The major examples of grammatical forms are word classes such as noun, verb, adjective and adverb together with their corresponding phrases and clauses. The grammatical form of a given expression in a sentence, therefore, could be anything from noun or adjective to noun phrase or adverbial clause.
Why It Is Necessary to Study Grammatical Forms
One important reason for you to study grammatical forms is that you may be asked to state the grammatical form of selected words or groups of words from a sentence. That is if you are a high school or college student who expects to take a test in an English paper.
As a curious independent adult learner interested in learning more about how language functions, knowledge of grammatical forms will be a great addition to your linguistics toolkit.
By the end of this tutorial, you should be in a position to know what is expected from you any time you have to state the grammatical form of an expression in a sentence or a passage.
Additionally, it is important that you know the difference between grammatical form and grammatical function so that you can give the right answer to such English grammar questions. So I will show you the difference between the two as well.
You will find more examples of grammatical functions here.
Definition of Grammatical Form
Before we identify the examples of grammatical forms, I want you to learn the definition of grammatical form. When you know what the term grammatical form really means, you will be in a much better position to answer exam questions on grammatical forms. So here is your simple definition of grammatical form.
Grammatical form is a term used to describe or name a linguistic unit that forms part of a sentence or clause. The particular grammatical form of a linguistic unit is usually based on its composition, structure and function in a sentence.
Remember also that the linguistic unit in question could be a single word or a group of words.
Another term often used to refer to grammatical form is grammatical name.
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Grammatical Form vs Grammatical Function
The basic difference between grammatical form and grammatical function is that while grammatical form deals with the name given to a grammatical unit made up of a single word or a group of words, a grammatical function has to do with the role of the grammatical unit (grammatical form) in relation to other grammatical units within the context of a sentence.
This is why the expressions we use to state the grammatical function of a grammatical form in a sentence may sound in any one of the following ways.
It is the object of the verb …..
Its function is the subject of the verb…
It qualifies the noun …
Modifier of the verb …
It is the complement of the preposition ….
Examples of Grammatical Forms
Examples of grammatical forms are noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, noun phrase, noun clause, adjectival phrase and adjectival clause.
As you can see, grammatical forms fall under word classes (also known as parts of speech), phrases and clauses.
We shall now have a few examples to illustrate each type of grammatical form.
Word Classes/Parts of Speech
The examples of grammatical forms that fall under parts of speech (also known as word classes), as we have seen already are noun, verb, adjective, adverb and so on.
Let’s take each example of the grammatical form in this category and illustrate it further with an example.
1. Noun
Example: She has a keen interest in lawn tennis.
2. Adjective
Example: She has a keen interest in tennis.
3. Verb
Example: As prices rise, the value of a currency depreciates.
4. Adverb
Example: Hold it firmly.
5. Pronoun
Example: She spoke fondly about her college years.
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6. Determiner
Example: The national debt is getting unsustainably high.
7. Preposition
Example: What gifts will you buy for Christmas on Amazon?
8. Conjunction
Example: Harvard and Yale are prestigious centres of learning.
Phrases
Here are more examples of grammatical forms that are phrases.
9. Noun Phrase
Example: These same issues dominated the discussions about the increasing role of big tech in our global economy.
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10. Adjective Phrase
Example: He wore very old shoes to the party.
11. Adverb Phrase
He arrived too late for the board meeting.
12. Prepositional Phrase.
Example: I saw a few saloon cars on the road.
Top 2 Functions of Prepositional Phrases in English
Clauses (Main Clause, Subordinate Clause)
The following examples of grammatical forms are clauses. Have a look.
13. Noun Clause/Nominal Clause
Example: Tell everybody that job openings are still available.
14. Adverbial Clause/Adverb Clause
Example: I didn’t receive the email because my phone had a problem I couldn’t fix immediately.
How to Identify 10 Types of the Adverbial Clause
15. Adjectival Clause/Adjective Clause
McGraw is the programmer who wants to invent the most powerful antivirus software.
33 Examples of the Adjectival Clause
Final Thoughts
So there you have it. With the above examples of grammatical forms, you can now build on your knowledge of grammatical forms and grammatical functions in English.
Do not forget what we learned about the difference between grammatical form and grammatical function. Remember we said that grammatical form is sometimes called grammatical name. You might want to test your understanding of grammatical form and grammatical function here.
To reinforce what you have just learnt, you can access a ton of practice questions and answers on grammatical names and functions here.
And if you need to learn additional topics under English for academic purposes, you might want to continue with these examples of appositive phrases.
