A noun, as you know, is a person, place, thing, or idea. A noun that is the focus of a sentence is known as the subject of the sentence. In the
sentence “John walked his dog,” “John” is clearly the focus, because he is the one doing something. “John” is the subject. The rest of the
sentence, “walked his dog,” is known as the predicate of the sentence, and it includes all the action performed by the subject. But “dog” is a noun too, right? Yes. But “dog” is not the subject of the sentence; “dog” is a direct object, or the thing directly affected by the verb of the sentence:
“walked.”
Let’s look at a slightly different sentence: “John gave his dog a bone.”
Almost everything is the same as in the previous sentence: “John” is the subject; he performs an action in the predicate (“gave”); and his “dog” is
there again, too. However, notice that “dog” does not relate directly to the verb “gave.” Did John give his dog to someone? No . . . he gave
something (“bone”) to his dog. So in this case, “bone” is the direct object, and “dog” is the indirect object. One easy way to spot indirect objects is to look for the words to or for before the object. Sometimes, as in the sentence above, you won’t see the word to; however, you could rewrite the sentence with the word to so that the meaning is the same, and the indirect object becomes clearer: “John gave a bone to his dog.”
Personal pronouns are easy to spot, because there are only a handful to remember:
Subject Pronoun Object Pronoun
I Me
He Him
She Her
They Them
We Us
You You
It It
Pronouns take the place of nouns or of groups of words acting together as a noun. Here’s the most important thing about pronouns: You have to know what noun is being replaced by the pronoun. Look at this pair of sentences:
Jack woke up at 7 a.m. He walked his dog.
Because the first sentence is about Jack, you know that “he” in the second sentence is standing in as a replacement for “Jack.” The noun that a pronoun replaces is called the antecedent. In this case, “Jack” is the antecedent of “he.” Here’s why it’s important to know the antecedent for a pronoun: You have to make sure you’ve chosen the right pronoun for the job. If Jack is male, the pronoun she would not be the correct replacement. Assuming Jack is just one person, the pronoun they would also be incorrect.
In the preceding table, you can also see that the pronouns in the left
column are related to those in the right column. The pronouns on the left are known as subject pronouns, because they take the place of nouns being used in the subject position of a sentence. The pronouns on the right are object pronouns, because they replace nouns being used as objects in the sentence. The bottom two pronouns, you and it, can be used as either subject or object pronouns.
Possessive pronouns and possessive determiners show the “owner”
of an object—in other words, what or whom something belongs to. While pronouns take the place of a noun, determiners appear before a noun to show possession. In the sentence “Jack walked his dog,” the possessive determiner “his” tells us that the dog belongs to Jack. Here are the most important possessive determiners and pronouns you need to know:
Possessive Determiner Possessive Pronoun
My Mine
His His
Her Hers
Their Theirs
Our Ours
Your Yours
Whose Who
Its Its
Even though these words show possession, notice that they do not require apostrophes. This is important, because it’s one of the most common types of errors to appear in grammar testing. Remember: The word its always means “belonging to it,” while it’s always means “it is.”
Adjectives are simply words that modify nouns or pronouns. They provide a better description of the thing in question, and they generally appear right before the thing they modify. Here’s where it can get
confusing: Some words are only adjectives, like big or soft, but there are lots of other kinds of words—including verbs and nouns—that can also act as adjectives. One of the trickiest, and therefore important to
remember for grammar tests, is the participle. A participle is a verb form, usually ending in -ing or -ed, that is used to modify a noun. Here are some examples: “working lunch,” “wrecked car,” “traveling companion.”
You probably already know that adverbs are words or phrases that modify verbs. You might also remember that words ending in -ly are generally adverbs, such as quickly or skillfully. But keep in mind that adverbs can also modify adjectives (“very ugly sweater”) or even other adverbs (“performed quite poorly on the test”).
Prepositions indicate relationships—usually relationships of location or time. Words like under, between, by, and throughout are prepositions.
Prepositions often appear in prepositional phrases, which include an object of the preposition as well: under the water; behind the fence; at home. These phrases function like adjectives or adverbs. The object of the preposition cannot also be the subject of the sentence.
Conjunctions are used to connect words, phrases, and clauses. The most common conjunctions are and, or, but, and so. These are called coordinating conjunctions. It’s also important to remember the two sets of correlative conjunctions: either/or and neither/nor. When used as conjunctions, these always occur in pairs: Either is always followed later in the sentence by or, and neither is always followed by nor.
Two final terms that might sound confusing, but are actually quite simple, are predicate adjective and predicate nominative. The word predicate tells you right away where these are found in the sentence. A predicate adjective is simply an adjective that describes the subject, but is found after a linking verb. Here is an example: Harriet was sleepy. Similarly, a predicate nominative provides a new “name” for the subject, often by providing a position, title, or relationship. For example: Harriet was a professor. That man by the cashier is my father.