Tag: grammatical patterns glossary

The term “possessive” in grammar often refers to actual possession as we normally think of it.  When we talk about “Sam’s phone,” we are using a possessive indicator (‘s) to say that we are talking about a phone that is possessed by Sam.  An “s” preceded by an apostrophe (‘) is the device we use to make ordinary nouns possessive in English.  However, once we make a noun possessive and place it in front of another noun, it stops being a noun and becomes an adjective. In this case, the possessive form “Sam’s” describes, or “modifies,” the noun “phone.” It is a possessive adjective.

Grammar somewhat stretches the idea of possession, however.  First of all, it allows things to possess other things—for example, the city’s shopping district, the atom’s nucleus, the film’s director.  It also allows relationships that are not exactly possessive in nature:  the woman’s request, the room’s temperature, the boss’s retirement, the country’s largest city. So sometimes the meaning of the possessive form is not strictly possessive but describes a relationship of one thing being in close association with another thing–one thing may be a part of another thing, for example, or may be controlled by, created by, or located in another thing.

Some very important words in English are the possessive adjectives that are related to personal pronouns.  These are the words “my,” “his,” “her,” “their,” “your,” “our,” “its,” and “whose.”  These words, of course, are used to indicate possession in both the usual and “stretched” senses of the word, as in “my jacket,” “my job,” “my idea,” “my misunderstanding.”

Another function that possessive adjectives have is to show the agent (the doer) of the action described by a gerund—a verb in its “-ing” form functioning as a noun. So, for example, in the sentence “I don’t like his coming home so late,” the doer of “coming home so late” is a certain male person, and his action of coming home so late is something that the speaker does not like.

In sentences similar to the example above, it is quite common for speakers to use object pronouns (“me,” “him,” “her,” etc.) or ordinary nouns instead of possessives:  Instead of saying “I don’t like his coming home so late,” many people would say “I don’t like him coming home so late.”  Instead of saying “They anticipated the doctor’s saying that,” many people would say “They anticipated the doctor saying that.”  Their intended meaning is most likely the same as if they used the possessive form in these instances.

Strict prescriptive grammarians might insist that because the forms “coming” and “saying” in the above sentences are functioning as nouns (verbal nouns), they must be preceded by an adjective, and therefore it is an error to say “I don’t like him coming home so late.”  From this point of view, “him” is simply wrong and only “his” would be correct.  Although there is good logic in this, use of the object pronoun may be surpassing the use of the possessive form in such sentences.

One reason that people have a strong tendency to use object pronouns and regular nouns rather than possessive forms in these types of constructions is that there is a similar construction in which the object form (e.g., “him”) is the correct and ordinary form preceding a verb with “-ing.”  This is when it is truly the sole object of the verb and this object just happens to be doing something that the speaker wants to mention.  For example, the sentence “I saw him going into the house” is basically the equivalent of saying “I saw him as he was going into the house” or “I saw him, and he was going into the house.”  The sentence might answer the question “What was he doing when you saw him?”

It is also possible and correct to say “I saw his going into the house” using a possessive form, but it wouldn’t be used to answer the question “What was he doing when you saw him?” This sentence answers the question “What did you see?” and the answer (the complete direct object) is “his going into the house.” It is the equivalent of “I saw the going into the house by him” or “I saw his act of going into the house.” Technically, the “-ing” form following the object pronoun is a present participle, and the “-ing” form following a possessive adjective is a gerund (a verbal noun).

The past participle is a verb part. The words “done,” “gone,” “lost,” and “forgotten” are examples of past participles. The past participle is a form that a main verb can take when it is used along with an auxiliary verb (e.g., “have gone,” “was forgotten”) to convey certain types of grammatical meaning. It generally looks exactly like the past tense form of a verb–the forms “walked,” “asked,” “begged,” for example, could be either past participles or simple past tense forms–but some verbs, particularly some very common verbs, have distinctive past participle forms. The words “been,” “broken,” “eaten,” “sewn,” and “sung” are some of these unique past participles.

The past participle is often seen in combination with the auxiliary verb “have” in what are called perfect forms.

I have been to Florida twice.

The thief had broken in through the window, and now he was upstairs.

The past participle is also used in the passive construction (wherein a grammatical object of a sentence becomes the grammatical subject).

All the donuts were eaten by the time I got back.

The national anthem is sung before every professional baseball game.

She was given a ring by her parents for her birthday.

The past participle is also used with certain verbs in special constructions such as “have something done” and “get something done” that refer to something being acted on as a result of someone’s request, wish, or demand.

They had their house painted last summer.

It’s hard to get any work done with all this noise.

She decided to have her hair colored.

Past participles are often used as adjectives or eventually become classified as adjectives in their own right (as well as continuing to be used as past participle forms of verbs).

The broken lamp was still on the floor.

The rotten vegetables began to smell.

All the work is finished now.

I was completely exhausted at the end of the race.

The word “object” in grammar refers to one of the important elements that can make up a sentence (or clause).  The simplest type of sentence contains only a subject and a verb–for example, “She left.”  The subject of this simple sentence is “she,” and the verb is “left.”  But many sentences contain an additional, grammatically important element, which is an object, as in the sentence “She left her umbrella.”  Moreover, some sentences contain two objects, as in the sentence “She left her son her valuable paintings.”

Below are examples of sentences that contain grammatical “objects.”

I bought a book.

I bought my friend a book.

We saw that movie you were telling us about.

Dad made us some sandwiches.

There are two types of objects that can directly follow a verb in a sentence.  One is the “direct object” and the other is the “indirect object.” In the sentences above, the words in italics are indirect objects.  The second object in each of these sentences with two objects is the direct object.  Both types of objects are composed of nouns, or words or phrases that can function as nouns.

As we have seen, sentences can contain both types of objects at the same time, as in the sentence “She’s reading the child (1) a story (2).”  In this sentence, the direct object is “a story,” and the indirect object is “the child.”  In addition, the meaning of the indirect object typically includes the idea of “to” or “for” so that instead of saying “She’s reading the child a story,” the same basic meaning can be conveyed by saying “She’s reading a story to the child.”  (Please see note below marked with asterisk as well as INDIRECT OBJECT for further discussion.)

If there is only one object in a sentence, it is understood as the direct object. Therefore, if we removed the words “a story” in the sentence “She’s reading the child a story,” we are left with the fairly strange “She’s reading the child,” wherein the child becomes the thing that is being read.  If there is an indirect object in a sentence (and it is not paraphrased with a prepositional phrase), it always occurs as the first object after the verb. Therefore, a sentence like *“He bought gifts me” is either wrong or very hard to interpret–someone is buying a person for gifts??   But, if we say “He bought me gifts,” we understand that gifts are the things that were bought, and that he bought the gifts for me.

For further explanation of these terms, see DIRECT OBJECT and INDIRECT OBJECT in this glossary.  In general, if someone uses just the word “object” in reference to English grammar, it is the “direct object” that is usually meant.  The term “object” is also sometimes used to refer to a noun or noun equivalent that follows a preposition to form a prepositional phrase (e.g, “The cow jumped over the moon.”)  This type of object is called an “object of a preposition.”

*The above discussion concerning the order of objects in a sentence refers to the order in “active” sentences. In active sentences, English uses the order SUBJECT+ VERB +INDIRECT OBJECT + DIRECT OBJECT, as in “The college sent each student a letter.”   In associated “passive” sentences, either one of the objects can become the grammatical SUBJECT of the sentence, as in “Each student was sent a letter by the college” or “A letter was sent to each student by the college.”

The term “indicative” refers to the grammatical “mood” of a verb in a clause. The indicative mood could be described as the ordinary, everyday mood expressed in most statements.  It is used for what is or what we see as reality, so it is the mood that most verbs take when we speak or write.  It is not very meaningful, however, to explain the meaning of “indicative” without comparing it with the term “subjunctive.”  Both these words refer to grammatical “mood” as expressed by the verb in a particular clause.  For example, the sentence “I know that he sees a doctor about it” contains two clauses that are both in the indicative mood—1) “I know” and 2) “he sees a doctor about it.”  In the sentence “I insist that he see a doctor about it,” there is one clause in the indicative (“I insist”), and there is a second clause in the subjunctive (“he see a doctor about it”).  Notice the form of the verb in the subjunctive clause. It is grammatically correct but it does not end with “-s” as one would normally expect in standard English. The subjunctive mood of the verb shows that the action is not real or under the speaker’s control.  It refers to some action that is purely hypothetical.  Again, most statements we make in English use verbs in the indicative mood.  The use of the subjunctive mood is much more limited.  Please see further discussion under SUBJUNCTIVE.

A gerund is a word that contains the idea of a verb but functions in a sentence as a noun. The words “escaping,” “coughing,” “being,” and “laughing” are all in the form of gerunds.  Gerunds are made by adding “-ing” to the end of any verb (sometimes with a small spelling modification to the original word). Take the word “swim,” for example.  If we say “I swim every day” or “I swam at the pool yesterday,” we are using “swim” as a verb, but if we add “-ing” and use the word as the subject of a sentence, for example, we turn the verb into a noun, as in the sentence “Swimming is great exercise” or “Swimming makes me tired.”  Similarly, if we say “I love swimming” or “I hate swimming,” we are taking a verbal notion and turning it into a noun, grammatically the same as any other noun, such as “potato chips,” “tigers,” or “basketball.”

In the following sentences, we can see again how gerunds function grammatically as nouns. In the first sentence, we see it as a subject, and, in the second sentence, as an object.

Escaping is impossible. [“Escaping” is the SUBJECT]

We heard that awful drilling all morning. [“We” is the subject. “Drilling” is the OBJECT]

Like ordinary nouns, gerunds can be modified by adjectives, as in “awful drilling,” “tedious filling out of forms,” and “ridiculous arguing over nothing.”  In addition, like typical nouns, gerunds can follow words that are prepositions (for example, words like “on,” “to,” “with,” “for,” and “of”). By contrast, verbs themselves cannot follow prepositions.

We’re planning on going to the beach this Saturday.	[gerund form, CORRECT]
*We’re planning on go to the beach this Saturday.	[infinitive of verb, INCORRECT]

I look forward to meeting you next week.	[gerund form, CORRECT]
*I look forward to meet you next week.	[infinitive of verb, INCORRECT]

Both gerund forms and infinitive verb forms can directly follow other verbs in a clause, but some verbs, such as “enjoy” and “deny” allow only the gerund form to follow them, while some verbs allow either form, and some allow only the infinitive form.

Only the gerund is correct:

I enjoy listening to music.	[gerund form, CORRECT]
He denied trying to cheat.	[gerund form, CORRECT]
*I enjoy to listen to music.	[infinitive of verb, INCORRECT]
*He denied to cheat	[infinitive of verb, INCORRECT]

Either is correct:

I like dancing.	[gerund form, CORRECT]
I like to dance.	[infinitive of verb, CORRECT]

Only the infinitive is correct:

I want to go next week.	[infinitive of verb, CORRECT]
*I want going next week.	[gerund form, INCORRECT]

Click here for further discussion of the difference between the use of the gerund versus the infinitive.

When one object follows directly after another in a clause, as in the statement “I showed him (1) my collection (2),” the first is the indirect object (“him”) and the second is the direct object (“my collection”).  The indirect object is typically the person or thing to whom the action of the verb is directed or for whom it is done.

The meaning conveyed by an indirect object can generally be expressed in a prepositional phrase including the words “to” or “for.” (“He bought her flowers” > “He bought flowers for her.”)  When a prepositional phrase is used, it usually follows the direct object, although it is not grammatically incorrect to insert the phrase (with “to” or “for”) before the direct object or elsewhere in the sentence (e.g., “To her daughter she gave her house and her property.”)

She bought him a sweater. > She bought a sweater for him.

I gave my sister a present. > I gave a present to my sister.

He told the police the truth. > He told the truth to the police.

She handed the man sitting next to her the salad bowl. > She handed the salad bowl to the man sitting next to her.

She handed the clerk her key. >  She handed her key to the clerk. > To the clerk she handed her key.

Putting the indirect object into a prepositional phrase highlights that information, making the indirect object of equal prominence with, or of greater prominence than, the direct object.

Some verbs allow two objects to follow one another in a clause and yet the first object cannot be paraphrased using “to” or “for.”  We cannot paraphrase the sentence “I envy you your confidence,” for example, as “I envy your confidence to you” or “I envy your confidence for you.”  Below are examples of verbs that employ indirect objects whose meanings cannot be paraphrased with prepositional phrases that use “to” or “for.”  The function of the indirect object with verbs like these is unique.  These verbs tend to express some kind of reaction on the part of one person, the subject of the sentence, to what another person possesses or has done.  With these verbs (“excuse,” “forgive,” “envy,” etc.), the indirect object represents this other person, the person causing the reaction.  The information given by the indirect object tends to be redundant in these sentences, however, as it is often implicit in the direct object:  “excused him his flaws,” “envy you your talent.”  In fact, these indirect objects could, in many instances, simply be omitted from these types of sentences without loss of meaning.  For example, “I envy you your talent” could be reduced to “I envy your talent” with little alteration to meaning.   As odd as this particular type of indirect object may seem, it continues to be used in conjunction with these particular verbs (those in Group 1 below) to a fair degree.

Verb Group 1

excuse: His mother excuses him all his flaws.

forgive: She did all these awful things, yet we forgave her everything!

envy: I envy you your confidence in social situations.

begrudge: She begrudged him this rare opportunity.

pardon: The governor pardoned him his crimes.

The second group of verbs, below, contains indirect objects that are more like typical indirect objects; that is, they represent entities that are affected by the action of the verbs. Still, the indirect objects following these verbs are not paraphrased with “to” or “for.” We do not say, for example, “I bet to you a dollar.”

Verb Group 2

bet: I’ll bet you a dollar.

cost: That accident cost him his life.

fine: They fined him a hundred dollars.

The direct object is an element in a sentence that provides information that completes the idea introduced by certain verbs. We can say that it receives the action of the verb or that it is the thing acted upon by the verb. Let’s say a person says simply, “I brought.”  The likely confused response from the listener would be:  “You brought??  You brought what?“ The confusion comes from the fact that the verb “bring” requires a direct object.

Perhaps the best way to understand the functioning of a direct object is just to look at some sentences that have direct objects.  The direct object in each of the following sentences is shown in bold print.

The dog is chasing its tail.

I brought the donuts.

She understood what he was trying to say.

I left my umbrella at the restaurant.

He kissed her in front of everyone.

She painted the sky before she painted the mountains.

Elvis left the building while the fans still filled the auditorium.

I believe that he’s telling the truth.

You can see from the above examples that the direct object does not have to be just one word, and you can see that it often follows directly after a verb in a clause. You can also see that the direct object functions as a noun.

In English, the grammatical slot of the direct object does not have to be filled by a simple, ordinary noun like ”the donuts” or a noun phrase or clause like “what he was trying to say.” The direct object position can often be filled by a verb in either the gerund or infinitive form; that is a verb that is functioning as a noun.  Therefore, in the following examples, the gerund “dancing” and the infinitive “to quit” fill the slot for the direct object.

I enjoy dancing. [GERUND]	[What do you enjoy?– Dancing.]
I’m planning to quit. [INFINITIVE]	[What are you planning?– To quit.]

For further discussion, please see OBJECT.

Clauses are the large building blocks of sentences.  An individual clause is a group of words that contains, at least, a subject and a verb that operate together (e.g., “she knows,” “he left”).  Clauses can be very short (e.g, “I fell,” “I forgot”) or quite long (e.g., “I completely forgot about the surprise party last Saturday night for Alex’s birthday.”)  Some sentences contain only one clause, while other sentences contain two or more clauses that are linked together with words like “because,” “so,” “and,” “but,” “when,” “while,” “that,” and “if.”

A clause always contains a subject and a verb that operate together, but other words can be part of the clause too.  In the first example below, the words “late for the meeting” are part of the clause.  The entire sentence “The lawyer was late for the meeting” is a clause.

SUBJECT	VERB
The lawyer	was	late for the meeting.

SUBJECT 1	VERB 1			SUBJECT 2	VERB 2
The lawyer	was	late for the meeting	because	the elevator	jammed.

The second example above is a sentence with two clauses.  The first is “The lawyer was late for the meeting,” and the second is “the elevator jammed.”  The word “because” is a word that links the two clauses together.  A word that functions in this way is called a CONJUNCTION.  It is not part of either of the clauses.