|
English Personal Pronouns
The English personal pronouns are a subset of English pronouns taking various forms according to number, person, case and natural gender. Modern English has very little inflection of nouns or adjectives, to the point where some authors describe it as an analytic language, but the Modern English system of personal pronouns has preserved some of the inflectional complexity of Old English and Middle English. Forms Unlike nouns, which are not inflected for case except for possession (''woman/woman's''), English personal pronouns have a number of forms, which are named according to their typical grammatical role in a sentence: * objective (accusative) case (''me'', ''us'', etc.), used as the object of a verb, complement of a preposition, and the subject of a verb in some constructions (see below). The same forms are also used as disjunctive pronouns. * subjective (nominative) case (''I'', ''we'', etc.), used as the subject of a verb (see also below). * reflexive form (''m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pronouns
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun ( abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not consider them to form a single class, in view of the variety of functions they perform cross-linguistically. An example of a pronoun is "you", which can be either singular or plural. Subtypes include personal and possessive pronouns, reflexive and reciprocal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, relative and interrogative pronouns, and indefinite pronouns. The use of pronouns often involves anaphora, where the meaning of the pronoun is dependent on an antecedent. For example, in the sentence ''That poor man looks as if he needs a new coat'', the meaning of the pronoun ''he'' is dependent on its antecedent, ''that poor man''. The name of the adjective that belongs with a "pronoun" is called a "pronominal". A pronominal is also a word o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Possessive
A possessive or ktetic form ( abbreviated or ; from la, possessivus; grc, κτητικός, translit=ktētikós) is a word or grammatical construction used to indicate a relationship of possession in a broad sense. This can include strict ownership, or a number of other types of relation to a greater or lesser degree analogous to it. Most European languages feature possessive forms associated with personal pronouns, like the English ''my'', ''mine'', ''your'', ''yours'', ''his'' and so on. There are two main ways in which these can be used (and a variety of terminologies for each): * Together with a noun, as in ''my car'', ''your sisters'', ''his boss''. Here the possessive form serves as a '' possessive determiner''. * Without an accompanying noun, as in ''mine is red'', ''I prefer yours'', ''this book is his''. A possessive used in this way is called a ''substantive possessive pronoun'', a possessive pronoun or an ''absolute pronoun''. Some languages, including English, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Predicate Adjective
In linguistics, an adjective ( abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the main parts of speech of the English language, although historically they were classed together with nouns. Nowadays, certain words that usually had been classified as adjectives, including ''the'', ''this'', ''my'', etc., typically are classed separately, as determiners. Here are some examples: * That's a funny idea. (attributive) * That idea is funny. ( predicative) * * The good, the bad, and the funny. ( substantive) Etymology ''Adjective'' comes from Latin ', a calque of grc, ἐπίθετον ὄνομα, epítheton ónoma, additional noun (whence also English ''epithet''). In the grammatical tradition of Latin and Greek, because adjectives were inflected for gender, number, and case like nouns (a process called declension), they ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intensive Pronoun
An intensive pronoun (or self-intensifier) adds emphasis to a statement; for example, "I did it ''myself''." While English intensive pronouns (e.g., ''myself'', ''yourself'', ''himself, herself'', ''ourselves'', ''yourselves'', ''themselves'') use the same form as reflexive pronouns, an intensive pronoun is different from a reflexive pronoun because it functions as an adverbial or adnominal modifier, not as an argument of a verb. Both intensive and reflexive pronouns make reference to an antecedent. For example, compare "I will do it myself," where "myself" is a self-intensifier indicating that nobody else did it, to "I sold myself," where "myself" fills the argument role of direct object. Note also that this sentence may be extended, as in "I sold myself myself," where the second pronoun emphasizes the fact that nobody helped me to sell myself. Terminology Self-intensifiers have also been called simply "intensifiers",König, Ekkehard, Peter Siemund & Stephan Töpper. 2005. Int ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reflexive Pronoun
A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that refers to another noun or pronoun (its antecedent) within the same sentence. In the English language specifically, a reflexive pronoun will end in ''-self'' or ''-selves'', and refer to a previously named noun or pronoun (''myself'', ''yourself'', ''ourselves'', ''themselves'', etc.). English intensive pronouns, used for emphasis, take the same form. In generative grammar, a reflexive pronoun is an anaphor that must be bound by its antecedent (see binding). In a general sense, it is a noun phrase that obligatorily gets its meaning from another noun phrase in the sentence. Different languages have different binding domains for reflexive pronouns, according to their structure. Origins and usage In Indo-European languages, the reflexive pronoun has its origins in Proto-Indo-European. In some languages, some distinction exists between normal object and reflexive pronouns, mainly in the third person: whether one says "I like me" or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Verb
A verb () is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle ''to'', is the infinitive. In many languages, verbs are inflected (modified in form) to encode tense, aspect, mood, and voice. A verb may also agree with the person, gender or number of some of its arguments, such as its subject, or object. Verbs have tenses: present, to indicate that an action is being carried out; past, to indicate that an action has been done; future, to indicate that an action will be done. For some examples: * I ''washed'' the car yesterday. * The dog ''ate'' my homework. * John ''studies'' English and French. * Lucy ''enjoys'' listening to music. *Barack Obama ''became'' the President of the United States in 2009. ''(occurrence)'' * Mike T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Subject (grammar)
The subject in a simple English sentence such as ''John runs'', ''John is a teacher'', or ''John drives a car'', is the person or thing about whom the statement is made, in this case ''John''. Traditionally the subject is the word or phrase which controls the verb in the clause, that is to say with which the verb agrees (''John is'' but ''John and Mary are''). If there is no verb, as in ''John what an idiot!'', or if the verb has a different subject, as in ''John I can't stand him!'', then 'John' is not considered to be the grammatical subject, but can be described as the '' topic'' of the sentence. While these definitions apply to simple English sentences, defining the subject is more difficult in more complex sentences and in languages other than English. For example, in the sentence ''It is difficult to learn French'', the subject seems to be the word ''it'', and yet arguably the real subject (the thing that is difficult) is ''to learn French''. A sentence such as ''It was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Subject Pronoun
In linguistics, a subject pronoun is a personal pronoun that is used as the subject of a verb. Subject pronouns are usually in the nominative case for languages with a nominative–accusative alignment pattern. On the other hand, a language with an ergative-absolutive pattern usually has separate subject pronouns for transitive and intransitive verbs: an ergative case pronoun for transitive verbs and an absolutive case pronoun for transitive verbs. In English, the subject pronouns are ''I'', ''you'', ''thou'', '' he'', '' she'', ''it'', ''one'', '' we'', '' ye'', ''they'', ''who'' and ''what''. With the exception of ''you'', ''it'', ''one'' and ''what'', and in informal speech ''who'',Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik, ''A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language'' (London: Longman, 1985), pp. 367 and 370. the object pronouns are different: i.e. ''me,'' ''thee'', ''him,'' ''her,'' ''us,'' ''you'' (objective case of ''ye'')'','' ''them'' an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Disjunctive Pronoun
A disjunctive pronoun is a stressed form of a personal pronoun reserved for use in isolation or in certain syntactic contexts. Examples and usage Disjunctive pronominal forms are typically found in the following contexts. The examples are taken from French, which uses the disjunctive first person singular pronoun ''moi''. The (sometimes colloquial) English translations illustrate similar uses of ''me'' as a disjunctive form. *in syntactically unintegrated disjunct (or "dislocated") positions :''Les autres s'en vont, mais moi, je reste.'' :: The others are leaving, but me, I'm staying. *in elliptical constructions (often "sentence fragments") with no verb (e.g. short answers) :''Qui veut du gâteau ? Moi.'' :: Who wants cake? Me. (cf. "I do") :''Il est plus âgé que moi.'' :: He is older than me. (cf. "I am") *in the main clause of a cleft sentence :''C'est moi que vous cherchez.'' :: It's me that you're looking for. Disjunctive pronouns are often semantically restricted. For e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Prepositions
English prepositions are words – such as ''of'', ''in'', ''on'', ''at'', ''from'', etc. – that function as the head of a prepositional phrase, and most characteristically license a noun phrase object (e.g., ''in the water''). Semantically, they most typically denote relations in space and time. Morphologically, they are usually simple and do not inflect. They form a closed lexical category. Many of the most common of these are grammaticalized and correspond to case markings in languages such as Latin. For example, ''of'' typically corresponds to the genitive. History of the concept in English The history of the idea of prepositions inEnglish grammar writing can be seen as one of relative stagnation, only exceptionally interrupted by certain more influential authors... It was only in the second half of the twentieth century that the situation radically changed and since then, grammarians have introduced scientifically precise definitions and developed detailed and elabor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Object (grammar)
In linguistics, an object is any of several types of arguments. In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a transitive verb typically distinguishes between its subject and any of its objects, which can include but are not limited to direct objects, indirect objects, and arguments of adpositions ( prepositions or postpositions); the latter are more accurately termed ''oblique arguments'', thus including other arguments not covered by core grammatical roles, such as those governed by case morphology (as in languages such as Latin) or relational nouns (as is typical for members of the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area). In ergative-absolutive languages, for example most Australian Aboriginal languages, the term "subject" is ambiguous, and thus the term "agent" is often used instead to contrast with "object", such that basic word order is often spoken of in terms such as Agent-Object-Verb (AOV) instead of Subject-Object-Verb (SOV). Topic-prominent lan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Object Pronoun
In linguistics, an object pronoun is a personal pronoun that is used typically as a grammatical object: the direct or indirect object of a verb, or the object of a preposition. Object pronouns contrast with subject pronouns. Object pronouns in English take the '' objective case'', sometimes called the ''oblique case'' or ''object case''.Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik, ''A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language'' (London: Longman, 1985), p. 337. For example, the English object pronoun ''me'' is found in "They see me" (direct object), "He's giving me my book" (indirect object), and "Sit with me" (object of a preposition); this contrasts with the subject pronoun in "I see them," "I am getting my book," and "I am sitting here." English The English personal and interrogative pronouns have the following subject and object forms: Archaic second person forms Historically, Middle English and Early Modern English retained the T–V disti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
