How to describe language:
I talked about a part of this chapter which contains adjectives, adverbs, prepositions and articles. So, I started first with adjectives I said that adjectives can be used before and after nouns, they can have many forms; adjectives can be made comparative like good → better, nice → nicer and superlative like best and nicest. They fall into a number of categories: one-syllable adjectives we add (er) or (est) to become comparative and superlative; some adjectives are irregular like good and bad there are some adjectives that end in vowel + consonant we double the final consonant like big → bigger, thin → thinner etc, and adjectives that end in (y) usually change the (y) to (i) like silly → sillier. Longer adjectives – three or more syllables – stay the same and are prefaced by (more) or (most). The same is true of some tow – syllable adjectives like more careful. While in modern English usage other adjectives like clever can be both cleverer and more clever. Then I moved to adjective order, I said that when we use a string of adjectives, there is an accepted order which is:
Size → color → origin → material → purpose → noun
Many adjectives are followed by specific prepositions for example: interested in, keen on etc. The last idea about adjectives was that we can use some of them as if they were nouns like the poor or the blind.
After that I moved to talk about adverbs; adverbs and adverbial phrases can be of time, manner and place: of time like early, of manner like played well and of place like in hell. Adverbs usually appear at the end of the sentence, but they can some times be used at the beginning or in the middle. Most adverbs of frequency like always, usually, often etc. can go at the beginning, middle or end of a sentence. But this often depends on the particular adverb being used for example (never) can only occur in the middle position. Adverbs can not usually come between a verb and its object, we say I usually have sandwiches for lunch but not I have usually sandwiches for lunch. A final comment about adverbs was that adverbs can modify adjectives like a wonderfully physical performance.
After finishing with adverbs I talked about prepositions, prepositions (at, in, on, for etc.) usually come before a noun but can also come at the end of a clause with certain structures. We can say, for example, the book is on the shelf or it is not something I am interested in. Furthermore, many words and expressions can only be followed by particular prepositions like dream about/ of, good at. There are some words which can be both prepositions and also adverbs like in the following sentence she climbed down the ladder, down is a preposition because it has an object which is the ladder. But in this sentence she sat down; it is an adverb because it does not have an object.
The last section of this part was about articles, but before starting with it there was a reference to determiners in this way:
Articles (the, a, an) belong to a class of words called determiners. Other examples of determiners are (that, this, these, those, some, all of). Determiners usually come before a noun or at the beginning of a noun phrase like an apple. We use the definite article (the) when we think that the reader or listener knows which particular thing or person we are talking about or when there can only be one like the Pope. We do not use the definite article when we are talking about people and things in general using plural or uncountable nouns. However, just to confuse things, we do sometimes make general statements with the definite article and a singular noun like the great white shark is a dangerous creature in the wrong situation.
The indefinite article (a, an) is used to refer to a particular person or thing when the listener or reader does not know which one is being described. As with the definite article, we can use (a, an) to refer to a member of a group–in order to refer to the whole group like a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.
That was my part of the chapter.
