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Grammar RulesIt is very easy to learn how to speak and write correctly, as for all purposes of ordinary conversation and communication, only about 2,000 different words are required. The mastery of just twenty hundred words, the knowing where to place them, will make us not masters of the English language, but masters of correct speaking and writing. Small number, you will say, compared with what is in the dictionary! But nobody ever uses all the words in the dictionary and there is no necessity for using them. To use a big word or a foreign word when a small one and a familiar one will answer the same purpose, is a sign of ignorance. Great scholars and writers and polite speakers use simple words. 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. Grammar Rules - Nouns 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. Grammar Definitions DEFINITIONS A _Pronoun_ is a word used for or instead of a noun to keep us from repeating the same noun too often. Pronouns, like nouns, have case, number, gender and person. There are three kinds of pronouns, _personal_, _relative_ and _adjective_. A _verb_ is a word which signifies action or the doing of something. A verb is inflected by tense and mood and by number and person, though the latter two belong strictly to the subject of the verb. An _adverb_ is a word which modifies a verb, an adjective and sometimes another adverb. A _preposition_ serves to connect words and to show the relation between the objects which the words express. A _conjunction_ is a word which joins words, phrases, clauses and sentences together. An _interjection_ is a word which expresses surprise or some sudden emotion of the mind. Thank you for visiting our grammar page. Please check back, as we are expanding our site to include more rules and excercizes.
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