The Good Grammar Guide pptx

[...]... – one denoting omission, the other possession False The so-called ‘possessive apostrophe’ hinges on omission just as much as all the others When we write the boy’s bicycle the woman’s handbag the swallows’ nests in each case the ’s is the now-truncated form of the original Anglo Saxon genitive ending -es, and It is that surviving genitive case that signals possession, not the apostrophe itself Pedantic?... First, the case-structure is still there even if it is not visible; second, the more you know about what is going on in a sentence, the more likely you are both to understand it to the full and write with comparable assurance when it comes to your turn The five cases are: The nominative case The case of a noun or pronoun when it functions as the subject of a verb: She arrives on Good Friday They destroyed... for other than comic purposes But though elegance is sacrificed, meaning is unaltered – whereas if you ‘reversed’ a sentence featuring a direct object, meaning would be transformed: 2a 2b 3a 3b The crowd clapped the players The players clapped the crowd The hunter shot the elephant The elephant shot the hunter 2b’s meaning is perfectly feasible while 3b’s is ridiculous, but they both illustrate the fact... to teach established and able professionals the rudiments of grammar and essential mechanical skills? Why else, indeed, is this book considered marketable? I detest the cliché ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’,7 but I fear it is all too apposite in this instance The baby in this instance was grammar itself, or the need to know it; the bathwater was the way it had traditionally been taught To... be telling’ 25 A further instance of ending a sentence with a preposition On this occasion the alternative ‘a village left in which to commit any crime’ is entirely euphonious and therefore just as good; however, placing the in at the very end gives it additional emphasis, which is what the thrust of the remark seems to require I would therefore keep it as it is 26 Assuming the speaker to be male,... of the structure, since they bear no grammatical relation to it.6 At best such flaws are lazy, at worst ignorant, and they are 5 See Preface above, pp xii–xiii 6 That is to say, the sentences would have exactly the same meaning if the vocatives were removed Their tone would be more impersonal, and it could be argued that the deletion of ‘Tim’ and ‘George’ sacrifices certain information; nevertheless, the. .. however: the apostrophe here still denotes omission – in this case that of the e in the Anglo-Saxon genitive suffix es The dative case The case of a noun or pronoun when it denotes the indirect object7 of a verb: She gave him a present on her birthday He sent the President a letter-bomb 3 Clause A group of words that has a subject and predicate8 – The plane will take off when the fog clears where the plane... include adjective, the just-mentioned predicate and the imminent correlatives They can seem needlessly difficult, as if their chief purpose is to confuse or obscure Fortunately, there’s nothing difficult about complement in practice The complement simply fulfils the function performed by the direct object in sentences with transitive verbs The difference is that you could ‘reverse’ the two components... feel they do not require such a guide, in which case they should move on to the next chapter; others, even if they are familiar with some of the material covered, may find it an additionally helpful lead-in In any event, all the matters addressed are explored more extensively later on, and the sequence adopted here is purely alphabetical 3 Kersti Börjars and Kate Burridge, Introducing English Grammar. .. to give us the giggles The highlight, however, was the teaching of ‘ut’ plus the subjunctive to indicate ‘a clause of purpose’ and its cousin ‘ne’ plus the subjunctive to indicate a clause of negative purpose, as in the English lest.’ His invariable illustration went, phonetically rendered: ‘I went tuh London tah see the Queen.’ To this day I cannot hear the words ‘ut’, ‘ne’ or ‘to see the Queen’ without . class="bi x0 y0 w0 h0" alt="" The Good Grammar Guide Does grammar bother you? Does it inspire first boredom, then fear? Since the virtual removal forty years ago of formal grammar teaching from our schools’. unfortunate and unnecessary. Not only is grammar an enabling servant rather than a tyrannical set of absolute rules: it can also be fun. The Good Grammar Guide offers extensive coverage of Parts. considered the most amusing, and as such it is guaranteed to banish both boredom and fear. Though entirely discreet, The Good Grammar Guide can additionally be read as a companion to the author’s