Basics of Grammar

Parts of Speech:

1. Noun(n):
It’s name of person place, thing or idea.
There are two types of noun as shown below:

Common noun:

It’s the name of common things: child, president, school, and season.

As you see there is no specific one child in the world; in fact there are many children. Similarly, there are no specific one president, one school and one season in the world; in fact there are many of these in the world. So in short, common noun names any specific group of things rather than one specific thing.

Proper noun:

It’s the name of specific people, things or places: Governor Jinah, Formen Christian College, ARY News, Spring season and Maria etc.

Noun can come anywhere in a sentence. The underlined words below are nouns.

The School-bus arrived.

After getting his awesome test score, Bilal was accepted to six universities.

A sentence can have unlimited common and proper nouns, as long as the sentence continues to make sense.

Singular noun names one person, place or thing (cat, house), while a plural noun names more than one person, place or thing (cats, houses).

Nouns can further categorized as count nouns, non-count nouns, and collective nouns, as shown below:

Count noun:

it can be counted: pen, blocks, ducks, and drops of water (one pen, seven blocks, two thousand ducks, and hundred drops of water).

Non-count noun:

It cannot be counted: flow, grass, wood, and water (two flow?, three flow…?; two grass?, three grass…?; two wood?, three wood…?; two water?, three water…? All doesn’t make sense.)

Notice that drops of water are count noun, while water is non-count noun.

Collective noun:

Singular count nouns that identify a group: panel, committee, choir, faculty, team, army, and jury.

2. Pronoun(pr):
It’s a person, place, thing, or idea that replaces a noun.
Pronouns such as he, we and them, are words that are used to replace a noun.

When Mrs. Sultan told Asim that he could take home their classroom sandwich for summer, he called his mother and told her that she need to pick it up after school.

Antecedent:

The noun to which a pronoun refers/replaces is called an antecedent.

Imran called his mother for early breakfast, because he has to go early to school.

In the sentence above, Imran is antecedent for ‘his’ and ‘he’. In other words, antecedent is a parent word to whom pronoun/pronouns refer. While most pronouns will have an antecedent, beware of the occasional sentence without an antecedent. Take the following sentence for example:

Everyone must take a seat before the match begins.

Everyone does not have an antecedent because it understood that everyone refers to all of the people in the ground-seats at the time the match begins.

Types of pronouns:

There are seven different types of pronouns as shown below, and a basic understanding of each is important for succeeding on preparation of Sentence Correction part of this exam.

1. Personal Pronouns:

As the name implies, these pronouns get personal; they refer to specific person or thing, and include persons, like I, he, hers, and us.

Although she was best known for her art, Roza also published cook books.
After the kids watched the movie, the baby-sitter served them dinner.

2. Demonstrative pronouns:

Demonstrative pronouns demonstrate. They point to nouns that are nearly in time or space. There are four demonstrative pronouns: this, that, these and those.

These shirts should be marked half price.
That cannot happen again.

3. Interrogative pronouns:

This type of pronoun interrogates, or asks questions. The four main interrogative pronouns are who, whom, which, and what.

Who took the last slice of pizza?
Which band member is your favorite?

4. Relative pronouns:

Relative pronouns relate. They connect a phrase to the antecedent. There are four specific relative pronouns: who, whom, that, and which.

The nurse gave you the injection has the day off.

Notice that who is also a relative pronoun, but important point is that in relative pronoun, who always come just after the noun to whom it refer.
The only thing that matters is your safety.

You see that pronouns ‘who’ and ‘that’ refers to their immediate nouns that came before these pronouns.

5. Indefinite pronouns:

These pronouns are not definite; they refer to a person or thing that is identified, but is not specific. There are dozens of indefinite pronouns, and some examples include everybody, few, each, and somebody.

Many of the balloons pepped before they were released.
You can put anything on the pizza you want.

6. Reflexive pronouns:

Reflexive pronouns reflect back onto the noun. They are myself, yourself, herself, himself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, and themselves.

The CEO does the hiring himself.
I gave myself a haircut.

7. Intensive pronouns:

These pronouns intensify or emphasize the antecedent. They take the exact same form as reflexive pronouns, but they follow the noun more closely.

I myself would prefer to eat in the non-smoking section.
The office manager herself said that we’re all getting bonuses.

Several pronoun concepts are tested in sentence correction, including pronoun-antecedent agreement and implied and ambiguous pronouns. These potential errors are covered in detail later on. Your ability to quickly spot a pronoun and its antecedent can save your valuable time.

Remember, you do not have to memorize the names of the seven types of pronouns. You simply must understand that pronouns take many different roles in a sentence.