Structure Class Words: Auxiliaries

Auxiliaries

Auxiliary verbs provide grammatical information about the main verb. Specifically, these verb indicate information about tense, mood, and voice. (We’ll talk about all of this in more depth later on.) You may have heard these verbs called “helping verbs.”

Structure Class Words: Determiners

Determiners (See list on page 101 of your text)

A determiner is a structure class word that precedes and modified a noun. The prototypical examples are a, an, and the.

Structure-class Words: Overview

So far, we have been looking at Form Class Words – nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. To review, form class words are words that can change their shape by accepting morphemes. So a noun, like dog, can become dogs; and an adjective like happy can become happier, or unhappy.

Form-class Words: Adjective and Adverbs

Adjectives

Adjectives are modifiers. In function, they are words that modify nouns.

Form-class Words: Verbs

Verbs express action, we were told in the third grade (those of us who got taught grammar in the third grade). And it is true that some verbs do express action.

Form-class Word: Nouns

Form-Class Words

English grammar is traditionally described as having eight parts of speech:

Notes: Important Terms

Some Important Terms

Prototypical v. Peripheral: In grammar as in life, our categories leak. When, for instance, we are sorting fiction into boxes labeled fantasy and boxes labeled science fiction, we will find some examples that clearly go in one box or the other – Lord of the Rings is fantasy,The Left Hand of Darkness is science fiction – but others will fall in a grey area: Anne McCaffery’s Pern novels, for instance.

Notes: Introduction

First, the good news. If you’re a native speaker of English, you already know English grammar. Every native speaker of English over the age of two or three (at least those without some sort of developmental issue) knows English grammar by the time they reach the age of two or three years old, though they may still be refining certain points well into their fourth year. If you didn’t know English grammar, you would not be able to construct, or understand, an English sentence. Which, obviously, you can – you’re reading this, aren’t you?

ENGL 3663 Syllabus

University of Arkansas – Fort Smith

Course Title ENGLISH GRAMMAR                         

Course Code    ENGL        3663                                                         Credit Hours        3  

                        Prefix        Number                                                      Lecture Hours      3  

                                                                                                            Lab Hours            0  

                                                                                                            Contact Hours      3_    

Instructor: Kelly Jennings

Office: Vines 139

Phone: 788-7907

Email: Kelly.Jennings@uafs.edu