A grammatical category is a general term. It encompasses among other things: • Grammatical aspect • Grammatical case • Grammatical mood • Grammatical gender • Grammatical number • Grammatical polarity • Grammatical tense • Grammatical voice • Grammatical person A grammatical category is a set of features which express related conceptual distinctions, and are often expressed in similar ways in a language. In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb defines the temporal flow (or lack thereof) in the described event or state. For example, in English the difference between I swim and I am swimming is a difference of aspect. Aspect, as discussed here, is a formal property of a language. Some languages distinguish a large number of formal aspects (see the list below), while others distinguish none at all. Even languages that do not mark aspect formally, however, can convey such distinctions by the use of adverbs, phrases, serial verb constructions or other means. Grammatical aspect may have been first dealt with in the work of the Indian linguist Yaska (ca. 7th century BCE), who distinguishes actions that are processes (bhāva), from those where the action is considered as a completed whole (mūrta). This is of course the key distinction between the imperfective and perfective. Yaska applies the same distinction also for between a verb and an action nominal. Common aspectual distinctions The most fundamental aspectual distinction, represented in many languages, is between perfective aspect and imperfective aspect. This is the basic aspectual distinction in the Slavic languages. It semantically corresponds to the distinction between the tenses known respectively as the aorist and imperfect in Greek, the preterite and imperfect in Spanish, the simple past (passé simple) and imperfect in French, and the perfect and imperfect in Latin. Essentially, the perfective aspect refers to a single event conceived as a unit, while the imperfective aspect represents an event in the process of unfolding or a repeated or habitual event. In the past tense, the distinction often coincides with the distinction between the simple past "X-ed", as compared to the progressive "was X-ing". For example, the perfective would translate both verbs in the sentence "He raised his sword and struck the enemy". However, in the sentence "As he was striking the enemy, he was killed by an arrow", the first verb would be rendered by an imperfective and the second by a perfective. Aspect vs. tense Aspect is a somewhat difficult concept to grasp for the speakers of most modern Indo-European languages, because they tend to conflate the concept of aspect with the concept of tense. (The two concepts are, however, mostly independent in the modern Slavic languages, such as Russian, and in Greek.) Although English largely separates tense and aspect formally, its aspects (neutral, progressive, perfect and progressive perfect) do not correspond very closely to the distinction of perfective vs. imperfective that is common in most other languages. Furthermore, the separation of tense and aspect in English is not maintained rigidly. One instance of this is the alternation, in some forms of English, between sentences such as "Have you eaten yet?" and "Did you eat yet?". Another is in the past perfect ("I had eaten"), which sometimes represents the combination of past tense and perfect aspect ("I was full because I had already eaten"), but sometimes simply represents a past action which is anterior to another past action ("A little while after I had eaten, my friend arrived"). (The latter situation is often represented in other languages by a simple perfective tense. Formal Spanish and French use a past anterior tense in cases such as this.) Interlingua, which was developed and standardized to be grammatically simple, has no aspects. Its verb tenses are similar to those of English and the Romance languages, but without irregularities. Speakers can use verbs and adverbs to express the meanings of various aspects: Illa continua scriber 'She continues to write', Ille ora arriva, 'He is now arriving', literally 'He now arrives'. Many Sino-Tibetan languages, like Mandarin, are devoid of tense but rich in particles which function as aspect markers. Lexical vs. grammatical aspect It is extremely important to distinguish between grammatical aspect, as described here, and lexical aspect. Lexical aspect is an inherent property of verbs, and is not marked formally in most languages. The distinctions made as part of lexical aspect are different from those of grammatical aspect, usually relating to situation aspect rather than viewpoint aspect. Typical distinctions are between states ("I have"), activities ("I shop") and achievements ("I buy"). These distinctions are often relevant syntactically. For example, states and activities, but not usually achievements, can be used with a prepositional for-phrase describing a time duration: "I had a car for five hours", "I shopped for five hours", but not "*I bought a car for five hours". One of the factors in situation aspect is telicity. Telicity might be considered a kind of lexical aspect, except that it is typically not a property of a verb in isolation, but rather a property of an entire verb phrase. Achievements and accomplishments have telic situation aspect, while states, activities and semelfactives have atelic situation aspect. The other factor in situation aspect is duration, which is also a property of a verb phrase. Accomplishments, states, and activities have duration, while achievements and semelfactives do not. Usage of aspects In some languages, aspect and time are very clearly separated, making them much more distinct to their speakers. There are a number of languages that mark aspect much more saliently than time. Prominent in this category is Chinese, which differentiates many aspects but relies exclusively on (optional) time-words to pinpoint an action with respect to time. In other language groups, for example in most modern Indo-European languages (except Slavic languages), aspect has become almost entirely conflated, in the tense system, with time. In Russian, aspect is more salient than tense in narrative. Russian, like other Slavic languages, uses different lexical entries for the different aspects, whereas other languages mark them morphologically, and still others with auxiliaries (e.g., English). Aspect can mark the stage of an action. The inchoative identifies that the action is soon to take place. The inceptive aspect identifies the beginning stage of an action (e.g. "I am beginning to eat."). Aspects of stage continue through progressive, pausative, resumptive, cessive, and terminative. Important qualifications: • Although the perfective is often thought of as representing a "momentary action", this is not strictly correct. It can equally well be used for an action that took time, as long as it is conceived of as a unit, with a clearly defined start and end, such as "Last summer I visited France". • Grammatical aspect represents a formal distinction encoded in the grammar of a language. Although languages that are described as having imperfective and perfective aspects will agree in most cases in their usage of these aspects, no two languages will agree in every situation. For example: o Some languages have additional grammatical aspects. Spanish and Ancient Greek, for example, have a perfect aspect (not the same as the perfective), which refers to a state resulting from a previous action (also described as a previous action with relevance to a particular time, or a previous action viewed from the perspective of a later time). This corresponds (roughly) to the "have X-ed" construction in English, as in "I have recently eaten". Languages that lack this aspect (such as Portuguese, which is closely related to Spanish) often use the past perfective to render the present perfect (compare the roughly synonymous English sentences "Have you eaten yet?" and "Did you eat yet?"). o In some languages, the formal representation of aspect is optional, and can be omitted when the aspect is clear from context or does not need to be emphasized. This is the case, for example, in Mandarin Chinese, with the perfective suffix le and (especially) the imperfective zhe. o For some verbs in some languages, the difference between perfective and imperfective conveys an additional meaning difference; in such cases, the two aspects will typically be translated using separate verbs in English.(cho vi du vao`); hence the same verb, in the imperfective (present or imperfect tense) and aorist, respectively, is used to convey look and see, search and find, listen and hear. Such differences are often highly language-specific. Aspect in English According to one prevalent account, the English tense system has only two basic times, present and past. No primitive future tense exists in English; the futurity of an event is expressed through the use of the auxiliary verbs "will" and "shall", by use of a present form, as in "tomorrow we go to Newark", or by some other means. Present and past, in contrast, can be expressed using direct modifications of the verb, which may be modified further by the progressive aspect (also called the continuous aspect), the perfect aspect (also called the completed aspect), or both. Each tense is named according to its combination of aspects and time. These two aspects are also referred to as BE + ING (for the first) and as HAVE +EN (for the second). Although a little unwieldy, such tags allow us to avoid the suggestion that uses of the aspect BE + ING always have a "progressive" or "continuous" meaning, which they do not. So we have for the present tense: • Present Simple (not progressive/continuous, not perfect; simple): "I eat" • Present Progressive (progressive, not perfect): "I am eating" • Present Perfect (not progressive, perfect): "I have eaten" • Present Perfect Progressive (progressive, perfect): "I have been eating" .and for the past tense: • Past Simple (not progressive/continuous, not perfect; simple): "I ate" • Past Progressive (progressive, not perfect): "I was eating" • Past Perfect (not progressive, perfect): "I had eaten" • Past Perfect Progressive (progressive, perfect): "I had been eating" (Note that, while many elementary discussions of English grammar would classify the Present Perfect as a past tense, from the standpoint of strict linguistics – and that elucidated here – it is clearly a species of the present, as we cannot say of someone now deceased that he "has eaten" or "has been eating"; the present auxiliary implies that he is in some way present (alive), even if the action denoted is completed (perfect) or partially completed (progressive perfect).) The uses of these two aspects are quite complex. They may refer to the viewpoint of the speaker: I was walking down the road when I met Michael Jackson's lawyer. (Speaker viewpoint in middle of action) I have travelled widely, but I've never been to Moscow. (Speaker viewpoint at end of action) But they can have other meanings: You are being stupid now. (You are doing it deliberately) You are not having chocolate with your sausages! (I forbid it) I am having lunch with Mike tomorrow. (It is decided) Note that the aspectual systems of certain dialects of English, such as Hawaiian Creole English and African- American Vernacular English, are quite different from Standard English, and often distinguish aspect at the expense of tense. Examples of various aspects rendered in English • Perfective (aorist, simple; see above): 'I struck the bell.' (single action) • Perfect (sometimes confusingly called "perfective"; see above): 'I have arrived at the cinema.' (hence, I am now in the cinema) • Progressive (continuous): 'I am eating.' (action is in progress) • Habitual : 'I walk home from work.' (every day) 'I would walk [OR: used to walk] home from work.' (past habit) • Imperfective (either progressive or habitual): 'I am walking to work' (progressive) or 'I walk to work every day' (habitual). • Prospective : 'I am about to eat' OR: 'I'm going to eat." • Recent Perfect or After Perfect: 'I just ate' OR: 'I'm after eating." (Hiberno-English) • Inceptive : 'I am beginning to eat.' • Inchoative (not clearly distinguished from prospective): 'The apples are about to ripen.' • Continuative : 'I am still eating.' • Terminative : 'I am finishing my meal.' • Conative : 'I am trying to eat.' • Cessative : 'I am quitting smoking.' • defective : 'I almost fell.' • Pausative : 'I stopped working for a while.' • Resumptive : 'I resumed sleeping.' • Punctual : 'I slept.' • Durative : 'I slept for an hour.' • Delimitative : 'I slept for a while.' • Protractive : 'The argument went on and on.' • Iterative : 'I read the same books again and again.' • Frequentative : 'It sparkled', contrasted with 'It sparked'. Or, 'I run around', vs. 'I run'. • Experiential : 'I have gone to school many times.' • Intentional : 'I listened carefully.' • Accidental : 'I knocked over the chair.' • Generic : 'Mangoes grow on trees.' • Intensive : 'It glared.' • Moderative : 'It shone.' • Attenuative : 'It glimmered.' • Semelfactive (momentane): 'The mouse squeaked once.' (contrasted to 'The mouse squeaked/was squeaking.') In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun indicates its grammatical function in a greater phrase or clause; such as the role of subject, of direct object, or of possessor. While all languages distinguish cases in some fashion, it is only customary to say that a language has cases when these are codified in the morphology of its nouns — that is, when nouns change their form to reflect their case. (Such a change in form is a kind of declension, hence a kind of inflection.) Cases are related to, but distinct from, thematic roles such as agent and patient; while certain cases in each language tend to correspond to certain thematic roles, cases are a syntactic notion whereas thematic roles are a semantic one. Cases in English Cases are not very prominent in modern English, except in its personal pronouns (a remnant of the more extensive case system of Old English). For other pronouns, and all nouns, adjectives, and articles, case is indicated only by word order, by prepositions, and by the clitic -'s . Taken as a whole, English personal pronouns are typically said to have three morphological cases: a subjective case (such as I, he, she, we), used for the subject of a finite verb and sometimes for the complement of a copula; an objective case (such as me, him, her, us), used for the direct or indirect object of a verb, for the object of a preposition, for an absolute disjunct, and sometimes for the complement of a copula; and a possessive case (such as my/mine, his, her(s), our(s)), used for a grammatical possessor. That said, these pronouns often have more than three forms; the possessive case typically has both a determiner form (such as my, our) and a distinct independent form (such as mine, ours). Additionally, except for the interrogative personal pronoun who, they all have a distinct reflexive or intensive form (such as myself, ourselves). Simplified illustration of some common case categories Even monument builders have to account for grammatical case. On this memorial sign, commemorating the 500th anniversary of the Russia city of Balakhna, the word Balakhna on the right is in the nominative case, while in 500 Let Balakhne ('500 Years to Balakhna') on the front of the sign the dative is used. While not very prominent in English, cases feature much more saliently in many other Indo-European languages, such as Latin, Greek, German, Slavic. Historically, the Indo-European languages had eight morphological cases, though modern languages typically have fewer, using prepositions and word order to convey information that had previously been conveyed using distinct noun forms. The eight historic cases are as follows, with examples: • The nominative case, which corresponds to English's subjective case, indicates the subject of a finite verb: The man went to the store. • The accusative case, which together with the dative and ablative cases (below) corresponds to English's objective case, indicates the direct object of a verb: The man bought a car. • The dative case indicates the indirect object of a verb: The man gave his daughter a book. • The ablative case indicates the object of most common prepositions: The boy went with his father to see the doctor. • The genitive case, which corresponds to English's possessive case, indicates the possessor of another noun: A country's citizens must defend its honour. • The vocative case indicates an addressee: John, are you O.K.? • The locative case indicates a location: I live in China. • The instrumental case indicates an object used in performing an action: He shot it with the gun. All of the above are just rough descriptions; the precise distinctions vary from language to language, and are often quite complex. Case is arguably based fundamentally on changes to the ending of the noun to indicate the noun's role in the sentence. This is not how English works, where word order and prepositions are used to achieve this; as such it is debatable whether the above examples of English sentences can be said to be examples of 'case' in English. In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood (or mode), which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. Many languages express distinctions of mood through morphology, by changing (inflecting) the form of the verb. Definition Because modern English does not have all of the moods described below (English has three moods: indicative, subjunctive, and imperative), and has a very simplified system of verb inflection as well, it is not straightforward to explain the moods in English. Note, too, that the exact sense of each mood differs from language to language. Grammatical mood per se is not the same thing as grammatical tense or grammatical aspect, although these concepts are conflated to some degree in many languages, including English and most other modern Indo- European languages, insofar as the same word patterns are used to express more than one of these concepts at the same time. Currently identified moods include conditional, imperative, indicative, injunctive, negative, optative, potential, subjunctive, and more. Infinitive is a category apart from all these finite forms, and so are gerunds and participles. It should be noted that not all of the moods listed below are clearly conceptually distinct. Individual terminology varies from language to language, and the coverage of (e.g.) the "conditional" mood in one language may largely overlap with that of the "hypothetical" or "potential" mood in another. Even when two different moods exist in the same language, their respective usages may blur, or may be defined by syntactic rather than semantic criteria. For example, the subjunctive moods alternate syntactically in many subordinate clauses, depending on the tense of the main verb. The usage of the indicative, subjunctive moods is almost completely controlled by syntactic context. Classification Realis moods Realis moods are a category of grammatical moods that indicate that something is actually the case or actually not the case. The most common realis mood is the indicative mood or the declarative mood. Declarative The declarative mood indicates that the statement is true, without any qualifications being made. It is in many languages equivalent to the indicative mood, although sometimes distinctions between them are drawn. It is closely related with the inferential mood (see below). Energetic Found in Classical Arabic and various other Semitic languages, the energetic mood expresses something which is strongly believed or which the speaker wishes to emphasize, e.g. ("he certainly writes"). In German, the same effect is obtained by the introduction of a particle can be inserted for emphasis. In French, similarly, the negative "point" in place of "pas" indicates strong negation. Generic The generic mood is used to generalize about a particular class of things, e.g. in "Rabbits are fast", one is speaking about rabbits in general, rather than about particular fast rabbits. English has no means of morphologically distinguishing generic mood from indicative mood; however, the distinction can easily be understood in context by surrounding words. Compare, for example: rabbits are fast, versus, the rabbits are fast. Use of the definite article “the” implies specific, particular rabbits, whereas omitting it implies the generic mood simply by default. Indicative The indicative mood or evidential mood is used for factual statements and positive beliefs. All intentions that a particular language does not categorize as another mood are classified as indicative. In English, questions are considered indicative. It is the most commonly used mood and is found in all languages. Example: "Paul is eating an apple" or "John eats apples". Irrealis moods Irrealis moods are the main set of grammatical moods that indicate that a certain situation or action is not known to have happened as the speaker is talking. Cohortative The cohortative mood (alternatively, hortatory) is used to express plea, insistence, imploring, self- encouragement, wish, desire, intent, command, purpose or consequence. It does not exist in English, but phrases such as "let us" are often used to denote it. In Latin, it is interchangeable with the jussive. Conditional The conditional mood is used to speak of an event whose realization is dependent on a certain condition, particularly, but not exclusively, in conditional sentences. In Modern English, it is a periphrastic construction, with the form would + infinitive, e.g. I would buy. In other languages, such as Spanish or French, verbs have a specific conditional inflection. Thus, the conditional version of "John eats if he is hungry" is: John would eat if he were hungry, in English; Jean mangerait s'il avait faim, in French; In English, too, the would + infinitive construct can be employed in main clauses, with a subjunctive sense: "If you would only tell me what is troubling you, I might be able to help". Dubitative The dubitative mood is used in Ojibwe, Turkish, and other languages. It expresses the speaker's doubt or uncertainty about the event denoted by the verb. For example, in Ojibwe, Baawitigong igo ayaa noongom translates as "he is in California today." When the dubitative suffix -dog is added, this becomes Baawitigong igo ayaadog noongom, "I guess he must be in California. [1] Eventive The eventive mood is used in the Finnish epic poem Kalevala. It is a combination of the potential and the conditional. It is also used in dialects of Estonian. In Finnish, there are theoretically forms such as kävelleisin "I would probably walk". Hypothetical The hypothetical mood, found in Russian, Lakota, and other languages, expresses a counterfactual but possible event or situation. Imperative The imperative mood expresses direct commands, requests, and prohibitions. In many circumstances, using the imperative mood may sound blunt or even rude, so it is often used with care. Example: "Paul, do your homework now". An imperative is used to tell someone to do something without argument. Many languages, including English, use the bare verb stem to form the imperative (such as "go", "run", "do"). In English, second person is implied by the imperative except when first-person plural is specified, as in "Let's go" ("Let us go"). The prohibitive mood, the negative imperative may be grammatically or morphologically different from the imperative mood in some languages. It indicates that the action of the verb is not permitted, e.g. "Don't you go!" In English, the imperative is sometimes used to form a conditional sentence: e.g. "go eastwards a mile, and you'll see it" means "if you go eastwards a mile, you will see it". Interrogative The interrogative mood is used for asking questions. Most languages do not have a special mood for asking questions. Jussive The jussive mood is similar to the cohortative mood, in that it expresses plea, insistence, imploring, self- encouragement, wish, desire, intent, command, purpose or consequence. In some languages, the two are distinguished in that cohortative occurs in the first person and the jussive in the second or third. Negative The negative mood expresses a negated action. In many languages, rather than inflecting the verb, negation is expressed by adding a particle: • Or after it, in modern English, I think not; • Or as in French Je ne sais pas. Standard English usually adds the auxiliary verb do, and then adds not after it: "I did not go there". In these instances, "do" is known as a dummy auxiliary, because of its zero semantic content. In Indo-European languages, it is not customary to speak of a negative mood, since in the languages negation is originally a grammatical particle that can be applied to a verb in any of these moods. Nevertheless, in some, like Welsh, verbs have special inflections to be used in negative clauses. Optative The optative mood expresses hopes, wishes or commands and has other uses that may overlap with the subjunctive mood. Sometimes this is called a "desiderative mood", since it indicates desires. Occasionally distinctions are made between different optative moods, e.g. a mood to express hopes as opposed to a mood to express desires. (Desires are what we want to be the case; hope generally implies optimism toward the chances of a desire's fulfillment. If someone desires something but is pessimistic about its chances of occurring, then one desires it but does not hope for it.) Potential The potential mood is a mood of probability, indicating that in the opinion of the speaker, the action or occurrence is considered likely. In English, it is formed by means of the auxiliaries may, can, ought and must. Presumptive The presumptive mood is used in Romanian to express presupposition or hypothesis regarding the fact denoted by the verb, as well as other more or less similar attitudes: doubt, curiosity, concern, condition, indifference, inevitability Subjunctive The subjunctive mood, sometimes called conjunctive mood, has several uses in dependent clauses. Examples include discussing hypothetical or unlikely events, expressing opinions or emotions, or making polite requests (the exact scope is language-specific). A subjunctive mood exists in English, but native English speakers need not use it. Example: "I suggested that Paul eat an apple", Paul is not in fact eating an apple. Contrast this with the sentence "Paul eats apples", where the verb "to eat" is in the present tense, indicative mood. Another way, especially in British English, of expressing this might be "I suggested that Paul should eat an apple", derived from "Paul should eat an apple." Other uses of the subjunctive in English, as in "And if he be not able to bring a lamb, then he shall bring for his trespass ." (KJV Leviticus 5:7) have definitely become archaic. Statements such as "I will ensure that he leave immediately" often sound archaic or overly formal, and have been almost completely supplanted by constructions with the indicative, like "I will ensure that he leaves immediately". In certain other languages, the dubitative or the conditional moods may be employed instead of the subjunctive in referring to doubtful or unlikely events (see the main article). Volitive mood The volitive mood is used to indicate the desires, wishes or fears, of the speaker. Admirative and inferential The admirative mood is used to express surprise, but also doubt, irony, sarcasm, etc. The inferential mood is used to report a nonwitnessed event without confirming it. In linguistics, grammatical genders, sometimes also called noun classes, are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words; every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be very few which belong to several classes at once. [1][2] If a language distinguishes between masculine and feminine gender, for instance, then each noun belongs to one of those two genders; in order to correctly decline any noun and any modifier or other type of word affecting that noun, one must identify whether the noun is feminine or masculine. The term "grammatical gender" is mostly used for Indo-European languages, many of which follow the pattern just described. Modern English, however, is normally described as lacking grammatical gender. [3] The linguistic notion of grammatical gender is distinguished from the biological and social notion of natural gender, although they interact closely in many languages. Both grammatical and natural gender can have linguistic effects in a given language. Although some authors use the term "noun class" as a synonym or an extension of "grammatical gender", for others they are separate concepts. Overview Many languages place each noun into one of three gender classes (or simply "genders"): • Masculine gender: includes most words that refer to males; • Feminine gender: includes most words that refer to females; • Neuter gender: includes mostly words that do not refer to males or females As can be seen, the neuter gender does not include all nouns that correspond to genderless realities. Some of these may be designated by nouns that are grammatically masculine or feminine. Also, some nouns that refer to males or females may have a different grammatical gender. In general, the boundaries of noun classes are rather arbitrary, although there are rules of thumb in many languages. In this context, the terms "masculine", "feminine" and "neuter" should be understood merely as convenient labels. They are suggestive class descriptors, but not every member of a class is well described by its label. Gender marking is not substantial in modern English. However, distinctions in personal pronouns have been inherited from Old English which can be used to give a flavour of how grammatical gender works. John insisted that he would pay for his own dinner. Jane insisted that she would pay for her own dinner. Here, the gender of the subject is marked both on the personal pronouns (he/she) and on the possessive adjectives (his/her). Marking of gender on the possessive form can be considered redundant in these examples, since his own and her own must refer to their respective antecedents, he and she, which are already unambiguously marked for gender. A full system of grammatical gender involves two phenomena: 1. Inflection: Many words have different forms for different genders, and certain morphological markers are characteristic of each gender. 2. Agreement: Every noun is associated with one gender class. In a phrase or clause, words that refer to a given noun inflect to match the gender of that noun. Note that some words, called epicene, may have identical forms for different genders. • Common gender: includes most words that refer to males or females, but is distinct from the neuter gender. Other languages still, like English, are regarded as not having grammatical gender, since they do not make gender distinctions through inflection, and do not generally require gender agreement between related words. Some authors have extended the concept of "grammatical gender" to the expression of other types of natural, individual characteristics through inflection, such as animacy. See the section on gender across languages, below. Gender agreement The following "highly contrived" Old English sentence serves as an example of gender agreement. [6] Old English Seo brade lind wæs tilu and ic hire lufod. Literal translation That broad shield was good and I her loved. Modern English That broad shield was good and I loved it. The word hire "her" refers to lind "shield". Since this noun was grammatically feminine, the adjectives brade "broad" and tilu "good", as well as the pronouns seo "the/that" and hire "her", which referred to lind, must also appear in their feminine forms. Old English had three genders, masculine, feminine and neuter, but gender inflections were greatly simplified by sound changes, and then completely lost (as well as number inflections, to a lesser extent). [...]... level of formality Semantic vs grammatical number All languages are able to specify the quantity of referents They may do so by lexical means with words such as English a few, some, one, two, five hundred However, not every language has a grammatical category of number Grammatical number is expressed by morphological and/or syntactic means That is, it is indicated by certain grammatical elements, such... car" and "these cars" are correct, while "*this cars" or "*these car" are ungrammatical Not all languages have number as a grammatical category In those that do not, quantity must be expressed either directly, with numerals, or indirectly, through optional quantifiers However, many of these languages compensate for the lack of grammatical number with an extensive system of measure words There is a hierarchy... furthermore in decline and advised against by most journalistic style guides such as the Chicago Manual of Style The absence of grammatical gender is unusual for an Indo-European language, though common in other language families In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one" or "more than... syntactic means That is, it is indicated by certain grammatical elements, such as through affixes or number words Grammatical number may be thought of as the indication of semantic number through grammar Languages that express quantity only by lexical means lack a grammatical category of number Grammatical tense is a temporal linguistic quality expressing the time at, during, or over which a state or action... Circumstantial voice Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to the participant role of a referent, such as the speaker, the addressee, and others Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns It also frequently affects verbs, sometimes nouns, and possessive relationships as well Grammatical person in English English distinguishes three grammatical persons:... other languages, involves a simple two-way number contrast between singular and plural (car / cars; child / children, etc.) Other more elaborate systems of number are described below Grammatical number is a morphological category characterized by the expression of quantity through inflection or agreement As an example, consider the English sentences below: That apple on the table is fresh Those two apples... arbitrary convention (possibly rooted in the language's history) Usually, a combination of the three types of criteria is used, though one is more prevalent Gender in English While grammatical gender was a fully productive inflectional category in Old English, Modern English has a much less pervasive gender system, primarily based on natural gender There are a few traces of gender marking in Modern English:... see), but not in other grammatical persons, except with the verb to be Adjectives and determiners Adjectives often agree with the number of the noun they modify Other determiners may agree with number In English, the demonstratives "this", "that" change to "these", "those" in the plural, and the indefinite article "a", "an" is either omitted or changes to "some" Exceptions Sometimes, grammatical number... French -rice) In languages with grammatical gender, there are typically thousands of words which inflect for gender The third-person singular forms of the personal pronouns are the only modifiers that inflect according to gender It is also noteworthy that, with few exceptions, the gender of an English pronoun coincides with the real gender of its referent, rather than with the grammatical gender of its antecedent,... phrase "broad shield" with "brave man" or "kind woman", the only change to the rest of the sentence would be in the pronoun at the end, which would become "him" or "her", respectively Grammatical vs natural gender • The grammatical gender of a word doesn't always coincide with real gender of its referent Indeterminate gender In languages with a masculine and feminine gender (and possibly a neuter), the . Grammatical gender • Grammatical number • Grammatical polarity • Grammatical tense • Grammatical voice • Grammatical person A grammatical category is a set. A grammatical category is a general term. It encompasses among other things: • Grammatical aspect • Grammatical case • Grammatical mood • Grammatical