“Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” ( /ˌsuːpərˌkælɨˌfrædʒɨˌlɪstɪkˌɛkspiːˌælɨˈdoʊʃəs/) is a song from the 1964 Disney musical film Mary Poppins. The song was written by the Sherman Brothers, and sung by Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke. It also appears in the stage show version. Since Mary Poppins was a period piece set in 1910, period-sounding songs were wanted. “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” sounds […]
Continue ReadingCategory Archives: Parts of Speech
Parts of Speech (abbreviated to PoS and sometimes called Word Classes) are the different categories of English words which all work in the same grammatical way: nouns, verbs, prepositions and so on.
This section has articles on all the different parts of speech.
Punctuation in English
Punctuation is the use of different marks to show how a sentence is constructed and should be read and understood. It is, if you like, the written equivalent of pauses and emphasis. In English the following punctuation marks are used: apostrophes brackets or parentheses colon commas dashes or hyphens ellipsis emoticons exclamation mark inverted commas […]
Continue ReadingPredicates in English Grammar
Most sentences have a subject; the Predicate is the rest of the sentence which tells us about that subject. In these examples, the subject of the sentence is Plato and the predicate is highlighted bold. Plato thought. Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher. Plato is the name of my dog. As you can see, predicates […]
Continue ReadingZero Article in English Grammar
The Zero Article does not exist. But it is very useful nonetheless. Talking about the zero article is useful when we’re describing how to use articles. But essentially when we talk about the zero article we mean that we do not use any article in front of a noun. In other words, we do not […]
Continue ReadingWho vs Whom in English Grammar
Who vs Whom often comes up and sometimes causes confusion. This article explains the difference between these two. Who and whom are both pronouns and while they mean the same thing (a person or group of people) they are grammatically different. Subjects vs Objects The subject of a sentence is the “main actor” in the […]
Continue ReadingWhat is a Subordinating Conjunction?
Let me start by saying that I think the name Subordinating Conjunction is wrong. It doesn’t really describe what they do. When we use one of these so-called subordinating conjunctions we’re not saying they make a phrase subordinate to another; we’re saying they make a phrase need another. A bit like a child; it’s not […]
Continue ReadingWhat is a Common Noun?
A simple definition of a noun is that it’s an object or concept; a thing. We can group nouns in various ways. One major group are Common Nouns. Simply put, a Common Noun is a noun which is used to talk about an object or concept. Here are a few examples: objects table, hill, water, […]
Continue ReadingVerbs of Perception in English Grammar
Verbs of Perception refer to those verbs which are used to talk about sensing: see/look/watch/notice/observe hear/listen to taste smell touch/feel sense in general These verbs can be used in different ways and have certain grammatical conditions attached to them. Continuous (Progressive) Forms Used in continuous forms (aka progressive forms), these verbs indicate the subject is […]
Continue ReadingVerbs in English Grammar
When we want to talk about what the subject of a sentence does, we use a verb. Verbs tell us about an action; they are sometimes called doing words or action words. Verbs describe what is happening. Here then are some simple verbs: drink, eat, rest, dunk As with many languages, verbs in English are […]
Continue ReadingVerb Tenses & Forms in English Grammar
Note: descriptions of verb forms and tenses vary. Here we present a simple overview of the tenses and forms of English which is useful for the classroom. In grammar a tense (from the Latin tempus) is a form of a verb used to indicate roughly the time when the action described by the verb takes […]
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