Glossary of English Grammar Terms (detailed)

Glossary of English Grammar Terms


This glossary of English grammar terms relates to the English language. Some terms here may have additional or extended meanings when applied to other languages. For example, "case" in some languages applies to pronouns and nouns. In English, nouns do not have case and therefore no reference to nouns is made in its definition here.



Term Definition

active voice

one of two voices in English; a direct form of expression where the subject performs or "acts" the verb; see also passive voice

eg: "Many people eat rice"

adjective

part of speech that typically describes or "modifies" a noun

eg: "It was a big dog."

adjective clause seldom-used term for relative clause


adjunct word or phrase that adds information to a sentence and that can be removed from the sentence without making the sentence ungrammatical

eg: I met John at school.

adverb

word that modifies a verb, an adjective or another adverb

eg: quickly, really, very

adverbial clause dependent clause that acts like an adverb and indicates such things as time, place or reason

eg: Although we are getting older, we grow more beautiful each day.

affirmative statement that expresses (or claims to express) a truth or "yes" meaning; opposite of negative

eg: The sun is hot.

affix language unit (morpheme) that occurs before or after (or sometimes within) the root or stem of a word

eg: un- in unhappy (prefix), -ness in happiness (suffix)


agreement

(also known as "concord") logical (in a grammatical sense) links between words based on tense, case or number

eg: this phone, these phones

antecedent word, phrase or clause that is replaced by a pronoun (or other substitute) when mentioned subsequently (in the same sentence or later)

eg: "Emily is nice because she brings me flowers."

appositive noun phrase that re-identifies or describes its neighbouring noun

eg: "Canada, a multicultural country, is recognized by its maple leaf flag."

article

determiner that introduces a noun phrase as definite (the) or indefinite (a/an)


aspect

feature of some verb forms that relates to duration or completion of time; verbs can have no aspect (simple), or can have continuous or progressive aspect (expressing duration), or have perfect or perfective aspect (expressing completion)

auxiliary verb

(also called "helping verb") verb used with the main verb to help indicate something such as tense or voice

eg: I do not like you. She has finished. He can swim.

bare infinitive unmarked form of the verb (no indication of tense, mood, person, or aspect) without the particle "to"; typically used after modal auxiliary verbs; see also infinitive

eg: "He should come", "I can swim"

base form

basic form of a verb before conjugation into tenses etc

eg: be, speak

case

form of a pronoun based on its relationship to other words in the sentence; case can be subjective, objective or possessive

eg: "I love this dog", "This dog loves me", "This is my dog"

causative verb verb that causes things to happen such as "make", "get" and "have"; the subject does not perform the action but is indirectly responsible for it

eg: "She made me go to school", "I had my nails painted"

clause group of words containing a subject and its verb

eg: "It was late when he arrived"

comparative,

comparative adjective

form of an adjective or adverb made with "-er" or "more" that is used to show differences or similarities between two things (not three or more things)

eg: colder, more quickly

complement

part of a sentence that completes or adds meaning to the predicate

eg: Mary did not say where she was going.

compound noun noun that is made up of more than one word; can be one word, or hyphenated, or separated by a space

eg: toothbrush, mother-in-law, Christmas Day

compound sentence sentence with at least two independent clauses; usually joined by a conjunction

eg: "You can have something healthy but you can't have more junk food."

concord another term for agreement


conditional

structure in English where one action depends on another ("if-then" or "then-if" structure); most common are 1st, 2nd, and 3rd conditionals

eg: "If I win I will be happy", "I would be happy if I won"

conjugate

to show the different forms of a verb according to voice, mood, tense, number and person; conjugation is quite simple in English compared to many other languages

eg: I walk, you walk, he/she/it walks, we walk, they walk; I walked, you walked, he/she/it walked, we walked, they walked

conjunction

word that joins or connects two parts of a sentence

eg: Ram likes tea and coffee. Anthony went swimming although it was raining.

content word

word that has meaning in a sentence, such as a verb or noun (as opposed to a structure word, such as pronoun or auxiliary verb); content words are stressed in speech

eg: "Could you BRING my GLASSES because I've LEFT them at HOME"

continuous

(also called "progressive") verb form (specifically an aspect) indicating actions that are in progress or continuing over a given time period (can be past, present or future); formed with "BE" + "VERB-ing"

eg: "They are watching TV."

contraction

shortening of two (or more) words into one

eg: isn't (is not), we'd've (we would have)

countable noun

thing that you can count, such as apple, pen, tree (see uncountable noun)

eg: one apple, three pens, ten trees

dangling participle illogical structure that occurs in a sentence when a writer intends to modify one thing but the reader attaches it to another

eg: "Running to the bus, the flowers were blooming." (In the example sentence it seems that the flowers were running.)

declarative sentence sentence type typically used to make a statement (as opposed to a question or command)

eg: "Tara works hard", "It wasn't funny"

defining relative clause

(also called "restrictive relative clause") relative clause that contains information required for the understanding of the sentence; not set off with commas; see also non-defining clause

eg: "The boy who was wearing a blue shirt was the winner"

demonstrative pronoun

demonstrative adjective pronoun or determiner that indicates closeness to (this/these) or distance from (that/those) the speaker

eg: "This is a nice car", "Can you see those cars?"

dependent clause part of a sentence that contains a subject and a verb but does not form a complete thought and cannot stand on its own; see also independent clause

eg: "When the water came out of the tap..."

determiner

word such as an article or a possessive adjective or other adjective that typically comes at the beginning of noun phrases

eg: "It was an excellent film", "Do you like my new shirt?", "Let's buy some eggs"

direct speech saying what someone said by using their exact words; see also indirect speech

eg: "Lucy said: 'I am tired.'"

direct object noun phrase in a sentence that directly receives the action of the verb; see also indirect object

eg: "Joey bought the car", "I like it", "Can you see the man wearing a pink shirt and waving a gun in the air?"

embedded question question that is not in normal question form with a question mark; it occurs within another statement or question and generally follows statement structure

eg: "I don't know where he went," "Can you tell me where it is before you go?", "They haven't decided whether they should come"

finite verb verb form that has a specific tense, number and person

eg: I work, he works, we learned, they ran

first conditional

"if-then" conditional structure used for future actions or events that are seen as realistic possibilities

eg: "If we win the lottery we will buy a car"

fragment incomplete piece of a sentence used alone as a complete sentence; a fragment does not contain a complete thought; fragments are common in normal speech but unusual (inappropriate) in formal writing

eg: "When's her birthday? - In December", "Will they come? - Probably not"

function purpose or "job" of a word form or element in a sentence

eg: The function of a subject is to perform the action. One function of an adjective is to describe a noun. The function of a noun is to name things.

future continuous

(also called "future progressive") tense* used to describe things that will happen in the future at a particular time; formed with WILL + BE + VERB-ing

eg: "I will be graduating in September."

future perfect

tense* used to express the past in the future; formed with WILL HAVE + VERB-ed

eg: "I will have graduated by then"

future perfect continuous

tense* used to show that something will be ongoing until a certain time in the future; formed with WILL HAVE BEEN + VERB-ing

eg: "We will have been living there for three months by the time the baby is born"

future simple

tense* used to describe something that hasn't happened yet such as a prediction or a sudden decision; formed with WILL + BASE VERB

eg: "He will be late", "I will answer the phone"

gerund

noun form of a verb, formed with VERB-ing

eg: "Walking is great exercise"

gradable adjective

adjective that can vary in intensity or grade when paired with a grading adverb ; see also non-gradable adjective

eg: quite hot, very tall

grading adverb

adverb that can modify the intensity or grade of a gradable adjective

eg: quite hot, very tall

hanging participle another term for dangling participle


helping verb another term for auxiliary verb


imperative

form of verb used when giving a command; formed with BASE VERB only

eg: "Brush your teeth!"

indefinite pronoun

pronoun does not refer to any specific person, thing or amount. It is vague and "not definite".

eg: anything, each, many, somebody

independent clause

(also called "main clause") group of words that expresses a complete thought and can stand alone as a sentence; see also dependent clause

eg: "Tara is eating curry.", "Tara likes oranges and Joe likes apples."

indirect object noun phrase representing the person or thing indirectly affected by the action of the verb; see also direct object

eg: "She showed me her book collection", "Joey bought his wife a new car"

indirect question another term for embedded question


indirect speech

(also called "reported speech") saying what someone said without using their exact words; see direct speech

eg: "Lucy said that she was tired"

infinitive

base form of a verb preceded by "to"**; see also bare infinitive

eg: "You need to study harder", "To be, or not to be: that is the question"

inflection change in word form to indicate grammatical meaning

eg: dog, dogs (two inflections); take, takes, took, taking, taken (five inflections)

interjection

common word that expresses emotion but has no grammatical value; can often be used alone and is often followed by an exclamation mark

eg: "Hi!", "er", "Ouch!", "Dammit!"

interrogative

(formal) sentence type (typically inverted) normally used when asking a question

eg: "Are you eating?", "What are you eating?"

interrogative pronoun

pronoun that asks a question.

eg: who, whom, which

intransitive verb

verb that does not take a direct object; see also transitive verb

e.g. "He is working hard", "Where do you live?"

inversion any reversal of the normal word order, especially placing the auxiliary verb before the subject; used in a variety of ways, as in question formation, conditional clauses and agreement or disagreement

eg: "Where are your keys?","Had we watched the weather report, we wouldn't have gone to the beach", "So did he", "Neither did she"

irregular verb

see irregular verbs list

verb that has a different ending for past tense and past participle forms than the regular "-ed"; see also regular verb

eg: buy, bought, bought; do, did, done

lexicon, lexis all of the words and word forms in a language with meaning or function

lexical verb another term for main verb


linking verb

verbs that connect the subject to more information (but do not indicate action), such as "be" or "seem"

main clause another term for independent clause


main verb

(also called "lexical verb") any verb in a sentence that is not an auxiliary verb; a main verb has meaning on its own

eg: "Does John like Mary?", "I will have arrived by 4pm"

modal verb

(also called "modal") auxiliary verb such as can, could, must, should etc; paired with the bare infinitive of a verb

eg: "I should go for a jog"

modifier word or phrase that modifies and limits the meaning of another word

eg: the house => the white house, the house over there, the house we sold last year

mood

sentence type that indicates the speaker's view towards the degree of reality of what is being said, for example subjunctive, indicative, imperative

morpheme unit of language with meaning; differs from "word" because some cannot stand alone

e.g. un-, predict and -able in unpredictable

multi-word verb

verb that consists of a basic verb + another word or words (preposition and/or adverb)

eg: get up (phrasal verb), believe in (prepositional verb), get on with (phrasal-prepositional verb)

negative form which changes a "yes" meaning to a "no" meaning; opposite of affirmative

eg: "She will not come", "I have never seen her"

nominative case another term for subjective case


non-defining relative clause

(also called "non-restrictive relative clause") relative clause that adds information but is not completely necessary; set off from the sentence with a comma or commas; see defining relative clause

eg: "The boy, who had a chocolate bar in his hand, was still hungry"

non-gradable adjective

adjective that has a fixed quality or intensity and cannot be paired with a grading adverb; see also gradable adjective

eg: freezing, boiling, dead

non-restrictive relative clause another term for non-defining relative clause


noun

part of speech that names a person, place, thing, quality, quantity or concept; see also proper noun and compound noun

eg: "The man is waiting", "I was born in London", "Is that your car?", "Do you like music?"

noun clause clause that takes the place of a noun and cannot stand on its own; often introduced with words such as "that, who or whoever"

eg: "What the president said was surprising"

noun phrase (NP) any word or group of words based on a noun or pronoun that can function in a sentence as a subject, object or prepositional object; can be one word or many words; can be very simple or very complex

eg: "She is nice", "When is the meeting?", "The car over there beside the lampost is mine"

number change of word form indicating one person or thing (singular) or more than one person or thing (plural)

eg: one dog/three dogs, she/they

object thing or person affected by the verb; see also direct object and indirect object

eg: "The boy kicked the ball", "We chose the house with the red door"

objective case

case form of a pronoun indicating an object

eg: "John married her", "I gave it to him"

part of speech

one of the classes into which words are divided according to their function in a sentence

eg: verb, noun, adjective


participle verb form that can be used as an adjective or a noun; see past participle, present participle


passive voice

one of two voices in English; an indirect form of expression in which the subject receives the action; see also active voice

eg: "Rice is eaten by many people"

past tense

(also called "simple past") tense used to talk about an action, event or situation that occurred and was completed in the past

eg: "I lived in Paris for 10 years", "Yesterday we saw a snake"

past continuous

tense often used to describe an interrupted action in the past; formed with WAS/WERE + VERB-ing

eg: "I was reading when you called"

past perfect

tense that refers to the past in the past; formed with HAD + VERB-ed

eg: "We had stopped the car"

past perfect continuous

tense that refers to action that happened in the past and continued to a certain point in the past; formed with HAD BEEN + VERB-ing

eg: "I had been waiting for three hours when he arrived"

past participle verb form (V3) - usually made by adding "-ed" to the base verb - typically used in perfect and passive tenses, and sometimes as an adjective

eg: "I have finished", "It was seen by many people", "boiled eggs"

perfect verb form (specifically an aspect); formed with HAVE/HAS + VERB-ed (present perfect) or HAD + VERB-ed (past perfect)


person grammatical category that identifies people in a conversation; there are three persons: 1st person (pronouns I/me, we/us) is the speaker(s), 2nd person (pronoun you) is the listener(s), 3rd person (pronouns he/him, she/her, it, they/them) is everybody or everything else

personal pronoun

pronoun that indicates person

eg: "He likes my dogs", "They like him"

phrasal verb

multi-word verb formed with a verb + adverb

eg: break up, turn off (see phrasal verbs list)

NB: many people and books call all multi-word verbs "phrasal verbs" (see multi-word verbs)


phrase two or more words that have a single function and form part of a sentence; phrases can be noun, adjective, adverb, verb or prepositional


plural of a noun or form indicating more than one person or thing; plural nouns are usually formed by adding "-s"; see also singular, number

eg: bananas, spoons, trees

position grammatically correct placement of a word form in a phrase or sentence in relation to other word forms

eg: "The correct position for an article is at the beginning of the noun phrase that it describes"

positive basic state of an adjective or adverb when it shows quality but not comparative or superlative

eg: nice, kind, quickly

possessive adjective adjective (also called "determiner") based on a pronoun: my, your, his, her, its, our, their

eg: "I lost my keys", "She likes your car"

possessive case

case form of a pronoun indicating ownership or possession

eg: "Mine are blue", "This car is hers"

possessive pronoun

pronoun that indicates ownership or possession

eg: "Where is mine?", "These are yours"

predicate one of the two main parts (subject and predicate) of a sentence; the predicate is the part that is not the subject

eg: "My brother is a doctor", "Who did you call?", "The woman wearing a blue dress helped me"

prefix

affix that occurs before the root or stem of a word

eg: impossible, reload

preposition

part of speech that typically comes before a noun phrase and shows some type of relationship between that noun phrase and another element (including relationships of time, location, purpose etc)

eg: "We sleep at night", "I live in London", "This is for digging"

prepositional verb

multi-word verb that is formed with verb + preposition

eg: believe in, look after

present participle -ing form of a verb (except when it is a gerund or verbal noun)

eg: "We were eating", "The man shouting at the back is rude", "I saw Tara playing tennis"

present simple (also called "simple present") tense usually used to describe states and actions that are general, habitual or (with the verb "to be") true right now; formed with the basic verb (+ s for 3rd person singular)

eg: "Canada sounds beautiful", "She walks to school", "I am very happy"

present continuous (also called "present progressive") tense used to describe action that is in process now, or a plan for the future; formed with BE + VERB-ing

eg: "We are watching TV", "I am moving to Canada next month"

present perfect

tense that connects the past and the present, typically used to express experience, change or a continuing situation; formed with HAVE + VERB-ed

eg: "I have worked there", "John has broken his leg", "How long have you been in Canada?"

present perfect continuous

tense used to describe an action that has recently stopped or an action continuing up to now; formed with HAVE + BEEN + VERB-ing

eg: "I'm tired because I've been running", "He has been living in Canada for two years"

progressive another term for continuous


pronoun

word that replaces a noun or noun phrase; there are several types including personal pronouns, relative pronouns and indefinite pronouns

eg: you, he, him; who, which; somebody, anything

proper noun

noun that is capitalized at all times and is the name of a person, place or thing

eg: Shakespeare, Tokyo, EnglishClub.com

punctuation

standard marks such as commas, periods and question marks within a sentence

eg: , . ? ! - ; :

quantifier determiner or pronoun that indicates quantity

eg: some, many, all

question tag

final part of a tag question; mini-question at end of a tag question

eg: "Snow isn't black, is it?"

question word another term for WH-word


reciprocal pronoun

pronoun that indicates that two or more subjects are acting mutually; there are two in English - each other, one another

eg: "John and Mary were shouting at each other", "The students accused one another of cheating"

reduced relative clause

(also called "participial relative clause") construction similar to a relative clause, but containing a participle instead of a finite verb; this construction is possible only under certain circumstances

eg: "The woman sitting on the bench is my sister", "The people arrested by the police have been released"

reflexive pronoun

pronoun ending in -self or -selves, used when the subject and object are the same, or when the subject needs emphasis

eg: "She drove herself", "I'll phone her myself"

regular verb

see regular verbs list

verb that has "-ed" as the ending for past tense and past participle forms; see also irregular verb

eg: work, worked, worked

relative adverb adverb that introduces a relative clause; there are four in English: where, when, wherever, whenever; see also relative pronoun


relative clause dependent clause that usually starts with a relative pronoun such as who or which, or relative adverb such as where

eg: "The person who finishes first can leave early" (defining), "Texas, where my brother lives, is big" (non-defining)


relative pronoun

pronoun that starts a relative clause; there are five in English: who, whom, whose, which, that; see also relative adverb


reported speech another term for indirect speech


restrictive relative clause another term for defining relative clause


second conditional

"if-then" conditional structure used to talk about an unlikely possibility in the future

eg: "If we won the lottery we would buy a car"

sentence largest grammatical unit; a sentence must always include a subject (except for imperatives) and predicate; a written sentence starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop/period (.), question mark (?) or exclamation mark (!); a sentence contains a complete thought such as a statement, question, request or command

eg: "Stop!", "Do you like coffee?", "I work."

series list of items in a sentence

eg: "The children ate popsicles, popcorn and chips"

singular of a noun or form indicating exactly one person or thing; singular nouns are usually the simplest form of the noun (as found in a dictionary); see also plural, number

eg: banana, spoon, tree

split infinitive situation where a word or phrase comes between the particle "to" and the verb in an infinitive; considered poor construction by some

eg: "He promised to never lie again"

Standard English (S.E.) "normal" spelling, pronunciation and grammar that is used by educated native speakers of English

structure word word that has no real meaning in a sentence, such as a pronoun or auxiliary verb (as opposed to a content word, such as verb or noun); structure words are not normally stressed in speech

eg: "Could you BRING my GLASSES because I've LEFT them at HOME"

subject one of the two main parts (subject and predicate) of a sentence; the subject is the part that is not the predicate; typically, the subject is the first noun phrase in a sentence and is what the rest of the sentence "is about"

eg: "The rain water was dirty", "Mary is beautiful", "Who saw you?"

subjective case

also called "nominative" case form of a pronoun indicating a subject

eg: Did she tell you about her?

subjunctive

fairly rare verb form typically used to talk about events that are not certain to happen, usually something that someone wants, hopes or imagines will happen; formed with BARE INFINITIVE (except past of "be")

eg: "The President requests that John attend the meeting"

subordinate clause another term for dependent clause


suffix affix that occurs after the root or stem of a word

eg: happiness, quickly

superlative, superlative adjective

adjective or adverb that describes the extreme degree of something

eg: happiest, most quickly

SVO subject-verb-object; a common word order where the subject is followed by the verb and then the object

eg: "The man crossed the street"

syntax sentence structure; the rules about sentence structure

tag question

special construction with statement that ends in a mini-question; the whole sentence is a tag question; the mini-question is a question tag; usually used to obtain confirmation

eg: "The Earth is round, isn't it?", "You don't eat meat, do you?"

tense

form of a verb that shows us when the action or state happens (past, present or future). Note that the name of a tense is not always a guide to when the action happens. The "present continuous tense", for example, can be used to talk about the present or the future.

third conditional

"if-then" conditional structure used to talk about a possible event in the past that did not happen (and is therefore now impossible)

eg: "If we had won the lottery we would have bought a car"

transitive verb

action verb that has a direct object (receiver of the action); see also intransitive verb

eg: "The kids always eat a snack while they watch TV"

uncountable nouns

(also called "mass nouns" or "non-count") thing that you cannot count, such as substances or concepts; see also countable nouns

eg: water, furniture, music

usage way in which words and constructions are normally used in any particular language

V1, V2, V3

referring to Verb 1, Verb 2, Verb 3 - being the base, past and past participle that students typically learn for irregular verbs

eg: speak, spoke, spoken

verb

word that describes the subject's action or state and that we can change or conjugate based on tense and person

eg: (to) work, (to) love, (to) begin

voice

form of a verb that shows the relation of the subject to the action; there are two voices in English: active, passive


WH-question

question using a WH-word and expecting an answer that is not "yes" or "no"; WH-questions are "open" questions; see also yes-no question

eg: Where are you going?

WH-word

(also called "question word") word that asks a WH-question; there are 7 WH-words: who, what, where, when, which, why, how

word order order or sequence in which words occur within a sentence; basic word order for English is subject-verb-object or SVO


yes-no question

question to which the answer is yes or no; yes-no questions are "closed" questions; see also WH-question

eg: "Do you like coffee?"

zero conditional

"if-then" conditional structure used when the result of the condition is always true (based on fact)

eg: "If you dial O, the operator comes on"

* note that technically English does not have a real future tense

** some authorities consider the base form of the verb without "to" to be the true infinitive