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User blog:Bromley/Imperatives, inflections, declensions and the simple complexity of the English language (grammar): Difference between revisions
User blog:Bromley/Imperatives, inflections, declensions and the simple complexity of the English language (grammar) (view source)
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A Reddit users asked what is the grammatical form of the word "stop" in the sentence, | A Reddit users asked what is the grammatical form of the word "stop" in the sentence, "Stop peeling the potatoes": | ||
The rule here is that the "imperative" form a verb to express a command, as in "Stop peeling the potatoes" drops the subject, "you", which is implied in the command "stop" (i.e., "You stop!") | The rule here is that the "imperative" form a verb to express a command, as in "Stop peeling the potatoes" drops the subject, "you", which is implied in the command "stop" (i.e., "You stop!") | ||
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But it's a good opportunity to build a greater command of English with a deeper look. | But it's a good opportunity to build a greater command of English with a deeper look. | ||
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We're used to it, so we don't think about it much. | English uses "inflections", or stem-changes (called "declensions"), at the end of words in order to indicate case, gender, tense, voice, etc. For example, we might say in English, "one dog" and "two dogs", so the "s" indicates more than one dog (plurality). Or, we might add an <i>apostrophe-s</i> to a noun to indicate possession, as in "dog's bone". Similarly, we change verbs to express "person" (I, you, he/she/it, we, they) or tense, such as "I peel" v. "I peeled". | ||
We're used to it, so we don't think about it, much less stop to consider the grammatical functions that indicate important meanings and distinctions we wish to convey. | |||
However, in many other languages, inflections indicate a much wider variety of grammatical forms. We say in English, "my red shoes", whereas in Spanish we'd say, "Mis zapatos rojos", inflecting both the noun, "shoes" and the adjective "red" to the plural. Literally translated, it reads from Spanish to English, "my reds shoes." As English evolved from Old to Middle to Modern English, these plural "markers" disappeared, although we still see remnants of it in older words such as "children", where the "-en" marks the plural of "child". | However, in many other languages, inflections indicate a much wider variety of grammatical forms. We say in English, "my red shoes", whereas in Spanish we'd say, "Mis zapatos rojos", inflecting both the noun, "shoes" and the adjective "red" to the plural. Literally translated, it reads from Spanish to English, "my reds shoes." As English evolved from Old to Middle to Modern English, these plural "markers" disappeared, although we still see remnants of it in older words such as "children", where the "-en" marks the plural of "child". | ||