You can readily see that pronouns are indispensable, and they (pronoun) form a major part of our (pronoun) everyday speech.
We divide pronouns into personal pronouns (I, me, you, he, she, it), possessive pronouns (mine, ours, his, theirs), reflexive pronouns (myself, themselves), demonstrative pronouns (this, these, those), interrogative pronouns (who? what? which?), relative pronouns (who, whom, which, that), indefinite pronouns (all, any, many, everyone, few, most) and reciprocal pronouns (one another, each other).
If you experienced a slight prickly sensation when glancing through those definitions the reason is most likely that pronouns can create more grammatical havoc than any other class of words. But when you’ve studied the detailed section on pronouns on page 77 you’ll feel much more at home with these useful surrogate nouns.
Determiners
Determiners precede nouns and noun phrases, and the best known and most common of them are:
the – known as the definite article, and
a and an – known as indefinite articles
It’s easy to see why they are described so; the is always specific, referring to a definite thing, person or entity, while a and an are used to refer to singular count nouns:
the house over there; the woman in the red dress; the Hippodrome
a large house; an angry young man; a good party; an eel pie
Words functioning as determiners – adjectives and pronouns, for example – exist in great variety, and help us to indicate quantity (some wine); ask questions (whose wine?); denote possession (my wine), and express emotion (what wine!). Numbers can function as determiners, too: a thousand thanks! first race, half a minute. Get the full story on determiners on page 139.
Conjunctions
Think of conjunctions as link-words that join two nouns, phrases, clauses or parts of a sentence:
She asked Bernard if he intended going out and he told her to mind her own business.
She told him he could stay if he promised to be more polite.
There are three types of conjunctions: coordinating conjunctions, which link words, phrases and clauses of equal importance; subordinating conjunctions, which link less important units to one or more of greater importance; and correlative conjunctions, which are used in pairs. They are all described on page 141.
Prepositions
While conjunctions link in a fairly straightforward way, prepositions link by relating verbs to nouns, pronouns and noun phrases. In particular they unite two sentence elements in such a way as to provide extra information about space, time, and reason:
Judith travelled to New York in a 747 and flew through a storm.
Lawrence went down to the beach at noon.
Lizzie went to the arcade for a new swimsuit.
We use prepositions constantly (try getting through a day without using as, by, in, on, to and up, to name just a few!) and misuse them occasionally. Should you, for example, end a sentence with a preposition? The answer, and more about this interesting member of the grammatical glue family, will be found on page 146.
Interjections
Interjections and exclamations are self-explanatory:
Wow! Hey! Shhhh! Blimey! Oh! Cheers!
Although these examples, expressing surprise, excitement or some other emotion, are followed by exclamation marks, these are not always necessary:
Okay, let’s get it over with. Ah-ha, that’s better. Mmmm . . .
For further insight into interjections, see page 152.
Phrases and Clauses
We’ve now surveyed the different classes of words we use to construct sentences. However we should, at this point, also familiarise ourselves with two units or groups of words that are usually found in sentences: phrases and clauses.
A phrase is a group of words working as a unit but unable to stand alone or to make sense, but the definition can also include single words. The logic of this is demonstrated when we shrink a conventional phrase:
I love that dry white wine from Australia.
I love that dry white wine.
I love that white wine.
I love that wine.
I love wine.
The sets of words in bold are all phrases. The key word wine is called the headword, and because it is a noun, all five phrases are called noun phrases.
There are five kinds of phrases, each named after the class of the headword:
| NOUN PHRASE | They loved their first home. (home is a noun) |
| VERB PHRASE | We have been burgled. (burgled is a verb) |
| ADVERB PHRASE | Come through the doorway. (through is an adverb) |
| ADJECTIVE PHRASE | It’s too difficult to do. (difficult is an adjective) |
| PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE | They walked along the path. (along is the introducing preposition; the path is a noun phrase) |
In the previous chapter we described three kinds of sentence: the simple sentence, consisting of a single main clause; the compound sentence, consisting of two or more main clauses, and the complex sentence, consisting of a main clause and one or more subordinate clauses. Fine – but what, exactly, are clauses?
A clause, quite simply, is a unit of related words which contains a subject and other words, always including a verb, which give us information about the subject:
The patient stopped breathing, so I shouted for the nurse.
In this example, The patient stopped breathing is a main clause of the sentence, because it can stand alone. In fact, if you put a full stop after breathing it becomes a legitimate sentence. But I shouted for the nurse is also a main clause because it can stand alone, too. What we have is a compound sentence consisting of two main clauses coordinated by the adverb so – here used as a conjunction:
| main clause | coordinator | main clause |
| The patient stopped breathing | so | I shouted for the nurse. |
Now let’s construct a sentence in a different way – this time with a main clause and a subordinate