Grammar

Noun
Noun /naʊn/ – a word that refers to a person, (such as Ann or doctor), a place (such as Paris or city) or a thing, a quality or an activity (such as plant, joy or tennis)

Verb
Verb /vɜːrb/ : a word or group of words that expresses an action (such as eat), an event (such as happen) or a state (such as exist)

Pronoun
Pronoun /ˈprəʊnaʊn/ : a word that is used instead of a noun or noun phrase, for example he, it, hers, me, them, etc.

Adjective
Adjectives /ˈædʒɪktɪv/ : a word that describes a person or thing, for example big, red and clever in a big house, red wine and a clever idea

Adverb
Adverb /ˈædvɜːb/ : a word that adds more information about place, time, manner, cause or degree to a verb, an adjective, a phrase or another adverb

Conjunction
Conjunction /kənˈdʒʌŋkʃn/ : a word that joins words, phrases or sentences, for example ‘and’, ‘but’, ‘or’ or ‘because’

Preposition
Preposition /ˌprepəˈzɪʃn/ : a word or group of words, such as in, from, to, out of and on behalf of, used before a noun or pronoun to show place, position, time or method

Interjection
Interjection /ˌɪntərˈdʒekʃn/ : a short sound, word or phrase spoken suddenly to express an emotion. Oh!, Look out! and Ow! are interjections.

Determiner
Determiner /dɪˈtɜːrmɪnər/ : a word such as the, some, my, a,an etc. that comes before a noun to show how the noun is being used

Grammatical Category
The term "grammatical category" refers to specific properties of a word that can cause that word and/or a related word to change in form for grammatical reasons (ensuring agreement between words).

Parenthetical Expression
A parenthetical expression is a word or words added to a sentence without changing the meaning or grammar of the original sentence. Parenthetical expressions give extra information but are not essential. You can add and remove a parenthetical and the sentence works just the same.

Reported Orders
An order is when somebody tells you to do something and you have no choice. It is not usually polite. It is a "command". Reported orders are one form of reported speech.

Reported Requests
A request is when somebody asks you to do something – usually politely. Reported requests are one form of reported speech.

Reported Questions
We usually introduce reported questions with the verb "ask"

Time and Place in Reported Speech
When we report something, we may need to make changes to:1.time (now, tomorrow)2.place (here, this room)

Backshift in Reported Speech
We sometimes change the tense of the reported clause by moving it back one tense. For example, present simple goes back one tense to past simple. We call this change "backshift".

Reported Statements
Reported statements are one form of reported speech.We usually introduce reported statements with "reporting verbs" such as "say" or "tell".

The 4 English Sentence Types
There are four types of English sentence, classified by their purpose:1.declarative sentence (statement)2.interrogative sentence (question)3.imperative sentence (command)4.exclamative sentence (exclamation)

What is a Sentence?
In simple terms, a sentence is a set of words that contain:a subject (what the sentence is about, the topic of the sentence), anda predicate (what is said about the subject)

Phrases
A phrase is one or more words that form a meaningful grammatical unit within a clause. There are five main types of phrase in English, as below.

20 Grammar Rules
Here are 20 simple rules and tips to help you avoid mistakes in English grammar. For more comprehensive rules please look under the appropriate topic (part of speech etc) on our grammar and other pages.

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.

What is Grammar ?
grammar is the rules in a language for changing the form of words and joining them into sentences.