Terms

Parts of Speech

November 26, 2010

On the basis of their grammatical behavior the words of a language are divided into several classes. These different classes of words are called the parts of speech. Languages differ in the parts of speech they have. English, for example has eight parts of speech: noun, pronoun, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, verb and interjection. Some [...]

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Grammar Terms – Conditional Sentence, Conjugation, Conjunct, Coordinate structure

November 17, 2010

Conditional is a traditional label for the modal auxiliary verbs would and should when they do not express obligation. The name is given because sentences with these auxiliary verbs often imply an unstated condition. For example, the sentence ‘I would like a drink’ appears to imply something like ‘If I had a choice’. In practice, [...]

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What are complements?

November 16, 2010

The label complement is applied to several different things. A subject complement A subject complement is a word or phrase which follows a copular verb. It either modifies the subject or denotes something identical to the subject. The bold italic items in the following sentences are examples of subject complements. Jane is an advocate. Susie [...]

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What is an appositive?

November 12, 2010

The label appositive refers to a noun phrase which immediately follows another noun phrase of identical reference. An appositive is usually non-restrictive which means that it only gives additional information about the first noun phrase whose reference in quite clear. In writing a non-restrictive appositive is set off by commas. The phrases set off by [...]

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