English grammar

Completion status: this resource is just getting off the ground. Please feel welcome to help!

Introduction

English grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the English language. English is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family, whose speakers, called Anglophones, originated in early medieval England on the island of Great Britain.

Origins of English

English is a West Germanic language. It came from Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain in the mid-5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxons who migrated from what is now northwest Germany, southern Denmark and the Netherlands.

It is also heavily based on Latin, the language used by the Roman Empire, that existed from 27 BC to around 1453.

English Grammar

Parts of Speech

There are nine different parts of speech, each with several subcategories.

• noun - a word that names a person, animal, place, thing, or idea. (Examples: girl, firefighter, dog, church, computer, friendship.) A common noun is lower-cased and names any person, animal, place, thing, or idea, while a proper noun denotes someone or something's name with a capital letter at the beginning of the word. (Examples: Penelope, Russia.)
• verb - a word that describes an action or state of existence. The most common verbs you'll see are action verbs (such as run, jump, like, want), but many other kinds of verbs exist, such as the auxiliary verb, which gives functional or grammatical meaning to the sentence in which it appears (such as is, was).
• pronoun - a word used in place of a noun to decrease redundancy. The pronoun 'I' is always capitalized. (Examples: I, you, he, she, we, they.)
• adjective - a word that describes a noun. (Examples: big, red, dark.)
• adverb - a word that modifies a verb or adjective, describing when, where, or how. (Examples: quickly, yesterday, everywhere.)
• preposition - a word that connects a noun or pronoun to a sentence. (Examples: on, at, by, as, after.)
• conjunction - a word that links two words, phrases, or sentences. (Examples: and, or, because.)
• interjection - a word that conveys emotion. (Examples: ahem, egad, hey, ouch.)
• article - a word that introduces a noun. (Examples: a, an, the.) Note that grammarians traditionally recognize eight parts of speech. Articles used to be a type of adjective, but are now considered a part of speech due to how differently from adjectives they behave.

Verb Basics

Verb Tenses

Past Tense

Helping Verbs in the Past Tense

To obtain a clear understanding of the helping verb in the English past tense, we must review the simple past, since that is what we will use for our examples. The simple past includes sentences like 'Bob jumped' or 'Bob flew.' However, when we add a helping verb that does not change the actual tense, the main verb reverts to the infinitive.

Examples:

Bob jumped.

Bob flew.

Bob did jump.

Bob did fly.

Syntax, or Sentence Formation

What is a Sentence?

At its most basic, a sentence is a word or grouping of words that expresses a complete thought, begins with a capital letter, and ends with a punctuation mark. A sentence can make a statement (declarative), ask a question (interrogative), give an order (imperative), or express strong feeling (exclamatory).

Examples:

Declarative:

Bob jumped and caught the ball.

This sentence states what happened, with no excitement, so it ends with a period. Interrogative:

When Bob jumped, did he catch the ball?

Since this sentence is a question, it ends with a question mark. Imperative:

Jump, Bob! Catch the ball!

Imperative sentences can end with a period or exclamation point, depending on the level of urgency. Single-word imperative, with the implied noun you:

Jump. Catch the ball.

Exclamatory:

Bob jumped and caught the ball!

Exclamatory sentences and declarative sentences are basically the same except for the ending punctuation, determined by how much excitement the sentence should convey.

Simple Sentences

A simple sentence begins with a capital letter and includes a subject (noun), predicate (verb), and ending punctuation. It should express a complete thought.

Example:

Bob jumped.

Compound Sentences

A compound sentence expresses more than one thought through the use of conjunctions or, if the two thoughts are very closely related, a semicolon.

Examples:

Bob jumped, and he caught the ball. Bob jumped; he caught the ball.

Note that a semicolon is only appropriate if the two thoughts it joins are closely related and each can stand alone as a complete sentence.

Subjects and Predicates

A complete sentence has a subject and a predicate.

Simple Subject

A simple subject is a noun that tells who or what the sentence is about. Usually a simple subject is one word.

Example:

Bob jumped.

In the sentence, Bob is the simple subject, the who or what of the sentence. Example:

Bob the basketball star jumped three feet in the air.

Bob is still the simple subject of the sentence.

Simple Predicate

The simple predicate is the verb or verb phrase. It tells what the subject did, is doing, or will do.

Read the following example sentence

Bob jumped.

In the sentence, jumped is the simple predicate, the 'what did he do?' of the sentence. Read the following example sentence:

Bob the basketball star jumped three feet in the air.

Jumped is still the simple predicate of the sentence.

Compound Subjects and Predicates

In a compound subject, two or more nouns, usually joined by a conjunction, share the same verb; in a compound predicate, two or more verbs, usually joined by a conjunction, share the same noun.

Examples:

Bob and Rick jumped.

Two subjects did one thing, so Bob and Rick is a compound subject.

Rick jumped and caught the ball.

One subject did two things, so jumped and caught the ball is a compound predicate. (While the ball is a noun, it is the object of the second verb, not part of a compound subject.)

Confusing Words, Idioms, Colloquialisms, and Slang

• Situation / Position / Condition
• Animal idioms

See also

• Apostrophe misuse
• Andrew Rossiter (2020). A Descriptive Grammar of English. 207 pp. ISBN 979-8645611750

Go to the Department of English

Link to any subpages this page might have