Grammar 101 - Parts Of Speech, Syntactic Structures

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Introduction (Feel free to skip)

Hey guys. At the suggestion of a few fellow Royal Road authors, I've decided to post a series of tutorials on the craft of writing. The purpose of these tutorials will be to teach those who are still in the early stages of the craft how to think and write like a professional author. Having said this, I think that it's necessary to explain my qualifications for being the one to write these tutorials.

First, my name is Michael Brock. I've worked intensely on my skills as a writer for over a decade now. In 2007, I graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in Linguistics (the science of language). Afterwards, I taught English and Reading to students in an underprivileged school, taught English as foreign language in France for seven months, spent three months in Brazil as a missionary, and published my first novel in October of last year. In case you're wondering, no, I'm not a bestselling author or anything. But Stephen King isn't on Royal Road, so I'm what you've got. (For what it's worth, I did read his book on writing called On Writing. It's ok.)

So let's begin. These tutorials will start out with easy and basic stuff and rapidly advance to more complex techniques of the craft of writing. At the suggestion of Unice, each lesson will be given a number reminiscent of a college course. For example, the first part of a series will be 101 and then 102, 201, 202, etc.

The first section is on grammar. By the end of the grammar section you should have a strong grasp on the basics of English grammar, be able to fluently use a variety of syntactic structures, know how to punctuate and structure paragraphs in narrative form, be familiar with a range of literary devices, be confident in your choice of words, and ultimately, be able to write prose that flows like water.


Grammar 101: Parts of Speech



This section will serve as a guide to the terminology that we'll be using throughout the tutorials. As this is the inaugural and easiest lesson of the series, I suspect that must of you will already know everything here. I encourage you to glance over it and read the "You Can Move On When" section. Now let's get into it.

The Eight Parts of Speech
1. Nouns
2. Pronouns
3. Verbs
4. Adverbs
5. Adjectives
6. Prepositions
7. Conjunctions
8. Interjections


1. Nouns - Nouns are most commonly described as persons, places, ideas, or things. Within the category of nouns are proper nouns, common nouns, collective nouns, and possessive nouns.

Proper nouns describe specific people, places, or things. They are written with capital letters and consist of multiple words that are considered as a single proper noun.

Common nouns describe non-specific people, places, things, or ideas.

Collective nouns describe groups of people, animals, or things and function as a single noun.

Possessive nouns show ownership and are marked with either 's or s'. Generally speaking, singular nouns take the 's form and plural nouns take the s' form.

Examples:

Veronica Roth [proper noun] is the author [common noun] of the Divergent [proper noun] book series.

Royal Road [proper noun with two words] is a cool website [common noun].

The audience [collective noun] became silent when the band [collective noun] stepped on stage.

We are studying the English [proper noun] language. (Note: The proper name of a language is always capitalized. I.e. English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, etc.)

That is Emily's [possessive noun] doll.

That is the twin brothers' [possessive plural noun] PS4.

That is James's [singular possessive noun] PS4. (Note: Most people falsely believe that if a word ends in s, then it's possessive form is automatically s'. This, however, is not true. It depends on whether the noun is singular or plural. This matter will be covered more in depth in a later section).

2. Pronouns - Pronouns take the place of nouns. There are relative pronouns, reflexive pronouns, indefinite pronouns, and possessive pronouns.

Relative pronouns introduce adjective clauses. They are words like who, whom, whose, which, and that.

Reflexive pronouns are object nouns that refer back to the subject. These include words like, myself, yourself, ourselves, themselves, and etc. For example: The boxer accidentally punched himself [reflexive pronoune] in the face. (Source: Uppercut)

Indefinite pronouns describe a general group of nouns. They are words like everyone, most, many, some, few, each, all, none, someone, and everything.

Possessive pronouns show possession and are words like yours, mine, ours, theirs, your, my, our, and their, etc.

3. Verbs - Verbs are words that show action, movement, or states of being. In narrative writing verbs are of quintessential importance. As such, the next lesson be dedicated entirely to verbs.

4. Adverbs are words that modify verbs. They generally end in -ly. Many authors recommend cutting out adverbs from one's prose, as writers tend to overuse them. However, they do have their proper place if used correctly. We'll see more on adverbs when we look at dialogue and sentence variety.

5. Adjectives are words that modify nouns and pronouns. Some examples include, the golden [adjective] goose, the cowardly [adj.] lion, the famous [adj.] actor, or the original [adj.] awesome sauce.

6. Prepositions show the spatial, temporal, or positional relationship between a noun or pronoun and the other words in a sentence. For more information, see prepositional phrases below.

7. Conjunctions connect two or more words or clauses. Common conjunctions include but, or, and... and. For example: I was going to list "and" first, but [conjunction] it made the sentence weird.

8. Interjections show emotion. They're not connected to other parts of the sentence. Some examples would be, "Eureka!" or "Dag gummit!"
Syntactic Phrases (Note: This part is extremely important!)

To create prose that flows like water, one first must be familiar with a variety of syntactic phrases and be able to use them skillfully and at command. Let's look at what these are because we'll be using them again later.

1. Noun Phrase
2. Appositive Phrase
3. Gerund Phrase
4. Infinitive Phrase
5. Adverbial Phrase
6. Participial Phrase
7. Prepositional Phrase


1. Noun phrases generally form basic sentences. They begin with a subject and are followed by a predicate. More simply, they begin with a noun and are followed with a verb. Some examples:

James is a good boy.

Girls only like bad boys.

Tanya doesn't like James.

He thinks that Tanya should die.

Noun phrases are easy to understand.

2. Appositive phrases rename a noun that has just been introduced. It functions like an interrupter.

Linguist, Noam Chomsky, coined the term Language Acquisition Device.
The cow jumped over the moon according to Brown, a research scientist at Purdue University.

3. A gerund phrase is a verb that is used as a noun.

Dancing is a man's sport.

Her favorite pastime is partying.

Rock climbing is a delightful activity.

4. An infinitive phrase begins with infinitive form of a verb. In English this means "to *verb."

To prepare, he studied ninja films until he became a martial arts master.

To clarify, Reed Richards rephrased his previous sentence in simpler terms.

To defeat the superior number of enemies, Sun Tzu developed a stunning plan.

Sun Tzu developed a stunning plan to defeat the superior number of enemies.

He scanned over the Wikipedia article to quickly prepare for the morning's test.

Note: In English you can separate the infinite with an adverb. This is entirely legitimate, but often doesn't lend to the best effect.

5. Adverbial phrases begin with an adverb. Remember, these are words that mostly end in -ly.

Wildly throwing out a desperation punch, he landed a lucky hit and managed to knock out the Bald Bull.

He repeatedly slammed his fist against the door until it opened.

Strenuously wracking his mind, he devised a clever scheme.

6. Participle phrases begin with either the present tense or past tense participial of a verb. Participle phrases work great in narrative writing.

Running as quickly as I could, I tried to escape from Jason.

Pivoting, I brought my right leg up and roundhouse kicked him in the face.

Distraught and defeated, I hung my head in shame.

Swamped with homework, I spent all night working and didn't get to play my new game.

7. A prepositional phrase entails a subject, preposition, and object of the preposition.

The cow jumped over the moon. (The cow is the subject, over is the preposition, and the moon is the object of the preposition.)

He tried to fly under the radar.

Note: Not all prepositions have to do with movement.

According to sources, the phrase "according to" is a preposition.

*Between you and me, most people don't understand how objects of prepositions work enough to know whether the correct phrase is "between you and me" or "between you and I."

(Hint: "Between you and me" is correct because the preposition requires the first person object pronoun, which is "me." The first person subject pronoun is "I.")


You Can Move On When:


You can move on when you understand all of the eight parts of speech and have a general understanding of the syntactic phrases. You will need the parts of speech to construct the syntactic phrases and you will need the syntactic phrases to create sentence variety in later lessons.
Hey guys. I'm a LitRPG author who writes action adventures stories. My website is https://www.souladonis.com.

My RR fictions are:
Souladonis: The Full LitRPG Novel, Fuuko: The Fox-Masked Hero.

RE: Grammar 101 - Parts Of Speech, Syntactic Structures

#3
'ResonantIce' pid='325017' dateline='1441156096' Wrote: Thanks for doing these. I'm looking forward to seeing the more advanced lessons.  :)

You're welcome. They're coming slowly because I'm neck deep in marketing and promotion in preparation for releasing two new novels over the span of the next month. Being a writer is a ridiculous amount of work.
Hey guys. I'm a LitRPG author who writes action adventures stories. My website is https://www.souladonis.com.

My RR fictions are:
Souladonis: The Full LitRPG Novel, Fuuko: The Fox-Masked Hero.

RE: Grammar 101 - Parts Of Speech, Syntactic Structures

#4
Suggestion for your next lesson: Sentence structure (parts of a sentence, punctuation, and commas)

Nice work so far though.
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