Glossary of English Grammar

The following is a brief introduction, or reintroduction, to grammatical terminology which may be helpful for someone who intends to use these lessons. Since many of my readers will be Anglophones, I will stick to English when possible, but using French or German when I need examples from a language that isn’t English. I apologize to readers of other languages, but (other than Esperanto, which is not widely known), these are the languages I’m most comfortable using for examples.

Also, there are linguistic concepts out there like ergativity which don’t apply to either English or Egyptian, so I am omitting discussion of those for clarity. This page will cover only concepts that are relevant for the study of Egyptian.

Accusative case: see case.

Active voice: see voice.

Adjectival predicate: see predicate.

Adverbial predicate: see predicate.

Agent: see voice.

Agreement: the principle that, in many (but not all) languages, the declension of an adjective must match that of the substantive it modifies, whether in case, gender, number, or a combination of several of those. Can also be applied to the conjugation of a verb, if it needs to somehow indicate one or more of its subject’s gender, number, or person.

Aspect: what a given verb form says about the action’s duration, completion or incompletion, repetition or uniqueness, or other such considerations. Usually closely linked to tense. Not every verb form explicitly shows aspect, but some aspects which are often seen are:

  • Perfective, which shows that at some point in time (which may not have happened yet) the action is completed.
    • Examples: “I have been there” (present), “I will have won the game” (future), “I had already eaten.” (past)
  • Progressive or continuous, which shows that at some point in time (which may not be right now) the action is in progress or ongoing.
    • Examples: “I am swimming” (present), “I will be visiting” (future), “I was walking” (past).
  • Habitual, which describes the action as happening on some regular or frequent basis.

Auxiliary verb: A verb which is used in a sentence or clause with another verb (often called the “main” verb) to modify its tense, mood, aspect, voice, or modality (in which case it is called a modal auxiliary). The following are some examples:

  • “shall” and “have” in “I shall have eaten already”
    • “shall” marks the future tense; “have” marks the perfective aspect
  • “can” in “I can take care of it for you”
    • “can” marks the modality of being able to do the main verb
  • “did” in “I did go to Boston last week”
    • “did” marks the past tense, as well as reiterating the truth of the statement

Case: Classification of the role a substantive plays in the syntax of a sentence or clause. Four cases frequently seen in languages are:

  • Nominative: the subject of the sentence.
    • Example: “The boy went on a field trip.”
  • Accusative: the direct object of the sentence, which is the thing the verb (if any) acts upon (if anything).
    • Example: “The dog ate the bone.”
    • The direct object is often simply just called the object of the entire sentence.
  • Dative: the “beneficiary” or “recipient” of the subject’s action, not to be confused with the thing the subject acts on.
    • Example: “The boy gave his mother a bouquet of carnations.”
    • Another example: “The boy gave a bouquet of carnations to his mother.“
    • The substantive that is in the dative case is often called the indirect object of the sentence.
  • Genitive: the “owner” or “possessor” in a relationship where one substantive is associated with the other. The phrase containing both the genitive and the substantive it “possesses” is called a genitive phrase.
    • Example: “The dog’s collar was a gift from the veterinarian.”
    • Another: “The collar of the dog was a gift.”

Catenative verb: A verb which leads a “chain” of verbs within a sentence or clause. In English, the catenative verb at the front of the chain is usually a finite verb which is conjugated to match the subject, while the other verbs are usually infinitives or gerunds. For example, in the sentence “I wanted to go to the store”, the verb “wanted” is catenative, forming a chain with the infinitive “to go”. Some of the most commonly used catenative verbs are auxiliary verbs, including modal auxiliaries.

Clause: A phrase or group of phrases which have both a subject and a predicate. Every complete sentence consists of one or more main clauses, which may (but need not) be supported by several subordinate clauses. These two types are explained thus:

  • Main (also known as independent) clauses are meaningful as complete ideas by themselves, without any other clauses. A sentence with more than one main clause is a compound sentence.
    • Example: “The boy kicks the ball.”
  • Subordinate (also known as dependent) clauses add clarity or information to another clause, and frequently would not express complete ideas if they stood alone. These can be further subdivided a number of different ways. Many sentences have no subordinate clauses, but those which do are complex sentences. See subordinate clause.

Complex sentence: A sentence which has at least one subordinate clause, in addition to its obligatory one or more main clauses. For example, the sentence “I knew that you would show up” contains the subordinate clause “that you would show up” (which is of the marked noun clause type) as well as the main clause “I knew”.

Compound sentence: A sentence which has more than one main clause. These may be connected by conjunctions or simply by pauses in speech. For example, the sentence “Jenny arrived at the restaurant and the host seated us” contains two main clauses: “Jenny arrived at the restaurant”, and “The host seated us”, connected by the conjunction “and”. The sentence “Dave is having a good day; I am not” consists of two main clauses connected by a pause, represented by the semicolon.

Conjugation: The inflection of verbs.

Continuous: see aspect.

Count noun: A noun which, in its normal usage, can be counted: you can meaningfully speak of “a man”, but also “two men”, or “ten men”, or “500 men.” Opposite of mass noun.

Dative case: see case.

Declension: The inflection of nouns, adjectives, and pronouns.

Direct object: the substantive that the verb of a sentence or clause acts upon. In “The boy gives the ball to his friend”, the direct object is the ball, because it is the thing the boy’s act of giving acts upon. Not to be confused with indirect object. The direct object is said to be in the accusative case.

Epicene: A pronoun that signifies that the gender of the person referred to is not important or specified, but which explicitly identifies the pronoun as referring to a sentient being and not an inanimate object. Standard English does not have one, but in recent years, many have been proposed.

Finite verb: a verb form which specifies (or at least limits) the person and/or number which is performing the verb. For example, in the sentence “I like cheese”, the verb like is finite, because the absence of an –s on “like” means that it cannot be used with third-person singular: “he like cheese” is not correct. Similarly, in “he likes cheese”, the presence of the -s means that it can only be used with third-person singular. Note that although we say “finite verb”, we really mean this form of the verb; verbs with finite forms generally also have non-finite forms. Opposite of non-finite verb.

Future perfect: a verb form combining future tense with perfective aspect; for example, “I will have won the game”. The verb describes a completed action (the “winning” is described as having been completed), but it isn’t complete now (in fact, it may not have even started); it will be complete in the future.

Gender (grammatical): A way to categorize nouns or pronouns in a language which inflect in similar ways and may have certain rules of agreement with adjectives or verbs, connected in many languages with cultural notions of gender, and thus often called “masculine” and “feminine”. Sometimes there is also a “neuter” or an epicene. In a language with multiple genders for nouns, many nouns which would not be considered to have genders in reality, such as “day” or “necktie”, are assigned to a grammatical gender according to some rules or principles of the language or forgotten cultural notions. For example, in French, the word for “day” is a masculine noun, but the word for “man’s necktie” is a feminine noun. Some languages have ways of inflecting different groups of nouns which do not derive from gender binaries or trinaries, so they are said to have noun classes.

Genitive case: see case.

Genitive phrase: a phrase that connects two substantives with a relationship of “belonging” or “adherence to” or other such concepts. Examples are “the son of the king”, “the woman’s house”, “the meaning of it all”.

Gerund: a verbal noun which represents the act of doing a verb; the noun counterpart of participles. In English they are formed with the -ing ending: “I like his writing.” “I love swimming.” They are often used in chains with catenative verbs. Like other nouns, a gerund can take adjectives: “I should learn about healthy eating.”

Habitual: see aspect.

Habitual aspect in English: English doesn’t have a straightforward habitual aspect, but it is often implied by the simple present tense: “I walk to school.” This implies there’s more to the statement, like “I walk to school often” or “I walk to school every morning.” This implication, that the present tense means the habitual aspect, is not found in every language; for example, while the German sentence ich gehe zur Schule could most literally translated “I walk to school”, it would probably be better translated as “I am walking to school.”

Imperative: see mood.

Indicative: see mood.

Indirect object: the substantive that “benefits” from the verb of a sentence or clause. In “The boy gives the ball to his friend”, the indirect object is the friend, because the friend is what benefits from the boy’s act of giving. Not to be confused with direct object. The indirect object is said to be in the dative case.

Infinitive: a non-finite verb form which is often thought to be the most abstract form of the verb, saying nothing about who is doing it or when, just the basic concept of the action. In some languages, it can function as a verbal noun, and is often used with modal auxiliaries or other catenative verbs. In English, there are “full” infinitives (a short phrase consisting of the particle “to” followed by the base of the verb: “to be”, “to walk”, “to jump”, etc.) and “bare” infinitives, which lack the word “to”; the bare infinitive is often used with a modal auxiliary, as in “I can go to the store”, where “go” is a bare infinitive.

Inflection: The process of modifying nouns, verbs, adjectives, and pronouns to show their different grammatical properties, such as: is the noun plural or singular? Is the verb present or past? Is it describing a real situation or a hypothetical one? Is the subject masculine or feminine? and so forth. Each language has its own rules of inflection.

Intransitive verb: A verb describing an action which is simply “done” by the subject, but not done “to” anything; a verb which cannot have a direct object. “To wink” is an intransitive verb because you don’t wink a thing the way you hit a thing or see a thing, you simply wink, without acting upon some other thing. You can wink at a thing, but you don’t “wink a thing”. Opposite of transitive verb.

Mass noun: A noun which is not normally considered to be countable: you can say you have “some” of it, or “all”, or “none”, but you cannot say you have “six” or “fifteen” of it. Examples: “water”, “sand”, “milk”. You can have “some water”, but (normally) not “five waters”. Opposite of count noun.

Modality: see modal auxiliary.

Mood: The mood of a verb describes the reality or unreality of the situation described. There are four moods commonly encountered in many languages:

  • Indicative, which is the simple one, stating a fact in reality: “I am going to school.”
  • Imperative, which is the command one, stating something you want someone else to make happen in reality: “Go to school!”
  • Interrogative, which is the question, trying to determine what the reality is: “Are you going to school?”
  • Subjunctive, which is the hypothetical, where you’re not definitely asserting something is true or not: “If I were to go to school today, the bully would take my lunch money.”

Nominal predicate: see predicate.

Nominative case: see case.

Non-finite verb: a verb form which does not specify the person and/or number performing the action. For example, in the sentence “I am running”, the word “am” is finite since it implies “I”, but “running” is non-finite, because it would be used with “you are”, “she is”, “we are”, or “they are”. Note that although we say “non-finite verb”, we really mean this form of the verb; verbs with non-finite forms generally also have finite forms. Opposite of finite verb.

Noun class: A category of nouns within a language which are inflected in a certain way that is distinctive from nouns of other classes in the language. Sometimes, a system of noun classes is called gender because the classes derive from notions of gender.

Number (grammatical): Although this term is used for what we normally think of as numbers, like “one” or “six”, it often refers to a set of categories for a substantive describing whether there is only one of the thing (“singular”) or more than one (“plural”).

Participle: A verb form which functions as an adjective; the adjective equivalent of a gerund. English active participles usually have -ing like gerunds, and passive participles end in -ed like the past tense of verbs, but not every language does it this way. There are two types of participles:

  • Active, describing a noun as doing the action: “I see the laughing man”, “this axe dealt the killing blow”
  • Passive, describing a noun as being acted upon; that is, being the direct object of the action: “this is a treasured heirloom”, “the coffin is made of painted wood.”

Particle: A word which provides a nuance or shade of meaning to the sentence or clause that is often difficult to translate in a single word, or carries some other grammatical function that would be hard to define in a dictionary. Opinions will vary on whether a given word is a particle or some other part of speech, such as a conjunction, interjection, adverb, or preposition (or if it is both). An example in English is the “to” in verb infinitives like “to walk”, “to jump”, etc.; it doesn’t seem to serve the same function as “to” when it’s used with nouns like “to the store”, “to the next level”, and so forth.

Passive voice: see voice.

Past perfect: a verb form combining past tense with perfective aspect; for example, “I had won the game”. The verb describes a completed action (the “winning” is complete), but it hasn’t just been completed now; it was already completed some time in the past. Also called the pluperfect.

Perfect: a verb form which shows perfective aspect. There are future perfects, past perfects, and present perfects. When “perfect” is used alone, it usually means present perfect.

Perfective: see aspect.

Person (grammatical): Whether a substantive is the same as the speaker (“first person”), or same as the listener (“second person”), or is something else entirely (“third person”). For example, “I saw you talking to them” has one of each: “I” is first person, “you” is second person, “them” is third person.

Pluperfect: see past perfect.

Predicate: The information a sentence or clause gives you about the subject. In the sentence “The fisherman is happy”, you presumably are already aware of the fisherman’s existence, but now we’re also telling you that he’s happy. “The fisherman” is the subject and “is happy” is the predicate. Predicates can be of four types:

  • nominal: The predicate is a substantive, and tells you what the subject is.
    • Example: “That man over there is Jennifer’s coworker.”
  • adjectival: The predicate is an adjective, and tells you a quality of the subject.
    • Example: “Bob is very happy.”
  • adverbial: The predicate is an adverb or prepositional phrase, usually describing the subject’s position in space and/or time.
    • Example: “She is behind the house.”
  • verbal: The predicate is a verb (and any adverbs or phrases which modify it). It describes actions taken by the subject.
    • Example: “I built this pyramid all by myself.”

Present perfect: a verb form combining present tense with perfective aspect; for example, “I have arrived”. The verb describes a completed action (the “arriving” is complete), but it has just been completed now (or within a relatively short time in the past, perhaps only a few minutes before saying the sentence at a party, for example). Sometimes simply called called the perfect.

Progressive: see aspect.

Reflexive pronoun: A pronoun used for a direct object, indirect object, or object of a preposition when it is the same as the subject performing the verb. Examples: “I hit myself“, “she laughed at herself.” Sometimes helpful in disambiguation: for example, if two men are fighting, “he hit himself” means something different than “he hit him”.

Subordinate clause: A clause within a sentence which adds information to another clause. Subordinate clauses can be marked (by having a word which introduces the clause’s function in the complete sentence) or unmarked (by not having such a word and simply being embedded in the other clause). Some but not all unmarked subordinate clauses could function as complete sentences in their own right, but many unmarked ones and all marked ones have to be part of a larger sentence. Subordinate clauses are usually grouped by the function they play within the clause they support, and there are three such groupings:

  • Adjective clauses, also often called relative clauses, function as adjectives.
    • Marked example: “The woman whom I met yesterday just called me.”
      • The clause acts as an adjective, describing the woman.
    • Unmarked example: “I just saw a guy I went to school with.”
  • Adverb clauses function as adverbs.
    • Marked example: “He jumped over the fence while I was nearby.”
      • The clause acts adverbially, saying when the action happened.
    • Unmarked adverb clause: “I’m happy Bob is here.”
      • The clause acts adverbially, explaining why the main clause is happening.
  • Noun clauses function as substantives.
    • Marked example: “He could see that I knew what I was doing.”
      • The thing that the subject sees is the fact that you knew what you were doing, so the clause is the direct object.
    • Unmarked example: “He knows I dislike him.”
      • The thing that the subject knows is once again the direct object.

Subject: The entity that the sentence or clause is really about. In the sentence “The man is a farmer”, you presumably know something about the man already (if only that he exists), but now we’re also telling you that he’s a farmer. “The man” is the subject and “is a farmer” is the predicate. The subject is said to be in the nominative case.

Subjunctive: see mood.

Substantive: A word or phrase being used to represent a single “thing”. Usually a noun or a pronoun, but can be a phrase, like “Dave’s uncle” in “I was glad to hear that Dave’s uncle is well”, or sometimes even an adjective or numeral, like “first” in “I saw a lot of nice cars at the dealership, but I bought the first.”

Syntax: The rules a language has for arranges words into phrases, clauses, and sentences to express ideas.

Tense: The time (past, present, or future) when the action takes place, for a given verb form. Sometimes used to describe a combination of the time and the aspect. Not every verb form in a language explicitly specifies the tense, in which situations it must be determined by other words in the sentence or by context.

Transitive verb: A verb describing an action upon some thing; a verb which can have a direct object. “To eat” is a transitive verb because if you are eating, you are eating something, and if that thing is stated, it will be the direct object. Opposite of intransitive verb.

Valency: Whether a verb is transitive or intransitive. A transitive verb which has a reflexive pronoun for its direct object can be considered to have a third type of valency.

Verbal noun: A verb form which can be used like a noun in a sentence; for example, “My favorite activity is swimming“, “to err is human”. Verbal nouns are generally non-finite verbs. The most common variety in English is the gerund, although infinitives also act like nouns in ways.

Verbal predicate: see predicate.

Voice (grammatical): whether a verb is active or passive:

  • an active verb is when the subject does the action: “I kicked the ball.”
  • a passive verb is when the action is done to the subject: “I was kicked by the clumsy waiter.”
    • In a sentence or clause with passive voice, there may be an agent expressed, which is the source of the action done to the subject. In the example above, the agent is the clumsy waiter.