* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
Download Grammar Review Notes – 1st quarter 2010
Chinese grammar wikipedia , lookup
Old Irish grammar wikipedia , lookup
Compound (linguistics) wikipedia , lookup
Arabic grammar wikipedia , lookup
Macedonian grammar wikipedia , lookup
Sanskrit grammar wikipedia , lookup
Lexical semantics wikipedia , lookup
Lithuanian grammar wikipedia , lookup
Zulu grammar wikipedia , lookup
Georgian grammar wikipedia , lookup
Ojibwe grammar wikipedia , lookup
Portuguese grammar wikipedia , lookup
Ukrainian grammar wikipedia , lookup
Esperanto grammar wikipedia , lookup
Malay grammar wikipedia , lookup
Latin syntax wikipedia , lookup
Russian grammar wikipedia , lookup
Modern Greek grammar wikipedia , lookup
Romanian nouns wikipedia , lookup
Scottish Gaelic grammar wikipedia , lookup
Old Norse morphology wikipedia , lookup
Ancient Greek grammar wikipedia , lookup
Modern Hebrew grammar wikipedia , lookup
Vietnamese grammar wikipedia , lookup
Swedish grammar wikipedia , lookup
Icelandic grammar wikipedia , lookup
Old English grammar wikipedia , lookup
Japanese grammar wikipedia , lookup
Romanian grammar wikipedia , lookup
Turkish grammar wikipedia , lookup
Yiddish grammar wikipedia , lookup
French grammar wikipedia , lookup
Spanish grammar wikipedia , lookup
Pipil grammar wikipedia , lookup
English grammar wikipedia , lookup
Grammar Review Notes ____________________________________________________ Nouns A noun is defined as a person, place, thing, or idea. A noun answers the question who? or what? in a sentence. All nouns will either be common or proper, either concrete or abstract, and either singular or plural. Nouns may also be collective (single word standing for a group of things) and/or may be compound (two words put together to create a new meaning, either hyphenated, separate, or combined). Nouns may happen in all parts of a sentence – as the subject, as the object of a prepositional phrase, as a direct object, as an indirect object, as a predicate nominative, etc. Examples: Common dog Proper Spot Concrete yes Singular dog Plural dogs Collective pack (as in a pack of dogs) Compound dogpaddle ____________________________________________________ Pronouns A pronoun is a word that replaces a noun in a sentence. Pronouns are used for variety and interest in speaking and writing. Like nouns, pronouns answer the question who? or what? in a sentence. Also like nouns, pronouns can happen in all parts of a sentence. See list above. Virtually every pronoun will have an antecedent. The antecedent is the noun that a pronoun is replacing in the sentence. Antecedents can be one or more words, can happen in the same sentence or in sentences prior, and can occur virtually anywhere in a sentence. There are different sorts of pronouns including personal, reflexive, intensive, demonstrative, relative, and indefinite. Examples: (In these examples, the pronoun is in bold and the antecedent is in italics.) 1. My dog ate his dog food while I was at school yesterday. (Personal pronoun) 2. My dog lets himself out when needed by going through the pet door. (Reflexive pronoun) ____________________________________________________ Verbs Verbs can be classified in three ways – action, linking, and helping or auxiliary. Often, two or more words working together make up a verb phrase. It’s important that you label all parts of the verb phrase when asked to identify verbs in a sentence. Remember that action verbs are a physical or mental action, linking verbs link the subject to the predicate but do not show action, and helping verbs work with main verbs to create a sense of time. (It’s easiest just to memorize the most common linking and helping verbs.) Action verbs will often answer the question – what’s happening in this sentence? In compound or compound-complex sentences, there can be more than one verb phrase. Examples: (Action verbs will be shown in bold, linking verbs in italics, and helping verbs underlined.) 1. Unfortunately, we often feed table food to our dogs. 2. Dogs should not eat some foods, especially chocolate and grapes. 3. Some breeds of dogs bark a lot; it seems like all of our dogs are barkers. 4. At least our dogs are friendly; they have never bitten anyone…yet. Adjectives Adjectives are descriptor words that modify nouns and pronouns. Most often, an adjective happens just before the noun or pronoun it modifies. There are cases, though, when an adjective happens at the end of the sentence (in the predicate) and modifies the subject of the sentence. Adjectives answer the questions which one? what kind? how many? to what extent? about the nouns and pronouns they modify. The most common adjectives are articles – a, an, the. Examples: (Adjectives are in bold and the words they modify are in italics.) 1. The red dachshund that lives two streets away from us is big and mean. (In this example, big and mean also modify the noun dachshund that occurred at the beginning of the sentence.) 2. On the other hand, Lowder is small, chunky, and loveable. 3. When I get home from a long day of work, Lowder greets me with a wagging tail, some happy barks, and a few kisses if I get too close.