English Notes

An intro into English language

 

Adjectives-modify a noun

Noun-name

Adverb-modify a a verb

Verb-doing word

Pro noun-I, you, he, she

Simile- comparison of one thing with another

Amy arrived (noun,verb)

 

My friend Amy arrived early so we went straight to the beach.

(Determinator, noun, noun, verb, adverb, conjunction, pro noun, verb, adverb, preposition, determinator, adjective, noun)

 

Common noun- a name that can be proceeded by the word ‘the’ and that represents all members of a class. River, town, women.

Proper noun- names for unique individuals, events or places.

Concrete noun- a noun that requires on of our senses.

Abstract noun- a noun that names an idea or a concept. Courage, freedom, love.

Collective nouns- refers to a group of things or people. A swarm of bees, murder of crows.

Noun phrase- made up of a noun and any words that modify that noun. Goat= the goat, the hungry goat, the hungry goat in the field.

 

Nouns part II

 

Whenever you modify a noun this becomes a noun phrase. Essentially you have changed the meaning of the noun in some way. We see this is newspapers a great deal.

The plane crash, a horrific plane crash, the most horrific plane crash ever.

How do nouns make a difference to a piece of writing?

Lexical cohesion, can also paint a picture/describe, create an emotional response.

 

Adjectives

 

The weary painter took off his blue, green and white overalls and ate a day old Chinese meal because he felt ravenous.

 

Adjectives are words or phrases that modify or describe nouns and or nouns.

Function: evaluate, emotive, and descriptive

 

Verbs

 

Main verbs tell you the action which is taking place;sing;jump;gave.

Auxiliary verbs give extra information about the main verb; can effect the meaning.

Primary auxiliaries (Do, have and be) distinguished tense model auxiliaries (can, could, will, would, must, may, might, shall, should) show possibility or necessity

 

Deontic verbs- must, will, can

Epistemic- may, might

 

Imperative is a command

 

Verb phrase is built around a head word the main verb.

Model auxiliaries can be placed along a continuum to show degrees of strength towards commitment.

Past tense- base form + -s inflection (sings)

Past tense- base form + -ed inflection (jumped)

Future tense-model auxiliary: will or shall + base form will sing.

 

Clauses and voice

 

Active voice: the police arrested the suspect!

Passive voice: the suspect was arrested by the police!

 

A clause is in the same that words from phrases form larger structure called clauses. These are groups of words centred around a verb phrase.

A clause will include- the subject (key focuses) the verb (includes adverbs and auxiliaries) the object.

 

Coordinated clauses are when two clauses are joined together by using a conjunction (and, but, furthermore)

 

Sentence type: simple, complex, compound.

Subordinate clause- there will be a main clause and phrases that only make sense with the main clause first

 

Active voice where the verb is placed first usually

Beastly fox hurts baby

The directs attention to the fox

 

Passive voice we don't know the subject, we don't want to talk about the subject, the subject is not the focus of the story.

 

Passive: 500 killed in storm, 500 killed

Active: Storm kills 500 people