Thoughts On Grammar

On Grammar pt. 1

Infinitive: to love

Indicative:

Present: I love you

Use: Mrs. Elliot said I love you to her husband every morning before he left for work.

Preterite: I loved you

Use: Elizabeth whispered at the empty room.

Present Continuous: I am loving you Use: Mrs. Elliot said to her middle school boyfriend, because she wasn’t sure when she would stop.

Present Perfect: I have loved you Use: “I have loved you all year”Mrs. Elliot’s middle school boyfriend replied.

Future: I will love you

Use: Elizabeth said to herself every morning afterwards.

Future Perfect: I will have loved you

Use: When you die, the amount of years I will have loved you will be larger than the amount of years I will have not, Mrs. Elliot told her husband.

Past Continuous: I was loving you

Use: When I die, if anyone asks how it happened, tell them it was because I was loving you. Mrs. Elliot’s husband replied.

Past Perfect: I had loved you

Use: Maybe, if I had loved you more… Elizabeth said to herself at 3 in the morning.

Future Continuous: I will be loving you

Use: I will be loving you every day after you die, Mrs. Elliot said after her husband left for work that morning.

Present Perfect Continuous: I have been loving you

Use: I have been loving you for too many years already! Mrs. Elliot’s husband joked often.

Past Perfect Continuous: I had been loving you

Use: I had been loving her too much, Elizabeth decided. Future Perfect Continuous: I will have been loving you

Use: When I die, remember that I most likely will have been loving you! Mrs. Elliot’s husband joked one time.

Imperative: Love.

Use: “Please love me” Elizabeth thought.

Participle:

Past Participle: loved.

Use: Mrs. Elliot loved her husband.

Perfect Participle: having loved.

Use: Having loved her for so long, Mrs. Elliot’s husband often forgot Mrs. Elliot did not share his sense of humor. Present Participle: loving.

Use: “In loving memory of Daisy Elliot, daughter to John and Elizabeth Elliot”.

On Grammar pt. 2

A Lesson in Perfect and Simple Tenses

(Simple Present: we use simple present to talk about permanent situations, or about things that happen regularly, repeatedly or all of the time):

A woman goes to the doctor,

“It hurts when I do this”

The doctor says:

“Don’t do that”

(In general, simple past is ‘normal’ for talking about the past, we use it if we do not have a special reason for using one of the other tenses):

A student asked me

the meaning of naïve,

I thought about the time a woman stole my wallet and I

apologized to her.

She spent €36

in SuperValu.

(We use unreal conditionals to talk about unlikely events or situations in the future, or improbable or impossible events or situations in the present):

If I were walking by the ocean

and my feet

squelched

too close,

would the sand swallow me whole?

(We could often change a present perfect sentence into a present sentence with a similar meaning)

I have never seen my father cry. → I do not know my father.

On Grammar pt. 3

A Study of Conjunction Usage:

e.g: We moved in together because we were friends.

I started locking my bedroom door when I went to work because I noticed she was going inside.

Conjunctions not only join clauses together, but also show how the meanings of the two clauses are related:

e.g: I made sweet and sour chicken and rice. (addition)

The rice was undercooked but we ate it. (contrast)

She could have cleaned up the kitchen or said thank you (alternative)

She didn’t do either because she was mad at me (cause)

She explained this to me when I arrived home the next evening (time).

And, but and or are often called “co-ordinating conjunctions”. They join pairs of clauses that are grammatically independent of each other:

e.g: She wanted us to spend more time together and I wanted to go to sleep.

I wanted to talk to her but it felt impossible.

I could do what she’d planned or she would spend the entire evening in her room.

Other conjunctions, like because, when, that, or which are called “subordinating conjunctions”. A subordinating conjunction together with its following clause acts like a part of the other clause:

e.g: I became friends with her because she made me laugh.

I felt uncomfortable when I made her angry.

She told me that I was being selfish.

It was a situation which is difficult to explain.

Some conjunctions are made up of two or more words:

e.g: “I did that so that you felt how I felt”.

What does one do the moment that they start feeling uncomfortable in their own home?

Adverb clauses can usually go either first or last in a sentence (depending on what is to be emphasized –the most important information usually comes last):

e.g: She called me 4 times while I was at work. (emphasizes when happened)

While I was at work, she called me 4 times. (emphasizes what happened)

If you cared about me, you would spend more time at home.

You would spend more time with me if you valued our friendship.

Although it is not your fault, I will make you feel like it is.

I said nothing to her, because I physically couldn’t.

Because no matter what I said, it would be the wrong thing.

Commas are often used to separate longer or more complicated clauses. Shorter pairs of clauses are often connected without commas:

e.g: She stayed up with me the night I got my heart broken.

I came home crying and she sat with me until I felt ready to go to bed.

When a subordinate clause begins a sentence, it is more often separated by a comma, even if it is short:

e.g: If she’d been openly mean, disliking her would have made sense.

I wouldn’t have hated myself if I had let myself hate her.

Words for repeated ideas can often be left out in the second of two co-ordinate clauses, but not normally in a subordinate clause:

e.g: I had all this anger, and didn’t know where to put it.

I felt guilty, because I was angry. Many conjunctions that express time relations (after, before, since, when, while, whenever, once and until) can be followed by -ing forms or past participles instead of subjects.

e.g. Since meeting her, I’ve started second guessing my own morals.

Normally a conjunction connects two clauses into one sentence. However, sometimes a conjunction and its clause can stand alone. This happens, for example, in answers.

e.g. Why did you block her? Because I had to.