Glossary of all grammar terms

The term adjunct has various definitions in modern grammar. Basically, it refers to any constituent or part of a clause that is non-essential and can be removed from the clause without causing it to become ungrammatical.

Examples include adverbial adjuncts (ran quickly), nominal adjuncts (the book on the table), adjectival adjuncts (a book of great importance), among others.

Note: Many grammarians still use the traditional term adverbial instead of adjunct.

Adverbs are one of the parts of speech (also called word classes), along with verbs, nouns and pronouns.

Adverbs most often tell us how, when or where something happens. For example, quickly, badly, hard, often, tomorrow, usually, indoors, etc. But there are several other uses (grammarians would say semantic types).

A useful overview is to note that adverbs modify (describe) verbs (he plays the piano well), adjectives (very beautiful), other adverbs (she speaks too fast), or a whole sentence (Stupidly, I had forgotten to bring my umbrella).

In grammatical terms, the agent is the 'doer' of the action. So, in the sentence The girl ate the cake, the girl is the agent.

In the active voice, the agent is the grammatical subject. It typically precedes the verb. In the passive voice, the agent is seen in the 'by prepositional phrase' (or omitted as unknown, obvious or unimportant).

The agent in the following sentences is shown in bold:

An antecedent is a word earlier in a piece of text that a word later in the text (usually a pronoun) refers back to.

For example, in the text I saw a strange man in town yesterday; he was wearing a yellow suit, the personal pronoun he refers back to man. So man is the antecedent.

And in the sentence What was the name of the girl who won the chess competition?, the relative pronoun who refers back to girl. So girl is the antecedent.

Apposition is the term for the extra information given about a noun (a person, place or thing). This extra information most often follows the noun immediately and is separated by commas from the rest of the sentence.

For example, My car, an Opel Adam, is great for driving in the city. The apposition, or appositive phrase, is extra or supplementary information about the noun. So the sentence still makes sense if the words between the commas are omitted: My car is great for driving in the city..

The appositive phrase can often be viewed as a reduced non-defining relative clause. In other words, Mr. Smith, who is our new English teacher, comes from Australia is reduced to an appositive by removing the words "who is". This results in: Mr. Smith, our new English teacher, comes from Australia.

Attributive refers to an adjective that premodifies a noun. For example, big as in the big dog.

Adjectives that follow the copular verb as complements are called predicative adjectives. For example: The dog is big.

An auxiliary verb is a verb that is used to form the various English tenses. It is also used in negative statements and questions.

The auxiliary verbs in English are to be, to have and to do.

Here are three examples. The auxiliary is shown in bold:

Note: Some grammarians call the modal verbs such as must and can auxiliary verbs.

Backshift is a term used in reported (indirect) speech to denote the shift or change back in tense from the original words to the reported words.

For example, from the present tense in "My sister lives in Paris" to the reported She said her sister lived in Paris. And from the past tense in "Did you speak to Mary?" to the past perfect in He asked if I had spoken to Mary.

Backshift is also called the sequence of tenses.

Canonical is a term that refers to the syntactic structure of a basic declarative, positive, main clause.

So, for example, the sentence I like sushi is a canonical sentence in the subject-verb-object (SVO) order.

On the other hand, neither I don't like sushi, nor Do you like sushi?, nor Sushi I like is canonical sentence.

The term canonical can also be applied to other grammatical items. For example, a canonical adjective is one such as hot. Hot is an adjective that can be used both attributively and predicatively. It also has a comparative and superlative form.

Compare hot with the non-canonical adjective asleep, which fulfils neither of the two characteristics above.

The term case is used to refer to the grammatical role of nouns and pronouns in clauses. There are three cases in modern English: the nominative, accusative and genitive. They are also called the subjective, objective and possessive, respectively.

Nouns do not change their form (spelling) in the nominative or accusative. But some pronouns do. For example: he → him and I → me.

Nouns change their form in the genitive/possessive case by the addition of the possessive apostrophe, often followed by an -s. For example: my teacher's car and the boys' ball.

Note: Other languages, such as German and Latin have four and six cases, respectively, with many more changes in the form of nouns and pronouns.

The term catenative refers to verbs that are followed by other, nonfinite verb forms.

For example, want is a catenative verb followed by the to-infinitive; e.g., I want to go home.

In I like watching TV, like is a catenative verb followed by a gerund.

And I saw him break the window has the catenative verb saw followed by a bare infinitive.

The problem for English learners is to know which of the three nonfinite verb forms to use after any given catenative verb: to-infinitive, gerund or bare infinitive.

In traditional grammar, a clause is a group of words that contains a subject and a finite verb. For example: I get up early. So a single clause can also be a complete sentence, as in the example above.

In the sentence I get up early because my work place is far from my home there are two clauses with the respective subjects and finite verbs: I - get up and my work place - is.

Note: Modern grammar defines clauses more broadly to include groups of words that may be without subjects or finite verbs.

A text is said to have cohesion if the writer is successful in convincing the reader that it is not just a series of sentences stuck together at random. There are a number of devices that writers employ to give a text cohesion.

A common one is the use of pronouns. So, for example, the pronoun 'it' in the first sentence of this entry refers back to the word 'text', its referent. The phrase 'a common one' in the previous sentence refers back to the words 'a number of devices' in the sentence before.

The term complement has many different meanings in modern grammar. Grammarians do not agree on what should or should not be called a complement. Whole books are written on the topic.

In traditional grammar, a complement is the word or phrase that follows the subject and its copula (which is usually the verb to be, but also includes verbs of the senses: look, sound, taste, feel). For example: He was in the kitchen or That looks very tasty or She is the best tennis player in the school.

Complement is also the term for the obligatory completion of a phrase. For example, the complement of without in the prepositional phrase without saying goodbye is saying goodbye.

And the complement of denied in the verb phrase He denied using my phone is using my phone.

A conjunction is a word that joins phrases or clauses together. Traditional grammar distinguishes coordinating conjunctions such as and, or, but from subordinating conjunctions such as although, since, because.

The conjunctions in the following example sentences are shown in bold. The first group exemplifies coordinating conjunctions and the second group subordinating conjunctions.

In the analysis of the structure of clauses the term constituent refers to the major elements. For example, subject, object, verb, adjunct.

English has an SVO (subject - verb - object) constituent or word order. A more common constituent order in world languages is SOV; for example, Korean.

All language takes place in a context. One example of a context is a discussion between parent and child about homework. Another context is a newspaper article about an extreme weather event.

Understanding the context is important because it can affect the choice of grammar or vocabulary. For example, in terms of grammar, the context determines whether the definite or indefinite article is required. In terms of vocabulary, it determines whether to use formal or informal language.

A contraction is a word formed by joining a noun or pronoun to its auxiliary verb. Contractions are very common in spoken language. For example: the contractions it's (it is), she's (she has) and I'll (I will) in the sentences It's raining, She's gone and I'll help.

Note that contractions have an apostrophe to show where the letter or letters of the auxiliary verb have been omitted.

Coordinate nouns are two nouns joined by a coordinating conjunction. The most common coordinating conjunctions are and and or. So, for example, Laurel and Hardy are coordinated nouns.

Two pronouns or a noun and a pronoun can also be coordinated. For example, he and she and my husband and I.

There is much disagreement on the grammaticality of coordinate possessives, particularly in the coordination of a noun and a pronoun. For example, there is no consensus on the most acceptable way to indicate the possessive of the coordinated 'my sister and I'.

• · Have you seen my sister and I's dog?
• · Have you seen my sister and me's dog?
• · Have you seen I and my sister's dog?
• · Have you seen my and my sister's dog?
• · Have you seen me and my sister's dog?
• · Have you seen mine and my sister's dog?

A copula verb (also called copular) is a verb that connects the subject to its complement. By far the most common copula is the verb to be. For example: I am thirsty and She is my English teacher.

Other common copulas are seem, look, taste and feel. For example: He looks angry today.

Do not confuse the copula verb to be with the auxiliary verb to be which combines with another verb in its present or past participle form in sentences such as Are you coming to my party? and She is living in Paris at the moment.

A corpus (plural: corpora) is a collection of written or spoken material stored in a huge database. It is used to analyse how language is produced in various contexts such as newspapers and television shows.

Two examples of corpora are: The British National Corpus (BNC), which is a collection of 100 million words of written and spoken English from a variety of sources. And The International Corpus of English (ICE), which is a collection of one million words of spoken and written English from 20 different countries.

The term counterfactual refers to a state that is not true or an action that did not happen. Counterfactuals are most commonly found in conditional sentences. For example: If I were rich, I'd quit my job (a present counterfactual: I'm not rich, so I can't quit my job), and If he had had time, he would have stayed longer, (a past counterfactual: he didn't have time, so he didn't stay longer).

Being rich and having time in the above examples are both counter or contrary to the truth or facts.

A dependent clause is a clause that adds detail to the main clause. It cannot stand on its own as a sentence because it depends on the main clause to make sense.

Dependent clauses start with a subordinating conjunction as shown in bold in the following sentences. The subordinating clause is in italics.

Note that dependent clauses are also called subordinate clauses.

A determiner is a word that precedes a noun. The most common determiners are the definitive article (the) and indefinite articles (a/an)

Other determiners include:

• - possessive pronouns: my, his, their
• - demonstrative pronouns: this, those...
• - quantifiers: all, each, many...
• - numerals: two, ten, thirty...

Determiners must agree in number with the nouns that follow them. For example: this book, not this books.

Discourse is a term for a connected stretch of language.

For example, a conversation between two people is discourse. So is an email exchange. This text is another example of discourse, as is a newspaper article or the chapter of a book.

Discourse analysis is the analysis of how writers and speakers choose to structure the 'texts'* that they produce in order to achieve coherence and cohesion as well as to pursue certain stylistic and rhetorical goals.

*In some analyses a connected stretch of language is called a 'text'.

An embedded clause is a clause that is present within another clause.

For example, in the sentence I saw the girl who won the chess competition in town yesterday, the relative clause who won the chess competition is embedded in the clause I saw the girl in town yesterday.

Note: There is no agreement among grammarians as to how to define embedding. But the basic idea is that embedding is the inclusion of one word string within another word string.

A finite verb has a subject and is marked for tense. For example We played chess yesterday has the subject we and the -ed past tense marking (or inflection).

The term is more easily understood by comparing it with its opposite, the nonfinite verb. The bold verb forms in the following sentences are examples of nonfinite verbs. They have no explicit subject and are not marked for tense:

In grammar, gender in English is best seen in the pronouns he, she, it, which are designated masculine, feminine and neuter (or non-personal), respectively.

There are some gender-specific nouns such as father or waitress. But English does not distinguish nouns grammatically by gender in the way that German does. In German, for example, the spoon is masculine (der Löffel), the fork is feminine (die Gabel) and the knife is neuter (das Messer).

An example of a gender agreement error in English is: Take care of my phone. Don't drop him.

The genitive is one of the three cases in modern English, together with the nominative and accusative. It is also called the possessive case.

The genitive or possessive case in English can be identified by the presence of an apostrophe in a noun. For example: John's dog, the trees' leaves, my neighbour's car.

A gerund is the present participle or -ing form of a verb that functions as a noun. For example, as the subject of the sentence 'Reading is a good way to learn vocabulary', and as the object of the verb enjoy in 'She doesn't enjoy cooking'.

Contrast these noun/nominal uses of reading and cooking with their use as periphrastic verb forms in 'I am reading "War and Peace" at the moment' and 'She has been cooking all day'.

Note: There is a lot of discussion among grammarians as to what constitutes a gerund. Some prefer to avoid the term altogther and use the "-ing form" or another alternative.

It is common in English grammar resources to read that a certain usage is incorrect. For example, the resource may say: The use of a singular verb form after a plural noun as in 'The children is very loud' is incorrect.

The children sentence clearly breaks a rule of grammar that every native speaker would agree with. But the word incorrect is also used to denote what some people consider unacceptable. For example: they in Someone called earlier. They didn't say their name.

Modern linguists therefore prefer to use the terms grammatical/ungrammatical to refer to usages that do or do not conform to the ways that most educated native speakers use the language.

Here is more on the terminology of the various types of usage problem.

The term head in grammar is used to refer to the most important word in a phrase or clause without which the phrase or clause has no meaning.

For example, dog is the head of the noun phrase the large black dog, stolen is the head of the verb phrase has been stolen, and on is the head of the prepositional phrase on the bed.

Hedging is a way of 'softening' statements and acknowledging the possibility of being wrong. For example, you can avoid making a bold claim by using the word arguably. So instead of stating Troy is the best movie set in the Bronze Age, you hedge by saying Troy is arguably the best movie set in the Bronze Age.

There are various ways to hedge: for example, by the inclusion of words such as arguably, possibly, perhaps, conceivably or by using 'weak' words such as may, might, could instead of will.

In traditional grammar, the independent clause of a sentence is the group of words that can be said to "stand alone". So, "I run every day" is an independent clause since it can be understood by itself (i.e., it can stand alone).

The group of words "because it keeps me fit" cannot be understood by itself. It depends on an independent clause to give it meaning. For this reason it is called a dependent clause (also known as a subordinate clause).

The infinitive is the base form of the verb. It is the form you see in dictionaries: eat, play, go, discuss, recommend, etc.

The bare infinitive (i.e. the infinitive without to) is used after modal verbs such as must. For example: I must go now.

The to-infinitive is used after certain other verbs. For example: I like to play chess or I forgot to feed the cat.

Inflections are the changes in spelling that happen when a word's grammar changes.

For example, the -ed that is added to work in the past tense, or the -s that is added to book in the plural.

A special type of inflection is the apostrophe (plus in most cases an -s) to show possession. For example, Betty's baby.

Here is more about inflections.

An intransitive verb is a verb that cannot be followed by an object. Sentences with intransitive verbs can be very short. For example:

More common intransitive verbs are sit, run, sneeze, sleep, rain.

Some intransitively verbs can be used transitively (i.e. with an object) in figurative expressions. For example: to die a thousand deaths, to rain cats and dogs and to laugh an evil laugh.

Intransitive verbs cannot be used in passive constructions.

Language transfer is the influence of the first language on the second. So, for example, if you are a German native speaker, you can transfer your knowledge of the article system to the learning of English, which uses the definite and indefinite articles in essentially the same way.

This positive language transfer makes the learning of this aspect of English much easier than it is for a Russian native speaker, whose language does not have articles.

Language transfer can also be negative. For example, Germans use the present tense where English requires the future with will. This results in language transfer errors such as I do it tomorrow or I tell him when I see him.

In traditional grammar, the main clause of a sentence is the group of words that can be said to "stand alone". So, "I run every day" is a main clause since it can be understood by itself (i.e., it can stand alone). For this reason the main clause is also called an independent clause).

The group of words "because it keeps me fit" cannot be understood by itself. It depends on the main clause to give it meaning. For this reason it is called a dependent clause (also known as a subordinate clause).

Marked is a term that has various meanings in the context of grammar. In this video series, however, it refers to a proto construction that is different from its more common, canonical (basic) form.

So, for example, the sentence I love sushi is the basic, unmarked subject-verb-object (SVO) order.

On the other hand, Sushi I love, which has the object-subject-verb (OSV) order, is a less common way of expressing the same thought and is therefore classified as marked.

The term matrix in some modern analyses of syntax is used for a clause that has an embedded clause within it. So, the matrix clause in "I knew that he would be late" is the whole sentence, with the clause that he would be late embedded within it.

In traditional grammar, "I knew" is regarded as the main clause and "that he would be late" is the subordinate clause.

A modal verb is a verb is followed by an infinitive. The most common modal verbs are must, can/could, will/would, shall/should, may/might. For example, I must go, I could go, I might go, etc.

Note: Some grammarians classify modal verbs as auxiliaries.

Morphology is the study of the internal structure of words and how they are formed and modified through the use of morphemes. Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning in a language.

For example, the prefix morpheme un- means not, and when attached to adjectives such as happy and important turns those words into their opposites.

The major aspects of morphology are inflection (modifying the form of a word to indicate its grammatical function or tense), derivation (creating new words by adding prefixes or suffixes to existing words), and compounding (combining two or more words to create a new word with a different meaning).

Negation is the grammar term for including the words not or neverin a verb construction. For example, I'm not hungry, She does not like me, He never answers my emails.

The words not and never are called negators.

A nonfinite verb form has no explicit subject and is not marked for tense. In the following sentences the nonfinite verb forms are contrasted with finite verb forms:

Noun is the word we give to the things in the world. Everything around you that you can see is a noun: computer, door, book, tree, dog.

Nouns can also be ideas or feelings, such as peace, sadness, memory. And nouns can be the names of people or places: Mari, Italy, London, Mississippi.

→ Nouns starting with a capital letter are called proper nouns. All the other nouns are common nouns.

In grammar, number refers simply to singularity and plurality. Book is a singular noun and book is a plural noun.

An example of a number agreement error in English would be to match a plural determiner with a singular noun: I don't have many money.

The object of a clause typically follows a transitive verb. It can be understood as the 'done to' (or in grammatical terms the 'patient') of the verb. So, for example, in the sentence The boy hit the ball, the ball is the object - i.e. the 'done to/patient' of the hitting.

In the following examples the object is shown in bold. In each case the sentence follows the very common SVO (subject-verb-object) pattern:

Note that in the examples above, the object is a direct object. There are also indirect objects, as in the following sentence: She read the class a story, where the class is the indirect object and a story is the direct object.

Objective is one of the terms associated with the case system. subjective is another case system term.

The case system determines how certain parts of speech change in form (spelling) when their role in the sentence changes. So, for example, the word I (as subject of the sentence and in the subjective case) changes to me in the objective case.

Unlike German or Latin, English has only a few pronouns that change between the subjective and objective cases.

Note: The objective case is also known as the accusative.

It is very common in spoken and written English to omit a word or words which can be understood by the listener or reader.

For example, I gave John an apple and Mary a pear. In this case, the words I gave have been omitted in front of the word Mary as they are unnecessary to convey the exact meaning.

Another example is the omission of the relative pronoun that after girl in What's the name of the girl you're dating?

Letters are very commonly omitted too. This is the case in the contraction of two words. For example, does not can be contracted to doesn't, with the omission of the letter o indicated by the apostrophe.

The grammatical term for the omission of letters or words is ellipisi

An operator has various meanings in grammatical analysis. Its most common use is in referring to the auxiliary verbs (be, have, do), as well as to the modal verbs.

Operators are shown in bold in the following examples:

A participle is a nonfinite form of a verb that is used with an auxiliary to create various tenses.

There are two participles: present and past. For example:

• - You are boring me. [present]
• - I have baked you a cake. [past]

Present and past participles can function as adjectives:

• - That was a boring lesson.
• - I'm bored!

The present participle can be used as a noun as in:

• - Baking is my favourite pastime.

This use of a present participle functioning as the subject or complement is often called the gerund.

The term partitive refers to the relationship between two nouns where one is part of another. For example, a slice of bread and the cover of the book.

Most often, partitives use the preposition of to connect the two nouns in this whole-part relationship. But the relationship can also be expressed the genitive apostrophe. For example, the book's cover or the tree's roots.

Note, however, that only relatively few partitives can be expressed naturally by the genitive. For example, the bread's slice is very questionable.

In grammatical terms, the patient is the recipient or 'done to' of a transitive verb. So, in the sentence The girl ate the cake, the cake is the patient.

In the active voice, the patient follows a transitive verb, i.e. it is the object of the verb. In the passive voice, the patient is the grammatical subject.

The patient in the following sentences is shown in bold:

A periphrastic verb form is a multiple-part verb.

In the following sentences the periphrastic verbs are shown in bold:

Most verb constructions (also called tenses in traditional language teaching) are periphrastic. The only single-part tenses in English are the present simple and past simple.

Note: Some adjectives and adverbs are periphrastic in their comparative and superlative forms: more intelligent, most carefully, etc.

In grammar, person refers to the personal pronouns I/we (first person), you/you (second person), and he-she-it/they (third person).

An example of a person agreement error in English would be to match a third person pronoun with a first or second person verb form. For example: He have lots of friends.

This is a common mistake made by beginning learners of English.

A phrase is a group of connected words. Most phrases are between two and five words long. For example: tomorrow evening, John's bike, the old man, in the cafeteria, at the end of the week.

The following sentence has four phrases:

- The new student · can speak · three languages · very well.

Note: In modern grammar a phrase can be a single word. So, he and money are both noun phrases (NP).

Plural is the grammar word for more than one of a noun. The words tables, cars, cups, girls are all plural nouns

Regular plurals end in the letter -s in English: books, doors, trees, dogs.

English also has many nouns with irregular plurals that do not end in the letter -s: mice, teeth, women, sheep.

The term possessive describes the grammatical relationship between a noun or pronoun and its following noun. For example, his teacher, Sarah's car the tree's roots.

Often the grammatical relationship is also a semantically possessive relationship. For example, Sarah possesses a car. And a tree possesses roots.

But the possessive relationship shown by the possessive pronoun or in nouns by an apostrophe (usually plus -s) is not always one of possession. For example, Shakespeare's plays or a day's work.

In traditional grammar, the predicate is what remains in a clause when the subject has been taken out.

In the following sentences the predicate is shown in bold:

Note that the finite verb in the predicate is called the predicator in modern grammar.

Predicative is the term for an adjective that is used as a complement of the verb. For example, big as in The dog is big.

Adjectives that premodify nouns are called attributive adjectives. For example: That big dog scares me.

In some analyses of clause structures, the term predicator is used instead of verb.

Traditionally, clause structures are classified by the constituents they contain: SVO, SVA, SVOC, etc. But whereas the (S)ubject, (O)bject, (C)omplement and (A)djunct denote functions, the term (V)erb is a word class.

For this reason, some modern grammarians prefer the term predicator, which indicates the function of the verb in the clause.

A prepositional phrase is a group of words starting with a preposition which is followed by a noun phrase or pronoun. For example: by the sea, at the end of the street, with him.

A prepositional phrase often comes after a noun to specify or define that noun. For example: the man in the red jacket, the girl with green hair.

A prescriptivist is someone who tells others about what he or she considers to be the rules of the language.

A prescriptivist will say, for example, that it is wrong to split an infinitive, as quickly does in You need to quickly leave the room.

A descriptivist, on the other hand, is someone (usually a linguist) who simply describes English as it is commonly used.

For example, a descriptivist will note that it is common to use a subject pronoun in coordinations: Please tell Marta and I when you are ready to meet. The descriptivist will not make the judgement that the pronoun I is wrong in such coordinations.

There is more on this issue at Descriptive and prescriptive approaches to grammar.

A pronoun can be used instead of a noun phrase. For example, he instead of John.

There are many types of pronoun. They include:

• · personal: I/me, you, he/him, we/us, ...
• · possessive: mine, yours, hers, ours, theirs, ...
• · reflexive: myself, yourself, herself, itself, ...
• · demonstrative: this, that, these, those
• · interrogative: what, which, who/whom/whose
· relative: which/that, who/whom/whose

In grammar, a prototypical example of one of the parts of speech is a word that has all the main characteristics of that part of speech.

For example, big is a prototypical adjective because it can be used both attributively and predicatively. It can also be used comparatively and as a superlative.

Compare big with asleep, which can be used neither predicatively nor comparatively. So asleep is not a prototype (prototypical adjective).

Note: Another word for prototypical is canonical.

Register refers to the use of different styles of speaking or writing based on the situation or audience.

An example is the informal register in greeting a friend Hi, John compared to the formal register in greeting your boss Good morning, Ms Wood.

Relationship in grammar refers to the connection between words. One kind of relationship is a possessive relationship when one thing or person possesses or has another thing. For example, a tree has branches or the teacher has a new car.

In English, this kind of possessive relationship is shown with an apostrophe: the tree's roots, the teacher's new car.

A relative clause comes after a noun and either specifies that noun or gives extra information about that noun.

For example, the relative clause in bold in the following sentence is a specifying or defining relative clause: The girl who won the chess competition comes from China.

And the relative clause in bold in the next sentence is an 'extra information' or non-defining relative clause. Note the commas: My mother, who lives in New York, is visiting us next week.

Semantics is the branch of linguistics that deals with the meanings of words and longer pieces of language. If you look up a word in a dictionary, the first thing you will find is its meaning. The meaning will usually be followed by grammatical information.

So, for example, nouns can be defined semantically as words referring to people, places, things and ideas. And they can be defined grammatically or functionally as performing the role of subject, object or complement in a clause.

Singular is the grammar word for one of a noun: a book, a door, one tree, a dog. The words table, car, cup, girl are all singular nouns

The grammar word for more than one of a noun is plural. Tables, cars, cups, girls are all plural nouns.

In traditional grammar, the subject of a sentence is who or what the sentence is about. For example: the subject of the sentence My mother gets up early is my mother. The sentence is about her. And the rest of the sentence (the predicate) gives information about the subject (in this case, that she gets up early).

The subject is very commonly the first word or words in a sentence and is followed by a verb.

Subjective is one of the terms associated with the case system. objective is another case system term.

The case system determines how certain parts of speech change in form (spelling) when their role in the sentence changes. So, for example, the word he (as subject of the sentence and in the subjective case) changes to him in the objective case.

Unlike German or Latin, English has only a few pronouns that change between the subjective and objective cases.

Note: The subjective case is also known as the nominative.

A subordinate clause is a clause that adds detail to the main clause. It cannot stand on its own as a sentence because it depends on the main clause to make sense. For this reason subordinate clauses are also called dependent clauses.

Subordinate clauses start with a subordinating conjunction as shown in bold in the following sentences. The subordinating clause is in italics.

Syntax is concerned with the way in which words are combined to form phrases, clauses or sentences. For example, one rule of English syntax is that the adjective comes before the noun and the definite article comes before the adjective.So it has to be the big dog, not the dog big.

Basic English sentence structure i.e syntax is SVO (subject-verb-object). For example: The big dog chased a cat, as compared with (e.g.) Korean, which has the SOV word order (The big dog a cat chased.)

In traditional grammar tense is the word for the verb constructions that allow speakers to indicate the time frame of an action or state (basically: past, present and future). The term tense is also used to indicate aspect (basically: continuous and perfect).

The combination of time frame and aspect results in many different tenses such as present simple, past continuous, future perfect.

Note: Modern grammarians claim that it is more accurate to say that English has only two tenses: present and past (or non-present) and to refer to all the traditional 'tenses' as verb forms or verb constructions.

A topic sentence is the sentence in each paragraph of an essay, report or other extended piece of writing that introduces the topic of the paragraph - i.e. what the reader can expect to find in the rest of the paragraph.

As such, the topic sentence is most commonly the first sentence in the paragraph and is followed by an explanation or further details that support or extend the first sentence topic.

In the following short and simple paragraph, the topic sentence is shown in bold.

There are three main ways we can protect endangered animals. Firstly, we can avoid destroying their habitats. Secondly, we can stop using their body parts for medicine or decoration. And thirdly... .

A transitive verb is a verb that can have an object. In the following sentences the transitive verb is shown in bold and the object in red:

Note that some transitive verbs can also be used intransitively (i.e. without an object). For example, you can say simply She ate.

Other transitive verbs must have an object. Neither He bought. nor My cat bit. is possible.

Only transitive verbs can be used in passive constructions.

The term verb construction is an alternative to the traditional term tense. Modern grammarians claim that there are only two tenses: past and present.

So, for example, they avoid calling the present perfect in the sentence I have finished the book the present perfect tense, but simply the present perfect or the present perfect form.

An alternative term to verb construction is verb form.

The term verb form is an alternative to the traditional term tense. Modern grammarians claim that there are only two tenses: past and present.

So, for example, they avoid calling the present perfect in the sentence I have finished the book the present perfect tense, but simply the present perfect or the present perfect form.

An alternative term to verb form is verb construction.

In grammar terminology, voice refers to the relationship of the subject of a sentence to its verb. English has two voices: active and passive.

In the active voice we can say that the subject of the sentence is the 'doer' of the verb. So, for example, in The girl (subject) ate the cake the girl is the 'doer' of the eating.

In the passive voice the subject is not the 'doer' but the 'done to': The cake (subject) was eaten by the girl. So, the grammatical subject in the passive is not the doer of the verb, but the done to (cake).

The grammatical terms for doer and done to are agent and patient, respectively.

The active voice is far more common than the passive voice.