COLLINS COBUILD

COLLINS Birmingham University International Language Database

ENGLISH GRAMMAR

COLLINS PUBLISHERS

THE UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM

COLLINS London and Glasgow

Collins ELT

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©William Collins Sons & Co Ltd 1990

First published 1990

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Contents

Contents 1

Editorial team 6

Introduction 6

Note on Examples 10

Guide to the Use of the Grammar 11

Glossary of grammatical terms 13

Cobuild Grammar Chart 21

Contents of Chapter 1 22

1 Referring to people and things 22

Introduction to the noun group 22

Identifying people and things: nouns 24

Things which can be counted: count nouns 25

Things not usually counted: uncount nouns 27

When there is only one of something: singular nouns 29

Referring to more than one thing: plural nouns 30

Referring to groups: collective nouns 32

Referring to people and things by name: proper nouns 33

Nouns which are rarely used alone 34

Sharing the same quality: adjectives as headwords 35

Nouns referring to males or females 36

Referring to activities and processes: '-ing' nouns 37

Specifying more exactly: compound nouns 37

Referring to people and things without naming them: pronouns 40

Referring to people and things: personal pronouns 40

Mentioning possession: possessive pronouns 42

Referring back to the subject: reflexive pronouns 43

Referring to a particular person or thing: demonstrative pronouns 44

Referring to people and things in a general way: indefinite pronouns 45

Showing that two people do the same thing: reciprocal pronouns 47

Joining clauses together: relative pronouns 47

Asking questions: interrogative pronouns 48

Other pronouns 48

Identifying what you are talking about: determiners 50

The specific way: using 'the' 50

The specific way: using 'this', 'that', 'these', and 'those' 53

The specific way: using possessive determiners 54

The general way 56

The general way: using 'a' and 'an' 57

The general way: other determiners 58

Contents of Chapter 2 61

2 Giving information about people and things 62

Introduction 62

Describing things: adjectives 62

Information focusing: adjective structures 64

Identifying qualities: qualitative adjectives 64

Identifying the class that something belongs to: classifying adjectives 65

Identifying colours: colour adjectives 66

Showing strong feelings: emphasizing adjectives 67

Making the reference more precise: postdeterminers 67

Special classes of adjectives 68

Position of adjectives in noun groups 70

Special forms: '-ing' adjectives 71

Special forms: '-ed' adjectives 73

Compound adjectives 76

Comparing things: comparatives 77

Comparing things: superlatives 79

Other ways of comparing things: saying that things are similar 80

Indicating different amounts of a quality: submodifiers 83

Indicating the degree of difference: submodifiers in comparison 86

Modifying using nouns: noun modifiers 88

Indicating possession or association: possessive structures 89

Indicating close connection: apostrophe s ('s) 90

Other structures with apostrophe s ('s) 90

Talking about quantities and amounts 91

Talking about amounts of things: quantifiers 91

Talking about amounts of things: partitives 94

Referring to an exact number of things: numbers 97

Referring to the number of things: cardinal numbers 97

Referring to things in a sequence: ordinal numbers 100

Referring to an exact part of something: fractions 101

Talking about measurements 102

Talking about age 104

Approximate amounts and measurements 105

Expanding the noun group: qualifiers 106

Nouns with prepositional phrases 106

Nouns with adjectives 109

Nouns with non-finite clauses 110

Contents of Chapter 3 111