English Grammar

This is a podcast about English grammar. The host explains that grammar consists of rules that describe sentence structure and English grammar has rules for words, sentence structure, tense, punctuation, etc. She also talks about yes-no questions and how they are formed. Another host discusses models, which are auxiliary words that modify the main word in a sentence and add layers of meaning. She explains the form, meaning, and use of models. Then, another host talks about negation in English, including negating the predicate verb, using negative nouns for subject and object, and using adverbs with negative meanings. Finally, another host discusses tenses in abstracted English, including present, past, and future tenses, as well as the aspects of simple, perfect, progressive, and perfect progressive. They provide examples for each aspect in the present tense. Hi guys, welcome to Jieqi, Chloe, Yuki, Zhang, Xue, Pingming's podcast about English grammar. I'm Jieqi, and I'm going to introduce grammar for you. Grammar comprises a set of language rules that describe the structure of sentences or parts of sentences. Similarly, English grammar represents a system of rules and structures used to construct and decipher English sentences. It encompasses a range of rules and conventions for determining words, placements, and sentences, their combinations, and the formation of sentence structures. English grammar encompasses several key aspects, including parts of speech, sentence structure, tense, punctuation, and more. English words fall into distinct categories, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, and articles, etc. Most English sentences adhere to a fundamental structure, subject, predicate, and occasionally an object, depending on the sentence complexity. This structure can be simple or intricate. Verb forms in English indicate the time of an action and whether the subject performs or receives the action. Common tenses include past, present, and future, with voice in compassing, active, and passive forms. English grammar involves numerous rules, such as subject-verb agreement, correct use of adjectives and adverbs, consistency in tense and voice, and so on. These rules contribute to ensuring the grammatical accuracy of sentences. Learning English grammar is a gradual process. Beginning with fundamental grammar rules can help you establish a robust foundation, making it easier to grasp more advanced concepts later on. Hi everyone, this is Chloe. Today I'm going to teach you guys yes-no questions. Yes-no questions are often defined as questions for which either yes or no is the expected answer. It aims to ask for confirmation. Inverting the subject and operator gives rise to the characteristic, syntactic form of yes-no questions in English. In addition to inverted word order and sometimes the addition of the do operator, English also uses annotation to mark yes-no questions. Yes-no questions typically display a raised, non-terminal annotation. However, yes-no questions sometimes have forwarding annotations. For example, normal friendly conversation, rising more likely, I want to hear your answer quickly, forwarding may appear, positive response expected, forwarding more likely. Sometimes yes-no questions can be more focused. That the internal gave focus is attracting to proportional constituents is further supported by the fact that when an optional adverbial is present, stressing the optional adverbial is natural. And then I want to talk about some and any. Some means more concrete and any means more abstract. Many ESL, EFL grammar texts say that any is used in questions as well as negatives. This is true with regarding to open or unmarked questions. However, we also saw in the chapter on negation that the weakly stressed some stressing a positive quantity. The final note on concrete contracted negative yes-no questions concerns the next few gaps that occurs in the first person singular. However, we cannot contract the verb, be it does not, I am not, you, unless we use the non-standard I ain't. Students may also need some understanding of how to respond to yes-no questions, particularly negative yes-no questions. Finally, we should remember that not all yes-no questions are inverted. Thank you very much. Hello, everyone. I'm your host, Yuki. In this part, we are diving deep into the world of models. Models, the unsung heroes of language, are a special category of auxiliary words. They modify the main word in a sentence, adding layers of meaning that indicates possibility, obligation, permission, ability, and more. Okay, now we are going to learn about models from three aspects, form, meaning, and use. First, model auxiliaries do not inflect. They are tense-less, and they take no subject-verb agreement. And the following verb should be zero infinitives. For example, the sentence he can go, we cannot say he can't go or he can't go. Could is the past form of can, which expresses the possibility or applied request, like could you help me? Next, there are three basic types of models meaning that we have so far identified. The first one is social interaction. For example, could you open the door? This is a request for assistance. The second one is showing ability and tendency. For instance, I can speak Chinese. This sentence indicates the ability to speak a language. The last one is showing logical probability. For example, it may rain tomorrow. It expresses a weak degree of possibility. Remember, models might be tiny words, but they really play a pivotal role in shaping our language and communication. Don't be shy to use models as a powerful tool for expressing thoughts, feelings, and intentions in a conversation. And it's okay to make mistakes. That's how we learn and improve our language skills. That's all for this part. I hope you did enjoy it. Take care and keep exploring the wonders of grammar. See you next time. And here comes the negation part. I'm Jiang Xuehan. There are three common forms of negation in English. They are negation of predicate verb, negation of subject, object, and expression, and negation of adverb. First, the negation of the predicate verb. For example, in a sentence, I am tired. When a verb is turned negative, it becomes, I am not tired. And for example, in I like grammar, like equals to like. So negating the verb becomes, I do not like grammar. Second, the subject, object, and predicate of negative meanings. It is a sentence that expresses negative meanings by using negative nouns. For example, nobody can use that much. And I know nothing about you. Among them, nobody and nothing are the subject and object. They reflect the negative meanings of the sentence respectively. Finally, adverbs with negative meanings. Adverbs specifically used to express negative meanings are sometimes used in English, such as, I never get up late. And I can hardly hear anything. So among them, never and hardly belong to the adverbs used to add negative meanings to sentences. So this is the end of negation part. Next is tense abstracts. Hi, I am Pei Ning Fu, and I am going to talk about the tenses in abstracted English. When we speak, we generally describe actions of other people or the things we do. Some actions are already completed, some are still going on, and some might take place sometime after the present time. So to emphasize the time of occurring of an event, we use verbs in various forms, and the forms of verbs are tenses. In English tenses, there are three types of tenses, which are present, past, and future. And each tense is further classified into four aspects, which are simple, perfect, progressive, and perfect progressive. I know it might sound a little bit confusing now, but we can think about it this way. Tense tells us when the action began, and aspect tells us when the action was continuous, completed, or something else. I think the three tenses are quite clear by their name, just literally the actions happened in the past, now, or in the future. However, the aspect is not that clear as tenses, so I will give some examples to make it easier to understand the concept. Now I will use present tense with these four aspects to give some examples. The first one is simple present. Any action that happens in the present moment, it can be a daily practice, a regular fact, or a habit. For example, she helps her neighbors every day, or I feel very happy now. We can notice that often the simple present is just a root verb with no changes or additions. The main exception to this is when the subject is third person and singular. In this case, you have to add the suffix at after the verb. And the next one is present progressive. The progressive aspect is used to talk about continuous events. For example, Jack is reading a novel, or I am talking about tenses and aspects. Now we also have present perfect. This is often formed by the verb past and combined with the past tense verb. It is used to show an action that happened in the past that is directly related to the present, such as the actions that are still continuing or that indicate a change over time. Here are some examples. I have lived in New York since day 21. Or we have broken up before, so this time feels different. The last one is present perfect progressive. This is used to show that an action started in the past and has continued up to the present moment. For example, Leigh has been working hard on this project. So now we have already went over the four aspects with simple tense. I have to say that it is just a brief introduction about tenses and aspects, but I still hope that this can help you have a better understanding about this important grammar before you move to the more complicated one. Thank you.