Glossary of English Grammar Terms4
| main clause | another term for independent clause |
| main verb (also called "lexical verb") | any verb in a sentence that is not an auxiliary verb; a main verb has meaning on its own eg: "Does John like Mary?", "I will have arrived by 4pm" |
| modal verb (also called "modal") | auxiliary verb such as can, could, must, should etc; paired with the bare infinitive of a verb eg: "I should go for a jog" |
| modifier | word or phrase that modifies and limits the meaning of another word eg: the house => the white house, the house over there, the house we sold last year |
| mood | sentence type that indicates the speaker's view towards the degree of reality of what is being said, for example subjunctive, indicative, imperative |
| morpheme | unit of language with meaning; differs from "word" because some cannot stand alone e.g. un-, predict and -able in unpredictable |
| multi-word verb | verb that consists of a basic verb + another word or words (preposition and/or adverb) eg: get up (phrasal verb), believe in (prepositional verb), get on with (phrasal-prepositional verb) |
| negative | form which changes a "yes" meaning to a "no" meaning; opposite of affirmative eg: "She will not come", "I have never seen her" |
| nominative case | another term for subjective case |
| non-defining relative clause (also called "non-restrictive relative clause") | relative clause that adds information but is not completely necessary; set off from the sentence with a comma or commas; see defining relative clause eg: "The boy, who had a chocolate bar in his hand, was still hungry" |
| non-gradable adjective | adjective that has a fixed quality or intensity and cannot be paired with a grading adverb; see also gradable adjective eg: freezing, boiling, dead |
| non-restrictive relative clause | another term for non-defining relative clause |
| noun | part of speech that names a person, place, thing, quality, quantity or concept; see also proper noun and compound noun eg: "The man is waiting", "I was born in London", "Is that your car?", "Do you likemusic?" |
| noun clause | clause that takes the place of a noun and cannot stand on its own; often introduced with words such as "that, who or whoever" eg: "What the president said was surprising" |
| noun phrase (NP) | any word or group of words based on a noun or pronoun that can function in a sentence as a subject, object or prepositional object; can be one word or many words; can be very simple or very complex eg: "She is nice", "When is the meeting?", "The car over there beside the lampost is mine" |
| number | change of word form indicating one person or thing (singular) or more than one person or thing (plural) eg: one dog/three dogs, she/they |
| object | thing or person affected by the verb; see also direct object and indirect object eg: "The boy kicked the ball", "We chose the house with the red door" |
| objective case | case form of a pronoun indicating an object eg: "John married her", "I gave it to him" |
| part of speech | one of the classes into which words are divided according to their function in a sentence eg: verb, noun, adjective |
| participle | verb form that can be used as an adjective or a noun; see past participle, present participle |
| passive voice | one of two voices in English; an indirect form of expression in which the subject receives the action; see also active voice eg: "Rice is eaten by many people" |
| past tense (also called "simple past") | tense used to talk about an action, event or situation that occurred and was completed in the past eg: "I lived in Paris for 10 years", "Yesterday we saw a snake" |
| past continuous | tense often used to describe an interrupted action in the past; formed with WAS/WERE + VERB-ing eg: "I was reading when you called" |
| past perfect | tense that refers to the past in the past; formed with HAD + VERB-ed eg: "We had stopped the car" |
| past perfect continuous | tense that refers to action that happened in the past and continued to a certain point in the past; formed with HAD BEEN + VERB-ing eg: "I had been waiting for three hours when he arrived" |
| past participle | verb form (V3) - usually made by adding "-ed" to the base verb - typically used in perfect and passive tenses, and sometimes as an adjective eg: "I have finished", "It was seen by many people", "boiled eggs" |
| perfect | verb form (specifically an aspect); formed with HAVE/HAS + VERB-ed (present perfect) or HAD + VERB-ed (past perfect) |
| person | grammatical category that identifies people in a conversation; there are three persons: 1st person (pronouns I/me, we/us) is the speaker(s), 2nd person (pronoun you) is the listener(s), 3rd person (pronouns he/him, she/her, it, they/them) is everybody or everything else |
| personal pronoun | pronoun that indicates person eg: "He likes my dogs", "They like him" |
| phrasal verb | multi-word verb formed with a verb + adverb eg: break up, turn off (see phrasal verbs list) NB: many people and books call all multi-word verbs "phrasal verbs" (see multi-word verbs) |
| phrase | two or more words that have a single function and form part of a sentence; phrases can be noun, adjective, adverb, verb or prepositional |
| plural | of a noun or form indicating more than one person or thing; plural nouns are usually formed by adding "-s"; see also singular, number eg: bananas, spoons, trees |
| position | grammatically correct placement of a word form in a phrase or sentence in relation to other word forms eg: "The correct position for an article is at the beginning of the noun phrase that it describes" |
| positive | basic state of an adjective or adverb when it shows quality but not comparative orsuperlative eg: nice, kind, quickly |
| possessive adjective | adjective (also called "determiner") based on a pronoun: my, your, his, her, its, our, their eg: "I lost my keys", "She likes your car" |
| possessive case | case form of a pronoun indicating ownership or possession eg: "Mine are blue", "This car is hers" |
| possessive pronoun | pronoun that indicates ownership or possession eg: "Where is mine?", "These are yours" |
| predicate | one of the two main parts (subject and predicate) of a sentence; the predicate is the part that is not the subject eg: "My brother is a doctor", "Who did you call?", "The woman wearing a blue dresshelped me" |
| prefix | affix that occurs before the root or stem of a word eg: impossible, reload |
| preposition | part of speech that typically comes before a noun phrase and shows some type of relationship between that noun phrase and another element (including relationships of time, location, purpose etc) eg: "We sleep at night", "I live in London", "This is for digging" |
| prepositional verb | multi-word verb that is formed with verb + preposition eg: believe in, look after |
| present participle | -ing form of a verb (except when it is a gerund or verbal noun) eg: "We were eating", "The man shouting at the back is rude", "I saw Tara playingtennis" |
| present simple(also called "simple present") | tense usually used to describe states and actions that are general, habitual or (with the verb "to be") true right now; formed with the basic verb (+ s for 3rd person singular) eg: "Canada sounds beautiful", "She walks to school", "I am very happy" |
| present continuous(also called "present progressive") | tense used to describe action that is in process now, or a plan for the future; formed with BE + VERB-ing eg: "We are watching TV", "I am moving to Canada next month" |
| present perfect | tense that connects the past and the present, typically used to express experience, change or a continuing situation; formed with HAVE + VERB-ed eg: "I have worked there", "John has broken his leg", "How long have you been in Canada?" |
| progressive | another term for continuous |
| pronoun | word that replaces a noun or noun phrase; there are several types including personal pronouns, relative pronouns and indefinite pronouns eg: you, he, him; who, which; somebody, anything |
| proper noun | noun that is capitalized at all times and is the name of a person, place or thing eg: Shakespeare, Tokyo, EnglishClub.com |
| punctuation | standard marks such as commas, periods and question marks within a sentence eg: , . ? ! - ; : |
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