English grammar
English grammar series
English grammar
• Contraction
• Disputes in English grammar
• English compound
• English honorifics
• English personal pronouns
• English plural
• English relative clauses
• English verbs
• English conjugation tables
• English irregular verbs
• English modal verb
• Gender in English
English grammar
is a body of rules
(grammar) specifying how phrases and sen-
tences are constructed in the English lan-
guage. Accounts of English grammar tend to
fall into two groups: the descriptivist, which
describes the grammatical system of English;
and the prescriptivist, which does not de-
scribe English grammar but rather sets out a
small list of social regulations that attempt to
govern the linguistic behaviour of native
speakers (see Linguistic prescription and De-
scriptive linguistics). Prescriptive grammar
concerns itself with several open disputes in
English
grammar,
often
representing
changes in usage over time.
This article describes a generalized Stand-
ard English, which is the form of speech
found in types of public discourse including
broadcasting, education, entertainment, gov-
ernment, and news reporting. Standard Eng-
lish
includes both
formal and
informal
speech. The many dialects of English have di-
vergences from the grammar described here,
which are only cursorily mentioned.
Lexical categories and
phrasal syntax
Nominals
Noun phrases and pronouns both can have a
referential function where they "point" (i.e.
refer) to some person or object in the real
world (or a possible world). Additionally, they
share many of
the same grammatical
functions in that they can both act as sub-
jects,
objects,
and complements within
clauses.
Noun phrases may consist of only a single
noun, or they may be complex consisting of a
noun (which functions as the head of the
noun phrase) that is modified by different
types of elements (such as adjectives, prepos-
itional phrases, et cetera.).[1]
Pronouns are words that can act as substi-
tutions for noun phrases. For instance, in the
following sen