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An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, an adjective, another adverb, a determiner, a clause, a preposition, or a sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, or level of certainty by answering questions such as how, in what way, when, where, to what extent. This is called the adverbial function and may be performed by an individual adverb, by an adverbial phrase, or by an adverbial clause.
English grammar is the set of structural rules of the English language. This includes the structure of words, phrases, clauses, sentences, and whole texts.
In linguistics, a modifier is an optional element in phrase structure or clause structure which modifies the meaning of another element in the structure. For instance, the adjective "red" acts as a modifier in the noun phrase "red ball", providing extra details about which particular ball is being referred to. Similarly, the adverb "quickly" acts as a modifier in the verb phrase "run quickly". Modification can be considered a high-level domain of the functions of language, on par with predication and reference.
Rodney D. Huddleston is a British linguist and grammarian specializing in the study and description of English.
English auxiliary verbs are a small set of English verbs, which include the English modal auxiliary verbs and a few others. Although the auxiliary verbs of English are widely believed to lack inherent semantic meaning and instead to modify the meaning of the verbs they accompany, they are nowadays classed by linguists as auxiliary on the basis not of semantic but of grammatical properties: among these, that they invert with their subjects in interrogative main clauses and are negated either by the simple addition of not or by negative inflection.
The English modal auxiliary verbs are a subset of the English auxiliary verbs used mostly to express modality, properties such as possibility and obligation. They can most easily be distinguished from other verbs by their defectiveness (they do not have participles or plain forms) and by their lack of the ending ‑(e)s for the third-person singular.
Relative clauses in the English language are formed principally by means of relative words. The basic relative pronouns are who, which, and that; who also has the derived forms whom and whose. Various grammatical rules and style guides determine which relative pronouns may be suitable in various situations, especially for formal settings. In some cases the relative pronoun may be omitted and merely implied.
In grammar, a complement is a word, phrase, or clause that is necessary to complete the meaning of a given expression. Complements are often also arguments.
In linguistics, an adverbial phrase ("AdvP") is a multi-word expression operating adverbially: its syntactic function is to modify other expressions, including verbs, adjectives, adverbs, adverbials, and sentences. Some grammars use the label adverb phrase to denote an adverbial phrase composed entirely of adverbs versus an adverbial phrase, which might not contain an adverb.
While the English language lacks distinct inflections for mood, an English subjunctive is recognized in most grammars. Definition and scope of the concept vary widely across the literature, but it is generally associated with the description of something other than apparent reality. Traditionally, the term is applied loosely to cases in which one might expect a subjunctive form in related languages, especially Old English and Latin. This includes conditional clauses, wishes, and reported speech. Modern descriptive grammars limit the term to cases in which some grammatical marking can be observed, nevertheless coming to varying definitions.
In traditional grammar, a subject complement is a predicative expression that follows a copula, which complements the subject of a clause by means of characterization that completes the meaning of the subject.
The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (CamGEL) is a descriptive grammar of the English language. Its primary authors are Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum. Huddleston was the only author to work on every chapter. It was published by Cambridge University Press in 2002 and has been cited more than 8,000 times.
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. 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.
English adverbs are words such as so, just, how, well, also, very, even, only, really, and why that head adverb phrases, and whose most typical members function as modifiers in verb phrases and clauses, along with adjective and adverb phrases. The category is highly heterogeneous, but a large number of the very typical members are derived from adjectives + the suffix -ly and modify any word, phrase or clause other than a noun. Adverbs form an open lexical category in English. They do not typically license or function as complements in other phrases. Semantically, they are again highly various, denoting manner, degree, duration, frequency, domain, modality, and much more.
English nouns form the largest category of words in English, both in the number of different words and how often they are used in typical texts. The three main categories of English nouns are common nouns, proper nouns, and pronouns. A defining feature of English nouns is their ability to inflect for number, as through the plural –s morpheme. English nouns primarily function as the heads of noun phrases, which prototypically function at the clause level as subjects, objects, and predicative complements. These phrases are the only English phrases whose structure includes determinatives and predeterminatives, which add abstract-specifying meaning such as definiteness and proximity. Like nouns in general, English nouns typically denote physical objects, but they also denote actions, characteristics, relations in space, and just about anything at all. Taken all together, these features separate English nouns from other lexical categories such as adjectives and verbs.
English adjectives form a large open category of words in English which, semantically, tend to denote properties such as size, colour, mood, quality, age, etc. with such members as other, big, new, good, different, Cuban, sure, important, and right. Adjectives head adjective phrases, and the most typical members function as modifiers in noun phrases. Most adjectives either inflect for grade or combine with more and most to form comparatives and superlatives. They are characteristically modifiable by very. A large number of the most typical members combine with the suffix -ly to form adverbs. Most adjectives function as complements in verb phrases, and some license complements of their own.
Verbless clauses are comprised, semantically, of a predicand, expressed or not, and a verbless predicate. For example, the underlined string in [With the children so sick,] we've been at home a lot means the same thing as the clause the children are so sick. It attributes the predicate "so sick" to the predicand "the children". In most contexts, *the children so sick would be ungrammatical.
English interjections are a category of English words – such as yeah, ouch, Jesus, oh, mercy, yuck, etc. – whose defining features are the infrequency with which they combine with other words to form phrases, their loose connection to other elements in clauses, and their tendency to express emotive meaning. These features separate English interjections from the language's other lexical categories, such as nouns and verbs. Though English interjections, like interjections in general, are often overlooked in descriptions of the language, English grammars do offer minimal descriptions of the category.
English subordinators are words that mostly mark clauses as subordinate. The subordinators form a closed lexical category in English and include whether; and, in some of their uses, if, that, for, arguably to, and marginally how.
Modal adjectives are adjectives, such as likely, probable and necessary, that express modality, i.e., possibility, necessity, or contingency.
References
- ↑ Matthews, Peter (2003). The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- ↑ Huddleston, Rodney; Pullum, Geoffrey K. (2002). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 768.
- ↑ Huddleston, Rodney; Pullum, Geoffrey K. (2002). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 102.
- ↑ Huddleston, Rodney; Pullum, Geoffrey K. (2002). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 436.
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