It has been suggested that Disputes in English grammar be merged into this article or section. (Discuss)

English grammar is a body of rules specifying how meanings are created in English. There are many accounts of the grammar, which tend to fall into two groups: the descriptivist, which describe the patterns through which meanings are typically created in functional speech and writing; and the prescriptivist, which set out pre-existing rules as to how meanings are created (see prescription and description). Disputed English grammar denotes disagreement about whether given constructions constitute correct English. ... Verbs in the English language are a lexically and morphologically distinct part of speech which describes an action, an event, or a state. ... This is a paradigm of English verbs, that is, a set of conjugation tables, for the model regular verbs and for some of the most common irregular verbs. ... English has a large number of irregular verbs. ... In the English language, a modal auxiliary verb is an auxiliary verb (or helping verb) that can modify the grammatical mood (or mode) of a verb. ... In English as in many other languages, the passive voice is the form of a transitive verb whose grammatical subject serves as the patient, receiving the action of the verb. ... The English language once had an extensive declension system similar to modern German or Icelandic. ... The personal pronouns of English can have various forms according to gender, number, person, and case. ... This article needs additional references or sources for verification. ... A compound is a word composed of more than one free morphemes. ... An honorific is something that is attached to the name but is not normally used elsewhere, e. ... This article is focused mainly on usage of English relative clauses. ... Look up gender in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... For the rules of English grammar, see English grammar and Disputes in English grammar. ... In linguistics, prescription can refer both to the codification and the enforcement of rules governing how a language is to be used. ... This article does not cite its references or sources. ...

No human language's grammar has been fully mapped out^{[citation needed]}. That is, no set of unambiguous rules has been formulated that will always or almost always agree with native speakers on whether any given sentence is grammatical or not^{[citation needed]}. (This is evidenced by the generally poor performance of automated grammar checkers^{[citation needed]}.) The development of a complete grammar is an important goal of natural language processing. In computing terms, a grammar checker is a design feature or a software program designed to verify the grammatical correctness or lack of it in a written text. ... Natural language processing (NLP) is a subfield of artificial intelligence and linguistics. ...

The remainder of this article deals with English grammar as viewed from a linguistic perspective. Therefore, the issues addressed deal mainly with the grammars of natural dialects of everyday speech rather than those of formal writing. Issues common to all languages are not stressed here. Linguistics is the scientific study of language, which can be theoretical or applied. ...

Word order

English is a subject verb object (SVO) language: it prefers a sequence of subject–verb–object in its simplest, unmarked declarative statements. Thus "Tom [subject] eats [verb] cheese [object]" and "Mary sees the cat." In linguistic typology, subject-verb-object (SVO) is the sequence subject verb object in neutral expressions: Sam ate oranges. ...

However, beyond these simple examples, word order is a complicated matter in English. In particular, the speaker or writer's point of departure in each clause is a key factor in the organization of the message. Thus, the elements in a message can be ordered in a way that signals to the reader or listener what the message concerns.

• The duke has given my aunt that teapot. (i.e., I'm going to tell you about the duke.)
• My aunt has been given that teapot by the duke. (i.e., I'm going to tell you about my aunt.)
• That teapot has been given to my aunt by the duke. (i.e., I'm going to tell you about that teapot.)

The point of departure can also be set up as an equation, known as a thematic equative. In this way, virtually any element in a clause can be put first.

• "What the duke gave my aunt was a teapot" (i.e., I'm going to tell you what the duke gave my aunt.)
• "What happened was that the duke gave my aunt a teapot" (i.e., I'm going to tell you what happened.)

Usually, the point of departure is the subject of a declarative clause; this is the unmarked form. A point of departure is marked when it is not the subject—thus, occasionally it is the object ("You I blame for this dilemma") and more often an adverbial phrase ("This morning I got up late"). In grammar, a clause is a word or group of words ordinarily consisting of a subject and a predicate, although in some languages and some types of clauses, the subject may not appear explicitly. ...

In questions, point of departure is treated slightly differently. Unmarked questions start with the word that indicates what the speaker wants to know.

• "Where is my little dog?" (I want you to tell me where.)
• "Is John Smith inside?" (I want you to tell me whether he is or isn't.)

Marked questions displace this key "what I want to know" word with some other element.

• "After tea, will you tell me a story?" (still "will you or won't you?")
• "In your house, who does the cooking?" (still "who?")

Imperative clauses are either of the type "I want you to do something" or "I want you and me to do something." The second type usually starts with let's; in the unmarked form of the first type, you is implied and not made explicit ("Improve your grammar!"), and included in the marked form ("You improve your grammar!"); another marked form is "Do improve your grammar." In the negative, "Don't argue with me" is unmarked, and "Don't you argue with me" is marked.

In spoken English, the point of departure is frequently marked off by intonation.

Generally, English is a head-initial language, meaning that the "anchor" of a phrase (segment of a sentence) occurs at the beginning of the phrase. In linguistics, a sentence is a unit of language, characterized in most languages by the presence of a finite verb. ...

• ran quickly (verb phrase)
• to the store (prepositional phrase)

The main exception is that simple modifiers precede the noun phrases: A prepositional phrase (PP) is a linguistic term for a phrase whose head is a preposition. ... Look up noun phrase in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

• a dog (article + noun)
• blue house (adjective + noun)
• Fred's cat (possessive + noun) but man of the house (noun + prepositional phrase)

This leads to a sentence like: "Fred's sister ran quickly to the store." As can be inferred from this example, the sequence of a basic sentence (ignoring articles and other determiners as well as prepositional phrases) is: Adjective1 - Subject - Verb - Adverb - Adjective2 - Indirect Object - Adjective3 - Direct Object. An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. ... Determiners are words which quantify or identify nouns. ...

Interrogative sentences invert word order ("Did you go to the store?"). Changing a given sentence from active to passive grammatical voice changes the word order, moving the new subject to the front ("John bought the car" becomes "The car was bought by John"), and lexical or grammatical emphasis (topicalization) changes it in many cases as well (see duke-aunt-teapot examples above). In grammar, the voice of a verb describes the relationship between the action (or state) that the verb expresses and the participants identified by its arguments (subject, object, etc. ...

English also sees some use of the OSV (object-subject-verb) word order, especially when making comparisons using pronouns that are marked for case. For example "I hate oranges, but apples I'll eat." Far more rare, but still sometimes used is OVS, "If it's apples you like, then apples like I," although this last usage can sound contrived and anachronistic to a native speaker.

Nouns

In English, nouns generally describe persons, places, things, and abstract ideas, and are treated as grammatically distinct from verbs. English nouns, in general, are not marked for case or gender, but are marked for number and definiteness. In linguistics, declension is a feature of inflected languages: generally, the alteration of a noun to indicate its grammatical role. ...

Gender

Main article: Gender in English

A remnant of grammatical gender is also preserved in the third person pronouns. Gender is assigned to animate objects based on biological gender (where known), and to personified objects based on social conventions (ships, for example, are often regarded as feminine in English). He is used for masculine nouns; she is used for feminine nouns; and it is used for nouns of indeterminate gender and inanimate objects. The use of it to refer to humans is generally considered ungrammatical and impolite, but is sometimes used deliberately as a term of offence or insult is it implies the person is of indeterminate gender or worst: sub-human. Look up gender in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Traditionally, the masculine he was used to refer to a person in the third person whose gender was unknown or irrelevant to the context; recently, this usage has come under criticism for supporting gender-based stereotypes and is increasingly considered inappropriate (see Gender-neutral language). There is no consensus on a replacement. Some English speakers prefer to use the slightly cumbersome "he or she" or "s/he", others prefer the use of they (3rd plural) (see singular they). This situation rarely leads to confusion, since the intended meaning can be inferred from context, eg "This person has writen me a letter but they have not signed it." although it still is considered by some to be incorrect grammar. Spivak pronouns have also been proposed which are essentially formed by dropping the leading <th> from the plural counterpart, but their use is relatively rare compared to other solutions. For comparison, speakers of German distinguish between the homophonous sie ("she"), sie ("they"), and Sie ("you", polite) with little difficulty. Gender-neutral language (gender-generic, gender-inclusive, non-sexist, or sex-neutral language) is language that attempts to refer neither to males nor females when discussing an abstract or hypothetical person whose sex cannot otherwise be determined. ... Many traditional and current uses of distributive constructions in English grammar are broadly described by the term singular they, covering uses of the pronoun they (and its inflected forms) when plurality is not required by the context. ... The Spivak pronouns are new terms proposed to serve as gender-neutral third-person singular personal pronouns in English (see gender-neutral pronouns). ...

The categorization of nouns is typically expressed by one or more of the elements called deictic, numerative, epithet, and classifier. We shall consider each of these in turn.

Deixis

The deictic element indicates whether or not a specific subset of a noun is intended; and if so, which subset. A deictic is either (i) specific or (ii) non-specific. The specific deictics are given in the following table.

The subset in question is specified by one of two possible deictic features: either

• (a) demonstratively, i.e., by reference to some kind of proximity to the speaker
  • ("this", "these" = "near me"; "that", "those" = "not near me"), or
• (b) by possession, i.e., by reference to 'person' as defined from the standpoint of the speaker
  • ("my", "your", "our", "his", "her", "its", "their"; also "Mary's", "my father's", etc.)

together with the possibility of an interrogative in both of these categories (demonstrative "which?" and possessive "whose?"). All of these have the function of identifying a particular subset of the noun that is being referred to.

"Proximity to the speaker" refers not only to physical distance, but also to temporal; deictics orient the listener to the 'speaker-now', the temporal–modal complex that constitutes the point of reference of the speech event. So, "this tragedy" refers to one that is current or recent and/or is or was geographically close to the speaker, whereas "that tragedy" refers to one that occurred in the past and/or was less geographically close.

There is one more item in this class, namely "the". The word "the" is a specific, determinative deictic of a peculiar kind: it means "the subset in question is identifiable; but this will not tell you how to identify it—the information is somewhere around, where you can recover it"; typically, the listener/reader can recover the information from assumed general knowledge, the specific context, or from a specific and recent point in the text. So whereas "this train" means "you know which train: the one near me", and "my train" means "you know which train: the one I own", "the train" means simply "you know which train." Hence "the" is usually accompanied by some other element that supplies the information required: for example, "the long train" means "you know which train: you can tell it by its length."

Non-specific deictics convey the sense of all, or none, or some unspecified subset. The main categories and main items in each are as follow.

(a) Total

• positive ("each", "every", "both", "all")
• negative ("neither", "no", i.e. "not any")

(b) Partial

• selective ("one", "either", "some", "any")
• non-selective ("a" or "an", "one")

There are two systems of number for English nouns, one associated with each of the two kinds of deictics. (i) With specific deictics, the number system is non-plural versus plural; mass nouns are grouped together with singular, in a category of non-plural. So "this" and "that" go with non-plural (singular or mass), and "these" and "those" go with plural.

For example, for non-plural nouns, singular might be "this train" (plural "these trains") and mass might be "this electricity" (no plural equivalent).

(ii) With non-specific deictics, the system is singular versus non-singular. So "a" and "an" go with singular, and weak "some" with non-singular (mass or plural).

For example, "a train" is singular (plural "trains" or "some trains"); non-singular mass ("electricity" or "some electricity" has no singular equivalent).

If there is no deictic element, the noun is non-specific and, within that, non-singular. In other words, a noun may have no deictic element in its structure, but this does not mean that it has no value in the deictic "system", but simply that the value selected is realized by a form having no deictic in the expression.

Number

Main article: English plural

English nouns are typically inflected for number, having distinct singular and plural forms. The plural form usually consists of the singular form plus -s or -es, but there are many irregular nouns. Ordinarily, the singular form is used when discussing one instance of the noun's referent, and the plural form is used when discussing any other number of instances, but there are many exceptions to this rule. Examples include: This article needs additional references or sources for verification. ... In linguistics, grammatical number is a morphological category characterized by the expression of quantity through inflection or agreement. ... Look up plural in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

• The girl (singular) talks.
• The girls (plural) talk.
• Every girl (singular) talks.
• All girls (plural) talk.
• No girl (singular) talks.
• No girls (plural) talk.

Articles

A definite article such as "the" is used to refer to a specific instance of the noun, often already mentioned in the context or easy to identify. Definite articles are slightly different from demonstratives, which often indicate the location of nouns with respect to the speaker and audience. Definite Article is the title of British comedian Eddie Izzards 1996 performance released on video and CD. The video/DVD and CD performances were both recorded on different nights at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London, England. ...

• "Let's look for a good restaurant."
• "What about the restaurant we ate at last week?"
• "That restaurant was terrible. What about this one on the corner here?"

An indefinite article such as "a" or "an" is used to refer to a generic instance of the noun. Note that "a" is used when preceding a noun beginning with a consonant sound, whereas "an" is used when preceding a noun beginning with a vowel sound. An article is a word that is put next to a noun to indicate the type of reference being made to the noun. ... In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by a closure or stricture of the vocal tract sufficient to cause audible turbulence. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ...

• You should have a drink.
• That building is a university.
• They are being an annoyance.
• He is an heir to the throne.

Case

Historically, English used to mark nouns for case, and the two remnants of this case marking are the pronominal system and the possessive clitic (which used to be called the Saxon genitive). The possessive is marked by a clitic at the end of the possessing noun phrase. This can be illustrated in the following manner: In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun indicates its grammatical function in a greater phrase or clause; such as the role of subject, of direct object, or of possessor. ... In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun or noun phrase with or without a determiner, such as you and they in English. ... In linguistics, a clitic is an element that has some of the properties of an independent word and some more typical of a bound morpheme. ... The Saxon genitive is the traditional term used for the s word-ending in the English language. ... Look up noun phrase in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

The king's daughter's house fell.

The first <'s> clitic on king indicates that the daughter in question is the king's. The second <'s> clitic does not attach to daughter, as many people mistakenly believe, but in fact to the entire noun phrase The king's daughter.

English preserves the old Germanic noun case system in its pronouns. Their forms vary with gender, number, person, and case. The full set of cases is listed below; note that modern use of the second person singular thou, originally the informal form to the formal you, is very rare, and is confined to dialects and religious and poetic functions. In modern Standard English, the second person plural you is used instead. In linguistics, grammatical gender is a morphological category associated with the expression of gender through inflection or agreement. ... In linguistics, grammatical number is a morphological category characterized by the expression of quantity through inflection or agreement. ... Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to the participant role of a referent, such as the speaker, the addressee, and others. ... In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun indicates its grammatical function in a greater phrase or clause; such as the role of subject, of direct object, or of possessor. ... For other uses, see Thou (disambiguation). ... A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος, dialektos) is a variety of a language characteristic of a particular group of the languages speakers. ...

Notes

1. Some dialects use different forms for the second person plural pronoun: they include you-all or y'all ^[1], you guys, yu'uns ^[2], youse ^[3], or ye ^[4]. These forms are generally regarded as colloquial and non-standard.
2. The pronoun thou was the former second person singular pronoun; it is considered an archaism in most contexts, although it is still used in some dialects in the north of England.
3. Mine (and thine) were also previously used before vowel sounds to avoid a glottal stop. e.g., "Do mine eyes deceive me?", "Know thine enemy." This usage is now archaic.
4. Whom is often replaced with who.

See English personal pronouns, for further information. The nominative case is a grammatical case for a noun, which generally marks the subject of a verb, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... “Oneself” redirects here. ... The accusative case (abbreviated ACC) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. ... Water tower in Florence, Kentucky featuring the word yall. ... For other uses, see Thou (disambiguation). ... In language, an archaism is the deliberate use of an older form that has fallen out of current use. ... A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος, dialektos) is a variety of a language characteristic of a particular group of the languages speakers. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... The personal pronouns of English can have various forms according to gender, number, person, and case. ...

Nouns as other parts of speech

Nouns can also be used as verbs, as in "verbing weirds language", or as adjectives, as in "mountain bike". See the following articles:

• Verbification
• Adjective: Adjectival use of nouns

Verbification, or Verbing is a process in linguistics whereby nouns, adjectives, and other words are transformed into verbs. ... In grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a noun or pronoun (called the adjectives subject), giving more information about what the noun or pronoun refers to. ...

Verbs

Main articles: English verbs and Conjugation tables

In English, verbs generally describe actions, and can also be used to describe certain states of being. In contrast to the relative simplicity of English nouns, verbs come in a large array of tenses, some moods, two voices, and are marked for person. Verbs in the English language are a lexically and morphologically distinct part of speech which describes an action, an event, or a state. ... This is a paradigm of English verbs, that is, a set of conjugation tables, for the model regular verbs and for some of the most common irregular verbs. ...

Person

Verbs in English are marked in limited fashion for person. Unlike some other European languages, person cannot generally be inferred from the conjugation attached to the verb. As a result, subject nouns and pronouns are generally required elements in English sentences for clarity's sake. Most regular verbs in English follow the paradigm exemplified below for the simple present of the verb "to listen":

Note: an archaic version of the second person singular is "thou listenest", and of the third person singular "he/she/it listeneth".

Tense

Changes in tense in English are achieved by the changes in ending and the use of auxiliary verbs "to be" and "to have" and the use of the auxiliaries "will", "shall" and "would". (These auxiliaries cannot co-occur with other modals like can, may, and must.) The examples below use the regular verb to listen: In linguistics, an auxiliary (also called helping verb, auxiliary verb, or verbal auxiliary) is a verb functioning to give further semantic or syntactic information about the main or full verb following it. ...

• Present tenses
  • Simple present (or simply "present"): "I listen." This tense expresses actions in the present on a habitual or repetitive basis, but not necessarily happening at the moment the speaker is speaking.
  • Present continuous (or "present progressive"): "I am listening." This tense expresses actions in the present taking place as the speaker is speaking.
  • Present perfect : "I have listened." This tense expresses actions that began in the past but are still true in the present: "I have known her for six years" (and I still know her).
  • All forms of the present tense are often used in place of their future-tense counterparts. In particular, various kinds of subordinate clauses — especially if and when clauses — cannot generally use the future tense, so the present tense is used instead.
• Past tenses
  • Simple past: "I listened." This is used to express a completed action that took place at a specific moment in the past. (Confusingly, in US English, the simple past may sometimes be used for a non-specific moment in the past).
  • Present perfect or perfect "I have listened." This is used to express a completed action that took place at a non-specific moment in the past. This tense often expresses actions that happen in the past, yet cannot be considered a past tense because it always has a connection to the present.
  • Past continuous (otherwise known as the imperfect or past progressive): "I was listening." This is used to express an incomplete action in the past. (Thus an "imperfect" action, as opposed to a completed and therefore "perfect" action.)
  • Past perfect or pluperfect: "I had listened." This expresses an action completed prior to some other action in the past (often expressed by the simple past). The pluperfect is thus expressing an action even more in the past e.g "He realised he had lost his way", "I was going to town because he had spoken to me".
  • Present perfect continuous: "I have been listening." This is used to express that an event started at some time in the past and continuing to the present.
  • Past perfect continuous or simply "perfect continuous": "I had been listening." Usually used with an explicit duration, this indicates that an event was ongoing for a specific time, e.g. "When Peter entered my room, I had been listening to music for half an hour."

• Future tenses
  • Simple future: "I shall/will listen." This is used to express that an event will occur in the future, or that the speaker intends to perform some action.
  • Future continuous: "I shall/will be listening." This is used to express an ongoing event that has not yet been initiated.
  • Future perfect: "I shall/will have listened." This indicates an action which will occur before some other action in the future: Normally two actions are expressed, and the future perfect indicates an action which will occur in the future but will, at the time of the main future action expressed, be in the past (e.g. "I will know the tune next week because I will have listened to it").
  • Future perfect continuous or future imperfect: "I shall/will have been listening." Expresses an ongoing action that occurs in the future, before some other event expressed in the future.
  • "I am going to listen" is a construction using "to go" as an auxiliary. It is referred to as going to future, futur proche or immediate future, and has the same sense as the simple future, sometimes with an implication of immediacy. It is not strictly a tense, and "to go" is not strictly a tense auxiliary verb, but this construction often presented as a tense for simplicity. By varying the tense of the auxiliary "to go", various other meanings can be achieved, i.e. I am going to be listening (future continuous), I was going to listen (Conditional perfect continuous).

• Conditional tenses
  • Present conditional or simply conditional: "I would listen." This is used to express an event that occurred multiple times or was ongoing in the past (i.e. When I was younger, I would listen. [multiple times]), or something that would be done now or in the future when predicated upon another condition (i.e. “If I had the time, I would listen to you.” [this condition could be known from context and omitted from the conditional statement.])
  • Present continuous conditional: "I would be listening." This is used to express an ongoing event that had not yet been initiated.
  • Conditional perfect: "I would have listened." Indicates that an action would occur after some other event.
  • Conditional perfect continuous: "I would have been listening": Expresses an ongoing action that would occur in the future in the past, after some other event.

Auxiliary verbs may be used to define tense, aspect, or mood of a verb phrase. Going-To Future is a term used to describe an English sentence structure referring to the future, making use of the verb phrase be going to. ...

As mentioned above "going to" is used for some future pseudo-tenses: Going-To Future is a term used to describe an English sentence structure referring to the future, making use of the verb phrase be going to. ...

Forms of "do" are used for some negatives, questions and emphasis of the simple present and simple past:

1. "Do I listen?" "I do not listen." "I do listen!"
2. "Did I listen?" "I did not listen." "I did listen!"

Verb tense chart

English verb tenses can be better visualized in the following chart, which shows the times of the English language and its three aspects, namely Prior, Complete and Incomplete. Note that this chart only represents actions truly happening, be it present, past or future. Since unreal conditionals are obviously assumptions, conditional strucutures with would are not included here.

Voice

Main article: English passive voice

English has two voices for verbs: the active and the passive. The basic form is the active verb, and follows the SVO pattern discussed above. The passive voice is derived from the active by using the auxiliary verb "to be" and the past participle form of the main verb. In English as in many other languages, the passive voice is the form of a transitive verb whose grammatical subject serves as the patient, receiving the action of the verb. ...

Examples of the passive:

Furthermore, the agent and patient switch grammatical roles between active and passive voices so that in passive the patient is the subject, and the agent is noted in an optional prepositional phrase using by, for example: In linguistics, a grammatical agent is an entity that carries out an action. ... In linguistics, a grammatical patient is an entity upon whom an action is carried out. ...

1. active: I heard the music.
2. passive: The music was heard (by me). (Note: me, not I)

The passive form of the verb is formed by replacing the verb with to be in the same tense and aspect, and appending the past participle of the original verb. Thus:

This pattern continues through all the composite tenses as well. The semantic effect of the change from active to passive is the depersonalization of an action. It is also occasionally used to topicalize the direct object of a sentence, or when the agent is either unknown or unimportant even when included, thus:

1. The plane was shot down.
2. Dozens were killed.
3. Bill was run over by a bus.

Many writing style guides including Strunk and White recommend minimizing use of the passive voice in English; however, many others do not. The Elements of Style (the little book &#8211; 1918) is an American English writing style guide detailing seven elementary rules of usage, ten elementary principles of composition and a few matters of form and commonly misused expressions. ...

There is a third 'voice' in English, related to the classic "middle" voice. In this, the patient becomes the subject, as in passive, but the verb remains in apparently active voice, no agent can plausibly be supplied, and generally an adverbial modifies the entire construction. Thus:

1. She doesn't frighten easily.
2. This bread slices poorly.
3. His novels sell well.

Mood

English has "moods" of verb. These always include the declarative/indicative and the subjunctive moods, and normally the imperative is included as a mood. Some people include conditional or interrogative forms as verbal moods.

Indicative, or declarative, mood

• The declarative mood or indicative mood is the simplest and most basic mood. The overwhelming majority of verb use is in the indicative, which may be considered the "normal" form of verbs, with the subjunctive as an "exceptional" form of verbs. (If any other forms are considered a mood (e.g. imperative), they may also be considered other "exceptional" verb forms.)

Examples are most commonly used verb forms, e.g.: The declarative mood indicates that the statement is true, without any qualifications being made. ... In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood, which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. ...

• I think
• I thought
• He was seen
• I am walking home.
• They are singing.
• He isn't a dancer.
• We are very happy.

Subjunctive mood

• The subjunctive mood is used to express counterfactual (or conditional) statements, and is often found in if-then statements, and certain formulaic expressions. It is typically marked in the present tense by the auxiliary "were" plus the present participle (<-ing>) of the verb.
  1. Were I eating, I would sit.
  2. If they were eating, they would sit.
  3. Truth be told...
  4. If I were you... I would do that.

The conjugation of these moods becomes a significantly more complex matter when they are used with different tenses. However, casual spoken English rarely uses the subjunctive, and generally restricts the conditional mood to the simple present and simple past. A notable exception to this is the use of the present subjunctive in clauses of wish or command which is marked in one or two ways: (1) if third person singular, the "-s" conjugation called for by the declarative mood is absent, and (2) past tense is not used. For example, "They insisted that he go to chapel every morning" means that they were requiring or demanding him to go to chapel. However, "They insisted that he went to chapel every morning" means they are reasserting the statement that, in the past, he did attend chapel every morning. The underlying grammar of this distinction has been called the "American subjunctive". On the other hand, other constructions for expressing wishes and commands, which do not use the subjunctive, are equally common, such as "They required him to go..." In grammar, the subjunctive mood (sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood) is a verb mood that exists in many languages. ...

Imperative mood

• The imperative mood is used for commands or instructions. It is not always considered a verbal mood per se. It is formed by using the verb in its simplest, unconjugated form: "Listen! Sit! Eat!" The imperative mood in English occurs only in the second person, and the subject ("you") is generally not expressly stated, because it is implied. When the speaker gives a command regarding anyone else, it is still directed at the second person as though it were a request for permission, although it may be a rhetorical statement.
  1. Let me do the talking.
  2. Let us build a bridge.
  3. Give him an allowance.
  4. Let sleeping dogs lie.

In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood, which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. ...

Conditional forms

Conditional forms of verb are used to express if-then statements, or in response to counterfactual propositions (see subjunctive mood, above), denoting or implying an indeterminate future action.

Conditionals may be considered tense forms but are sometimes considered a verbal mood, the conditional mood. The conditional mood (or conditional tense) is the form of the verb used in conditional sentences to refer to a hypothetical state of affairs, or an uncertain event that is contingent on another set of circumstances. ...

Conditionals are expressed through the use of the verbal auxiliaries could, would, should, may and might in combination with the stem form of the verb. In linguistics, an auxiliary verb is a verb whose function it is to give further semantic information about the main verb which follows it. ...

1. He could go to the store.
2. You should be more careful.
3. I may try something else.
4. He might be heading north.

Note that for many speakers, "may" and "might" have merged into a single meaning (that of "might") that implies the outcome of the statement is contingent. The implication of permission in "may" seems to remain only in certain uses with the second person, e.g. "You may leave the dinner table."

Two main conditional tenses can be identified in English:

I would think = Present Conditional

I would have thought = Conditional Perfect

Interrogative word order

Interrogative word order is used to pose questions, with or without an expected answer. Most of the time, it is formed by switching the order of the subject and the auxiliary (or "helping") verb in a declarative sentence, as in the following:

1. Are you going to the party?
2. Is he supposed to do that?
3. How much do I owe you?
4. Where is the parking lot?

However, when the information being requested would be the subject of the answer, the word order is not inverted, and the interrogative pronoun takes the place of the subject, as in the following:

1. Who helped you with your homework?
2. What happened here?

When spoken, an intonation change is often used so as to emphasize this switch, or can entirely reflect the interrogative mood in some cases (e.g. "John ran?"). The interrogative phrase can further be formed in this manner by moving the predicate of a declarative sentence in front of the helping verb and changing it to a demonstrative, relative pronoun, quantifier, etc. The interrogatives phrase is denoted by ending the sentence with a question mark <?>. Intonation, in linguistics, is the variation of pitch when speaking. ...

Rhetorical questions can be formed by moving the helping verb-subject pair to the end of the question, e.g. "You wouldn't really do that, would you?"

Irregular verbs

While many verbs in English follow the relatively simple paradigm illustrated at the beginning of this section, there are some verbs that do not. There are two categories of such verbs:

1. strong verbs (the "transparently irregular")
2. true irregular verbs.

The term "transparently irregular" is sometimes used to describe Jacob Grimm's "strong" verbs that appear irregular at first, but actually follow a common paradigm. This group of verbs is a relic of the older Germanic ablaut system for conjugation. This is generally confined to atypical simple past verb forms, e.g.: In the Germanic languages, strong verbs are those which mark their past tenses by means of ablaut. ... The Brothers Grimm on a 1000DM banknote. ... In linguistics, the term ablaut designates a system of vowel gradation (i. ...

I swim ~ I swam ~ I have swum

I sing ~ I sang ~ I have sung

I steal ~ I stole ~ I have stolen

Another category of "transparently irregular" verbs dates back to Middle English. Some verbs, especially those with a stem ending in an alveolar consonant (/t/, /d/, or /s/), formed a geminate consonant or consonant cluster with the -d suffix. In Middle English, vowels before a consonant cluster often became shorter. As the Great Vowel Shift obscured the connection between long vowels and the corresponding short vowels, transparent irregularities such as the following arose: In phonetics, gemination is when a spoken consonant is doubled, so that it is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a single consonant. ... The Great Vowel Shift was a major change in the pronunciation of the English language that took place in the south of England between 1200 and 1600. ...

I meet ~ I met ~ I have met

I lead ~ I led ~ I have led

I read ~ I read ~ I have read

I lose ~ I lost ~ I have lost

I keep ~ I kept ~ I have kept

True irregular verbs have forms that are not predictable from ablaut rules. The most common of these in English is the verb "to be." A sampling of its verbal paradigm is listed below; the majority of other forms are predictable from the knowledge of these four.

Irregular verbs include eat, sit, lend, and keep, among many others. Some paradigms are based on obsolete root words, or roots that have changed meaning. Others are derived from old umlaut patterns that changes in phonemic structure and grammar have distorted (keep ~ kept is one such example). Some are unclear in origin, and may date back to Proto-Indo-European times. In human language, a phoneme is the theoretical representation of a sound. ... The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) is the hypothetical common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans. ...

Notes

1. In English, a long-standing prescriptive rule holds that shall denotes simple futurity in the first person, and will denotes simple futurity in the second and third persons. In American English, this distinction has largely vanished; will is normally used for both cases, and shall is rare. In British English, adherence to the rule has declined during the 20th century (see Shall and will for a more detailed discussion), although use of shall remains for expressing the simple future in the first person.
2. The distinction between tense, aspect, and mood is not clear-cut or universally agreed-upon. For example, many analysts would not accept that English has twelve tenses. The six "continuous" (also called "progressive") forms in the list above are often treated under the heading of "aspect" rather than tense: the simple past and the past continuous are examples of the same tense, under this view. In addition, many modern grammars of English agree that English does not have a future tense (or a future perfect). These include the two largest and most sophisticated recent grammars:

1. Biber, D., S. Johansson, G. Leech, S. Conrad & E. Finegan. 1999. Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Harlow, Longman.
2. Huddleston, R. & G. Pullum. 2002. The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge, CUP.

The main argument given by Huddleston and Pullum (pp 209-10) that English does not have a future tense is that "will" is a modal verb, both in its grammar and in its meaning. Biber et al. go further and say that English has only two tenses, past and present: they treat the perfect forms with "have" under "aspect". Huddleston & Pullum, on the other hand, regard the forms with "have" as "secondary tenses". (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901&#8211;2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900&#8211;1999... Look up shall in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb defines the temporal flow (or lack thereof) in the described event or state. ... Professor Rodney Huddleston is a linguist and grammarian specializing in the study and description of English. ... Professor Geoffrey K. Pullum (born in 1945 in Irvine, Scotland) is a linguist specialising in the study of English. ... The verb will in English has multiple meanings. ... The English modal auxiliary verbs are will and would shall and should may and might can and could must ought to Modal auxiliary verbs help other verbs express a meaning or an idea but have no meaning by themselves. ... In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb defines the temporal flow (or lack thereof) in the described event or state. ...

Adjectives and adverbs

Adjectives are modifiers for nouns and adverbs are modifiers for verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs. Not all languages distinguish them, but English does in both grammar and word formation. Grammatically, adjectives precede the noun they modify, whereas adverbs might precede or follow the verb they modify, depending upon the specific adverb (although there are a small number of exceptions). English also has a means of converting adjectives into adverbs: the addition of the suffix <-ly> changes an adjective to an adverb (in addition to moving it to the appropriate place in a sentence).

Occasionally, people use adverbs with verbs that require an adjective.

1. "I feel badly" - the speaker has an impaired sense of touch (likewise: "I hear badly")
2. "I feel bad" - the speaker is ill or upset (likewise: "I feel happy")

The latter is, of course, the meaning most people try to convey. It's unclear whether this example shows the misuse of adjectives/adverbs or the fairly common use of "feel" as a copula verb (whose complement refers to its subject). That is, "feel" is often used with a meaning very close to "be." "I feel sick" is the equivalent of "I am sick" and using "I feel sickly" would be odd, for most native speakers. A better example might be something like: "I drive decent", with a meaning of "I drive decently" or "I drive well."

As well, confusion often occurs between good, well (adj.), and well (adv.).

1. "I feel good" - a good mood
2. "I feel well (adj.)" - good health (though this is often replaced by "I feel good" in everyday speech with little ambiguity in meaning)
3. "I did well (adv.)" - success

There are other ways of changing words from one lexical class to another. Nouns are easily transformed into verbs by moving them to the appropriate position in a sentence, and then conjugating them according to the default paradigm. Nouns can also be changed to other kinds of nouns (<-er>, <-ist>), into adverbs of state/condition (<-ness>), and into adjectives (<-ish>, as in "bullish"). Verbs can be turned into adjectives with <-ing> ("dancing school"), into adverbs with <-ly>, and sometimes even into nouns with <-er> ("dancer", "listener").

These processes provide the English language with greater flexibility in choosing words, expanding vocabulary, and re-shuffling words to add subtlety of meaning that might otherwise not be available in an analytic language.

Other topics

Slang

The use of words like "ain't" are accepted by some speakers but not by others. The difference is considered by descriptive grammarians to be a matter of dialect or register. Many constructions that are acceptable in, for example, African American Vernacular English might be considered ungrammatical in a context where formal Standard English was expected.^[5] Look up aint in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος, dialektos) is a variety of a language characteristic of a particular group of the languages speakers. ... In linguistics, a register is a subset of a language used for a particular purpose or in a particular social setting. ... Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... Standard English is a nebulous term generally used to denote a form of the English language that is thought to be normative for educated users. ...

See also

• Disputes in English grammar
• Capitalization
• English prefixes

Disputed English grammar denotes disagreement about whether given constructions constitute correct English. ... Capitalization (or capitalisation) is writing a word with its first letter as a majuscule (upper case letter) and the remaining letters in minuscules (lower case letters), in those writing systems which have a case distinction. ... English prefixes are affixes (i. ...

Notes and references

• The Grammar Book: An ESL/EFL Teacher's Course, Second Edition by Marianne Celce-Murcia and Diane Larsen-Freeman ISBN: 0838447252

External links

• English Grammar, wikibook in English
• A Friendly Grammar of English by Robert de Beaugrande
• Modern English Grammar by Daniel Kies
• The American Heritage Book of English Usage. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996. [Date of Printout].
• The Internet Grammar of English.