I Used to Know That_ Stuff You Forgot From School - Caroline Taggart [2]
pronoun: a word that stands in the place of a noun. For instance, Caroline has forgotten a lot of stuff. That is why she is writing this book—where the pronoun she in the second sentence takes the place of the proper noun Caroline in the first. Other examples include it, he, her, his, me, and they.
verb: a doing word. A verb indicates the occurrence or performance of an action, or the existence of a state or condition, such as to be, to do, to run, to happen. This form of a verb (normally containing the word to) is called the infinitive. Verbs change their form according to tense, person, and number: I am, I was, you were, he is, they are. Verbs can also be in the active or passive voice—I bake the bread is active; the bread is baked is passive. English also has three verb moods: the indicative makes a simple statement—I bake the bread; the subjunctive indicates something that is wished or possible—If I were you, I would bake the bread; and the imperative gives a command—Bake that bread!
Phrases and Clauses
Now it is time to take a look at the building blocks of sentences: phrases and clauses. Each depends on the other to express a complete thought, but knowing the difference between them can be quite confusing. Generally, you can rely on the following definitions:
• A phrase is a group of words (in a sentence) that does not contain a subject or predicate—or either one: In the afternoon, we went to the store.
• A clause does contain a subject and a verb and may stand alone as a sentence or as part of a sentence. However, in the sentence He loves dogs but doesn’t have one, the clause but doesn’t have one is the subordinate clause.
Sentences—and each clause of a sentence—can be divided into a subject and a predicate.
• The subject is the noun or noun phrase that the sentence is about, the thing that does the action expressed in the verb.
• The predicate is everything else. In sentences involving the verb to be, what follows the verb is known as the complement, as in Silence is golden, where golden is the subjective complement of the verb.
• A verb may be transitive or intransitive, which means it may or may not need a direct object in order to make sense. The object is the thing on which the subject performs the action of the verb. In the sentence He hit the ball, the object is ball.
To see some examples of all this, consider a line from A Midsummer Night’s Dream:
I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows.
The main statement or principal clause is I know a bank. Not very interesting, but it stands alone as a sentence. I is the subject, know a bank is the predicate and can be subdivided into the verb know, and the object (answering the question What do I know?), is bank. Know in this sentence is a transitive verb—it doesn’t make much sense without the object.
The subordinate clause is whereon the wild thyme blows. The clause has a verb (blows) with a subject (the wild thyme, which is a noun phrase), but it isn’t a sentence. Note, however, that blows makes sense on its own—it doesn’t need an object, so it is intransitive.
Blow is one of many verbs that can be either transitive or intransitive, depending on context: The wind blows intransitively, but you can blow a horn or blow glass in a transitive way.
Taking a sentence apart to analyze its components is called parsing. You may remember drawing a parse tree or sentence diagram in elementary school.
Synonyms, Antonyms, and the Like
The suffix -nym derives from the Greek for name, but in fact, these words are currently used to refer to meaning. So a synonym is a word that has the same or similar meaning as another, while an antonym has the opposite meaning.
Here are some examples:
• Spooky, scary, frightening, and eerie are synonyms, as are pale, wan, and ashen.
• Mean is an antonym of generous.
Illogically, a homonym is a word