Grammatical units •
The grammatical units of English are these: word,
phrase, clause and sentence.
Word classes •
The main word classes are these:
verb, noun, adjective, adverb, preposition, determiner, pronoun and
conjunction.
Phrases •
There are these kinds of phrase:
verb phrase, noun phrase, adjective phrase, adverb phrase and prepositional phrase.
Sentence elements •
The sentence elements are these: subject, verb,
object, complement and adverbial.
English compared with other languages •
English words do nor have a lot of different
endings for number and gender.
Word order is very important in English.
The verb phrase can have a complex structure.
There are many idioms with prepositions.
Grammatical units
A FLIGHT ANNOUNCEMENT
'Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of British Island Airways, Captain Massey and his crew welcome you on board the Start Herald Flight to Southampton. Our flight time will be approximately forty-five minutes, and we shall be climbing to an altitude ofeight thousand feet and cruising at a speed of two hundred and fifty miles per hour.'
(from M.
Underwood and P. Barr Listeners)
The grammatical units of English are words, phrases, clauses and sentences.
1 Words
The words in the announcement are good, evening, ladies, and, gentlemen, on etc.
NOTE For word-building, e.g. air + ways= airways, •
2 Phrases and clauses
We use phrases to build a clause. Here is an
example.
|
Subject |
Verb |
Complement |
|
(noun
phrase) |
(verb
phrase) |
(noun
phrase) |
|
Our flight time |
will be |
approximatelyforty-five
minutes. |
Here the noun phrase ourflight time is the subject of the clause. A clause has a subject
and a verb. There can be other phrases, too. In this next example we use a
prepositional phrase as an adverbial.
|
Adverbial |
Subject |
Verb |
Object |
Object |
|
(prepositional
phrase) |
(noun
phrase) |
(verb phrase) |
(noun
phrase) |
(noun phrase) |
|
On behalfof the airline |
we |
wish |
you |
a pleasant flight. |
3 Sentences
A sentence can be a single clause.
On
behalfofBritish Island Airways, Captain Massey and his crew welcome you on
board the Start Herald flight to Southampton.
A written sentence begins with a capital letter (On) and ends with a mark such as a full stop.
We can also combine two or more
clauses in one sentence. For example, we can use and to link the clauses.
Ourflight time will be approximatelyforty-five minutes, and we shall be climbing to an altitude of eight thousand feet and cruising at a speed of two hundred and fifty miles an hour.
