15 Grammar Terms You Must Know
1. Adjectives
An adjective is a describing word. It gives us more information about a noun. Examples of adjectives are: good, bad, clever, kind, innocent, foolish etc.
2. Adverb
An adverb is a word used to modify a verb. Adverbs tell us more about the time, place, manner or frequency of the action. Most words ending in -ly are adverbs. Examples are: soon, eagerly, immediately, kindly, cleverly, sometimes, today, outside etc.
Adverbs can also modify adjectives and other adverbs.
3. Articles
Articles are a kind of determiners. They go at the beginning of nouns or noun phrases. The article a/an can only be used with singular countable nouns.
4. Clause
A clause is a group of words that makes complete sense. A clause must have a finite verb. It will usually also have a subject of its own. Note that an imperative sentence is also a clause, but it does not have an expressed subject.
5. Conjunction
A conjunction is a word used to connect two or more words, phrases or clauses together. There are mainly two types of conjunctions – coordinating conjunctions and subordinating conjunctions. Examples are: and, but, or, so, because, as, since, if, when etc.
6. Noun
A noun is the name of a person, place, animal or thing. There are different kinds of nouns. A proper noun is the name of a particular person or thing. Examples are: India, Meera, Ramesh, Amazon etc. A common noun is a word used to denote a particular class of people, animals or things. Examples are: house, school, flower, bird, women etc.
7. Plural
A plural noun refers to more than one person or thing. Examples are: boys, cats, dogs, books, countries etc.
8. Possessive
We use an apostrophe + s to form the possessive form of a noun. For example, in the expression Rahul's mother , Rahul is in the possessive form. Pronouns also have possessive forms. Possessive pronouns are: my, your, our, their, his, her and its.
9. Preposition
Prepositions are small but important words. They show how two words in a sentence are related. For example, in the sentence, I went to school, the preposition to indicates my movement from home to school. It shows direction. Likewise, in the sentence The book is on the table, the preposition on shows the relation between the book and the table.
10. Pronoun
A pronoun is a word used to avoid the repetition of a noun. Consider the sentences Raju is my friend. He is an advocate. Here the pronoun he stands for Raju. There are different kinds of pronouns.
11. Proper noun
A proper noun is the name of a particular person or thing. Examples are: Mohini, Radhika, Peter, Ismail, India, France, Malayalam, Nile etc.
12. Phrase
A phrase is a group of words that makes some sense but not complete sense. Examples are: from time to time, every now and then, once upon a time, in the corner etc.
13. Sentence
A sentence is a group of words which makes complete sense. A sentence has a subject and a predicate of its own. In writing, a sentence begins with a capital letter and ends with a full stop, a question mark or an exclamation mark.
Examples are:
Honesty is the best policy.
Look at this.
What happened?
What a pleasant surprise!
14. Singular
A singular noun refers to one person or object. Examples are: child, man, pen, book, dog, cat, river etc. Only countable nouns have singular and plural forms.
15. Verb
A verb is a word indicating action. Examples are: write, sing, take, look, break, bring etc.