Archive for August, 2019

Interjection, Inflection, Interrogatives

August 26th, 2019 in English Learning

Interjection

A word or phrase which expresses emotion. An interjection does not form part of a sentence.

Examples are: alas, hurrah, damn, my god etc.

Alas! He is dead.

Hurrah! We have won.

Hush! Don’t make a noise.

Inflection

Changes in the form of a verb for grammatical reasons.

For example, the noun boy has just two inflected forms, boy and boys, while the verb write has five inflected forms write, writes, wrote, writing and written

Interrogatives

Words and structures used for asking questions. In an interrogative sentence, the auxiliary verb comes before the subject.

Is John sleeping?

Are you coming with me?

Pronouns used for asking questions are called interrogative pronouns.

Examples are: who, which and what

Who is that girl talking to your husband?

What is the matter?

Modals

The English modals are may, might, can, could, will, would, shall, should, must and ought. Dare and need sometimes behave like modals.

Unlike the primary auxiliaries (be, have and do) modals have no participles, gerunds or infinitives. They also don’t take ‘-s’ in the third person singular.

Modal auxiliaries are used with other verbs to add various meanings, mostly to do with degrees of certainty or obligation.

She can do it.

You ought to obey the rules.

I must leave now.