- •Class nouns
- •Names of persons
- •Geographical names
- •Miscellaneous proper names
- •Set expressions
- •Some syntactic relations
- •Parts of the day
- •Names of seasons and names of meals
- •"School, college, bed, prison, jail; sea; town, wind, weather, life"
- •Names of diseases and names of languages
- •Certain adjectives, pronouns and numerals
- •The oblique moods subjunctive I
- •Subjunctive II
- •The conditional mood
- •In complex sentences. Real conditions.
- •The suppositional mood
- •The verbals the triple nature of the participle, its tense and voice
- •The functions of p1 & p2
- •The objective participial construction
- •The subjective participial construction
- •The nominative absolute participial construction, the prepositional absolute participial construction
- •The absolute constructions without a participle
- •Double nature of the gerund, its tense and voice
- •Predicative constructions with the gerund
- •The use of the gerund
- •The functions of the gerund
- •The gerund & the participle. The gerund & the infinitive. The gerund & the verbal noun
- •The double nature of the infinitive, its tense, aspect and voice
- •The functions of the infinitive
- •The objective-with-the-infinitive construction
- •The subjective infinitive construction.
- •Syntax the word order
- •Position of the object, the attribute, the adverbial modifiers
- •The subject
- •"It" as the subject of the sentence
- •The predicate
- •The compound verbal predicate. Mixed types
- •Agreement of the predicate with the subject
- •The object
- •The complex object. The cognate object
- •The attribute
- •The adverbial modifier
- •Detached parts of the sentence. The independent elements
- •The simple sentence
- •The compound sentence
- •The complex sentence
- •Attributive and adverbial clauses
- •The rules of the sequence of tenses
- •Indirect speech (statements, questions)
- •Indirect orders and requests, offers, suggestions and advice, indirect exclamations
The subject
The S is the principal part of a two-member sentence which is grammatically independent of the other parts of the sentence and on which the second principal part (the predicate) is dependent. It can denote a living being, a lifeless thing or an idea.
The ways of expressing the S: 1) A noun in the common case (The sun is shining); 2) A pronoun (personal, demonstrative, defining, indefinite, negative, possessive, interrogative) (Everyone is sitting), sometimes the pronouns "one, they, you, we" refer to people in general – in such cases an impersonal sentence is used in Russian; 3) A substantivized adjective or participle (The injured were taken to hospital); 4) A numeral (cardinal, ordinal) (The two were happy); 5) An infinitive, an infinitive phrase or construction (To work is a necessity); 6) A gerund, a gerundial phrase or construction (Studying is a must); 7) Any part of speech used as a quotation (Yes is the word I want to hear from her); 8) A syntactically indivisible group (Fish and chips is the most famous English dish); 9) A quotation group (And what does Mr.Know-It-All recommend?).
"It" as the subject of the sentence
When "It" as a subject represents a living being or a thing it's a notional subject, when it performs a purely grammatical function it's a formal object.
When a NS "It": 1) Denotes definite thing or an abstract idea (the personal "it") (Here's the door. It can be opened); 2) Points out some person or thing expressed by a predicative noun (the demonstrative "it") (It is Mary).
When a FO "It": 1) Denotes natural phenomena (weather, etc.) or characterizes the environment (It is raining) or denotes time and distance (It is nine already) (the impersonal "it"); 2) Introduces the real subject (the introductory or anticipatory "it") (It's no use crying); 3) Used for emphasis (the emphatic "it") (It was John who did it).
The predicate
The P is the second principal part of the sentence which expresses an action, state, or quality of the person or thing denoted by the S. Grammatically dependent upon the S. The simple P is expressed by a finite verb in a simple or a compound tense form. Generally denotes an action. The compound P consists of 2 parts: a finite verb and some other part of speech. The second component is the significant part.
The compound nominal P denotes the state or quality of the person or thing expressed by the subject (He is tired), or the class of persons or things to which this person or thing belongs (She is a doctor). The CNP consists of a link verb and a predicative (the nominal part of the predicate). The link verb (a verb of incomplete predication) expresses the verbal categories of person, number, tense, aspect, mood, sometimes voice. Most link verbs have partly lost their original concrete meaning (especially "to be") except the following: "to appear, to get, to grow, to continue, to feel, to keep, to look, to turn, to hold, to prove, to loom, to rank, to remain, to run, to seem, to smell, to taste, to fall, to stand, to go, to work". All the LV are divided into: 1) LV of being and remaining ("to be, to look, to seem, etc."); 2) LV of becoming ("to become, to get, to run, etc."). The predicative can be expressed by: 1) A noun in the common (sometimes possessive) case (She was a pretty child); 2) An adjective (He's very nice); 3) A pronoun (personal, possessive, negative, interrogative, reflexive, indefinite, defining) (It's me); 4) A word of the category of state (He's afraid); 5) A numeral (cardinal & ordinal) (I'm only 22); 6) A prepositional phrase (The rule was beyond my understanding); 7) An infinitive, infinitive phrase or construction (My first thought was to embrace her); 8) A gerund, gerundial phrase or construction (I like playing chess); 9) Participle 2 or, seldom, adjectivized Participle 1 (He was surprised); 10) An adverb (It was absolutely enough). The Objective Predicative expresses the state or quality of the person or thing denoted by the object and is generally expressed by a noun, an adjective, a word denoting state, or a prepositional phrase (He painted the wall white). It doesn't form part of the P, so the P is simple.
A phraseological P is a P expressed by a phraseological unit. They can be: 1) A momentaneous action expressed by a finite verb which has a great extent lost its concrete meaning and a noun formed from a verb and mostly used with a definite article (to give a push, to have a smoke); 2) Combinations the second component of which in most cases is an abstract noun used without any article (to get rid, to take care).