Thursday, 1 October 2015

Grammar Notes

Grammar

Nouns
‘A word used to identify any class of people, places or things’ (naming word)
Common: concrete and abstract. Preceded by the word ‘the’
Concrete: something we can see, hear, smell, taste and touch.
Abstract: concept or idea
Proper: unique individuals, events or places

Collective: group of things/people

Noun phrases
Whenever you modify a noun this becomes a noun phrase.
Plane crash
A horrific plane crash!
The most horrific plane crash!
How do nouns make a difference to a piece of writing?
-Lexical cohesion
-Paint a picture/describe
-Create an emotional response

Adjectives
Words or phrases that modify or describe nouns or pronouns.
-Describing words
-Function: evaluative, emotive, descriptive
-Comparative and superlative (exaggerate)

Verbs
Base form of verbs: (main and auxiliary)
Infinitive (to sing, to think)
Main: (action taking place: sing, jump, gave)
Auxiliary: primary and modal(give extra info about main verb – can affect meaning)
Primary: (do, have and be)
Modal: deontic and epistemic (can, could, will, would, must, may, might, shall, should)
Imperative: command
Verb phrases: built around a head word (main verb) and modal auxiliaries can be placed along a continuum to show degrees of strength towards commitment.
Present tense: base form and ‘s’ inflection (sings)
Past tense: base form and ‘ed’ inflection (jumped) (sing=sang)
Future tense: modal auxiliary: will or shall + base form (will sing)
ing can be used for all three.

Active and passive voice
Ahmed kicked the ball’ (focus is on Ahmed) = Active
The ball was kicked by Ahmed’ (focus has changed) = passive
Active:
-Actor/agency  responsible for carrying out the verb phrase is placed in subject position (usually at the start)
Passive:
- Don’t know the subject
-Don’t want to talk about the subject
-Subject not the focus

Clauses and Voice
If you modify a verb, you create a
verb phrase. = adverb/auxiliary verb
Clauses: words from phrases, phrases
form large structure called clauses.
Includes: subject, verb, object.
Coordinated clauses: two clauses
joined together by using a
conjunction (and, but, furthermore,
etc)
Must make sense on their own if you
remove the conjunction.
Subordinate clause: Main clause
followed by phrases that only make
sense when linked to the main clause

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