Category: Grammar

A set of regularities representative of an autonomous language variety.

Grapevine: Granny talks Present Simple

Travel in Grammar obviously is not the only website about grammar, and we may get plenty to read, in books or articles, to manage at school or other language courses. We need to be able to work classic grammar guidance. Let us begin with Oxford Dictionaries for verb tenses. ■→More

Grapevine: 3 gloves, to that time

You remember Huck in the woods when he heard that strange noise them ghosts make, when they have something on mind they can't make themselves understood about. Except I don’t believe in ghosts, and I am perfectly a living human, the same would have happened to me today. ■→More

FOUR CORNERS OF THE WORLD

To see how we could cognitively map in language, let us try a mild brainteaser. If we compare our answers with family, friends, or other people and the results are consistent, the mapping is natural for us, even if the idea has not been well known: our brain-teaser is intuitive. ■→More

10.2. THE RELATIVE PROGRESSIVE

For figurative talk and theory altogether, we can manage just balancing the variables {ON} and {IN}, with Modal form relativity. Imagery for Modal verbs really does deserve to be a pleasant thing. ■→More

10.1. UNREAL OR REAL TIME

No group and no Government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.
— President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ■→More

CHAPTER 10. FORM RELATIVITY GALORE

With theory making, PAST forms refer to the PRESENT, and PRESENT forms refer to the FUTURE. It is only the anchored PAST to stay in the PAST. Theory making is similar in Polish, Russian, French, and other languages:
if I was, si j’étais, gdybym był/a, если бы я был/а, wäre ich, etc.
Our language form relativity has nothing to do with ■→Whorfianism. ■→More

9.2. THE MODAL NET

We have considered two sides of a hypothetical fruit. Let us now think if we could arrive at the theory “net weight”: when we people make theories, it is usually to get to something real. ■→More

9.1. AUXILIARY HAVE AND MODAL SYNTAX

If we say that something is a fruit, it is a possible fruit, or maybe it must be fruit, but we do not know the kind, it is first of all our thought process we manage. Auxiliary HAVE can be quite some handle. ■→More

CHAPTER 9. TO TELL THE FASHION IN VALUABLE TIME

Modal verbs do not narrate the real time. Their manner is relative to real time, as they mediate between the grammatical Time and Aspect. The name "modal" comes from the Latin word "modus", meaning an extent or measure, too. ■→More

8.2. PRACTICE FOR ALL ASPECTS

We practice earthling proper egoism: we ignore cues that would not be properly "egoistic" and "gravitational":
The butterfly (kiss) the bee in the midst of her phiz, when he (see) the golden grit. ■→More

8.1. EARTHLING BASIC COGNITIVE VARIABLE

Planet Earth has been a natural habitat for millennia. In thousands of years, people to think what there is {ON} a map, have not denied plausibility for places {IN} areas, routes {TO} places, as well as locations {AT} them. Early childhood learning to talk has been getting along with learning to walk. Human postural control will favor one variable for the basis of all Aspects and tenses. ■→More

CHAPTER 8. A PERFECT AND PROGRESSIVE REGARD

Matters may never be what they seem, but they are what they look: the Perfect Progressive does merge the Perfect and the Progressive. All Perfect tenses have an open time frame. ■→More

CHAPTER 7. TIME IN THE MIND AND HEART

There are many grammar books to tell about “stative” or “static verbs”; that we should never use them with the Progressive; that phrases as "I am loving" or "I am hating" are incorrect. In fact, such phrases do occur also in educated styles, and without the brain, the heart is just a muscle. ■→More

6.4. MORE PRACTICE: THE GRAMMATICAL FRAME, VARIABLE, AND FORM

4. After some study of a number of ideas on the cosmos, she (picture) the humanity as an odd kind of fish in a series of still larger fish tanks. Early in the series, there (be) N any point to try bringing another fish tank to imagination. It (require) adding more fish tanks. ■→More

6.3. EXERCISES: THE ASPECT AND THE TIME FRAME

Mind practice for the Aspect and the time frame:
2. The skylark found nothing to outbid the bit of cosmos with a squid.
8. The spotted redshank bachelorette bewailed, and reset her buret for the bouncing bet. ■→More

6.2. ASPECT COGNITIVE VARIABLE AND TIME FRAME

Madame Règle is not a systematic person at all. The only regularity about her would be a small book she always carries fastened to her bag with a scarf, or actually a variety of scarves, of many colors and textures. The book is not the same book every day, and the choice of the scarf sure depends on some totally unpredictable factor, just as the exact time for lunch, for which you might want to assume the broad time frame of about sixty minutes to commence or not to happen altogether. ■→More

6.1. OUR LINGUISTIC GRAVITATION

Our time extents, PRESENT and PAST, do not change for punctuation. They do not change for the Aspect, Simple or Perfect, either. To continue our work on the two Aspects, we choose on the grammatical time frame. ■→More

CHAPTER 6. TO CHOOSE OWN PATH IN TIME

There are no universal principles for choosing between the Present Perfect and the Past Simple. We may learn many classic rules, and yet we are always going to need own resolves in context. An idea as a grammatical time frame can prove very helpful. ■→More

5.3. PRACTICE: REAL SYNTAX AND MORE WORDS

Abbreviated verb forms are really much in use in American English. It is important to learn telling them. We first try the exercises in our thoughts, as in the Mind Practice. ■→More

5.2. PRACTICE: SYMBOLIC CUES AND REAL SYNTAX

We combine the Aspect and Time, to exercise target grammatical time. We think the answers: true learning is in the mind. ■→More

5.1. THE LOGIC SO FAR

We sum up on the grammar logic so far, and visualize Time with Aspect — for efficient language habits with target grammatical time. ■→More

CHAPTER 5. LET US MAKE OWN PATHS ABOUT TIME

Phrases as the the Affirmative, Interrogative or Negative may look rare or even strange, if we compare everyday language. Let us think about something usual as a strawberry, to work them out. ■→More

4.1. THE IDEA OF TRAVEL IN GRAMMAR

We can think about the Simple, Progressive, and Perfect — together, as variables that we choose in real time. It can be good time and in truth, no effort at all. ■→More

CHAPTER 4. TIME RAMBLES DIFFERENT WITH DIFFERENT PEOPLE

Human walking or other moving about needs place and time, yet it does not need anybody to describe, give rules or definitions. We can connect the grammatical aspect and basic ways we people orientate in physical space. More→

3.4. PRACTICE FOR THE SHAPE OF TIME

We have a little exercise on Aspect pattern build, before we reckon on Aspect use. To get along at school, we think about grammar labels, that is, if patterns are the Simple, Progressive, Future, Past, or another — the way as in our Mind Practice, 3 minutes to read. ■→More

3.3. THE BIG CHART FOR THREE PERSONS AND PATHS

We put together the Simple, Progressive, and the Perfect, with all personal pronouns and in all three fields of time. ■→More

3.2. THE PERSON ‘YOU’

In a standard, face-to-face conversation, it is naturally easy to tell if we speak with one or more persons. However, the pronoun you has evolved into the same shape for the singular and the plural. The form is also the same as verb object. ■→More

3.1. THE FIELDS AND THE RIVER OF TIME

Whether English is spoken or written, verb forms be and have are the most usual to occur. We can extract patterns for the Simple, Progressive, and Perfect. ■→More

CHAPTER 3. TIME IS LIKE A RIVER

Everyday language has phrases as a flow or passage of time, a course or current of events: we people happen to have such impressions about life and time. Let us imagine a river of time. There are word patterns to show in the river, and there are pods of time to surface with them. We need to use a pattern, for a pod to carry us through. ■→More .

2.1. MORE WORDS IN THE FIELDS

Verbs may change in shape for the PRESENT, PAST, and FUTURE, and not all are regular in this. We exercise verb 1st and 2nd forms in the fields of time. ■→More

CHAPTER 2. THE FUTURE NEEDS THE PRESENT

humans have evolved grammars along with perception for three-dimensional space. There never has been really at hand any fourth or time independently dimension, to make language. The real time we people live in is always our PRESENT. The verb form "will" can map on the real-time FUTURE already in its PRESENT grammatical shape. ■→More

1.2. MIND PRACTICE

It is much easier to make progress in language, if we learn to introspect and consciously give direction to own intellect. We may begin with exercise in awareness of own mind. More→

1.1. FIELDS OF TIME: BASIC PRACTICE

Learning a language always requires thinking, but it does not require difficulty. The simple exercises here are to help work out flexible habits that can contribute to advanced language skill. More→