Lingua Inglese e Laboratorio, Riassunto Esame di Inglese

Pronouns

Pronouns replace nouns or noun phrases. For example, instead of saying "We like Nadia", we can say "We like her". Similarly, instead of saying "I like my new smartphone", we can say "I like it".

Personal pronouns usually refer to people or other living beings. They can be 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person, singular or plural (I/we, you, she/he/it, they). They also take special forms (me, her, him, us, them) after prepositions or when they function as objects. Additionally, personal pronouns can be possessive (mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, theirs) or reflexive (myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, themselves, ourselves).

Demonstrative pronouns are used for "pointing to" objects or events. Examples of demonstrative pronouns include this, that, these, and those. For instance, we can say "I love these, but not those".

Indefinite pronouns include any, anyone, everyone, everybody, some, someone, and no one. For example, we can say "Everyone loves someone".

Relative pronouns introduce relative clauses. For example, we can say "The new phone that I bought".

“My neighbour who helped me; the glasses which dropped”. Correct form of pronouns:

When you see the African lions in the park, you see them in their true environment.

Pronoun Subject Object Possessive Reflexive

Adjective Pronoun Both pronouns “you” are in the subject position. The

I Me My Mine Myself pronoun “them” is the object pronoun and refers to

You You Your Yours Yourself the lions. The pronoun “their” is in the possessive form

He Him His His Himself because the environment discussed in the sentence is

She Her Her Hers Herself that of the lions.

It It Its Its Itself Pronoun used to refer to parts of the body

We Us Our Ours Ourselves Possessive pronouns are usually used with reference

You You Your Yours Yourselves to parts of the body: “She put the shawl over her

They Them Their Theirs themselves shoulder”, “She lifted the boy and put the shawl over

his shoulder”

Pronoun does agree with the

world it refers to→“The little girl put on her hat” if the hat belongs to the girl, the possessive pronoun must agree with the word “girl”.Clear or not clear“When onion vapours reach your nose, they irritate the membranes in your nostrils, and they in turn irritate the tear→ducts in you eyes” it is unclear whether “they” refers to vapours, membranes or nostrils.

SUBJECT & OBJECT

We use the label subject to indicate who or what a sentence or clause is about. It is often the “do – er”, it carries out the action expressed by the verb.

Sometimes the subject expresses the “be – er”:

“I play the piano every afternoon”;“My cousin is a doctor”.

Subject

The subject usually:

• Takes the form of a noun, pronoun, or noun phrase: “Sean is helping his sister”, “He is helping his sister”, “My bestfriend is helping his sister”;
• Occurs

immediately before the verbs(s): “You ate too much for dinner”;

Changes places with an auxiliary verb to form a question: “Is my best friend helping his sister?”;

Is repeating in a tag question: “You ate too much for dinner, didn’t you?”.

Object

We use the label object to indicate the person or thing being acted on, or who/which is affected by what the verb expresses.

An object usually;

• Takes the form of a noun, pronoun, or noun phrase: “My brother is helping Sean”, “My brother is helping him”, “My best friend is helping his sister”;
• Occurs immediately after the main verb: “I ate all the cookies”;
• Can often become the subject in a passive sentence: “All the cookies were eaten by me”;
• Cannot be an adjective.

DETERMINERS

Determiners come before nouns and any adjectives that may also be present. They carry a range of meanings to do with

“reference” of the noun that they go with for example, whether is identifiable or not, whether it is nearby or far away. There are four different types of determiner:

1. Indefinite article: a/an and the definitive article: the “A cat sat on the mat”
2. Demonstrative determiners: this, those, that, these “I love that film”
3. Possessive determines: my, your, their “Where did you buy your shoes?”
4. Quantity – expressing determiners: all, both, each, enough, every, few, many, some, several “Every picture tells many stories”

Examples:

• “A cat” means a cat that is not (yet) known or identifiable “I saw a cat yesterday”
• “The cat” means an identifiable cat that you and I know about “Did you feed the cat?”
• “This/That cat” means a cat that is located near the speaker or away from the speaker “I love this cat but not that cat”

→“My cat” means a cat that is owned by the speaker “My cat is always happy to see me”.

→“Some cat” means an indefinite group of cats “Some cats eat only fish”.

WARNING! This, that, these and those are pronouns when they do not appear before a noun – as in for example “I like that very much”. When they occur before nouns, “this cat”, they are determiners.

Articles A and AN

“A” is used before a consonant sound and “AN” is used before a vowel sound. The letter “U” can have a consonant or vowel sound a university, but an umbrella. The letter “H” is sometimes not pronounced a horse, but an hour.

Use the articles

Use “A” or “AN”:

• Before singular count nouns when the noun is mentioned for the first time: “I see a house”;
• When the singular form is used to make a general statement about all people or things of

that type: “A concertpianist spends many hours practicing”;

• In expressions of price, speed and ratio: “60 miles an hour”; “A” or “AN” are not used:
• Before plural nouns: “Flowers were growing along the riverbank”;
• Before noncount nouns: “I wanted advice”.

“THE” is used:

• Before a noun that has already been mentioned: “I saw a man. The man was wearing a hat”;
• When it is clear in the situation which thing or person is referred to: “The books on the shelf are first editions”;
• Before a singular noun that refers to a species or group: “The tiger lives in Asia”;
• Before adjectives used as nouns: “The children collected money to donate to the institution for the deaf”;
• Where there is only one of something: “The sun shone down on the earth”;
• Before a body part in a prepositional phrase that belongs to

the object in the sentence: “Someone hit me on the head”;

A body part in a preposition phrase that belongs to the subject of a passive sentence: “I was hit on the head”;

A possessive pronoun, rather that the article “THE”, is usually used with body parts: “I hit my head”.

“The” is usually used with canals, deserts, forests, oceans, rivers, seas and plural island, lakes and mountains;

“The” is not used with singular islands, lakes, mountains and parks: (Central Park, Lake Michigan, Fiji Island) and is not used with the names of countries, states, continents and the names of cities;

“The” is used when the name of a country or state includes the word “of”, the type of government or a plural form;

What article useThe expression “a number of” means “several” or “many” and takes a plural verb. The expression “the number

“of” refers to the group and takes a singular verb “A large number of tourists get lost because of that sign”, “the number of lost tourists has increased recently”.

The following nouns do not always take an article: prison, school, college, church, bed, home, court, jail and sea for example, “Jack went to bed”, “Jack went to the bed” and “Jack bought a bed”. Articles are not used with possessive pronouns or demonstratives “people all over the world want peace”, “The peace was broken by a group of children”.

Noncount nouns are used without an article to refer to something in general.

This, that, these and those: This and that are singular; while these and those are plural.

VERBS

Verbs have traditionally been described as “doing words” or “action words”. This works well for some verbs, like eat, chatter, jump, run.

Examples: “Every morning my dad cycles to

work”.“I can jump high and run fast”.“He played a short pass and smashed it into the goal”.

However, verbs can also describe states (the way things are)“I feel fine”.“This bag belongs to my mum”.“She is a great teacher”.

Watch the endings!To identify verbs, it is also helpful to look at their shape (for examples, their endings) and how they behave in sentences.

Here are some examples of verbs in sentences“She travels to work by train”.“We walked five miles to a garage”.

EndingsNotice that in the first sentence the verb has an – s ending, which indicates a present-time situation “she travels to work by train”. →In the second sentence it has an – ed ending, which indicates a past-time situation“we walked five miles to a garage”.

– s / – ed endings

These suffixes are known as inflections that indicate a present tense and past tense. Only verbs show

Agreement with a Subject, and only verbs can carry tense to express time.

Additionally, certain suffixes are characteristics of the base forms of verbs: -ate, -ify, -ise / -ize.

Concentrate, Clarify, Advise

Demonstrate, Magnify, Realise

Illustrate, Summarise

Inflectional endings: Advises, concentrates, demonstrated

SUBJUNCTIVE VERBS

After certain adjectives: crucial, essential, imperative, important, necessary.

After certain verbs: demand, require, insist we may have a subjunctive verb form.

When the subjunctive verb has a third person singular Subject it does not take the -s inflection.

"I wish he were here" "I wish he was here" is also possible but does not have a subjective verb.

"I insist that he leave at once" "I insist that he leaves at once" is also possible but does not have a subjective verb.