Gerund
When -ing forms are used like nouns, they are called gerunds. A gerund can be the subject, object or complement of a verb. Flying (subject) makes me sick. Trespassing (subject) is prohibited. Smoking (subject)...
Category: Grammar
Full Stop
Full stop The punctuation mark full stop (.) is used to close sentences. A new sentence that follows a full stop has a capital letter. Full stops are also used in writing abbreviations. This...
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...
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...