WHICH WORD? 'Turn, become, get, grow, go'

The words become, go, grow, turn, come and get can all be used to talk about change. They have similar meanings. There are differences too.

Complete the following sentences using an appropriate word indicating change.

1. You are ……………….. younger and younger.

a) staying
b) becoming
c) changing

2. Please ………………… ready now.

a) become
b) get
c) turn

3. It was ………………….. very dark.

a) becoming
b) getting
c) turning

4. What do you have to do to ………………….. an astronaut?

a) become
b) get

5. They ………………… married in 1986.

a) got
b) became
c) turned

6. Leaves …………………. brown in autumn.

a) turn
b) go
c) get

7. She ………………… red with embarrassment.

a) went
b) got
c) came

8. It will all ………………… right in the end.

a) go
b) come
c) get

9. Jealousy ………………… her into a monster.

a) became
b) got
c) turned

Answers

1. You are becoming younger and younger.

2. Please get ready now.

3. It was becoming / getting very dark.

4. What do you have to do to become an astronaut?

5. They got married in 1986.

6. Leaves turn / go brown in autumn.

7. She went red with embarrassment.

8. It will all come right in the end.

9. Jealousy turned her into a monster.

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Comparatives and superlatives

Complete the following sentences using an appropriate comparative or superlative form.

1. He is ………………. his father than his mother.

a) more like
b) liker
c) Either could be used here

2. He is ………………….. than stupid.

a) more lazy
b) lazier
c) Either could be used here

3. That is ……………….. of you.

a) kindest
b) most kind
c) Either could be used here

4. Could you talk …………………..?

a) quietlier
b) more quietly
c) Either could be used here

5. Can’t you drive any ………………….?

a) fast
b) faster
c) more fast

6. Susie is ……………….. than her sisters.

a) taller
b) tallest

7. Susie is the ……………………. of the four girls.

a) taller
b) tallest

8. He works ………………… than anybody else in the team.

a) hard
b) harder
c) hardest

9. We offer ………………….. expensive clothes for the fuller figure.

a) less
b) lesser

Answers

1. He is more like his father than his mother.

2. He is more lazy than stupid.

3. That is most kind of you.

4. Could you talk more quietly?

5. Can’t you drive any faster?

6. Susie is taller than her sisters.

7. Susie is the tallest of the four girls.

8. He works harder than anybody else in the team.

9. We offer less expensive clothes for the fuller figure.

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Adjective phrase

A word group that has an adjective as its head is called an adjective phrase. Note that the adjective in this phrase may be accompanied by other words such as determiners, modifiers etc.

Adjective phrases can go before a noun (attributive position). They can also go after a linking verb like be (predicative position).

• He was wearing a dark brown suit. (Here the adjective phrase ‘a dark brown’ modifies the noun suit.)
• The fish tasted awfully funny. (Here the adjective phrase ‘awfully funny’ says something about the fish. It goes after the copular or linking verb tasted.

A copular verb does not take an object and it cannot be modified by an adverb. The word or phrase that follows a copular verb typically says something about the subject of the sentence.

• The fish tasted awful. (NOT The fish tasted awfully.)

Here the adjective awful says something about the fish. It doesn’t modify the verb tasted.

Note that the adjective in an adjective phrase may be modified by an adverb. When it is modified by an adverb, the adverb goes before the adjective. The adjective may also be modified by other determiners like articles, possessives and demonstratives.

Consider the phrase ‘my cute little daughter’

Here the adjective phrase ‘my cute little’ consists of a possessive (my) and two adjectives (cute and little).

Sometimes the idea expressed by an adjective can also be expressed using a noun phrase. Consider the examples given below.

• Brutus is an honorable man. (Here the adjective honorable modifies the noun man.)

The same idea can be expressed using the phrase: a man of honor

• Brutus is a man of honor.

Another example is given below.

• Churchill was an eminent man. (Here the adjective eminent modifies the noun man.)
• Churchill was a man of eminence. (Here the noun phrase ‘a man of eminence’ means the same as the phrase ‘an eminent man’.)

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GENERAL AND SPECIFIC DETERMINERS

General and specific determiners

Determiners are words which come at the beginning of the noun phrase.

They tell us whether the noun phrase is specific or general.

Determiners are either specific or general

Specific determiners:

The specific determiners are:

• the definite article: the
• possessives: my, your, his, her, its; our, their, whose
• demonstratives: this, that, these, those
• interrogatives: which

We use a specific determiner when we believe the listener/reader knows exactly what we are referring to:

Can you pass me the salt please?
Look at those lovely flowers.
Thank you very much for your letter.
Whose coat is this?

General determiners:

The general determiners are:

• a; an; any; another; other; what

When we are talking about things in general and the listener/reader does not know exactly what we are referring to, we can use an uncount noun or a plural noun with no determiner:

Milk is very good for you. (= uncount noun)
Health and education are very important. (= 2 uncount nouns)
Girls normally do better in school than boys. (= plural nouns with no determiner)

… or you can use a singular noun with the indefinite article a or an:

A woman was lifted to safety by a helicopter.
A man climbing nearby saw the accident.

We use the general determiner any with a singular noun or an uncount noun when we are talking about all of those people or things:

It’s very easy. Any child can do it. (= All children can do it)
With a full licence you are allowed to drive any car.
I like beef, lamb, pork - any meat.

We use the general determiner another to talk about an additional person or thing:

Would you like another glass of wine?

The plural form of another is other:

I spoke to John, Helen and a few other friends.

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The Clause

Add caption You've met clauses, too, but let's take a closer look at four important types of clause: Independent and Main Clauses An independent clause stands alone as a sentence, e.g. 'I ate the jelly'. The central clause in a longer sentence is called a main clause. There are two main clauses (in bold) in this sentence:                            I ate the jelly; it wasn't Jo. Subordinate or dependant clauses These add information to a main clause (on which they are dependant for their meaning), e.g. She ate the cake because she is greedy.  In the above sentence, the subordinate clause, 'because she is greedy' is linked to its main clause by the subordinating conjunction, 'because', the existence of which prevents the clause being a main clause. There are many subordinating conjunctions in English, some are single words, others are small phrases. Can you find a subordinating conjunction in this next sentence? 'He hit him even though he was his friend' He hit him even though he was his friend. MAIN CLAUSE SUBORDINATE (or DEPENDENT) CLAUSE The Relative Clause Another common dependent clause functions like an adjective to add more information to a noun. This is the relative clause, so called because the information they give relates to the main clause's subject. Relative clauses are introduced by 'who', 'whom', 'which' or 'that'. Ah, but you will, you will... Being able to pick out the separate phrases and clauses that make up a sentence will prove Very UsefulIndeed whatever other grammar you manage to learn - or not! Sometimes, it can be relatively easy to notice each grammatical unit as each phrase is separated by a pair of commas, but more often you'll need to speak the sentence slowly and with slight exaggeration to be able to sense the 'micro-pauses' that occur after each phrase. A phrase is always a part of a sentence. When you read a phrase, it will sound 'complete' but not in the same way that a sentence always does. A clause has an even more complete sense of meaning than a phrase. A clause is always made from two or more phrases, one of which will be a verb phrase. TEST YOURSELF Part A Try separating the following sentence into its separate phrases and clauses. Remember to read the sentence in a somewhat exaggerated, slow but still natural way. Try hard to pick out or 'hear' the very brief micro-pauses that occur between phrases.  At school yesterday a funny thing happened to me. In the next box, different colours will help you discover these individual grammatical units - phrases. Can you now 'hear' them? Can you see how each phrase acts as a unit of meaning, rather as if it were a single word? At school yesterday morning a funny thing happened to me. Did you count the two words groups, 'a funny thing happened' as a single phrase? No? Good - that's because this is not a single phrase - it's a clause - which is made from two separate phrases: a subject (which is the noun phrase: 'a funny thing') and a verb phrase that has been rendered finite by its subject (you can tell it is a finite verb because it is 'marked for tense': 'happened'). Remember that a clause is a group of words that tells of someone or something doing or being something.   The main clause in a sentence is what gives it its core sense. Some sentences can have more than one main clause - these are called compound sentences and are covered later.   Now try your hand at finding the phrases (and clause(s)) in this sentence: On the way to college this morning I saw a large object in the sky above the entrance near the sport's field. Part B - looking for clauses... Can you pick out just the basic main clauses in the following sentences (hint: look for the subject/finite verb combinations). The first is shown. 1. The car swerved to the left and it almost hit the pedestrians. 2. Even though he drove with care, he failed the test. 3. I like McChicken sandwiches. 4. My school opens at 8.30 when it is term time. 5. The student who came last pays the bill.

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The Morpheme

The Morpheme

A morpheme can be either a root word or a meaningful part of a word (i.e. an affix such as a prefix or suffix). An individual morpheme will always be, if not the whole word, then the smallest meaningful part of a word. Morphemes are labelled as free morphemes when they are whole words or bound morphemes when they exist only as parts of longer words. Free Morphemes Free morphemes are always root words, e.g. 'faith'. Bound Morphemes Bound morphemes can only exist as meaningful parts of words. If you think you've found a morpheme, you will have found a single letter or a group of letters that, if it's not a whole word, must be able, by itself, to change the grammatical function or the meaning of its word. An example is the suffix, '-ful', in the word, 'faithful': the abstract noun 'faith' becomes the adjective, 'faithful'. The suffix '-ed' is another common morpheme. When added to a verb, this bound morpheme changes the grammatical tense of its word from present to past. This is a change of grammatical function (similarly, the verb 'cook' becomes... 'cooked'. Another example, the bound morpheme '-s' can be used to form the grammatical plural of many words that function as nouns. Hence, the free morpheme, the root word, 'book' becomes the plural noun 'books'.

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Clauses

Clauses
Clauses consist of two or more phrases and, like phrases, form coherent units of meaning.

• A clause tells about action or state (i.e. what a thing is doing or being, e.g. 'He grabbed a brick'; 'She felt ill'.
• Typically, a clause is composed of a noun phrase (acting as subject) and a verb phrase.
• If something is acted upon by the subject, it fills the grammatical object position.

The 'Predicate'

• The predicate is a term sometimes used to describe all of the clause apart from the subject, i.e., it tells what the subject is doing (and to what).
• In the above example, the full grammatical subject is, 'Down by the river as the clock struck one, in a frenzy and with a loud scream, he...' and the predicate is, therefore, '...grabbed the intruder by the scruff of the neck.'
• The structure of any clause, therefore, is subject + predicate.

Phew....! That's an awful lot of grammar to digest for one web page! Fear not - it won't happen again. Time for a breather, then maybe a quick re-read through to make sure it's all sunk in?

You've met clauses, too, but let's take a closer look at four important types of clause:

Independent and Main Clauses
An independent clause stands alone as a sentence, e.g. 'I ate the jelly'.

• The central clause in a longer sentence is called a main clause.
• There are two main clauses (in bold) in this sentence: 
                            I ate the jelly; it wasn't Jo.

Subordinate or dependant clauses
These add information to a main clause (on which they are dependant for their meaning), e.g.

She ate the cake because she is greedy. 

In the above sentence, the subordinate clause, 'because she is greedy' is linked to its main clause by the subordinating conjunction, 'because', the existence of which prevents the clause being a main clause.

There are many subordinating conjunctions in English, some are single words, others are small phrases. Can you find a subordinating conjunction in this next sentence?

'He hit him even though he was his friend'

He hit him	even though he was his friend.
MAIN CLAUSE	SUBORDINATE (or DEPENDENT) CLAUSE

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Words, Phrases and Clauses

Words, Phrases and Clauses
These are the three central grammatical structures which make up all sentences.

• A phrase consists of one or more words and is a part of a sentence.
• Whilst technically a phrase can be a single word, it's easier to think of multi-word phrases as being an 'extended word'. We might have about half a million individual words in our language but we still don't have enough to cover every eventuality. A phrase is our way out: it's a word with extra identifying or 'modifying' words added to it, e.g. 'the hissing and spitting black cat'.
• A phrase (one or more words) is the smallest group of words that can occupy a grammatical 'slot' within a sentence.
• It will always have a coherent and unified meaning (this is because all phrases are single words or built around a single word. This is the so-called head of the phrase, its head word.
• The remaining words within a phrase are always grammatically linked to the head word and function to modify or add extra information to the head word.
• A phrase, if it is made up from more than one word, can always be substituted by a single word (which will never be quite as full or clear in meaning, but can be a substitute).
• A phrase can never be sufficient to create a sentence or clause on its own (except in speech when almost anything goes within certain informal contexts).

Head WordHere is a phrase: ...the unusually strong creature...

• Can you tell that the meaning this phrase creates is coherent and unified - and yet that it is insufficient in itself to make a complete grammatical sentence?
• Can you also see why its head word is creature and that the three remaining words: the, unusually and strong are acting to modify the head word and so refine its meaning?
• Phrases are named according to the grammatical function they perform within their sentence. Thus, the above phrase, being built around a single noun as its head word, is called a noun phrase.

Grammatical Units
Being able to identify the number of separate grammatical units or structures that exist within a sentence is a central skill that you will pick up as you learn more about grammar. It's something that comes with knowledge and practice but you might be surprised how easy it can be. Can you work out how many separate grammatical units there are in the following - rather wordy! - sentence?

Down by the river as the clock struck one, in a frenzy and with a loud scream, he grabbed the intruder by the scruff of the neck.

Did you count seven? If so, well done. Six of them are phrases and there is a seventh different grammatical structure called aclause. The clause is shown in grey below (technically it's also composed of phrases, in this case three: he grabbed the intruder - this is covered later under 'clauses').

Down by the river as the clock struck one, in a frenzy and with a loud scream, he grabbed the intruder by the scruff of the neck.

• The words in many of these phrases indicate such things as position in time and space, or manner. These are calledprepositions: 'down', 'as', 'in', 'with', 'by' and 'of'. These are the head words of prepositional phrases. You'll read more about these later.

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