The Grammar World

Hi People!
Welcome to my world of grammar. For years I've been obsessed with the English
language and have been trying to reason and question why grammar rules are made the
way they are.
I haven't found an answer to that question, however, what I have discovered is my
passion for grammar in the process...
So anyone who is as passionate as I am, is welcome aboard!
Don't be tensed about the tenses
Our journey into time commences
What are Future Present and Past
The concept of time seems very vast!
Look and hear and touch and smell
Whats my message?
Only time will tell...

The Rule of the Thumb

Are there any rules in grammar?

Rules! Not exactly... But there are guidelines that help us understand the
language better.
Let us give these guidelines or thumb rules, as I like to call them, a glance:

Parts of Speech
o There are eight parts of speech. Dont get scared! They are
nothing but simple words that when put together form meaningful
sentences. Same words can be used as different parts of speech,
depending on how they are used. These parts of speech are:
Nouns- Naming words like George, city, chair, happiness
Pronouns- Words used in place of nouns like he, she, I, they
Adjectives- Words that describe or tell the quality of nouns or
pronouns
Verbs- doing words in action or in different states like sit,
stand, like, want
Adverbs- words that describe adjectives, verbs and adverbs
like quickly, very
Prepositions- words that tell the relationship of the main noun
or the subject with the rest of the sentence like on, at, into,
from
Conjunctions- words that join words, clauses, sentences like
and, but, or
Interjections- words used to express emotions like oh, wow
Phrases, Clauses and Sentences
o A phrase is a simple group of words that may or may not express
any meaning
o A clause is an incomplete sentence. It conveys a certain meaning
but theres always something more to be added.
o A sentence is a group of words strung together to convey a
meaning. It is the most basic component of any language and if
spoken or written incorrectly, may or may not convey the meaning
that it is intended to. It has two parts

Subject: a noun or a pronoun, along with its description, is

the subject of the sentence
Predicate: the rest of the sentence that tells about the
subjects action or state and other such details is the
predicate

Tenses
o Tenses refer to the time being referred to in a sentence
o As we all know (HOPEFULLY!) that there are three basic categories
to tenses:
Past
Present
Future
o Each of these categories is further divided into sub-categories
based on the status of the action that is being talked about
Simple- the normal status of the action in past, present or
future
Continuous- the progression of action in the three tenses
Perfect- a completed action in the three tenses
Perfect Continuous- a completed action in past, present and
future which is in progression even after achieving the state
of perfection.
Subject Verb Agreement
o Well! What does the name suggest? Yes, it is what it suggests...
Subject and the verb that talks about it must agree in number.
Confused? Dont be! Youll understand it better when we get there...
Active and Passive Voice
o Ever voiced your opinions directly, openly, robustly? That was your
ACTIVE VOICE.
o Remember the time when you had to state something indirectly in
order to subdue the situation or calm someone down... HUSH!
HUSH! HUSH!! You had used PASSIVE VOICE there, and yes, there
are a few guidelines that can help you speak passively
Conditionals
o Oh! The ifs and whens! Conditionals are the types of conditions that
are expressed in the English language and the consequences that
follow.
o There are four conditionals
Zero- surety
First- actual likelihood of the result happening in future
Second- make-believe present or improbable future
Third- unreal past

And so we cover our major points... dont let these guidelines overwhelm you; for
there are hundreds of guidelines and structures that can be explored... but
thankfully, we shall only stick to the basics!

Parts of Speech
Let's start with the basics :)
Here's how I understand the parts of speech... what do you think about this...
The Text:
The eight brothers are talk of the town,
You know the naming one as Noun.
The next one known as Pronoun,
Is used instead of Noun.
The third called the Adjective,
Seems mighty descriptive.
The fourth one is the Verb
He consists of all the doing words.
The next christened Adverb,
Beautifies our spoken word.
Now meet the Preposition,
He cares for all relations.
Then comes our Conjunction,
He joins almost everyone.
The last one- Interjection,
Has quite a good expression.
Together they form the parts of speech
Now we begin to explore each!

Exercise:
Fill in the blanks with appropriate names of the parts of speech.
There were these eight brothers who went into the town
The eldest one, the smartest, was fondly known as ________________
The second in the line was called the _______________,
He told you noun's comparatives and also superlatives.
The third born child of English was called the _______________
He was a noun's replacement, in his ups and downs.
The fourth one was a worker and known to us as ____________
He consists of all the doing words, like love, hurt and disturb.
The fifth of them is genius, was christened as _________________
He himself tells the qualities of adjective and verb.
Now what all do I say about the sixth of brothers
He's called _____________ and locates all the others.
The last but one was the fondest and so was named ______________
He joined them all together on more than one occasion.

And last but not the least, was the brat called ___________________
The "aaahhs" and "ooohhhs" and "ouches" are quite a great selection.
He shouted and expressed in words that I can't teach...
And all these brothers together form your PARTS OF SPEECH.

Nouns and their Types

Hi there!
Have a close look at the table given below and you'll get a glimpse of the types of nouns.
Types of Nouns

Oh yes! They are a HUGE category of words. They are the naming words... They are the
names given to people, places, animals, birds, things, emotions... PHEW!! Broadly
divided into four categories based on their class, group, perception and number, we
classify nouns into SEVEN types: Common, Proper, Collective, Concrete, Abstract,
Countable and Uncountable.
Now watch this animation and try to spot all the naming words (it doesn't matter what
they name) and then we shall see what each type means.

Could you find them all? Let us see...

The highlighted words in the following text are all nouns.
Hi, my name is Christine. I am a woman. I belong to the Sinclair family of
London. I wear glasses because they make me feel confident. I love to have tea in the
evening with one tea spoon of sugar and no milk.
Now based on our table above, let us try to put them in appropriate categories and Voila!
We'll know what these types mean!
Categories

From now on be conscious of all the nouns around you and use them as often as you can.
They will help improve your vocabulary and will help us further when we learn other
grammar concepts.
So see you again, when we explore NOUNS further and learn how to use them.

Properties of Nouns
As promised, I'm back with some more information on Nouns. Number and gender are
properties of nouns. This means that they are expressed in these two forms combined
together. Let us see what these properties are:

Number: It means how many?

One

Many

There are two forms that belong to the NUMBER category: Singular and Plural.
o Singular noun means the naming word that is ONE in number or single.
o Plural nouns mean the naming words are MANY in number. Please
remember, uncountable nouns do not have plurals... Why? Because they
cannot be counted!!
Now USUALLY we can turn a noun to plural by adding either s or es to the singular
form, for example, one CAT and many CATS; one BOX and many BOXES. However,
there are certain exceptions to this rule.
Ive managed to cover quite a few here, however, there may be more... and if you come
across some additional rules, please let me know.
METHOD OF FORMING PLURALS
When the singular word ends in a vowel followed by y,
plural is made by simply adding an s in the end.
When the singular word ends in a vowel followed by y,
plural is made by replacing the y with ies.
When the singular word ends in f or fe, then it is
generally replaced by ves. However, please note that
there are quite a few exceptions to this guideline.
When there is a single vowel sound between two
consonant sounds, the vowel sound is replaced by
another vowel sound
In compound words, the s is added to the actual noun,
rather than its quality or description

EXAMPLE
Day-days, key-keys, boy-boys,
guy-guys
Story-stories, body-bodies,
cherry-cherries, entry-entries
Half-halves, scarf-scarves,
thief-thieves... exceptions- roofroofs, belief-beliefs
man-men, mouse-mice, goosegeese, tooth-teeth
Son-in-law becomes sons-inlaw. However, grand-parent
becomes grand-parents

An interesting thing worth mentioning here is that there are certain nouns that have only
one form- either singular (measles, diabetes) or plural (scissors, glasses) and cannot be
converted from singular to plural or vice versa.
There is yet another category of words that is used in both singular and plural forms, but
is written as singular (sheep, hair, deer, fruit, fish...)
Now that we have learnt how to express whether our noun is one in number or many,
lets learn the gender categories in which our nouns can be divided.

Gender: It refers to the gender category the noun belongs to.

Male

Female

There are four kinds of gender on which our nouns can be classified:
o Masculine-the obvious nouns that belong to the male category like boys
o Feminine- the obvious nouns that belong to the female category like lady
o Neuter-non-living things, inanimate objects, emotions, feelings or abstract
nouns do not require to take any gender like a chair
o Common- both males and females fall in this general category like a
teacher or a doctor

A BUS

A MANAGER

A BULB
A MOTHER

A GOLFER

A RABBIT
MR. SMITH

A LOCK
SANTA CLAUS

A JONES
TIGER
MS.

FLOWERS

AN ARCHITECT

THE BUDDHA

A TEMPLE