English Grammar terms
The most Common English Grammar terms used in our Grammar lessons:
Active Voice & Passive voice
In active voice sentence, the subject of the verb does the action.
Ex: They killed my dog yesterday.
In passive voice sentence, the subject receives the actions and may be hidden, not mentioned the in sentence.
Ex: My dog was killed (by them) yesterday.
Adjective
An adjective describes a person, things,…. A word like beautiful, cheap, reasonable, etc.
Adverb
An adverbs tell more about a verb. The words like quickly, quietly, fast, often etc are adverbs.
Article
2 types of articles in English:
The “indefinite” articles are a and an. The “definite article” is the.
Auxiliary Verb
A verb that is used with a main verb. Be, do and have are auxiliary verbs. Can, may, must etc are modal auxiliary verbs.
Clause
A group of words containing a subject and its verb.
Ex: She was terribly sick. We would buy that house.
Conjunction
Words, phrases and clauses are connnected by conjunctions, such as and, but, if
Infinitive
The simple form of a verb as in to work or work.
Interjection
An exclamation iwords
oh!, ah!, ouch!, well!).
Modal Verb
An auxiliary verb like can, may, must etc that modifies the main verb and expresses possibility, probability etc. It is also called “modal auxiliary verb”.
Noun
A word like table, dog, teacher, America etc. A noun is the name of an object, concept, person or place. A “concrete noun” is something you can see or touch like a person or car. An “abstract noun” is something that you cannot see or touch like a decision or happiness. A “countable noun” is something that you can count (for example: bottle, song, dollar). An “uncountable noun” is something that you cannot count (for example: water, music, money).
Object
In the active voice, a noun or its equivalent that receives the action of the verb. In the passive voice, a noun or its equivalent that does the action of the verb.
Participle
The -ing and -ed forms of verbs. The -ing form is called the “present participle”. The -ed form is called the “past participle” (for irregular verbs, this is column 3).
Part Of Speech
One of the eight classes of word in English – noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, preposition, conjunction and interjection.
Phrase
A group of words not containing a subject and its verb (eg on the table, the girl in a red dress).
Preposition
A word like at, to, in, over etc. Prepositions usually come before a noun and give information about things like time, place and direction.
Pronoun
A word like I, me, you, he, him, it etc. A pronoun replaces a noun.
Sentence
A group of words that express a complete thought. A sentence conveys a statement, question, exclamation or command. A sentence contains or implies a subject and a predicate. In simple terms, a sentence must contain a verb and (usually) a subject. A sentence starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop (.), question mark (?) or exclamation mark (!).
Subject
Every sentence contains (or implies) two parts: a subject and a predicate. The subject is the main noun (or equivalent) in a sentence about which something is said.
Tense
The form of a verb that shows us when the action or state happens (past, present or future).
Verb
A word like (to) walk, (to) talk, (to) come, feel, hate. A verb describes an action or state.
