Grammar Terms

A glossary of English grammatical and linguistic terms, with definitions,

This glossary of English grammar terms relates to the English language.

Term Definition
active voice one of two voices in English; a direct form of
expression where the subject performs or "acts" the
verb; see also passive voice
e.g: "Many people eat rice"
adjective part of speech that typically describes or "modifies"
a noun
e.g: "It was a big dog."
adjective clause seldom-used term for relative clause
adjunct word or phrase that adds information to a sentence
and that can be removed from the sentence without
making the sentence ungrammatical
e.g: I met John at school.
adverb word that modifies a verb, an adjective or another
adverb
e.g: quickly, really, very
adverbial clause dependent clause that acts like an adverb and
indicates such things as time, place or reason
e.g: Although we are getting older, we grow more
beautiful each day.
affirmative statement that expresses (or claims to express) a
truth or "yes" meaning; opposite of negative
e.g: The sun is hot.
affix language unit (morpheme) that occurs before or
 Term Definition
after (or sometimes within) the root or stem of a
word
e.g: un- in unhappy (prefix), -ness in happiness
(suffix)
agreement logical (in a grammatical sense) links between
(also known as words based on tense, case or number
"concord") e.g: this phone, these phones
antecedent word, phrase or clause that is replaced by a
pronoun (or other substitute) when mentioned
subsequently (in the same sentence or later)
e.g: "Emily is nice because she brings me flowers."
appositive noun phrase that re-identifies or describes its
neighbouring noun
e.g: "Canada, a multicultural country, is
recognized by its maple leaf flag."
article determiner that introduces a noun phrase as
definite (the) or indefinite (a/an)
aspect feature of some verb forms that relates to duration
or completion of time; verbs can have no aspect
(simple), or can have continuous or progressive
aspect (expressing duration), or have perfect or
perfective aspect (expressing completion)
auxiliary verb verb used with the main verb to help indicate
(also called "helping something such as tense or voice
verb") e.g: I do not like you. She has finished.
He can swim.
bare infinitive unmarked form of the verb (no indication of tense,
mood, person, or aspect) without the particle "to";
typically used after modal auxiliary verbs; see
also infinitive
e.g: "He should come", "I can swim"
base form basic form of a verb before conjugation into tenses
etc
 Term Definition
e.g: be, speak
case form of a pronoun based on its relationship to other
words in the sentence; case can
be subjective, objective or possessive
e.g: "I love this dog", "This dog loves me", "This
is my dog"
causative verb verb that causes things to happen such as "make",
"get" and "have"; the subject does not perform the
action but is indirectly responsible for it
e.g: "She made me go to school", "I had my nails
painted"
clause group of words containing a subject and its verb
e.g: "It was late when he arrived"
comparative, form of an adjective or adverb made with "-er" or
comparative adjective "more" that is used to show differences or
similarities between two things (not three or more
things)
e.g: colder, more quickly
complement part of a sentence that completes or adds meaning
to the predicate
e.g: Mary did not say where she was going.
compound noun noun that is made up of more than one word; can
be one word, or hyphenated, or separated by a
space
e.g: toothbrush, mother-in-law, Christmas Day
compound sentence sentence with at least two independent clauses;
usually joined by a conjunction
e.g: "You can have something healthy but you can't
have more junk food."
concord another term for agreement
conditional structure in English where one action depends on
another ("if-then" or "then-if" structure); most
common are 1st, 2nd, and 3rd conditionals
 Term Definition
e.g: "If I win I will be happy", "I would be happy if I
won"
conjugate to show the different forms of a verb according
to voice, mood, tense, number and person;
conjugation is quite simple in English compared to
many other languages
e.g: I walk, you walk, he/she/it walks, we walk, they
walk; I walked, you walked, he/she/it walked, we
walked, they walked
conjunction word that joins or connects two parts of a sentence
e.g: Ram likes tea and coffee. Anthony went
swimming although it was raining.
content word word that has meaning in a sentence, such as a
verb or noun (as opposed to a structure word, such
as pronoun or auxiliary verb); content words are
stressed in speech
e.g: "Could you BRING my GLASSES because
I've LEFT them at HOME"
continuous verb form (specifically an aspect) indicating actions
(also called that are in progress or continuing over a given time
"progressive") period (can be past, present or future); formed with
"BE" + "VERB-ing"
e.g: "They are watching TV."
contraction shortening of two (or more) words into one
eg: isn't (is not), we'd've (we would have)
countable noun thing that you can count, such as apple, pen, tree
(see uncountable noun)
e.g: one apple, three pens, ten trees
dangling participle illogical structure that occurs in a sentence when a
writer intends to modify one thing but the reader
attaches it to another
e.g: "Running to the bus, the flowers were
blooming." (In the example sentence it seems that
the flowers were running.)
 Term Definition
declarative sentence sentence type typically used to make a statement
(as opposed to a question or command)
e.g: "Tara works hard", "It wasn't funny"
defining relative relative clause that contains information required for
clause the understanding of the sentence; not set off with
(also called commas; see also non-defining clause
"restrictive relative e.g: "The boy who was wearing a blue shirt was
clause") the winner"
demonstrative pronoun or determiner that indicates closeness to
pronoun (this/these) or distance from (that/those) the
demonstrative speaker
adjective e.g: "This is a nice car", "Can you see those cars?"
dependent clause part of a sentence that contains a subject and a
verb but does not form a complete thought and
cannot stand on its own; see also independent
clause
e.g: "When the water came out of the tap..."
determiner word such as an article or a possessive adjective or
other adjective that typically comes at the beginning
of noun phrases
e.g: "It was an excellent film", "Do you like my new
shirt?", "Let's buy some eggs"
direct speech saying what someone said by using their exact
words; see also indirect speech
e.g: "Lucy said: 'I am tired.'"
direct object noun phrase in a sentence that directly receives the
action of the verb; see also indirect object
e.g: "Joey bought the car", "I like it", "Can you
see the man wearing a pink shirt and waving a
gun in the air?"
embedded question question that is not in normal question form with a
question mark; it occurs within another statement or
question and generally follows statement structure
e.g: "I don't know where he went," "Can you tell
 Term Definition
me where it is before you go?", "They haven't
decided whether they should come"
finite verb verb form that has a specific tense, number and
person
e.g: I work, he works, we learned, they ran
first conditional "if-then" conditional structure used for future actions
or events that are seen as realistic possibilities
e.g: "If we win the lottery we will buy a car"
fragment incomplete piece of a sentence used alone as a
complete sentence; a fragment does not contain a
complete thought; fragments are common in normal
speech but unusual (inappropriate) in formal writing
e.g: "When's her birthday? - In December", "Will
they come? - Probably not"
function purpose or "job" of a word form or element in a
sentence
e.g: The function of a subject is to perform the
action. One function of an adjective is to describe
a noun. The function of a noun is to name things.
future continuous tense* used to describe things that will happen in
(also called "future the future at a particular time; formed with WILL +
progressive") BE + VERB-ing
e.g: "I will be graduating in September."
future perfect tense* used to express the past in the future;
formed with WILL HAVE + VERB-ed
e.g: "I will have graduated by then"
future perfect tense* used to show that something will be ongoing
continuous until a certain time in the future; formed with WILL
HAVE BEEN + VERB-ing
e.g: "We will have been living there for three
months by the time the baby is born"
future simple tense* used to describe something that hasn't
happened yet such as a prediction or a sudden
 Term Definition
decision; formed with WILL + BASE VERB
e.g: "He will be late", "I will answer the phone"
genitive case case expressing relationship between nouns
(possession, origin, composition etc)
e.g: "John's dog", "door of the car", "children's
songs", "pile of sand"
gerund noun form of a verb, formed with VERB-ing
e.g: "Walking is great exercise"
gradable adjective adjective that can vary in intensity or grade when
paired with a grading adverb ; see also non-
gradable adjective
e.g: quite hot, very tall
grading adverb adverb that can modify the intensity or grade of
a gradable adjective
e.g: quite hot, very tall
hanging participle another term for dangling participle
helping verb another term for auxiliary verb
imperative form of verb used when giving a command; formed
with BASE VERB only
e.g: "Brush your teeth!"
indefinite pronoun pronoun does not refer to any specific person, thing
or amount. It is vague and "not definite".
e.g: anything, each, many, somebody
independent clause group of words that expresses a complete thought
(also called "main and can stand alone as a sentence; see
clause") also dependent clause
e.g: "Tara is eating curry.", "Tara likes
oranges and Joe likes apples."
indirect object noun phrase representing the person or thing
indirectly affected by the action of the verb; see
also direct object
e.g: "She showed me her book collection", "Joey
 Term Definition
bought his wife a new car"
indirect question another term for embedded question
indirect speech saying what someone said without using their exact
(also called "reported words; see direct speech
speech") e.g: "Lucy said that she was tired"
infinitive base form of a verb preceded by "to"**; see
also bare infinitive
e.g: "You need to study harder", "To be, or not to
be: that is the question"
inflection change in word form to indicate grammatical
meaning
e.g: dog, dogs (two
inflections); take, takes, took, taking, taken (five
inflections)
interjection common word that expresses emotion but has no
grammatical value; can often be used alone and is
often followed by an exclamation mark
e.g: "Hi!", "er", "Ouch!", "Dammit!"
interrogative (formal) sentence type (typically inverted) normally
used when asking a question
e.g: "Are you eating?", "What are you eating?"
interrogative pronoun pronoun that asks a question.
e.g: who, whom, which
intransitive verb verb that does not take a direct object; see
also transitive verb
e.g. "He is working hard", "Where do you live?"
inversion any reversal of the normal word order, especially
placing the auxiliary verb before the subject; used in
a variety of ways, as in question formation,
conditional clauses and agreement or disagreement
e.g: "Where are your keys?","Had we watched the
weather report, we wouldn't have gone to the
beach", "So did he", "Neither did she"
 Term Definition
irregular verb verb that has a different ending for past tense and
see irregular verbs list past participle forms than the regular "-ed"; see
also regular verb
e.g: buy, bought, bought; do, did, done
lexicon, lexis all of the words and word forms in a language with
meaning or function
lexical verb another term for main verb
linking verb verbs that connect the subject to more information
(but do not indicate action), such as "be" or "seem"
main clause another term for independent clause
main verb any verb in a sentence that is not an auxiliary verb;
(also called "lexical a main verb has meaning on its own
verb") e.g: "Does John like Mary?", "I will have arrived by
4pm"
modal verb auxiliary verb such as can, could, must, should etc;
(also called "modal") paired with the bare infinitive of a verb
e.g: "I should go for a jog"
modifier word or phrase that modifies and limits the meaning
of another word
e.g: the house => the white house, the house over
there, the house we sold last year
mood sentence type that indicates the speaker's view
towards the degree of reality of what is being said,
for example subjunctive, indicative, imperative
morpheme unit of language with meaning; differs from "word"
because some cannot stand alone
e.g. un-, predict and -able in unpredictable
multi-word verb verb that consists of a basic verb + another word or
words (preposition and/or adverb)
e.g: get up (phrasal verb), believe in (prepositional
verb), get on with (phrasal-prepositional verb)
 Term Definition
negative form which changes a "yes" meaning to a "no"
meaning; opposite of affirmative
e.g: "She will not come", "I have never seen her"
nominative case another term for subjective case
non-defining relative relative clause that adds information but is not
clause completely necessary; set off from the sentence
(also called "non- with a comma or commas; see defining relative
restrictive relative clause
clause") e.g: "The boy, who had a chocolate bar in his
hand, was still hungry"
non-gradable adjective that has a fixed quality or intensity and
adjective cannot be paired with a grading adverb; see
also gradable adjective
e.g: freezing, boiling, pregnant
non-restrictive relative another term for non-defining relative clause
clause
noun part of speech that names a person, place, thing,
quality, quantity or concept; see also proper
noun and compound noun
e.g: "The man is waiting", "I was born in London",
"Is that your car?", "Do you like music?"
noun clause clause that takes the place of a noun and cannot
stand on its own; often introduced with words such
as "that, who or whoever"
e.g: "What the president said was surprising"
noun phrase (NP) any word or group of words based on a noun or
pronoun that can function in a sentence as a
subject, object or prepositional object; can be one
word or many words; can be very simple or very
complex
e.g: "She is nice", "When is the meeting?", "The
car over there beside the lampost is mine"
number change of word form indicating one person or thing
 Term Definition
(singular) or more than one person or thing (plural)
e.g: one dog/three dogs, she/they
object thing or person affected by the verb; see also direct
object and indirect object
e.g: "The boy kicked the ball", "We chose the
house with the red door"
objective case case form of a pronoun indicating an object
e.g: "John married her", "I gave it to him"
part of speech one of the classes into which words are divided
according to their function in a sentence
e.g: verb, noun, adjective
participle verb form that can be used as an adjective or a
noun; see past participle, present participle
passive voice one of two voices in English; an indirect form of
expression in which the subject receives the action;
see also active voice
e.g: "Rice is eaten by many people"
past tense tense used to talk about an action, event or
(also called "simple situation that occurred and was completed in the
past") past
e.g: "I lived in Paris for 10 years", "Yesterday
we saw a snake"
past continuous tense often used to describe an interrupted action in
the past; formed with WAS/WERE + VERB-ing
e.g: "I was reading when you called"
past perfect tense that refers to the past in the past; formed with
HAD + VERB-ed
e.g: "We had stopped the car"
past perfect tense that refers to action that happened in the past
continuous and continued to a certain point in the past; formed
with HAD BEEN + VERB-ing
e.g: "I had been waiting for three hours when he
arrived"
 Term Definition
past participle verb form (V3) - usually made by adding "-ed" to the
base verb - typically used in perfect and passive
tenses, and sometimes as an adjective
e.g: "I have finished", "It was seen by many
people", "boiled eggs"
perfect verb form (specifically an aspect); formed with
HAVE/HAS + VERB-ed (present perfect) or HAD +
VERB-ed (past perfect)
person grammatical category that identifies people in a
conversation; there are three persons: 1st person
(pronouns I/me, we/us) is the speaker(s), 2nd
person (pronoun you) is the listener(s), 3rd person
(pronouns he/him, she/her, it, they/them) is
everybody or everything else
personal pronoun pronoun that indicates person
e.g: "He likes my dogs", "They like him"
phrasal verb multi-word verb formed with a verb + adverb
e.g: break up, turn off (see phrasal verbs list)
NB: many people and books call all multi-word
verbs "phrasal verbs" (see multi-word verbs)
phrase two or more words that have a single function and
form part of a sentence; phrases can be noun,
adjective, adverb, verb or prepositional
plural of a noun or form indicating more than one person
or thing; plural nouns are usually formed by adding
"-s"; see also singular, number
e.g: bananas, spoons, trees
position grammatically correct placement of a word form in a
phrase or sentence in relation to other word forms
e.g: "The correct position for an article is at the
beginning of the noun phrase that it describes"
positive basic state of an adjective or adverb when it shows
quality but not comparative or superlative
 Term Definition
e.g: nice, kind, quickly
possessive adjective adjective (also called "determiner") based on a
pronoun: my, your, his, her, its, our, their
e.g: "I lost my keys", "She likes your car"
possessive case case form of a pronoun indicating ownership or
possession
e.g: "Mine are blue", "This car is hers"
possessive pronoun pronoun that indicates ownership or possession
e.g: "Where is mine?", "These are yours"
predicate one of the two main parts (subject and predicate) of
a sentence; the predicate is the part that is not the
subject
e.g: "My brother is a doctor", "Who did you call?",
"The woman wearing a blue dress helped me"
prefix affix that occurs before the root or stem of a word
e.g: impossible, reload
preposition part of speech that typically comes before a noun
phrase and shows some type of relationship
between that noun phrase and another element
(including relationships of time, location, purpose
etc)
e.g: "We sleep at night", "I live in London", "This
is for digging"
prepositional verb multi-word verb that is formed with verb +
preposition
e.g: believe in, look after
present participle -ing form of a verb (except when it is a gerund or
verbal noun)
e.g: "We were eating", "The man shouting at the
back is rude", "I saw Tara playing tennis"
present simple (also tense usually used to describe states and actions
called "simple that are general, habitual or (with the verb "to be")
present") true right now; formed with the basic verb (+ s for
 Term Definition
3rd person singular)
e.g: "Canada sounds beautiful", "She walks to
school", "I am very happy"
present tense used to describe action that is in process
continuous (also now, or a plan for the future; formed with BE +
called "present VERB-ing
progressive") e.g: "We are watching TV", "I am moving to
Canada next month"
present perfect tense that connects the past and the present,
typically used to express experience, change or a
continuing situation; formed with HAVE + VERB-ed
e.g: "I have worked there", "John has broken his
leg", "How long have you been in Canada?"
present perfect tense used to describe an action that has recently
continuous stopped or an action continuing up to now; formed
with HAVE + BEEN + VERB-ing
e.g: "I'm tired because I've been running", "He has
been living in Canada for two years"
progressive another term for continuous
pronoun word that replaces a noun or noun phrase; there
are several types including personal
pronouns, relative pronouns and indefinite
pronouns
e.g: you, he, him; who, which; somebody, anythi
ng
proper noun noun that is capitalized at all times and is the name
of a person, place or thing
e.g: Shakespeare, Tokyo, EnglishClub.com
punctuation standard marks such as commas, periods and
question marks within a sentence
e.g: , . ? ! - ; :
quantifier determiner or pronoun that indicates quantity
e.g: some, many, all
 Term Definition
question tag final part of a tag question; mini-question at end of a
tag question
e.g: "Snow isn't black, is it?"
question word another term for WH-word
reciprocal pronoun pronoun that indicates that two or more subjects are
acting mutually; there are two in English - each
other, one another
e.g: "John and Mary were shouting at each other",
"The students accused one another of cheating"
reduced relative construction similar to a relative clause, but
clause containing a participle instead of a finite verb; this
(also called construction is possible only under certain
"participial relative circumstances
clause") e.g: "The woman sitting on the bench is my
sister", "The people arrested by the police have
been released"
reflexive pronoun pronoun ending in -self or -selves, used when the
subject and object are the same, or when the
subject needs emphasis
e.g: "She drove herself", "I'll phone her myself"
regular verb verb that has "-ed" as the ending for past tense and
see regular verbs list past participle forms; see also irregular verb
e.g: work, worked, worked
relative adverb adverb that introduces a relative clause; there are
four in
English: where, when, wherever, whenever; see
also relative pronoun
relative clause dependent clause that usually starts with a relative
pronoun such as who or which, or relative
adverb such as where
e.g: "The person who finishes first can leave
early" (defining), "Texas, where my brother lives,
is big" (non-defining)
 Term Definition
relative pronoun pronoun that starts a relative clause; there are five
in English: who, whom, whose, which, that; see
also relative adverb
reported speech another term for indirect speech
restrictive relative another term for defining relative clause
clause
second conditional "if-then" conditional structure used to talk about an
unlikely possibility in the future
e.g: "If we won the lottery we would buy a car"
sentence largest grammatical unit; a sentence must always
include a subject (except for imperatives)
and predicate; a written sentence starts with a
capital letter and ends with a full stop/period (.),
question mark (?) or exclamation mark (!); a
sentence contains a complete thought such as a
statement, question, request or command
e.g: "Stop!", "Do you like coffee?", "I work."
series list of items in a sentence
e.g: "The children ate popsicles, popcorn and
chips"
singular of a noun or form indicating exactly one person or
thing; singular nouns are usually the simplest form
of the noun (as found in a dictionary); see
also plural, number
e.g: banana, spoon, tree
split infinitive situation where a word or phrase comes between
the particle "to" and the verb in an infinitive;
considered poor construction by some
e.g: "He promised to never lie again"
Standard English "normal" spelling, pronunciation and grammar that
(S.E.) is used by educated native speakers of English
structure word word that has no real meaning in a sentence, such
as a pronoun or auxiliary verb (as opposed to
 Term Definition
a content word, such as verb or noun); structure
words are not normally stressed in speech
e.g: "Could you BRING my GLASSES because
I've LEFT them at HOME"
subject one of the two main parts (subject and predicate) of
a sentence; the subject is the part that is not the
predicate; typically, the subject is the first noun
phrase in a sentence and is what the rest of the
sentence "is about"
e.g: "The rain water was dirty", "Mary is beautiful",
"Who saw you?"
subjective case case form of a pronoun indicating a subject
also called e.g: Did she tell you about her?
"nominative"
subjunctive fairly rare verb form typically used to talk about
events that are not certain to happen, usually
something that someone wants, hopes or imagines
will happen; formed with BARE INFINITIVE (except
past of "be")
e.g: "The President requests that John attend the
meeting"
subordinate clause another term for dependent clause
suffix affix that occurs after the root or stem of a word
e.g: happiness, quickly
superlative, superlativ adjective or adverb that describes the extreme
e adjective degree of something
e.g: happiest, most quickly
SVO subject-verb-object; a common word order where
the subject is followed by the verb and then the
object
e.g: "The man crossed the street"
syntax sentence structure; the rules about sentence
structure
 Term Definition
tag question special construction with statement that ends in a
mini-question; the whole sentence is a tag question;
the mini-question is a question tag; usually used to
obtain confirmation
e.g: "The Earth is round, isn't it?", "You don't eat
meat, do you?"
tense form of a verb that shows us when the action or
state happens (past, present or future). Note that
the name of a tense is not always a guide to when
the action happens. The "present continuous
tense", for example, can be used to talk about the
present or the future.
third conditional "if-then" conditional structure used to talk about a
possible event in the past that did not happen (and
is therefore now impossible)
e.g: "If we had won the lottery we would have
bought a car"
transitive verb action verb that has a direct object (receiver of the
action); see also intransitive verb
e.g: "The kids always eat a snack while they watch
TV"
uncountable nouns thing that you cannot count, such as substances or
(also called "mass concepts; see also countable nouns
nouns" or "non- e.g: water, furniture, music
count")
usage way in which words and constructions are normally
used in any particular language
V1, V2, V3 referring to Verb 1, Verb 2, Verb 3 - being the base,
past and past participle that students typically learn
for irregular verbs
e.g: speak, spoke, spoken
verb word that describes the subject's action or state and
that we can change or conjugate based
on tense and person
 Term Definition
e.g: (to) work, (to) love, (to) begin
voice form of a verb that shows the relation of the subject
to the action; there are two voices in
English: active, passive
WH-question question using a WH-word and expecting an
answer that is not "yes" or "no"; WH-questions are
"open" questions; see also yes-no question
e.g: Where are you going?
WH-word word that asks a WH-question; there are 7 WH-
(also called "question words: who, what, where, when, which, why, how
word")
word order order or sequence in which words occur within a
sentence; basic word order for English is subject-
verb-object or SVO
yes-no question question to which the answer is yes or no; yes-no
questions are "closed" questions; see also WH-
question
e.g: "Do you like coffee?"
zero conditional "if-then" conditional structure used when the result
of the condition is always true (based on fact)
e.g: "If you dial O, the operator comes on"

* note that technically English does not have a real future tense
** some authorities consider the base form of the verb without "to" to be the
true infinitive