Practical Grammar

The First Year of Studies

I semester

1. The Parts of Speech Inventory.
2. Classification of simple sentences according to the purpose of communication. (Types of clauses.).
3. Basic Patterns of an English sentence. (Five canonical clause structures).
4. Principle elements of the sentence. (Noun phrase and Verb phrase. The structure of phrases).
5. The notions of complement and object. (Complements and objects as noun and verb dependents).
6. General characteristics of Nouns. (Distinctive properties of prototypical nouns).
7. Classification of nouns. Major subclasses of nouns.
8. Count and non-count nouns. Distinctive features.
9. Number in Nouns. Regular and irregular plurals.
10. Nouns with fixed number: Singular only and plural only nouns.
11. Genitive Case: formation and meaning. (Genitive case vs possessive).
12. Pronouns. Major subclasses of pronouns. (The prototypical members of pronoun subclasses).
13. Person, Case and Gender differences of personal pronouns.
14. The forms of personal pronouns and their use. (The nominative-accusative and dependent-independent contrasts of personal pronouns).
15. Pronouns as means of noun determination and modification (some, any, much, many, few, little, etc.)
16. Definite and indefinite determinatives. Articles as major means of noun determination.
17. Definiteness. Definite article functions and use.
18. Indefinite article functions and use.
19. Zero article functions and use.
20. Use of articles in set expressions.
21. Use of articles with proper names.
22. General characteristics of Adjectives. (Distinctive properties of prototypical adjectives).
23. Gradable and non-gradable adjectives.
24. Ways of adjective grade formation. Comparative and Superlative adjective phrases.
25. Order of adjectives.
26. Formation and use of present Simple.
27. Formation and use of present Progressive.
28. Contrasts between progressive and non-progressive.
29. Formation and use of present perfect.
30. Formation and use of present perfect progressive.
31. The Simple preterite formation and use.
32. Time reference in the present perfect and the simple preterite.
33. The preterite progressive construction and use.
34. The preterite perfect construction and use.
35. The continuative perfect. The continuative use of perfect as opposed to non-continuative use. (Present Perfect Progressive and Present Perfect).
36. The preterite perfect progressive as compared to preterite perfect.