English Grammar and Its Usage Flashcards
Grammar and Its Usage
English language follows a set of rules like all other languages. Broadly speaking, the part of Grammar which is concerned with the changes in the form of words by internal modification or by affixation is known as accidence, and the manner in which these words are arranged in the form of a sentence is known as syntax.
Parts of Speech
Words are divided into eight classes according to the work they do in a sentence. They are as follows:
- Noun
- Pronoun
- Adjective
- Verb
- Adverb
- Preposition
- Conjunction
- Interjection
Nouns
A Noun is a “naming word”. It names somebody or something.
A noun is the name of a person, animal, place, thing or idea.
Kinds of Nouns
Nouns may be divided into two: (a) Common Noun and (b) Proper Noun.
Common Nouns are the names given to all persons, places or things of the same group.
Collective Nouns: Common nouns include a class called Collective Nouns. A collective noun names a group of people, animals or things regarded as a whole.
Proper Nouns are the names of particular persons, places or things.
Pronouns
A pronoun is used in place of a noun. Pronouns may be Personal, Relative and Possessive.
Personal Pronouns: To represent person or thing.
Relative Pronouns: A relative pronoun acts as a pronoun and a conjunction at the same time.
Most commonly used relative pronouns are which, whom and that.
Possessive Pronouns: These show possession.
Adjectives
A word used to describe or point out a person, animal, place or thing which the noun names, or to tell the number and quality, is called an Adjective.
Two or more words can be joined with a hyphen to form a Compound Adjective.
Verbs
A Verb is word which tells or asserts something about a person or thing. Verb comes from the Latin Verbum, meaning word. It is so called because it is the most important word in a sentence. A verb may tell us: i. What a person or thing does ii. What is done to a person or thing iii. What a person or thing is.
Adverbs
Adverbs modify the meaning of not only verbs, but also adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions, etc.
Prepositions
A preposition, by definition, is placed before a noun or its equivalent to show its relationship in terms of place, time, etc.
There are hardly any rules governing the use of prepositions, some people feel that it is inelegant to put them at the end of a sentence since they are basically used as link words. However, as Fowler points, “All our great writers have allowed themselves to end a sentence or a clause with a preposition.” The thumb-rule is that the sentence should read well.
It is largely usage that determines the choice of a preposition. Americans tend to drop them, but it is largely colloquial. A wrong preposition certainly changes the intended meaning.
All standard dictionaries list the root words along with different prepositions or adverbial phrases and also show the difference in the meaning.
Types of Voices
As a general rule, we should use Active Voice in our sentences. Such sentences are shorter, direct and emphatic.
An exception is, however, made when sending out negative message or fixing responsibility.
Passive voice is also found useful when drafting legal formulations as no identifiable subject can be mentioned.
Articles
The words ‘a’ or ‘an’ and ‘the’ are called Articles. They come before nouns. ‘A’ or ‘an’ is called the Indefinite Article because it usually leaves indefinite the person or thing spoken of; as,
a doctor; that is, any doctor.
The is called a Definite Article because it normally points out to some particular person or thing.
The indefinite article is used before singular countable noun.
The definite article is used before singular countable noun, plural countable noun, and uncountable noun, e.g., the pen, the pens, the milk.
The article ‘an’ is used when the noun to which it is attached begins with a vowel sound. It is the vowel sound and not the vowel which determines the use of ‘a’ and ‘an’. Vowels with consonant sound take ‘a’ and not ‘an’.
Usage
Usage implies the manner in which the native speakers of a language use it. The “body of conventions governing the use of a language, especially those aspects not governed by grammatical rules”, “habitual or customary use” often lays down new standards of acceptance.
Tenses
“In Grammar - a set of forms taken by a verb to indicate the time (and sometimes continuance or completeness) of an action with relation to the time of utterance” is the meaning which the Concise Oxford Dictionary assigns to the word tense. Tense comes from the Latin word ‘tempus’ meaning time.
We see that the form of the verb shows not only the time of an action or event but also the state of the action referred to.
We may define the word tense as that form of the verb which shows the time and state of an action
Sentences
A group of words which makes complete sense is called a sentence.
Grammar also lays down rules to arrange words in a certain order to form meaningful sentences. Sentences may be formed to:
Make a statement
Pose a question
Give a command
Make an exclamation
Subject and Predicate
A sentence consists of two parts:
Subject - The part of a sentence which names the person or thing we are speaking about is called the subject of the sentence.
Predicate - The part which tells something about the subject is called the predicate.
