grammar devices

absolute phrase

absolute phrase

- A noun or pronoun followed by a participle and any modifiers of the noun or pronoun (e.g., Her foot tapping against the chair, Cynthia sat nervously in the waiting room.

active v. passive voice

When a verb is in the active voice, the subject of the sentence does the action: The early bird catches the worm. In the passive voice, the subject receives the action: The early worm is caught by the early bird. Often the agent (the one doing the action) does not appear in the passive-voice sentence: The early worm is caught.

adjectival

a word that appears in a position that can be occupied by an adjective. All adjectives are adjectivals, but not all adjectivals are adjectives.

adjectival clause/relative clause

a dependent clause that is “related” to another clause by a relative pronoun (e.g., That is the man who mugged me) or a relative adverb (e.g., This is the street where I live).

adjectival prepositional phrase

- A prepositional phrase that modifies a noun; e.g., The razor on the sink is John’s. It tells which or what kind.

adverbial

any item that fills an adverb position, e.g, I fell while jumping

adverbial clause

A subordinate clause introduced by a subordinating conjunction; it modifies the verb of the main clause (e.g., They failed the test because they didn’t study).

adverbial verb phrase

A prepositional phrase that modifies a verb; e.g., John shaves in the morning. It tells how, when, where, why, how much.

anteccedent

- An expression (word or phrase) that another expression refers to, e.g., That man is the antecedent of himself in That man might hurt himself. Antecedent is from the Latin phrase ‘to go before.

adverbial prepositional phrase

A prepositional phrase that modifies a verb; e.g., John shaves in the morning. It tells how, when, where, why, how much.

appositive

- A noun or pronoun that renames another noun or pronoun; e.g., China, the most populous nation, is not the largest

article

- A(n) and the. They are a type of determiner: words that modify nouns.

case

A classification system for nouns and pronouns, according to their grammatical function (e.g., he is nominative case; him is objective case; and his is possessive or genitive case).

clause

A syntactic unit having both a subject and predicate. Clauses are of two types: independent (i.e., can stand alone as a sentence) and dependent (i.e., cannot stand alone as a sentence).

complex sentence

A sentence consisting of both an independent and a dependent clause; e.g., When I opened the door, the cat ran out.

compound-complex sentence

A sentence consisting of at least two independent clauses and at least one dependent clause. In the following example, the dependent clauses are italicized: Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.

compound sentence

A sentence consisting of two independent clauses. The clauses are usually joined by a comma and a coordinating conjunction or by a semicolon; e.g., One arrow is easily broken, but you can’t break a bundle of ten. Love is blind; envy has its eyes wide open.

conjunction

a joining word

conjunctive adverb

An adverb used with a semicolon to connect independent clauses: If an animal does something, we call it instinct; however, if we do the same thing, we call it intelligence.

coordinating conjunction

One of the following words, used to join elements of equal grammatical rank: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so.

correlative conjunction

A pair of conjunctions connecting grammatically equal elements: either . . . or, neither . . . nor, whether . . . or, not only . . . but also, and both . . . and.

demonstrative

A type of determiner consisting of this, that, these, and those; a pronoun that “points” to a specific entity or set of entities