Grammar terminology cheatsheet

Types of sentences

• Declarative sentence: makes a statement
• Imperative sentence: issues a command/request
• Interrogative sentence: asks a question

Parts of a sentence

• Clause: a phrase combining a subject/predicand with a predicate
  • Independent clause: a clause that can stand alone as its own sentence
  • Dependent/subordinate clause: a clause that cannot stand alone as a sentence

• Subject: the entity that a sentence "is about"
• Predicate: what a clause asserts is true of its subject (verb, adjective, etc)

Parts of speech (types of words)

• Noun: person, place, thing or idea
• Adjective: describes a property of a noun (e.g. color, size, quality, etc)
• Verb: "action word", expresses a state or action performed by or upon a noun
  • Modal verb: term used to refer to the verbs can, could, may, might, must, shall, should, will, would, ought
  • Copula: general term used to describe the grammatical construction that identifies two things
    • in English, this is the verb to be
    • some languages, like Russian and Arabic, don't even have a specific word that is used for this
  • Direct object: a noun that a verb is "acting upon" (not always present)
  • Transitive verb: a verb that must always have a direct object
    • examples in English include enjoy,throw,hate (I enjoy is not a complete sentence)
  • Intransitive verb: a verb that does not require a direct object
• Adverb: modifies a verb or adjective
  • often formed in English by adding -ly to an adjective, e.g. slowly, happily, quietly
  • non-ly adverbs in English include often and well
• Pronoun: a word or group of words that can be used in place of a noun
  • in English, some examples are I, you, he, she, it, we, they, him, her, who, whoever, what
  • Personal pronoun: pronoun associated with a specific grammatical person (1st, 2nd, 3rd)
• Determiner: word that combines with a noun to specify (or leave vague) what it refers to
  • in English, examples include the, some, a, an, this, that, these, those
• Preposition: word that expresses a relation between nouns, often for expressing location/position
  • in English, examples include on, in, over, under, by, of, from
• Conjunction: word used to combine clauses
  • in English, examples include and, or, but, if

Verb conjugation

• Tense: indicates where an action is situated in time
  • e.g. past, present, future

• Conditional: expresses a hypothetical action/situation or the consequence of an if-else
  • in English, generally formed by combining verb with would/wouldn't
• Progressive: expresses an action that is currently in progress
  • in English, generally formed by adding -ing
• Perfect: expresses a completed action
  • in English, often formed by adding -ed to a verb, but there are many exceptions
  • irregular English examples include did, bought, saw, heard, ate, drank
• Subjunctive: a grammatical mood of verbs often used to discuss a counterfactual or something that is not (necessarily) true
  • in English, the word were in I wish you were here would be considered subjunctive
  • unlike English, Spanish gives an entire verb conjugation to the subjunctive (e.g. no creo que haya llegado versus creo que ha llegado)