all text copyright Beth Kemp 2004-2010

provided for the purpose of private study only

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