English grammar

Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 138. Chapters: English plural, Split infinitive, Grammatical tense, Plural form of words ending in -us, English conjugation tables, List of English words with disputed usage, List of commonly misused English words, Germanic weak verb, English verbs, Germanic strong verb, List of English irregular verbs, Thou, History of English grammars, Joseph Priestley and education, English modal verb, English passive voice, Contractions of negated auxiliary verbs in English, English subjunctive, Shall and will, English prefixes, Generic antecedent, English articles, Germanic verb, Jesus, Phrasal verb, Like, English personal pronouns, Possessive adjective, English relative clauses, Tag question, False title, Classical compound, You, List of English prepositions, Sentence diagram, Reduced relative clause, Initial-stress-derived noun, Comma splice, Going-to future, She, English noun phrase, Zero-marking in English, History of linguistic prescription in English, Nested quotation, Gender in English, Definite article reduction, They, Free indirect speech, Realis mood, English Grammar In Use, Not!, Do-support, Longest English sentence, The Rudiments of English Grammar, Gapping, Run-on sentence, Distributive pronoun, Than, Possessive pronoun, Crossover effects, Northern subject rule, Penthouse principle, Possessive antecedent, Verb phrase ellipsis, Nominative absolute, Double copula, Sloppy identity, Present continuous, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, Right-branching sentence, Grammar Ray: A Graphic Guide to Grammar, Transition words, Dependent statement, Unspeakable Sentences, Sleeping Dogs Don't Lay. Excerpt: This is a paradigm of English verbs, that is, a set of conjugation tables, for the model regular verbs and for some of the most common irregular verbs. The tables analyze English according to a traditional grammar perspective. There are three non-finite (i.e. not able to form independent clauses) moods and five finite moods (i.e. able to form independent clauses) in English, which makes eight moods: Finite moods: There are twelve tenses: All non-auxiliaries exhibit two more tenses: There are two voices: There are two grammatical numbers and three grammatical persons: The modal auxiliaries are can, may, dare, need, must, ought, will and shall. They are all irregular and defective. English grammar is the body of rules describing the properties of the English language. A language is such that its elements must be combined according to certain patterns. This article is concerned with (and restricted to) morphology, the building blocks of language; and syntax, the construction of meaningful phrases, clauses and sentences with the use of morphemes and words. The grammar of any language is commonly approached in two different ways: descriptive, usually based on a systematic analysis of a large text corpus and describing grammatical structures thereupon; and prescriptive, which attempts to use the identified rules of a given language as a tool to govern the linguistic behaviour of speakers (see Descriptive linguistics and Linguistic prescription). Prescriptive grammar further concerns itself with several open disputes in English grammar, often representing changes in usage over time. This article predominantly concerns itself with descriptive grammar. There are historical, social and regional variations of English. For example, British English and American English have several lexical differences; however, the gr...