All the Grammatical Terms you should be aware of.

 Grammatical terms 

Introduction 

Grammatical terms are called metalinguistic terms. They are used to describe language that always provides a context for talking about grammar and conceptualization of grammatical knowledge.

Constituent Structure

Constituent structure encodes linear order, hierarchical groupings, and syntactic categories of constituents and is the input to the phonological component of the grammar. The constituent structure is nothing but the LFG phrase structure rule.

A constituent structure can be very be presented using brackets or tree diagrams. A grammar that analysis sentences wholly in terms of HIERARCHY of structure layers is sometimes called a constituent structure grammar.

Phrases

A phrase consists of a head element plus any other required or optional elements that appear alongside the head element. Lyons (1968:171) says,".... any group of words which is grammatically equivalent to a single word and which does not have its own subject and predicate is a phrase; The head element determines which other elements can appear with it. 

Noun Phrase

A noun phrase normally has a noun as its head element.

Verb phrase

A head element of this verb phrase is the verb. The verb is followed by a noun phrase which functions as the direct object of the verb. Like noun and verb phrases, an adjective phrase can function both as a constituent of a sentence and that of other phrases. As a constituent of a sentence, an adjective phrase releases the function of complement.

Some of the examples are:  He is very intelligent. (Subject attribute)

                                            We found him very intelligent. (Object attribute)

                                           He was extremely sad to hear the news. (Subject attributes)

Noun phrases

Nouns

The head of a noun phrase is normally a noun. The noun refers to people places and things. The noun in English is usually classified as common or proper. Common nouns refer to the general names of people, places, and things and are divided into two classes: 

1. Count nouns                                                                                   2. Non-count nouns.

Count nouns can be made plural while noncount nouns do not have a plural form. In some languages the equivalents of many English non-count nouns are countable. Speakers of these languages are likely to produce errors as in (a)* The police will need a lot of additional evidence.

Collective nouns are made up of a small group of count nouns in English that refer to a collection or group of individual parts or members. Unlike other nouns, collective nouns in their singular forms may be followed by a singular or plural verb so both would be considered grammatical.

a. The faculty is meeting next week.

b. The faculty are meeting next week.

Proper nouns are the names of specific people places and things that can either be singular or plural and they are usually capitalized. The table below shows the basic noun types and pronouns. The head element of a noun phrase may also be a pronoun. A word that refers to a noun that has been previously mentioned. The pronoun she refers back to the noun phrase a woman in the previous sentence. 

a. A woman got out of the car was were wearing a blacktop.

Gerunds

 A gerund is a present participle that can function as the head of a noun phrase. A gerund can appear alone in a noun phrase. A gerund can appear in an NP, as in (a), or an NP can include more constituents such as the neighbors,

a. {Swimming} is a great form of exercise.

b. {Inviting the neighbors} was a big mistake.

We can tell that swimming and inviting the neighbor's function as NP's because we can substitute another NP (with a head noun) for each of them.

Prenomial Modifiers

Prenomial modifiers are words that precede a head noun in a noun phrase. The most common prenominal modifiers fall into categories: determiners and adjectives. Each of these categories is discussed below briefly:

Determiners

Determiners indicate important characteristics about head nouns such as definiteness, indefiniteness, possession, or quantity. There are thus, several types of determiners:

articles (definite and indefinite), demonstrative determiners (this, these, those, that) numbers(cardinal and ordinal), possessive determiners