Of contrastive typology

The adjective

An adjective gives the reader or speaker extra information about a noun or delimits it in some way. It can occur in two positions in a phrase:

• 
  before the noun as in clear water, beautiful beaches, a terrible decision. The adjectives in these examples are said to be attributive,
  
• 
  following any form of the verb be (e.g. am, is, was, been) and similar verbs (seem, appear,become) as in the water became clear, the beaches are beautiful. These adjectives are inpredicative position.
  

The pronoun

Pronouns are usually treated as a special sub-class of nouns. This is because they stand in for a noun or group of nouns. They are limited in number and belong to what is called a closed set, that is, a group of words to which new members are, for practical purposes, not allowed. Some examples of pronouns are: I, you, he, she, our, its, something, anyone and so on. Thus, instead of saying, Bill’s arrived. Bill’s in the lounge, we prefer Bill’s arrived. He’s in the lounge. Or a person called for you; better would be someone called for you. There are several other words which fall into this class; for example (the) one(s), when used to replace dishes in the example: pass me the dishes – the ones on the top shelf.

The conjunction

It would be very unusual for anyone to either speak or write completely in simple sentences; instead we tend to use a mixture of simple, compound and complex sentences. One way to create longer, more complicated sentences is to use conjunctions. As we have already noted in the section on types of clause, conjunctions serve to connect two or more clauses, phrases or words together to make longer constructions. In the following examples, the conjunction is in bold:

• 
  The coffee was strong, but sweet.
  
• 
  We can go to the match or watch it on TV.
  
• 
  She has a dog and two cats.
  
• 
  When I arrived home, they had already eaten.
  
• 
  I had to stop driving because the rain was so bad.
  
• 
  Can I have a word with you, if you’ve got the time?
  
• 
  Although he can’t swim, he goes sailing.
  

There are two types of conjunction. The first is the coordinating conjunction; examples of this can be seen in sentences a to c above. This type is always used to connect elements that share the same grammatical status, that is, main clause to main clause, verb to verb, noun to noun, adjective to adjective and so on. In sentence a two adjectives, strong and sweet, are conjoined, in b two verbs, go and watch and c two nouns, dog and cats.

The second type is the subordinating conjunction, which most often joins two or more unequal clauses to one another. Typically a main clause will be connected to a subordinate clause as we saw in the section on clause types. So in sentences d to g above, the subordinate clause (which you will remember cannot stand on its own, but needs another more important clause to complete the meaning) begins with a conjunction, here when, because, if and although.