Mini lessons

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Grammar terms

Word classes: adjectives, nouns, verbs, and pronouns

Words can be divided into classes such as adjectives, prepositions, interjections, nouns, verbs, adverbs and numerals, and others. Here we only examine a few of them in a simple way.

Adjectives

Adjectives tell us how things are like. Examples:
good
bad
strong
yellow
ideal
round
applicable
spicier
the dullest
democratic

Nouns

Nouns are the names of things. Examples:
chair, table, pencil, paper
strength idea,
usefulness, goodness, application
democracy, republic, king, kingdom

Verbs

Verbs are related to doing and being. Examples:
walk, run, stay,
move, write, read, listen
idealize, make, prove, lie, apply

Pronouns

Pronouns are used instead of the nouns. Examples:
I, you, he, she
We, you, they,
this, that, it
these, those, they

Subject, object and predicate

Parsing sentences means finding the parts of a sentence, or the roles of words in a sentence. Subject is the doer. Object is the thing that the subject does something to. Predicate is the verb. Different languages have different rules how to operate with these roles (subject, object, predicate). There are many more roles to be studied later.

Example 1

The boy kicked the ball.
Begin by identifying the subject (noun phrase) and predicate (verb phrase).
The boy is the subject.
"kicked" is the predicate.
"the ball" is the object.

Examples 2

I love you.
You love me.

In the first sentence, "love" is the predicate. The pronoun "I" is the subject and "you" in the end is the object.

In the second sentence, "love" is the predicate. The pronoun "You" is the subject and "me" in the end is the object.

Often the object is in a different grammatical case than the subject, in some languages also for the nouns and not only pronouns.

You can read more in English for example at https://www.studysmarter.co.uk/explanations/english/english-grammar/word-class/