A pronoun usually refers to something already mentioned in a
sentence or piece of text. They are used instead of nouns to
prevent repetition of the noun to which they refer.
1. SUBJECTIVE PRONOUN- I, we, you, they, he ,she, it
2
. OBJECTIVE PRONOUN- Me, us, you, them, her, his, it
3. POSSESSIVE PRONOUN-
a. My, his, her, our, your, its, their
b. Mine, hers ,ours, yours, theirs
4. EMPHATIC PRONOUNS- MYSELF, HIMSELF,
HERSELF, ITSELF, YOURSELF, OURSELVES,
YOURSELVES, THEMSELVES.
5. REFLEXING PRONOUN- myself, himself, herself,
itself, yourself, yourselves, ourselves, themselves
a. Subject and object are same.
6. RELATIVE PRONOUN- to connect sub clause to the
main clause
a. Which-things
b. Who-person-subject
c. Whom-person-object
d. When-time
e. Where-place
f. How-manner
g. Whose-possession
h. What-content
i. Why-reason
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Verb Classification
1. Helping Verbs
Imagine that a stranger walks into your room and says:
* I can.
* People must.
* The Earth will.
Do you understand anything? Has this person communicated anything to you? Probably not!
That's because these verbs are helping verbs and have no meaning on their own. They are
necessary for the grammatical structure of the sentence, but they do not tell us very much
alone. We usually use helping verbs with main verbs. They "help" the main verb. (The
sentences in the above examples are therefore incomplete. They need at least a main verb to
complete them.) There are only about 15 helping verbs.
2. Main Verbs
Now imagine that the same stranger walks into your room and says:
* I teach.
* People eat.
* The Earth rotates.
Do you understand something? Has this person communicated something to you? Probably
yes! Not a lot, but something. That's because these verbs are main verbs and have meaning
on their own. They tell us something. Of course, there are thousands of main verbs.
In the following table we see example sentences with helping verbs and main verbs. Notice
that all of these sentences have a main verb. Only some of them have a helping verb.
helping verb main verb
John likes coffee.
You lied to me.
They are happy.
The children are playing.
We must go now.
I do not want any. Helping verbs and main verbs can be further sub-divided, as we shall see on the following
pages
Helping Verbs
Helping verbs are also called "auxiliary verbs".
Helping verbs have no meaning on their own. They are necessary for the grammatical
structure of a sentence, but they do not tell us very much alone. We usually use helping verbs
with main verbs. They "help" the main verb (which has the real meaning). There are only
about 15 helping verbs in English, and we divide them into two basic groups:
Primary helping verbs (3 verbs)
These are the verbs be, do, and have. Note that we can use these three verbs as helping verbs
or as main verbs. On this page we talk about them as helping verbs. We use them in the
following cases:
* be
o to make continuous tenses (He is watching TV.)
o to make the passive (Small fish are eaten by big fish.)
* have
o to make perfect tenses (I have finished my homework.)
* do
o to make negatives (I do not like you.)
o to ask questions (Do you want some coffee?)
o to show emphasis (I do want you to pass your exam.)
o to stand for a main verb in some constructions (He speaks faster than she
does.)
Modal helping verbs (10 verbs)
We use modal helping verbs to "modify" the meaning of the main verb in some way. A
modal helping verb expresses necessity or possibility, and changes the main verb in that
sense. These are the modal verbs:
* can, could
* may, might
* will, would,
* shall, should
* must
* ought to Here are examples using modal verbs:
* I can't speak Chinese.
* John may arrive late.
* Would you like a cup of coffee?
* You should see a doctor.
* I really must go now.
Main Verbs »
Semi-modal verbs (3 verbs)
The following verbs are often called "semi-modals" because they are partly like modal
helping verbs and partly like main verbs:
* need
* dare
* used to
Main Verbs
Main verbs are also called "lexical verbs".
Main verbs have meaning on their own (unlike helping verbs). There are thousands of main
verbs, and we can classify them in several ways:
Transitive and intransitive verbs
A transitive verb takes a direct object: Somebody killed the President. An intransitive verb
does not have a direct object: He died. Many verbs, like speak, can be transitive or
intransitive. Look at these examples:
transitive:
* I saw an elephant.
* We are watching TV.
* He speaks English.
intransitive:
* He has arrived.
* John goes to school.
* She speaks fast.
Linking verbs
A linking verb does not have much meaning in itself. It "links" the subject to what is said
about the subject. Usually, a linking verb shows equality (=) or a change to a different state or place (>). Linking verbs are always intransitive (but not all intransitive verbs are linking
verbs).
* Mary is a teacher. (mary = teacher)
* Tara is beautiful. (tara = beautiful)
* That sounds interesting. (that = interesting)
* The sky became dark. (the sky > dark)
* The bread has gone bad. (bread > bad)
Dynamic and stative verbs
Some verbs describe action. They are called "dynamic", and can be used with continuous
tenses. Other verbs describe state (non-action, a situation). They are called "stative", and
cannot normally be used with continuous tenses (though some of them can be used with
continuous tenses with a change in meaning).
dynamic verbs (examples):
* hit, explode, fight, run, go
stative verbs (examples):
* be
* impress, please, surprise
* hear, see, sound
* belong to, consist of, contain, include, need
* appear, resemble, seem
Regular and irregular verbs
This is more a question of vocabulary than of grammar. The only real difference between
regular and irregular verbs is that they have different endings for their past tense and past
participle forms. For regular verbs, the past tense ending and past participle ending is always
the same: -ed. For irregular verbs, the past tense ending and the past participle ending is
variable, so it is necessary to learn them by heart.
regular verbs: base, past tense, past participle
* look, looked, looked
* work, worked, worked
irregular verbs: base, past tense, past participle
* buy, bought, bought
* cut, cut, cut
* do, did, done
Here are lists of regular verbs and irregular verbs. One way to think of regular and irregular verbs is like this: all verbs are irregular and the so-
called regular verbs are simply one very large group of irregular verbs.
Often the above divisions can be mixed. For example, one verb could be irregular, transitive
and dynamic; another verb could be regular, transitive and static.
