Speaking Writing Articles |
Purity
Purity of style consists in using words which are reputable, ...
Each Otherone Another
Each other refers to two, one another to more than two. "Jone...
Strength
Strength is that property of style which gives animation, ene...
The Paragraph
The paragraph may be defined as a group of sentences that are...
Past Perfect Tense
Sing. Plural
...
X L C D M1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 50, 100, 500, 1000.
(9) Proper names begin with a capital; as, "Jones, Johnson, C...
Adverb
An adverb is a word which modifies a verb, an adjective or an...
Says Ii Said
"Says I" is a vulgarism; don't use it. "I said" is correct fo...
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THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN A NUTSHELL |
Vocabulary Parts of Speech - Requisites
All the words in the English language are divided into nine great
classes. These classes are called the Parts of Speech. They are Article,
Noun, Adjective, Pronoun, Verb, Adverb, Preposition, Conjunction and
Interjection. Of these, the Noun is the most important, as all the others
are more or less dependent upon it. A Noun signifies the name of any
person, place or thing, in fact, anything of which we can have either
thought or idea. There are two kinds of Nouns, Proper and Common. Common
Nouns are names which belong in common to a race or class, as man,
city. Proper Nouns distinguish individual members of a race or class as
John, Philadelphia. In the former case man is a name which belongs
in common to the whole race of mankind, and city is also a name which
is common to all large centres of population, but John signifies a
particular individual of the race, while Philadelphia denotes a
particular one from among the cities of the world.
Nouns are varied by Person, Number, Gender, and Case. Person is that
relation existing between the speaker, those addressed and the subject
under consideration, whether by discourse or correspondence. The Persons
are First, Second and Third and they represent respectively the
speaker, the person addressed and the person or thing mentioned or under
consideration.
Number is the distinction of one from more than one. There are two
numbers, singular and plural; the singular denotes one, the plural two or
more. The plural is generally formed from the singular by the addition of
s or es.
Gender has the same relation to nouns that sex has to individuals, but
while there are only two sexes, there are four genders, viz., masculine,
feminine, neuter and common. The masculine gender denotes all those of
the male kind, the feminine gender all those of the female kind, the
neuter gender denotes inanimate things or whatever is without life, and
common gender is applied to animate beings, the sex of which for the time
being is indeterminable, such as fish, mouse, bird, etc. Sometimes things
which are without life as we conceive it and which, properly speaking,
belong to the neuter gender, are, by a figure of speech called
Personification, changed into either the masculine or feminine gender,
as, for instance, we say of the sun, He is rising; of the moon, She
is setting.
Case is the relation one noun bears to another or to a verb or to a
preposition. There are three cases, the Nominative, the Possessive
and the Objective. The nominative is the subject of which we are
speaking or the agent which directs the action of the verb; the
possessive case denotes possession, while the objective indicates the
person or thing which is affected by the action of the verb.
An Article is a word placed before a noun to show whether the latter is
used in a particular or general sense. There are but two articles, a or
an and the.
An Adjective is a word which qualifies a noun, that is, which shows
some distinguishing mark or characteristic belonging to the noun.
Next: DEFINITIONS
Previous: REQUIREMENTS OF SPEECH
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Informational
