First Person Pronouns
The person category which denotes the speaker and possibly also some people associated with the speaker. The English first person pronouns are I/me (singular) and we/us (plural). The singular pronoun I/me always means ‘the...
Author: Manjusha Nambiar
Dash
Dashes (–) are common in informal writing. They can be used in the same way as colons, semi-colons or brackets. There are three things I can never remember – names, faces and I have...
Dangling Participle
A participle which does not have a subject in the sentence is called a dangling participle or hanging participle. For example, in Driving down the road, a deer leapt out in front of me,...
Gender
The use of different grammatical forms to show the difference between masculine, feminine and neuter or between human and non-human. A noun that denotes a male animal is said to be of the masculine...
Finite And Non-finite Verbs
A verb which is limited by the number and person of its subject is called a finite-verb. Consider the examples given below. I sing. Ann sings. They sing. The verb sing changes its form...
Ergative Verb
A verb which can be either transitive or intransitive is called an ergative verb. English has many ergative verbs. Examples are: sink, ring, boil, speak, explode, collapse, dissolve etc. • The explosion sank the...
Embedded Question
A question which is not being asked directly, but which merely forms part of a larger sentence, which itself may or may not be a question is called an embedded question or an indirect...
Discourse Marker
A word or a phrase which is linked weakly or not at all to an adjoining sentence and which serves to keep a conversation or a text flowing smoothly. Discourse markers show the connection...
Determiners
Determiners are words like a, my, this, that, some, all, both, either, every, enough and several. They come at the beginning of noun phrases, but they are not adjectives. There are two main groups...
Positive, Comparative And Superlative
Degree is a grammatical category which expresses the degree to which some quality is present. English adjectives and adverbs commonly distinguish three degrees: the positive (the basic form), the comparative (expressing a higher degree...