* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
Download Grammar for Better Writing Simple Modifiers
Old Irish grammar wikipedia , lookup
Navajo grammar wikipedia , lookup
Georgian grammar wikipedia , lookup
Kannada grammar wikipedia , lookup
Arabic grammar wikipedia , lookup
Ojibwe grammar wikipedia , lookup
Macedonian grammar wikipedia , lookup
Compound (linguistics) wikipedia , lookup
Preposition and postposition wikipedia , lookup
Chinese grammar wikipedia , lookup
Zulu grammar wikipedia , lookup
Ukrainian grammar wikipedia , lookup
Lithuanian grammar wikipedia , lookup
Latin syntax wikipedia , lookup
Comparison (grammar) wikipedia , lookup
Modern Hebrew grammar wikipedia , lookup
Arabic nouns and adjectives wikipedia , lookup
Old Norse morphology wikipedia , lookup
Old English grammar wikipedia , lookup
Pipil grammar wikipedia , lookup
Vietnamese grammar wikipedia , lookup
Spanish grammar wikipedia , lookup
Swedish grammar wikipedia , lookup
Portuguese grammar wikipedia , lookup
Malay grammar wikipedia , lookup
Modern Greek grammar wikipedia , lookup
Romanian nouns wikipedia , lookup
Ancient Greek grammar wikipedia , lookup
Esperanto grammar wikipedia , lookup
Turkish grammar wikipedia , lookup
Russian grammar wikipedia , lookup
Japanese grammar wikipedia , lookup
Yiddish grammar wikipedia , lookup
Italian grammar wikipedia , lookup
Scottish Gaelic grammar wikipedia , lookup
French grammar wikipedia , lookup
Polish grammar wikipedia , lookup
Diagram the following sentences subjects and verbs. Disregard other words. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Hector has been exercising. Hurry! Did you forget? Dr. Lee has been calling. Ms. Alice Cummins interrupted. Have guests been invited? Grammar for Better Writing 2 Lesson 2: Simple Modifiers: Adjectives, Adverbs, Prepositional Phrases ADJECTIVES Notice the following: the empty chair, the clear water, the handsome boy. In these sentences the words empty, clear, and handsome are adjectives that modify chair, water, and boy., in that they DESCRIBE, or IDENTIFY, or LIMIT, or in some way CHARACTERIZE the nouns. Most of the purely descriptive adjectives stand with the nouns they modify and, as you will learn when you study complements, may stand on the side of the verb (The handsome boy; The boy is handsome). When an adjective attaches itself directly to a noun (when it is not a compliment) it is represented as follows: There are other types of words that attach themselves to nouns to limit or describe them and are called “adjectives” by function. These include: a) The articles the, a, and an. b) Possessive nouns and pronouns: my purse, that affair, these people, her career, its usefulness, John’s car, father’s position. c) Demonstratives and indefinites: this book that affair these people those remarks each member some likelihood every person d) Nouns used to describe, identify, or qualify other nouns: chemistry teacher, soccer team, Paris flight. These are not true adjectives in that they can not be compared (we can say clearer water but not chemistrier teacher. Most of them do not lend themselves to use in the predicate (verb) position (the chair is clear but not the teacher is chemistry). Although these words in their FORM are nouns, they FUNCTION as adjectives and they attach to nouns as modifiers like this: Diagram the following sentences subjects, verbs, and adjectives. Disregard other words. 1. The professional hockey players grinned happily. 2. The angry Wildcat wrestlers sneered menacingly. 3. A young Italian man lives here. 4. The pretty red balloon floated up. 5. Her overly ambitious plans were quickly rejected. ADVERBS A word that is clearly a modifier but does not modify a noun or a pronoun may be called an adverb. Most of the adverbs you will use will modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs. When they modify verbs, adverbs usually tell when/where/how/to what extent about the action of the verb. Sometimes he talks rapidly. Earlier he had studied abroad. Adverbs also modify adjectives and other adverbs, a relationship which can be represented as follows: The extremely uneasy boy talked rather quickly. Just as nouns may be used as adjectives (“ a college requirement”), they may also be used adverbs : “I walked home” and “Last month I worked nights.”These are referred to as adverbial nouns. PREPOSITIONAL PHRASES A preposition is a word that connects a noun (or another word or word group serving as a noun), called its object, to some other part of the sentence. The most common prepositions are: Prepositional phrases may be diagrammed by placing the preposition on a slanting line and placing the object on a connected horizontal line: In spite of the heat, two of us walked to the end of the road.