How to Learn Any Language 36
NOUN
A noun is a person, place, or thing – either a tangible thing, like a block of ice or a head of cattle or your mother in law, or an intangible thing, like a concept or an emotion.
PRONOUN
The dictionary tells us that pronouns are words that serve as substitutes for nouns. If that’s confusing, ignore it and let’s get right down to the pronouns. In English they are I, you, he, she, it, we, they, me, him, her, us, them, my, mine, your, yours, his, hers, its, our, ours, their and theirs.
In addition, we have INTERROGATIVE pronouns (who, what, which) for asking questions.
We also have RELATIVE pronouns (who, whose, which, that) for explaining and describing the nouns we use.
In the sentence “Who owns that house?” the pronoun who is used in interrogative form. It’s asking a question. In the sentence “The man who owns that house is nice,” the pronoun who is used in its relative sense. You’re not asking anybody a question, you’re identifying the man. “The man whose house…,” “The house, which I visited…,” and “The house that I visited…” all demonstrate the use of relative pronouns.
VERB
A verb is an action word – to do, to go, to want, to think. Chances are that any word that sounds right after the word to (provided the to doesn’t mean “toward” or “in the direction of”) is a verb. English verbs are so consistent (unchanging), it’s easy for the English speaker to get overwhelmed when tackling a language whose verbs INFLECT (change forms), as all the Romance, the Slavic, and many other languages’ verbs do. When we follow a verb through all its forms (I go, you go, he goes, we go, they go, in the present tense, past tense, future tense, etc.) we are CONJUGATING that verb. You’ll feel less bewildered if you stop to realise that our own English verbs inflect just enough to give you the idea of changing forms. The present tense, third person singular form of the English verb (the he form) usually adds an s (I give, you give, but he gives).
INFINITIVE
An infinitive is a verb in neutral gear. In English the infinitive is the form we talked about above – to go, to do, etc. The infinitive form of the verb go is therefore to go. That doesn’t tell you who’s going or when he’s going or, in case he’s already gone, when he went. The infinitive is just hanging there, ready to express any and all of the above possibilities when the proper INFLECTIONS, changes, are applied.
The gears that neutral infinitives can shift into involve PERSON, NUMBER, and TENSE. We’ll tackle them in that order.
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