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Grammar

Textual Analysis work always requires you to analyse the effect of grammatical and lexical features of the text.  Therefore, grammar is only one aspect, but a solid knowledge of grammar is often a differentiating feature of a very strong candidate.

Use these grammar pages to help you learn the word classes.

Please note:

Lang-Lit students are not expected to use the full range of grammatical terms that Language students are.

All Language students should be comfortable with identifying:

• Nouns: abstract and concrete, proper and common
• Pronouns: person (1st etc) and number (singular or plural)
• Adjectives and adverbs
• Modifiers and intensifiers
• Verbs including infinitives
• Grammatical words vs lexical words
• Simple sentences

A few of you aiming for a top grade will understand:

• Passive/active voice verbs
• Finite/non-finite verb forms
• Relative clauses

Most of you will also understand all or some of the following:

• Pronoun use and its effects
• Pre- and post- modification of nouns
• Comparatives/superlatives of adjectives
• Types of adverbs (manner/intensity/time/place)
• Verbs – aspect/tense; main/modal/auxiliary/primary
• Verb subjects and objects
• Adverbials
• Morphology
• Different uses/functions of same word (eg “teaching” as verb/noun/adjective)
• Conjunctions – co-ordinating and subordinating
• Determiners – usage and effects
• Prepositions/prepositional phrases
• Sentence types by function (declarative/imperative etc)
• Compound and complex sentences