BASIC GRAMMAR

Words in every language belong to different groups called part of speech. There is no
generally accepted number of parts of speech for all languages; rather every language
has its own.

Major part of speech/open class minor part speech/close class

Nouns pronoun
Verbs prépositions
Adjectives conjunctions
Adverbs determiners/interjection
NOUNS
Nouns: traditionally, a noun is defined as the name of a person, place or thing. Nouns
are classified into:
a. Proper Noun: proper nouns are names of specific people, places, days, month
etc. they are begun with capital letters no matter where they occur in a sentence.
Ex.
Name of person: Muhammad, Adel, Musa, Hafsat,
Abdalla.
Name of place: Nigeria, Sudan, Kano, Abuja, Lagos
Days, Month/holiday: Monday, October, Independence Day
b. Common Nouns: common nouns are general names that represent persons or
things of a kind. Unlike proper nouns that denote personal names, such names
are commonly shared by persons or things that have something in common.
Ex. woman, chair, table, car, etc.
c. Abstract nouns: are names of qualities, emotions, actions and conditions.
Abstract things are not seen, touched, heard, smelt or tested. So they are
connected with ideas, and feelings. Ex. Joy, anger, honesty, bright, ugly,
happiness, beauty, sad, patience, and sorrow etc.
d. Collective nouns: is used for a group or collection. Groups may consist of
people, objects or animals. Collective noun is regarded as a complete whole.
Ex. staff, family, team, vocabulary, audience, committee etc.
e. Count and Non-count nouns: generally, nouns are divided into count and
non-count. Count nouns are nouns that can be counted. They have both a
singular and plural form and are always used with (the indefinite article a/an)
when they are singular. Ex. village, book, goat etc. non-count nouns are those
that cannot be counted. They have only one form. They are not used with
numbers and they take a singular verb. They do not use determiner whenever
used on their own. Ex. furniture, sugar, water,
f. Concrete noun: are names of things that we can see and touch. Ex. desk, chair,
pencil etc.
 PRONOUN
Pronouns are words used instead of nouns so that they will not be repeated
unnecessarily. Kind of pronouns:

Personal pronoun: By personal pronoun,

we mean grammatical person. There are
three grammatical persons, namely: first,
second and third persons. They are as
follows
1st person+ the person speaking I or we
2 person + the person listening
nd you or you
3rd person + the person spoken about she/he it or they
1. Demonstrative pronoun: these are the pronouns that point out a particular
person or thing. They include this, these, that and those. Ex
a) That is an interesting lecture
b) This is Bayero university, Kano
c) Those are still in use
d) These are bad
NB: demonstrative pronouns have the same form with demonstrative adjectives.
2. Interrogative pronoun: these are the pronouns that are used to ask questions.
They are: what, who, whom, whose and which. Ex.
a) What is your favourite colour?
b) What can I do for you?
c) Where is your daughter?
d) Who gave you my book?
e) Which is yours?
3. Possessive pronoun: these are pronouns formed from possessive adjectives.
They include his, ours, its, yours, theirs and mine. Ex.
a) This book is mine
b) The choice is yours
c) That pen is hers
d) These class are ours
4. Relative pronouns: are who, whose, which, that, whom. A relative pronoun
relates to a noun or pronoun which is called antecedent. It also joins two clauses
together. Ex.
 a) He is the lecturer that chased his student away.
b) These are the chairs which I told you about
c) This is the girl whose father was arrested
d) This is the man who gave me a lift.
5. Reflexive pronouns: is placed in the object position and refers to the same
person or thing as the subject. Myself, yourself, him/herself, ourselves,
themselves. Ex.
a) She is deceiving herself
b) You have dealt with yourself
c) Musa locked himself
d) They ended up hurt themselves
6. Indefinite pronoun: are pronouns that do not specify their referents. Ex.
a) Everything is in order
b) All is well that ends well
c) Every one of us must be given one thousand Naira
Other examples are somewhere, none, anything, every, each, some, all etc.

VERBS
Verbs are action words. A verb shows action or state of being. A verb is either finite
or non-finite. Finite verbs agree with the subjects of the sentence in which they are
used and show tense. Finite verbs are grouped into lexical and auxiliary verbs.

1. Lexical verbs: a lexical verb is the major verb in a sentence. Lexical verb is
divided into:
a) Transitive verbs: a transitive verb is usually followed by an object to
complete its meaning. Ex.
i. John killed a big snake
ii. The girl saw a mad man
iii. She ate the food
iv. Musa bought some oranges
b) Intransitive verb does not need an object to make a sentence meaningful.
Ex.
i. My mom dead last month
ii. It rained yesterday
iii. The bird sings
iv. The sun rises again
c) Linking verb: is a verb that connects the subject of a sentence to its
complement or predicate to indicate the state of being of the subject. Ex.
i. Lawyers are liars
ii. My daughter is pretty
iii. These students are intelligent
 iv. The syrup tastes bitter
d) Regular verb: these are verbs whose other forms can easily be predicted
from their base forms. They have the following forms
Base dance cook pick
ing dancing cooking picking
-s dances cooks picks
-ed danced cooked picked
e) Irregular verb: the form of irregular verbs cannot be known by knowing the
base as they have varying number of distinct forms. On the other hand, they
changed their past and past participle in different ways. Ex.

base past tense past-participle

Give, eat, break, see gave, ate, broke and saw Given, eaten, broken and seen

Build, learn sit Built, learnt, sat Built learnt, sat

Cry, try Cried, tried Cried, tried

Put, cut Put, cut Put, cut

Auxiliary verbs: are the verbs that help the lexical verbs to form tenses, or to indicate
doubt possibility, necessity or obligation. Auxiliary verbs are of two types:
a) Primary auxiliary
b) Modal auxiliary
Primary Auxiliaries: these verbs are three in number, namely, ‘do’, ‘have’, and ‘be’.

The primary auxiliaries ‘do’, ‘have’ and ‘be’ act as both lexical and auxiliary verbs.
Lexical verbs:
a) She is here
b) Musa does the cleaning
c) I had a boring experience there
Auxiliary verbs:
a) Ladidi is cooking her favourite dish
b) I did not find it difficult to teach
c) She has thrown it away
Modal Auxiliaries: include can, could, will, would, shall should, may, might, ought
to, used to, need and dare. Ex.
a) You must go back to your house today.
b) You need to see me after lecture
c) I will see you
d) I may come and I might not come next week
e) I would like to know the outcome of discussion
 f) I used to eat banana every day.

Non-finite verbs: these verbs are called non-finite verbs because they are not
restricted in any way in tense and number. They include:
1. participle
2. Gerund
3. Infinitive
Participles are verbal adjectives. That is, verbs that function as adjectives participle
are of two types:
i. Present participle: ends in –ing (we are waiting for lecturer to come)
ii. Past participle: ends in –ed (kano pillars played yesterday)

Gerund: is a verbal noun. That is, it is a verb that does the work of a noun. It occupies
a nominal position comfortably. Ex.
i. reading is my favourite
ii. cooking is her hobby
Infinitive: the infinitive form of the verb has two forms:
i. the full infinitive (to - infinitive)
ii. the bare infinitive
The full infinitive takes ‘-to’ construction. Ex.
a) It is my duty to teach the students.
b) Prof. Sambo wants to see me tonight
c) It is not in your interest to study English language
The bare infinitive is the infinitive without to. Ex.
a) The HOD will give you 10 marks each.
b) Help me call my sister pls.
Active and passive voice: