Basic Grammar

1. Basic Grammar A Writer’s Reference B1-B4

2. Parts of Speech • Nouns: the name or a person, place, thing, or concept. • The lion in the cage growledat the zookeeper. • Verbs: express action or being (possibly preceded by one or more helping verbs). • Patrick plays basketball everyday.

3. Transitive / intransitive Transitive= transfers the action from the subject toward a direct object. A group of volunteers painted a mural on the wall. Intransitive= does not transfer action so it does not have an object. I waited patiently.

4. Linking Verbs Connects the subject with a word or words that identify or describe the subject. It can connect the subject with a noun, the predicate nominative. Judge Biancais also a professor of law. -Can also connect the subject to a pronoun or an adjective in the predicate. Michellefeltill after the barbecue. Wewere so hungry.

5. Auxiliary Verbs Also called helping verbs They help the main verb express action or make a statement. They indicate voice, mood, or tense. The officers had been planning the raid for months.

6. Pronouns • Words used in place of a noun. Usually substitutes a specific noun, known as its antecedent. • Personal: • She let me borrow her helmet. • Candice let me borrow her helmet Antecedent personal pronoun

7. Possessive Pronouns • Shows ownership or belonging. • That bike is mine.

8. Intensive and Reflexive Pronouns Both are formed by adding –self or –selves to a personal pronoun.

9. Reflexive Pronouns reflect an action back on a preceding noun or pronoun. Kim helped herself to second of every buffet item. • Intensive Pronouns add emphasis to a noun or pronoun in the same sentence. No one asked the doctorherself if she needed help. • If it can be removed without changing the meaning of the sentence, then it is an intensive pronoun.

10. Relative Pronoun Introduces a subordinate clause. Who whom which whose that Schliemann was the archaeologist who discovered Troy. • A subordinate, or dependent, clause does not express a complete thought and cannot stand alone as a sentence. • If current studies are correct, many people love to read about their personalities.

11. Interrogative Pronoun Is used to ask a question. Who whom which what whose Whose wallet is this? What can we do while it rains?

12. Demonstrative Pronoun Points out specific persons, places, things, or ideas. This, these- point out persons or things that are near in space or time. That, those- point out persons or things that are more distant in space or time.

13. Indefinite Pronoun Does not refer to a specific person or thing. Someone left the phone off the hook. The snowstorm closed most of the schools.

14. Reciprocal Pronoun Expresses mutual action or relationship. Each other One another "Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.“ (John F. Kennedy)

15. Adjectives: used to modify, or describe, a noun or pronoun. • Which one? What kind of? How many? • Adverbs: used to modify, or qualify, a verb (or verbal), and adjective, or another adverb. • When? Where? How? Why? Under what conditions? To what degree?

16. Preposition A word used to show the relationship between a noun or pronoun and some other word in the sentence. It is a word placed before a noun or pronoun to form a phrase modifying another word in the sentence. (it can sometimes functions as an adjective or as an adverb).

17. He yelled to the child. He yelled at the child. He yelled aboutthe child. He yelled near the child.

18. Prepositional phrases • Adjective phrase • Adverb phrase Page 320

19. Objects and complements • Linking verbs and subject complements • Transitive verbs and direct objects • Transitive verbs, indirect objects, and direct objects • Transitive verbs, direct objects, and object complements • Intransitive verbs Page 316-318

20. Conjunctions Words used to join words or groups of words. • Coordinating Conjunctions: connects word or word groups that have equal importance in a sentence. • Correlative conjunctions: are pairs of conjunctions that connect words or groups of words. Always used in pairs, they correlate with one another. • Subordinating conjunctions: introduce subordinate clauses; joins a subordinate clause to an independent clause.

21. Interjections Words or short phrases used to express emotion. It has no grammatical connection to other words in a sentence. Usually set off by a comma or exclamation mark. Wow! We won!

22. Subordinate Word Groups • Prepositional phrases • Verbal phrases • Appositive phrases • Absolute phrases • Subordinate phrases

23. Parts of Sentences A sentence is a group of words that expresses a complete thought. Every sentence can be divided into two parts—the subject and the predicate. Some areas of the Atacama get rain only a few times a century.

24. Sentence Types • Simple: Consists of one independent clause and no subordinate clauses. • Compound: Contains two or more independent clauses joined together (usually joined with a coordinating conjunction). Some people like changebut others like stability.

25. Complex: contains one independent clause and one or more subordinate clauses. Although only-children differ, they often share many traits. • Compound-Complex: has two or more independent clauses and one or more subordinate clauses. Researchers have studied couples who have contrasting personalities, and the results have been interesting.