a complicated subject, and I’m just going to talk about the basics here. Most of the work is done by auxiliary verbs such as be, have, and will.

There are three simple tenses:

                Present: I speak

                Past: I spoke

Future: I will speak (or shall speak)

There are also three perfect tenses, formed by the past participle with the auxiliary have:

                Present perfect: I have spoken

                Past perfect or pluperfect: I had spoken

                Future perfect: I will have spoken

Each of these six tenses also has a progressive form, formed by the present participle with the auxiliary be:

                Present progressive: I am speaking

Past progressive: I was speaking

Future progressive: I will be speaking

Present perfect progressive: I have been speaking

Past perfect progressive:  I had been speaking

Future perfect progressive: I will have been speaking

There are at least three other forms that function as distinct tenses, although they don’t have standard names:

                I am going to speak

                I am about to speak

                I used to speak

Then there are the conditional and quasi-subjunctive tenses formed with the auxiliary verbs  may, might, would.   But now we’re getting into questions of mood rather than tense --- I don’t want to go there right now.

            A couple of other things to end this discussion before it gets too involved.  The present and past tenses have emphatic forms, formed with the auxiliary do:

                I do speak, I did speak.

And transitive verbs can also be used in either the active or passive voice:

                Newton discovered the formula.  (active construction)

                The formula was discovered by Newton.  (passive construction)