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       THE ENGLISH NOUN   A noun is a part of speech that is used to indicate the name of a living being (person, animal, plant, etc.), place, inanimate objects, thing, or an idea. Nouns are an integral part of grammar in all languages. In Hindi, we have संज्ञा as equivalent of noun, in Bengali বিশেষ্য , in Russian существительное, and so on.   As we have learned, generally sentences consist of two main components - an action (doing something) and a doer of the action. The words that denote doers of the action are termed as nouns or pronouns. Nouns are also the accessory words that we use in a sentence to convey a complete thought. Some examples of noun (in bold) are:   Boys play football . Sam is late again. Please give me a pencil . The Ganges is a mighty river . We need to show kindness . The parrot wants food .   In this post we shall talk more about the nouns.  Often nouns can be recognised by their endings. Typ...

ENGLISH SENTENCE STRUCTURE:   FOUR TYPES OF SENTENCES We have seen in a previous post that from the standpoint of content, intent and emotion, English sentences can be divided into four major kinds: Declarative or Assertive, Interrogative, Imperative and Exclamatory. We also learnt about clauses and phrases. However, from structural point of view, English sentences like those in many other languages are also classified into three different types. Depending upon the numbers of clauses and how they are linked to each other we have Simple, Compound, and Complex sentences. Besides that, many grammarians include Compound-Complex sentences as the fourth type. Simple Sentences Let us examine the following sentences; The Sun rises in the east. Sam is our neighbour. Kathmandu is the capital of Nepal. As we see, each of the above sentences is made of one subject and one predicate. In each sentence there is only one clause.   These are simple sentences....

PHRASES   AND   CLAUSES We have learnt that a sentence is a group of words connected as per certain grammatical rules so as to make a complete idea that we want to communicate. We have also learnt that a sentence consists of two parts, subject and predicate, and a verb is an essential component of the predicate. Subjects are generally made of nouns and pronouns. However, there are situations when a group of words, though has a meaning cannot be termed as a sentence, or when a group of words satisfies all conditions of a sentence but in essence forms only a part of a bigger sentence. Such groups are known as Phrases and Clauses. In this post we shall learn about them. THE PHRASE We go back to the sentence - Ravi throws a stone into the pond. Now, let us examine the group of words into the pond . It has a meaning; it makes sense but does not convey the complete sense.    Such a group of words, that makes sense but not the complete sense, is ...

PARTS OF A SENTENCE: SUBJECT AND PREDICATE Key words: subject, predicate In traditional grammar, a sentence consists of two main parts – subject and predicate. The  subject  of a sentence is the person, place, thing, or idea that is  doing something,  or we are talking about. In other words, we must have a subject to speak or write about, while the predicate tells something about the subject. Let us consider the following sentence: Ravi sells computers. This sentence is about a person, Ravi , and it tells us what Ravi does. Ravi is therefore the subject of the sentence. Some other examples - Raman  plays football. Sudha and her friends play on the ground. In all the above sentences, the subjects are marked in bold letters. Typically, the subject is a noun, a noun phrase, or a pronoun . To determine the subject of a sentence, we first identify the  verb and then make a question by placing "who?" or "what?" befor...

MORE ABOUT PARTS OF SPEECH… As we have learnt, depending upon the meaning and use in a sentence, a word can be assigned different parts of speech. Accordingly, eight parts of speech are recognised in traditional English – noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, and interjection. However, there are views that suggest creation of new part of speech, or even deletion of some. For example,   the classification of the British council ( https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english.../determiners-and-quantifiers ) recognises nine parts of speech, Determiners being the ninth one, in addition to the eight mentioned above. Determiners include some groups of words that are traditionally considered as adjectives. In a conventional sense, an adjective is a word used to describe or provide additional information about the noun. Adjectives used to describe about the size, shape, age, colour, origin, material, etc., of a noun or pronoun is termed...