English Grammar Flashcards
What a nice swimming pool!
Imperative
How I wonder what you are!
Exclamatory
Is the little star twinkling?
Interrogative
The little star is twinkling.
Declarative
Grammatical categories: Which grammatical categories are represented?
e. g. run - running -> aspect
1) Boy – Boys →
2) Him – Her →
3) Eat- eats →
4) Fool - be fooled →
5) Go - has gone →
- Number
- Gender
- Person
- Voice
- Tense
Name the difference between prescriptive and descriptive grammar
prescriptive
- laying down rules
- the grammatical correct version
- “correct”, “proper” and “educated” use of English
describe
- the way natives talk
- the way language is really being used
Syntactic elements: Determine the syntactic elements in the following sentences
My little boy gave me his hand
Subject (my and little can also be considered as subject complements); Predicate; (Indirect) Object; (direct) object
Do you ask?
Present simple
Did you ask?
Past simple
…Had asked?
past perfect simple
…have asked
present perfect simple
…will have asked
Future perfect simple
I will be studying
Continous Future
I am asking
present progessive
I was asking
past progressive
…had been asking
Past perfect progressive
…had been asking
Past perfect progressive
I have been asking
present perfect progressive
…will be asking
Future progressive
…will have been asking
Future perfect progressive
Syntactic Element of:
The boy visited his father in thehospital
The boy (subject) visited (Predicate) his father (object) in the hospital. (Adverbial)
Basic Sentence Patterns
The girl was sleeping
Subject Verb Object complement subject complement object adverbial
- SV – The girl was sleeping.
Her mother was dressing the baby
- SVO – Her mother was dressing the baby.
Liitle James seemed very happy
Subject Verb Object complement subject complement object adverbial
- SVC – Little James seemed very happy.
Most people considered her a perfect mother
SVOC – Most people considered her a perfect mother.
He was sitting on the table
- SVA – He was sitting on the table.
She has spent all her life in the village
- SVOA – She has spent all her life in the village.
Clauses: Outer Form: Off with you
Verbless clauses
- Made in Germany
Non-finite clauses contain a verb which does not show tense, built around an infinite, gerund or participle
- I spoke to Luna last night
Finite clauses must contain a verb which shows tense & person
- Normative: laying down rules (“how language ought to be used“)
- “linguistic etiquette“
- “correct“, “proper“ and “educated” use of English
- People who do not follow certain rules (e.g. “You must not split an infinitive“ or “You must not end a sentence with a preposition“ may be regarded as “poorly educated“
Prescriptive grammar
- Describing language use without any social judgement
- Reason: no variety is inherently better than another one: each variety has its own rules
- “anything goes?“
- Corpuslinguistics as a tool to find out about REAL usage
Discriptive Grammar
