Basic grammar and sentence structure

Sentence

A sentence is made up of a subject ( who or what the sentence is about) and a predicate ( what the subject is doing or being)

Example: the cat (subject) sleeps (predicate).

Noun

A person, place, thing or idea.

Examples: dog, city, happiness.

The dog ran

Verb

An action or state of being.

Examples: run, think, is, are.

She is happy.

Adjective

Describes a noun ( answers “ what kind?” Or “ how many?”)

Example: red, tall, three.

The tall tree swayed.

Adverb

Describes a verb, adjective or another adverb ( answers “How?”, “when?”, “where?”, or “ to what extent?”).

Examples: quickly, very, yesterday.

She runs quickly.

Pronoun

Replaces a noun.

Examples: he, she, they, it.

She is tired.

Preposition

Shows the relationship between a noun or pronoun and another word.

Examples: in, on, under, with.

The book is on the table.

Conjunction

Connects words, phrases, or clauses.

Examples: and, but, or, because.

I like tea and coffee

Interjection

A word or phrase expressing emotion.

Examples: Wow! Oh! Opps!

Wow! That’s amazing.

Determiner

A determiner is a word placed before a noun to specific or limit it. ( articles, demonstratives, possessives, etc.)

Examples: the, a, this, that, my, some.

Simple sentence

Has a subject and a verb:

The bird sings.

A compound sentence

Joins two sentences with a conjunction:

The bird sings, and the dog barks.

A complex sentence

Includes an independent and an independent clause:

While the bird sings, the dog sleeps

Compounds

Compound words are words that are formed by combining two or more smaller words or morphemes to create a new word with a specific meaning.

Example: toothbrush. “Tooth” + “brush”.

Closed compounds

The words are written together without spaces.

Examples: Toothbrush. Basketball.

Hyphenated compound

‘Hyphenated compounds the words are connected through a hyphen.

Example: “mother-in-law” + “well-being”

Open compounds

The words are written separately but are still considered a single concept.

Example: “post office” “ice cream”

Infix

A type of affix that appears INSIDE the root

Affix

Are morphemes that attach to root words and modify their meaning in some way

Suffix

A type of affix that occurs AFTER the root

Prefix

A type of affix that appears before a root word

Derivational affix

The process of forming a new word from an existing word.

Eg: adjective - to - noun ( slow → slowness)

Adjective- to- verb ( weak → weaken)

adjective - to - adjective ( red → reddish

Inflectional affixes

These are morphemes that attach to a root word to indicate grammatical features such as tense, case, number, person or mood. They do not change the core meaning or the word, but rather modify its grammatical function.

Examples: -s in cats, (plural marker).

-ed in walked (past tense marker),

-ing in running (present participle marker),

-s in goes (third person singular marker)

Circumfix

Wraps around the root word

Causative

An addition to the end of a word meaning to “make” or “cause” is a causative

Nominalizer

An affix that creates a noun is a nominalizer

Homophones

Affixes that sound alike but have different meanings or functions are said to be homophones. Different words that sound the same are likewise said to be homophones.

Example: “to, too, two”

To: a preposition, as in “i am going to the store”

Too: meaning “also” as in “ I want to go too”

Two: the number, as in “ I have two apples”

Root

The root is the core morpheme of a word that carries its primary meaning. It’s the base to which infixes affixes and prefixes or morphemes can be added to modify or change the words meaning.

Example: “replay”. The root “play” conveys the basic idea of the action, me the prefix “re-“ modifies it to mean “do again “

Bound root

Is a root morpheme that cannot stand alone as a word by itself and must attach to other morphemes.

Example: “ject” in “eject” “project” or “inject”:

The root “ject” come from Latin and means “to throw”. It cannot stand alone as a word in English. So it needs to combine with other morphemes to create meaningful words.

Content morpheme

A type of morpheme that carries significant meaning or contributes to the core meaning of the word. These are typically free morphemes that provide the primary semantic content in a word.

Example: “cat” in “cats”: the morpheme cat carries the primary meaning of the word.

“Help” in “helper”: the morpheme help is the core meaning, and it’s combined with other morphemes like “er” to indicate a person who helps.

Bound morpheme

Are morphemes that never occur on their own

Example: “-ed” in “walked”

“-ed” is a bound morpheme that helps express past tense of the action

Free morpheme

Are morphemes that can stand alone as words

They do not need to be attached to other words to convey meaning.

Example. “Book”. It’s a free morphemes because it can function as a stand alone word

Compounds

Words that contain more than one root

Nominalization

The use of a word that is not a noun as a noun, or at the head of a noun phrase

Eg: the noun “legalization” from the verb “legalize”.

Allomorph

A variant phonetic form of a morpheme or - a unit of meaning that varies in sound and spelling without changing the meaning.

Think of it like different versions of the same thing. example, in English the -plural morpheme “-s” has different pronunciations: cats (-s sounds like /s/), dogs (-s sounds like /z/), buses (-s sounds like /iz/)

Strident or hissing fricative

A type of consonantal sound, it’s a fricative that means it is produced by directing air through a narrow channel in the mouth causing friction. Characterized by a sharp, piercing quality often with hissing or a buzzing component. They can either be voiced or voiceless.

Sibilant or affricate

A fricative sound that is characterized by a sharp, high-frequency sound, often with a hissing or whistling quality. They are typically voiceless.

Lexeme

A unit of language that represents a single word or a meaningful unit of a word, including its various forms.

Think of it as the underlying concept or meaning behind a word, which can be expressed in different ways through various forms.

Example: the lexeme “run” can be expressed as “run”, “runs”, “running”, or “runner”, but they all refer to the same underlying concept.

The lexeme “love” can be expressed as “love”, “loves”, “loving”, or “lover”.

Derivational suffixes

A morpheme that attaches to a root word to form a new word with a related nut distinct meaning. It can change the part of speech, grammatical function or semantic meaning of the root word.

Examples: -ful → helpful, beautiful

-less→ helpless, careless.

-ment → development, government.

-I’ve → organize, prioritize.

Morphology

Morphology is the study of how words are structured

What is a word

A word is the smallest free form found in a language

Free form

Is an element that can occur in isolation and/or whose position with respect to neighboring elements is not entirely fixed

Morphemes

Morphemes are the smallest unit of language that carries information about meaning or function

example: “Unhappiness”: this word contains 3 morphemes.

-“un” - a prefix meaning “not” or “opposite of”

-“happy” - a root word that conveys the idea of contentment or joy

- “-ness” - a suffix that turns an adjective into a noun, indicating a state or condition.

In this case, the word “unhappiness” consists of 3 morphemes that combine to create the meaning of”the state or being not happy”

Auxiliary verb

An auxiliary verb (Also known as the helping verb) is a verb used with the main verb in a sentence to express various grammatical nuances like tense, mood, aspect, voice, or to form questions and negatives. Auxiliary verbs help clarify the meaning of the main verb.

Examples:

• Be: am, is, are, was, were, being, been. She is running. They were working.

• Have: have, has, had. I have finished my homework. She had already left when i called.

Syntax

Refers to the set of rules, principles, and processes that govern the structure of sentences in a language. It determines how words and phrases are arranged to create meaningful, grammatically correct sentences. I simple terms, syntax is about how we order and organize words to convey meaning.

Diclensions

The variation of a noun, pronoun, or adjective to express different grammatical categories such as case, number, and gender.

Deictic word forms

Future forms

Possessive

Object markers

Determiner