ARTICLE / RESEARCH: GRAMMAR TERMS COLLECTION
ARTICLE / RESEARCH: GRAMMAR TERMS COLLECTION
A glossary of English grammatical and linguistic terms, with definitions, explanations & example sentences.
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 eg: “Many people eat rice” |
ADJECTIVE | part of speech that typically describes or “modifies” a noun eg: “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 eg: I met John at school. |
adverb | word that modifies a verb, an adjective or another adverb eg: quickly, really, very |
adverbial clause | dependent clause that acts like an adverb and indicates such things as time, place or reason eg: 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 eg: The sun is hot. |
AFFIX | language unit (morpheme) that occurs before or after (or sometimes within) the root or stem of a word eg: un- in unhappy (prefix), -ness in happiness (suffix) |
AGREEMENT (ALSO KNOWN AS “CONCORD”) |
logical (in a grammatical sense) links between words based on tense, case or number eg: 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) eg: “Emily is nice because she brings me flowers.” |
APPOSITIVE | noun phrase that re-identifies or describes its neighbouring noun eg: “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 (ALSO CALLED “HELPING VERB”) |
verb used with the main verb to help indicate something such as tense or voice eg: 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 eg: “He should come“, “I can swim“ |
BASE FORM | basic form of a verb before conjugation into tenses etc eg: be, speak |
CASE | form of a pronoun based on its relationship to other words in the sentence; case can be subjective, objective or possessive eg: “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 eg: “She made me go to school”, “I had my nails painted” |
CLAUSE | group of words containing a subject and its verb eg: “It was late when he arrived“ |
COMPARATIVE, COMPARATIVE ADJECTIVE |
form of an adjective or adverb made with “-er” or “more” that is used to show differences or similarities between two things (not three or more things) eg: colder, more quickly |
COMPLEMENT | part of a sentence that completes or adds meaning to thepredicate eg: 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 eg: toothbrush, mother-in-law, Christmas Day |
COMPOUND SENTENCE | sentence with at least two independent clauses; usually joined by a conjunction eg: “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 eg: “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 eg: 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 eg: Ram likes tea and coffee. Anthony went swimmingalthough 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 eg: “Could you BRING my GLASSES because I’ve LEFTthem at HOME“ |
CONTINUOUS (ALSO CALLED “PROGRESSIVE”) |
verb form (specifically an aspect) indicating actions that are in progress or continuing over a given time period (can be past, present or future); formed with “BE” + “VERB-ing” eg: “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 (seeuncountable noun) eg: 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 eg: “Running to the bus, the flowers were blooming.” (In the example sentence it seems that the flowers were running.) |
DECLARATIVE SENTENCE | sentence type typically used to make a statement (as opposed to a question or command) eg: “Tara works hard”, “It wasn’t funny” |
DEFINING RELATIVE CLAUSE (ALSO CALLED “RESTRICTIVE RELATIVE CLAUSE”) |
relative clause that contains information required for the understanding of the sentence; not set off with commas; see also non-defining clause eg: “The boy who was wearing a blue shirt was the winner” |
DEMONSTRATIVE PRONOUN DEMONSTRATIVE ADJECTIVE |
pronoun or determiner that indicates closeness to (this/these) or distance from (that/those) the speaker eg: “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 eg: “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 eg: “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 eg: “Lucy said: ‘I am tired.'” |
DIRECT OBJECT | noun phrase in a sentence that directly receives the action of the verb; see also indirect object eg: “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 eg: “I don’t know where he went,” “Can you tell 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 eg: 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 eg: “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 eg: “When’s her birthday? – In December“, “Will they come? – Probably not“ |
FUNCTION | purpose or “job” of a word form or element in a sentence eg: 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 (ALSO CALLED “FUTURE PROGRESSIVE”) |
tense* used to describe things that will happen in the future at a particular time; formed with WILL + BE + VERB-ing eg: “I will be graduating in September.” |
FUTURE PERFECT | tense* used to express the past in the future; formed with WILL HAVE + VERB-ed eg: “I will have graduated by then” |
FUTURE PERFECT CONTINUOUS | tense* used to show that something will be ongoing until a certain time in the future; formed with WILL HAVE BEEN + VERB-ing eg: “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 decision; formed with WILL + BASE VERB eg: “He will be late”, “I will answer the phone” |
GENITIVE CASE | case expressing relationship between nouns (possession, origin, composition etc) eg: “John’s dog“, “door of the car“, “children’s songs“, “pile of sand“ |
GERUND | noun form of a verb, formed with VERB-ing eg: “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 eg: quite hot, very tall |
GRADING ADVERB | adverb that can modify the intensity or grade of a gradable adjective eg: 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 eg: “Brush your teeth!” |
INDEFINITE PRONOUN | pronoun does not refer to any specific person, thing or amount. It is vague and “not definite”. eg: anything, each, many, somebody |
INDEPENDENT CLAUSE (ALSO CALLED “MAIN CLAUSE”) |
group of words that expresses a complete thought and can stand alone as a sentence; see also dependent clause eg: “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 eg: “She showed me her book collection”, “Joey bought his wife a new car” |
INDIRECT QUESTION | another term for embedded question |
INDIRECT SPEECH (ALSO CALLED “REPORTED SPEECH”) |
saying what someone said without using their exact words; see direct speech eg: “Lucy said that she was tired“ |
INFINITIVE | base form of a verb preceded by “to”**; see also bare infinitive eg: “You need to study harder”, “To be, or not to be: that is the question” |
INFLECTION | change in word form to indicate grammatical meaning eg: 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 eg: “Hi!”, “er”, “Ouch!”, “Dammit!” |
INTERROGATIVE | (formal) sentence type (typically inverted) normally used when asking a question eg: “Are you eating?”, “What are you eating?” |
INTERROGATIVE PRONOUN | pronoun that asks a question. eg: 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 eg: “Where are your keys?”,”Had we watched the weather report, we wouldn’t have gone to the beach”, “So did he”, “Neither did she” |
IRREGULAR VERB SEE IRREGULAR VERBS LIST |
verb that has a different ending for past tense and past participle forms than the regular “-ed”; see also regular verb eg: 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 (ALSO CALLED “LEXICAL VERB”) |
any verb in a sentence that is not an auxiliary verb; a main verb has meaning on its own eg: “Does John like Mary?”, “I will have arrived by 4pm” |
MODAL VERB (ALSO CALLED “MODAL”) |
auxiliary verb such as can, could, must, should etc; paired with the bare infinitive of a verb eg: “I should go for a jog” |
MODIFIER | word or phrase that modifies and limits the meaning of another word eg: 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) eg: get up (phrasal verb), believe in (prepositional verb),get on with (phrasal-prepositional verb) |
NEGATIVE | form which changes a “yes” meaning to a “no” meaning; opposite of affirmative eg: “She will not come”, “I have never seen her” |
NOMINATIVE CASE | another term for subjective case |
NON-DEFINING RELATIVE CLAUSE (ALSO CALLED “NON-RESTRICTIVE RELATIVE CLAUSE”) |
relative clause that adds information but is not completely necessary; set off from the sentence with a comma or commas; see defining relative clause eg: “The boy, who had a chocolate bar in his hand, was still hungry” |
NON-GRADABLE ADJECTIVE | adjective that has a fixed quality or intensity and cannot be paired with a grading adverb; see also gradable adjective eg: freezing, boiling, dead |
NON-RESTRICTIVE RELATIVE CLAUSE | another term for non-defining relative clause |
NOUN | part of speech that names a person, place, thing, quality, quantity or concept; see also proper noun and compound noun eg: “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” eg: “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 eg: “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 (singular) or more than one person or thing (plural) eg: one dog/three dogs, she/they |
OBJECT | thing or person affected by the verb; see also direct objectand indirect object eg: “The boy kicked the ball“, “We chose the house with the red door“ |
OBJECTIVE CASE | case form of a pronoun indicating an object eg: “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 eg: verb, noun, adjective |
PARTICIPLE | verb form that can be used as an adjective or a noun; seepast 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 eg: “Rice is eaten by many people” |
PAST TENSE (ALSO CALLED “SIMPLE PAST”) |
tense used to talk about an action, event or situation that occurred and was completed in the past eg: “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 eg: “I was reading when you called” |
PAST PERFECT | tense that refers to the past in the past; formed with HAD + VERB-ed eg: “We had stopped the car” |
PAST PERFECT CONTINUOUS | tense that refers to action that happened in the past and continued to a certain point in the past; formed with HAD BEEN + VERB-ing eg: “I had been waiting for three hours when he arrived” |
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 eg: “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 eg: “He likes my dogs”, “They like him“ |
PHRASAL VERB | multi-word verb formed with a verb + adverb eg: 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 alsosingular, number eg: bananas, spoons, trees |
POSITION | grammatically correct placement of a word form in a phrase or sentence in relation to other word forms eg: “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 eg: nice, kind, quickly |
POSSESSIVE ADJECTIVE | adjective (also called “determiner”) based on a pronoun: my, your, his, her, its, our, their eg: “I lost my keys”, “She likes your car” |
POSSESSIVE CASE | case form of a pronoun indicating ownership or possession eg: “Mine are blue”, “This car is hers“ |
POSSESSIVE PRONOUN | pronoun that indicates ownership or possession eg: “Where is mine?”, “These are yours“ |
PREDICATE | one of the two main parts (subject and predicate) of asentence; the predicate is the part that is not the subject eg: “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 eg: 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) eg: “We sleep at night”, “I live in London”, “This is fordigging” |
PREPOSITIONAL VERB | multi-word verb that is formed with verb + preposition eg: believe in, look after |
PRESENT PARTICIPLE | -ing form of a verb (except when it is a gerund or verbal noun) eg: “We were eating“, “The man shouting at the back is rude”, “I saw Tara playing tennis” |
PRESENT SIMPLE (ALSO CALLED “SIMPLE PRESENT”) | tense usually used to describe states and actions that are general, habitual or (with the verb “to be”) true right now; formed with the basic verb (+ s for 3rd person singular) eg: “Canada sounds beautiful”, “She walks to school”, “Iam very happy” |
PRESENT CONTINUOUS(ALSO CALLED “PRESENT PROGRESSIVE”) | tense used to describe action that is in process now, or a plan for the future; formed with BE + VERB-ing eg: “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 eg: “I have worked there”, “John has broken his leg”, “How long have you been in Canada?” |
PRESENT PERFECT CONTINUOUS | tense used to describe an action that has recently stopped or an action continuing up to now; formed with HAVE + BEEN + VERB-ing eg: “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 andindefinite pronouns eg: you, he, him; who, which; somebody, anything |
PROPER NOUN | noun that is capitalized at all times and is the name of a person, place or thing eg: Shakespeare, Tokyo, EnglishClub.com |
PUNCTUATION | standard marks such as commas, periods and question marks within a sentence eg: , . ? ! – ; : |
QUANTIFIER | determiner or pronoun that indicates quantity eg: some, many, all |
QUESTION TAG | final part of a tag question; mini-question at end of a tag question eg: “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 eg: “John and Mary were shouting at each other“, “The students accused one another of cheating” |
REDUCED RELATIVE CLAUSE (ALSO CALLED “PARTICIPIAL RELATIVE CLAUSE”) |
construction similar to a relative clause, but containing aparticiple instead of a finite verb; this construction is possible only under certain circumstances eg: “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 eg: “She drove herself“, “I’ll phone her myself“ |
REGULAR VERB SEE REGULAR VERBS LIST |
verb that has “-ed” as the ending for past tense and past participle forms; see also irregular verb eg: work, worked, worked |
RELATIVE ADVERB | adverb that introduces a relative clause; there are four in English: where, when, wherever, whenever; see alsorelative pronoun |
RELATIVE CLAUSE | dependent clause that usually starts with a relative pronounsuch as who or which, or relative adverb such as where eg: “The person who finishes first can leave early” (defining), “Texas, where my brother lives, is big” (non-defining) |
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 CLAUSE | another term for defining relative clause |
SECOND CONDITIONAL | “if-then” conditional structure used to talk about an unlikely possibility in the future eg: “If we won the lottery we would buy a car” |
SENTENCE | largest grammatical unit; a sentence must always include asubject (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 eg: “Stop!”, “Do you like coffee?”, “I work.” |
SERIES | list of items in a sentence eg: “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 eg: 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 eg: “He promised to never lie again” |
STANDARD ENGLISH (S.E.) | “normal” spelling, pronunciation and grammar that 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 a content word, such as verb or noun); structure words are not normally stressed in speech eg: “Could you BRING my GLASSES because I’ve LEFTthem at HOME” |
SUBJECT | one of the two main parts (subject and predicate) of asentence; the subject is the part that is not the predicate; typically, the subject is the first noun phrase in a sentenceand is what the rest of the sentence “is about” eg: “The rain water was dirty”, “Mary is beautiful”, “Whosaw you?” |
SUBJECTIVE CASE ALSO CALLED “NOMINATIVE” |
case form of a pronoun indicating a subject eg: Did she tell you about her? |
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”) eg: “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 eg: happiness, quickly |
SUPERLATIVE,SUPERLATIVE ADJECTIVE | adjective or adverb that describes the extreme degree of something eg: happiest, most quickly |
SVO | subject-verb-object; a common word order where the subject is followed by the verb and then the object eg: “The man crossed the street” |
SYNTAX | sentence structure; the rules about sentence structure |
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 eg: “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) eg: “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 eg: “The kids always eat a snack while they watch TV” |
UNCOUNTABLE NOUNS (ALSO CALLED “MASS NOUNS” OR “NON-COUNT”) |
thing that you cannot count, such as substances or concepts; see also countable nouns eg: water, furniture, music |
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 eg: 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 eg: (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 eg: Where are you going? |
WH-WORD (ALSO CALLED “QUESTION WORD”) |
word that asks a WH-question; there are 7 WH-words: who, what, where, when, which, why, how |
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 eg: “Do you like coffee?” |
ZERO CONDITIONAL | “if-then” conditional structure used when the result of the condition is always true (based on fact) eg: “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