Download Basic Grammar

A Writer’s Reference
B1-B4
 Nouns:
the name or a person, place, thing,
or concept.

The lion in the cage growled at the zookeeper.
 Verbs:
express action or being (possibly
preceded by one or more helping verbs).

Patrick plays basketball everyday.
Transitive= transfers the action from the
subject toward a direct object.
A group of volunteers painted a mural on the
wall.
Intransitive= does not transfer action so it does
not have an object.
I waited patiently.
Connects the subject with a word or words
that identify or describe the subject. It can
connect the subject with a noun, the
predicate nominative.
Judge Bianca is also a professor of law.
-Can also connect the subject to a pronoun or
an adjective in the predicate.
Michelle felt ill after the barbecue.
We were so hungry.
Also called helping verbs
They help the main verb express action or
make a statement.
They indicate voice, mood, or tense.
The officers had been planning the raid for
months.
Words used in place of a noun. Usually substitutes a
specific noun, known as its antecedent.
 Personal:

Nominative
First Person
(speaker)
Second Person
(spoken to)
Third Person
(spoken about)
I, we
Objective
Me, us
You
He, she, it, they Him, her, it, them
She let me borrow her helmet.
 Candice let me borrow her helmet

Antecedent
You
personal
pronoun
 Shows
 That
ownership or belonging.
First person
My, mine, our, ours
Second person
Your, yours
Third person
His, her, hers, its,
their, theirs
bike is mine.
Both are formed by adding –self or –selves to a
personal pronoun.
Reflexive Pronouns reflect an action back on a
preceding noun or pronoun.
Kim helped herself to seconds of every buffet item.

Intensive Pronouns add emphasis to a noun or
pronoun in the same sentence.
No one asked the doctor herself if she needed
help.


If it can be removed without changing the meaning
of the sentence, then it is an intensive pronoun.
Introduces a subordinate clause.
Who whom which whose
that
Schliemann was the archaeologist who discovered Troy.
A subordinate, or dependent, clause does not express a
complete thought and cannot stand alone as a sentence.
 If current studies are correct, many people love to read
about their personalities.

Is used to ask a question.
Who
whom which what
Whose wallet is this?
What can we do while it rains?
whose
Points out specific persons, places, things, or
ideas.
This, these- point out persons or things that
are near in space or time.
That, those- point out persons or things that
are more distant in space or time.
Does not refer to a specific person or thing.
Someone left the phone off the hook.
The snowstorm closed most of the schools.
Expresses mutual action or relationship.
Each other
One another
"Leadership and learning are indispensable to
each other.“
(John F. Kennedy)
 Adjectives:
used to modify, or describe, a
noun or pronoun.

Which one? What kind of? How many?
 Adverbs:
used to modify, or qualify, a verb
(or verbal), and adjective, or another
adverb.

When? Where? How? Why? Under what conditions?
To what degree?
A word used to show the relationship between
a noun or pronoun and some other word in
the sentence.
It is a word placed before a noun or pronoun
to form a phrase modifying another word in
the sentence. (it can sometimes functions as
an adjective or as an adverb).
He yelled to the child.
He yelled at the child.
He yelled about the child.
He yelled near the child.
 Adjective
phrase
 Adverb phrase
Page 320
 Linking
verbs and subject complements
 Transitive verbs and direct objects
 Transitive verbs, indirect objects, and direct
objects
 Transitive verbs, direct objects, and object
complements
 Intransitive verbs
Page 316-318
Words used to join words or groups of words.

Coordinating Conjunctions: connects word or word
groups that have equal importance in a sentence.

Correlative conjunctions: are pairs of conjunctions
that connect words or groups of words. Always
used in pairs, they correlate with one another.

Subordinating conjunctions: introduce subordinate
clauses; joins a subordinate clause to an
independent clause.
Words or short phrases used to express
emotion. It has no grammatical connection
to other words in a sentence. Usually set off
by a comma or exclamation mark.
Wow! We won!
 Prepositional
phrases
 Verbal phrases
 Appositive phrases
 Absolute phrases
 Subordinate phrases
A sentence is a group of words that expresses a
complete thought. Every sentence can be
divided into two parts—the subject and the
predicate.
Some areas of the Atacama get rain only a few
times a century.
 Simple:
Consists of one independent clause and no
subordinate clauses.
 Compound:
Contains two or more independent
clauses joined together (usually joined with a
coordinating conjunction).
Some people like change but others like stability.
 Complex:
contains one independent clause and
one or more subordinate clauses.
Although only-children differ, they often share
many traits.
 Compound-Complex: has two or more
independent clauses and one or more subordinate
clauses.
Researchers have studied couples who have
contrasting personalities, and the results have
been interesting.