Grammar and Sentence Structure

• Words and phrases joined by conjunctions are called conjuncts.
• Relative clauses and conjuncts are joined by "but".
• A gradable adjective has comparative and superlative degrees.
• Healthy is gradable.
• Perfect is non-gradable.
• Passive sentences include auxiliary verbs and a past participle.
• In passive sentences, the subject is not the doer of the action.
• John Milton is the Greatest Neologist, contributing 630 new words.
• A FRAGMENT is missing a subject, verb, and complete thought.
• A CLAUSE contains phrases with a subject and a verb.
• A PHRASE is a single unit that forms a constituent but does not have a complete thought.
• A constituent is a word or group of words functioning as a single unit within a hierarchical structure.

Noun Phrases

• Include determiner + noun.
• The dog, my husky, an actress
• Include determiner + single modifier + noun.
• The gorgeous teacher, my sleepy cat, the awful singer
• Include determiner + series of modifiers + noun. -The cute Persian cat, the big red hotdog
• Include modifier + noun.
• Plastic bottle, menthol candy

Other Noun Phrases:

• Appositive phrase: Donna, the Social Studies coach, is the best.
• Infinitive phrase: To give up is my last option.
• Gerund phrase: Teaching those who don't want to learn is hard.
• Participial phrase: Smiling from ear to ear, she accepted the proposal.

Verb Phrase

• Main verb + modifier: He drives recklessly.
• Auxiliary verb + main verb: He is eating.
• Modal + main verb: She will go to the hospital.
• Modal + auxiliary + main verb: It should be raining this month.
• Auxiliary verb + main verb + modifier/ complement: She was sitting patiently.
• FINITE verb phrases contain a single verb.
• I fed my cats.
• NONFINITE verb phrases contain two or three verbs.
• Twirly has been going around the neighborhood.

Adjective Phrase

• Consists of an adjective as the head of the phrase and all the cluster of words around it that modifies a noun or pronoun.
• Attributive adjective phrase: The highly suspicious man was arrested.
• Predicative adjective phrase: Your blue eyes are absolutely enticing to me.

Adverb Phrase

• Next week, the LET results will be released.
• You write so legibly.
• They describe manner, place, reason, and time.

Prepositional Phrase

• Get that thing out of my sight.
• You rant so much about your boss.
• I will turn you into a frog.

Adverbials

• The players arrived at the gymnasium.
• The cow jumped over the moon.
• Whenever he travels, he takes snapshots.
• Timmy smiled as if he won first place.

Conjunctural Phrase

• Both Jack and Jill fell down the hill.
• For kids, reading is not as fun as watching the movie.
• Such was a relationship that could conquer anything.

Interjectional Phrase

• Bloody hell! You're Harry Potter.
• Oh yeah! This is one heck of a spaghetti.

Grammar Approaches

Prescriptive:

• Condemns styles except the "King's English".
• Tells what SHOULD or SHOULD NOT be written.
• It is normative.

Descriptive:

• Grammar for everyday use (linguistic performance).

Generative Grammar:

• (Chomsky) "Mental grammar".
• Linguistic competence.

Transformational:

• (Chomsky) shows that sentences are similar in the "underlying structure".

• Example: active to passive, statement to question

• Deep structure: (Chomsky's Transformational Grammar) abstract representation of the sentence.

• Subordinating conjunctions connect independent clauses to dependent clauses

• However hard the situation is, you persevered to get your license.

• Conjunctive adverbs connect independent clauses to each other.

• The bride thought the groom would not come; however, he came.

Conditionals

ZERO:

• General truths or scientific facts (present simple).
  • If you freeze water, it becomes solid.

FIRST:

• Possible in the future (present simple + will/not +v.).
• If it rains, Joyce will take a taxi to work.

SECOND:

• Hypothetical/ unlikely (past simple + would + verb).
  • If I won the lottery, I would build an animal shelter.

THIRD:

• Different past (past perfect + would have + pp).
• If I hadn't been in love, I would have passed the exam.
• Inverted sentence: verb before the subject- In the middle of the park is the gazebo.

Three Major Noun Cases

Nominative:

• Subject of a verb.
• Predicate nominative.
• Appositive.

Objective:

• Dative (indirect object).
• Accusative (direct object).
• Object of a preposition.

Possessive (Genitive Case):

• Dog's bone, cat's paw.

Types/Classes of Adjectives

• Coordinate adjectives: black and pink dress
• Demonstrative adjectives: That heart used to be mine.
• Descriptive adjectives: He called his ex a lying bitch.
• Distributive adjectives: I don't want to hear any news about the pandemic.
• Rosmar bought every phone in the store.
• each, every, either, neither, none, both, any, one
• Indefinite adjectives: Do you have many cats?
• Interrogative adjectives: What topic do you want?
• Possessive adjectives: Don't touch my Prada.
• Predicate adjectives: You are gorgeous.
• Proper adjectives: I love Japanese ramen.
• Quantitative/ Numeral/Cardinal adjectives.
• I have two cats.
• Sequence adjectives: Your first take for the LEPT will be your last.
• Articles as adjectives: You are the apple of my eye.

Pronouns

• Personal Pronouns
• Reflexive Pronouns (DO, IO, OP)
  • She gave herself some comfort.
• Intensive/ Emphatic Pronouns
  • She herself gave the comfort.
• Demonstrative Pronouns
• Indefinite Pronouns (few, none, all, some)
• Interrogative Pronouns
• Distributive Pronouns [neither, either, each, everyone (one at a time)]
• Reciprocal Pronouns (We love each other.)
• Relative Pronouns (The subject, which has been making your head ache, will make you successful.)
• Possessive Pronouns

Punctuating Abbreviations

• Periods are always used in Latin abbreviations but not with contractions.
• US and UK abbreviations differ from each other.
• A period ends abbreviation of a title or names of institutions (Mr. Mrs. Co. Inc.)
• Can be omitted after professional and personal titles (Dr Mr Ms) and names of institutions and countries (USA RCBC DPWH).
• Three-initials of a person's name used within institutions may not have periods and are always unspaced but when the first and middle name initials used with surnames, may have space and periods.
• FDR = Franklin Delano Roosevelt
• T.S. Eliot

Word Formation

Repurposing

• Word formed by taking a word from one context and applying it to another context.
• Computer mouse

Reduplication

• Repetition or near-repetition of words or sounds.
  • Goody-goody, helter skelter, picnic, claptrap

Error

• Misspellings, mishearings, mispronunciations, and mistranscriptions that led to forming new words.
• Scramble originated as a variant of scrabble but had separate meanings over time.

Syntactic Structures

• Predication: Rachel knew about Mondler.
• Modification: talking toy, student council, beautiful liar
• Complementation

Coordination:

• Elliptical: I like black coffee not sweet.
• Split: Rather than giving up, he continued studying.
• Correlative: I offer not peace but war.

Methods of achieving cohesion

Elliptical:

• Mochi ate some fish. Twirly [] some chicken.

Referential:

• Huffle was barking. She was hungry.

The serpent ate the chicken

• Repetition: The serpent is dangerous.
• Synonym: The snake is now under custody.
• Hypernym: The animal is now being observed.
• General word: The poor thing was just trying to eat.

Substitution

• Changing to one (two, three, etc.), do, so
• V: These dresses are on sale.
• B: Great! I'll take those three.
• A: You look great!
• B: So do you!

Taxis

• Dependence of clauses in a clause complex.

Parataxis

• "arranging side-by-side" without words that indicate conjunction and subordination.
  • Para sayo ang exam, ang pagpasa, ang lisensya.

Hypotaxis

• "arranging under", "beneath", "arrangement"
• Subordination of one clause to another

Common Sentence Errors:

• Dangling modifier: Having read the book, the movie will be blockbuster.
• Misplaced modifier: The minister chatted informally about the cost of living with several women.
• Squinting modifier: Government offices are open on Saturdays only in the country.
• Faulty parallelism: I like eating better than to bake.

Test your knowledge of basic grammar and sentence construction, covering passive voice, adjective types, sentence fragments, verb and noun phrases, and more. Covers gerunds, appositives, and participial phrases. Also tests knowledge of abbreviations.