English grammar

For other pronouns, and all nouns, adjectives, and articles, grammatical function is indicated only by word order, by prepositions, and by the "Saxon genitive or English possessive" (-'s). They include the articles the, a[n], certain demonstrative and interrogative words such as this, that, and which, possessives such as my and whose (the role of determiner can also be played by noun possessive forms such as John's and the girl's), various quantifying words like all, some, many, various, and numerals (one, two, etc.).

The possessive form of an English noun, or more generally a noun phrase, is made by suffixing a morpheme which is represented orthographically as 's (the letter s preceded by an apostrophe), and is pronounced in the same way as the regular English plural ending (e)s: namely as when following a sibilant sound (,,, or ), as when following any other voiceless consonant (,,, or ), and as otherwise.

In most cases the plural is formed from the singular by adding -[e]s (as in dogs, bushes), although there are also irregular forms (woman/women, foot/feet, etc.), including cases where the two forms are identical (sheep, series). For more details, see English plural.

English nouns are inflected for grammatical number, meaning that if they are of the countable type, they generally have different forms for singular and plural.

This includes the structure of words, phrases, clauses, and sentences, right up to the structure of whole texts.

However, the subject is sometimes not said or explicit, often the case in null-subject languages if the subject is retrievable from context, but it sometimes also occurs in other languages such as English (as in imperative sentences and non-finite clauses).

For other pronouns, and all nouns, adjectives, and articles, grammatical function is indicated only by word order, by prepositions, and by the "Saxon genitive or English possessive" (-'s). Eight "word classes" or "parts of speech" are commonly distinguished in English: nouns, determiners, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions.

This refers to the situation in Latin and Greek (and in English), where such words are placed before their complement (except sometimes in Ancient Greek), and are hence "pre-positioned".

They include the articles the, a[n], certain demonstrative and interrogative words such as this, that, and which, possessives such as my and whose (the role of determiner can also be played by noun possessive forms such as John's and the girl's), various quantifying words like all, some, many, various, and numerals (one, two, etc.).

The rules of English grammar require that in most cases a noun, or more generally a noun phrase, must be "completed" with a determiner to clarify what the referent of the noun phrase is. The most common determiners are the articles the and a(n), which specify the presence or absence of definiteness of the noun.

Eight "word classes" or "parts of speech" are commonly distinguished in English: nouns, determiners, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions.

Works of English grammar generally follow the pattern of the European tradition as described above, except that participles are now usually regarded as forms of verbs rather than as a separate part of speech, and numerals are often conflated with other parts of speech: nouns (cardinal numerals, e.g., "one", and collective numerals, e.g., "dozen"), adjectives (ordinal numerals, e.g., "first", and multiplier numerals, e.g., "single") and adverbs (multiplicative numerals, e.g., "once", and distributive numerals, e.g., "singly").

You can also be used as an indefinite pronoun, referring to a person in general (see generic you) compared to the more formal alternative, one (reflexive oneself, possessive one's).

In English grammar and in particular in casual English, generic you, impersonal you, or indefinite you is the use of the pronoun you to refer to an unspecified person, as opposed to its use as the second person pronoun.

Other pronouns in English are often identical in form to determiners (especially quantifiers), such as many, a little, etc. Sometimes, the pronoun form is different, as with none (corresponding to the determiner no), nothing, everyone, somebody, etc. Many examples are listed as indefinite pronouns.

An important role in English grammar is played by determiners – words or phrases that precede a noun or noun phrase and serve to express its reference in the context.

This use of there occurs most commonly with forms of the verb be in existential clauses, to refer to the presence or existence of something.

For details about English, see English grammar: There as pronoun.

Apart from what are called the simple present (write, writes) and simple past (wrote), there are also continuous (progressive) forms (am/is/are/was/were writing), perfect forms (have/has/had written, and the perfect continuous have/has/had been writing), future forms (will write, will be writing, will have written, will have been writing), and conditionals (also called "future in the past") with would in place of will.

This is also the case with English: a construction such as "He is washing" may be described either as present continuous or as present progressive.

The second-person imperative is identical to the (basic) infinitive; other imperative forms may be made with let (let us go, or let's go; let them eat cake).

An example of a verb used in the imperative mood is the English sentence "Please be quiet".

a complement or postmodifier may be a prepositional phrase (... of London), a relative clause (like ...which we saw yesterday), certain adjective or participial phrases (... sitting on the beach), or a dependent clause or infinitive phrase appropriate to the noun (like ... that the world is round after a noun such as fact or statement, or ... to travel widely after a noun such as desire).

Regarding English, the term "infinitive" is traditionally applied to the unmarked form of the verb (the "plain form") when it forms a non-finite verb, whether or not introduced by the particle to.

It also includes the auxiliary do (does, did); this is used with the basic infinitive of other verbs (those not belonging to the "special verbs" class) to make their question and negation forms, as well as emphatic forms (do I like you?; he doesn't speak English; we did close the fridge). For more details of this, see do-support.

Do-support (or do-insertion), in English grammar, is the use of the auxiliary verb do, including its inflected forms does and did, to form negated clauses and questions as well as other constructions in which subject–auxiliary inversion is required.

Apart from what are called the simple present (write, writes) and simple past (wrote), there are also continuous (progressive) forms (am/is/are/was/were writing), perfect forms (have/has/had written, and the perfect continuous have/has/had been writing), future forms (will write, will be writing, will have written, will have been writing), and conditionals (also called "future in the past") with would in place of will.

In the grammar of some modern languages, particularly of English, the perfect may be analyzed as an aspect that is independent of tense – the form that is traditionally just called the perfect ("I have done") is then called the present perfect, while the form traditionally called the pluperfect ("I had done") is called the past perfect.

A system of grammatical gender, whereby every noun was treated as either masculine, feminine or neuter, existed in Old English, but fell out of use during the Middle English period.

Old English syntax is similar to that of modern English.

Adjectives may be used attributively, as part of a noun phrase (nearly always preceding the noun they modify; for exceptions see postpositive adjective), as in the big house, or predicatively, as in the house is big.

In many other languages, including English, German, Russian and Chinese, prepositive adjectives are the norm (attributive adjectives normally come before the nouns they modify), and adjectives appear postpositively only in special situations, if at all.

Many adjectives have comparative and superlative forms in -er and -est, such as faster and fastest (from the positive form fast). Spelling rules which maintain pronunciation apply to suffixing adjectives just as they do for similar treatment of regular past tense formation; these cover consonant doubling (as in bigger and biggest, from big) and the change of y to i after consonants (as in happier and happiest, from happy).

The grammatical category associated with comparison of adjectives and adverbs is degree of comparison. The usual degrees of comparison are the positive, which simply denotes a property (as with the English words big and fully); the comparative, which indicates greater degree (as bigger and more fully); and the superlative, which indicates greatest degree (as biggest and most fully). Some languages have forms indicating a very large degree of a particular quality (called elative in Semitic linguistics).

Apart from what are called the simple present (write, writes) and simple past (wrote), there are also continuous (progressive) forms (am/is/are/was/were writing), perfect forms (have/has/had written, and the perfect continuous have/has/had been writing), future forms (will write, will be writing, will have written, will have been writing), and conditionals (also called "future in the past") with would in place of will.

English does not have an inflective (morphological) conditional mood, except in as much as the modal verbs could, might, should and would may in some contexts be regarded as conditional forms of can, may, shall and will respectively.

Apart from what are called the simple present (write, writes) and simple past (wrote), there are also continuous (progressive) forms (am/is/are/was/were writing), perfect forms (have/has/had written, and the perfect continuous have/has/had been writing), future forms (will write, will be writing, will have written, will have been writing), and conditionals (also called "future in the past") with would in place of will.

Questions and negatives are formed from all of the above constructions in the regular manner: see Questions and Negation in the English grammar article.

For the uses of these various verb forms, see English verbs and English clause syntax.

A typical finite clause consists of a noun phrase functioning as the subject, a finite verb, followed by any number of dependents of the verb.

English nouns are not marked for case as they are in some languages, but they have possessive forms, through the addition of -'s (as in John's, children's) or just an apostrophe (with no change in pronunciation) in the case of -[e]s plurals and sometimes other words ending with -s (the dogs' owners, Jesus' love). More generally, the ending can be applied to noun phrases (as in the man you saw yesterday's sister); see below.

Most European languages feature possessive forms associated with personal pronouns, like the English my, mine, your, yours, his and so on. There are two main ways in which these can be used (and a variety of terminologies for each):

The copula be, along with the modal verbs and the other auxiliaries, form a distinct class, sometimes called "special verbs" or simply "auxiliaries". As noted above under, a finite indicative verb (or its clause) is negated by placing the word not after an auxiliary, modal or other "special" verb such as do, can or be.

In English grammar, certain verb forms are classified as auxiliary verbs. Exact definitions of this term vary; an auxiliary verb is generally conceived as one with little semantic meaning of its own, which modifies the meaning of another verb with which it co-occurs.

The copula be, along with the modal verbs and the other auxiliaries, form a distinct class, sometimes called "special verbs" or simply "auxiliaries".

Another type of existential usage is in clauses of the there is... or there are... type.

Such negating words generally have corresponding negative polarity items (ever for never, anybody for nobody, etc.) which can appear in a negative context, but are not negative themselves (and can thus be used after a negation without giving rise to double negatives).

As examples of polarity items, consider the English lexical items somewhat and at all, as used in the following sentences:

As noted above under, a finite indicative verb (or its clause) is negated by placing the word not after an auxiliary, modal or other "special" verb such as do, can or be.

Affirmative is typically the unmarked polarity, whereas a negative statement is marked in some way, whether by a negating word or particle such as English not, an affix such as Japanese -nai, or by other means, which reverses the meaning of the predicate.