Essential Grammar Terms Simplified

Grammar is an important part of the English language because it helps students and teachers to understand the basic rules using which they can clearly interpret, learn and convey information. It is extremely important to know all of its essential terms for ease in using their language. To enhance your English notes, jot it all down and finesse all your language exams.

The eight parts of speech

All these parts of speech are essential to construct a proper sentence, they work together to complete ideas, thoughts, and sentences. For simplification, let us consider an example sentence;

My sister just went to the shop across the road

Here, the sentence begins with the words ‘my sister’, which is a person-noun. The words ‘shop’ and ‘road’ are place and thing nouns. ‘Went’ is the past tense of the verb ‘go’. ‘Across’ is a preposition, and ‘the’ is an article. Although all the parts of speech are not present here, we will learn more about them below. 

Noun

Any word that is the name of a thing, person, place or animal, is a noun. The noun is of two types, proper noun, and common noun. Generic things are known as common nouns, proper nouns relate to specific things, concepts, places, or people.

Examples: Park is a common noun, Adolf Hitler is a proper noun.

Pronouns

The word that we usually write in place of nouns is pronouns. This is done to avoid repetitive words throughout a paragraph, essay, or any other content. Instead of writing the name of a character throughout the book, an innovative way for authors to create dynamics is using adjectives. Pronouns have 7 categories;

 

• Indefinite pronoun: When something nonspecific is being referred. The words used are- someone, something, somebody, some, no one, none, neither, nothing, anybody, anyone, all, another, any, either, everybody, each, everyone, everything, both, many, few.

 

• Personal pronoun: When a specific thing or person is being referred. The words used are- she, he, her, his, me, I, your, yours, mine, hers, him, our, it, it’s, there, hours, there’s, they, them.

 

• Interrogative pronoun: These pronouns are used to ask a question, usually placed at the beginning of a sentence. The words used are- who, what, why, whom, whose, which.

 

• Demonstrative pronoun: Words used to identify or pinpoint another noun, such as this, those, these, that, there.

 

• Reflexive or intensive pronoun: Pronouns are other words that end with -self are known as reflexive pronouns. It often shows the receiver of any particular action. Such as herself, yourself, myself, himself, themselves, yourselves, ourselves.

 

• Relative pronoun: Pronouns that are used for introducing another adjective clause, such as the words that, which, whom, who, whose.

 

• Possessive pronoun: Words used to portray the ownership of a name, place, thing, or animal. For example- yours, your, my, mine, yours, his, hours, it’s, theirs.

Articles

There are three articles, ‘a’, ‘an’ and ‘the’. ‘A’ is used before a generic word, usually a common noun; ‘An’ is used before a vowel. The Notes have five vowels, a, e, i, o, u. ‘The’ is used before a specific object, usually a proper noun.

Verb

Any doing word is known as a verb, that is used to express actions. Tenses are another term related to verbs. There are three types of tenses which are further subcategorized into four different types, namely simple present tense, present continuous tense, present perfect tense, present perfect continuous tense, simple past tense, past continuous tense, past perfect continuous tense, past perfect tense, simple future tense, future continuous tense, future perfect continuous tense, and future perfect tense.

Adverb

These are words that can be used for modifying an adjective, verb, or another adverb. When we ask a sentence questions such as: How? When? Why? Or, Where? The answer to these questions is an adverb.

Adjective

We can describe the nature of another noun or pronoun with the help of modifying words known as adjectives. 

Preposition

Known as a modifying factor, phrases or words are built by placing prepositions before a noun. It shows how the noun is related to other words in a sentence. For example- in, on, at, of, onto, during, beyond, besides, behind, among, against, between, before, outside, since, through, toward, unlike, up, without, with, outside, than, next, from, for, except, after, and so on.

Conjunction

Joining words are known as conjunctions, like and, but, or, so that, neither nor, either or. There are multiple coordinating, subordinating, and correlated conjunctions.

Use these parts of speech for better English notes and understanding of the knowledge.