Editing English language (section)

=== Nouns and noun phrases ===

English nouns are only inflected for number and possession. New nouns can be formed through derivation or compounding. They are semantically divided into [[proper nouns]] (names) and common nouns. Common nouns are in turn divided into concrete and abstract nouns, and grammatically into [[count noun]]s and [[mass nouns]].{{sfn|Payne|Huddleston|2002}}

Most count nouns are inflected for plural number through the use of the plural [[suffix]] -''s'', but a few nouns have irregular plural forms. Mass nouns can only be pluralised through the use of a count noun classifier, e.g. ''one loaf of bread'', ''two loaves of bread''.{{sfn|Huddleston|Pullum|2002|page=56–57}}

Regular plural formation:
* Singular: ''cat, dog''
* Plural: ''cats, dogs''

Irregular plural formation:
* Singular: ''man, woman, foot, fish, ox, knife, mouse''
* Plural: ''men, women, feet, fish, oxen, knives, mice''

Possession can be expressed either by the possessive [[enclitic]] -''s'' (also traditionally called a genitive suffix), or by the preposition ''of''. Historically the -s possessive has been used for animate nouns, whereas the ''of'' possessive has been reserved for inanimate nouns. Today this distinction is less clear, and many speakers use -''s'' also with inanimates. Orthographically the possessive -s is separated from a singular noun with an apostrophe. If the noun is plural formed with -s the apostrophe follows the -s.<ref name="EGT" />

Possessive constructions:
* With -s: ''The woman's husband's child''
* With of: ''The child of the husband of the woman''

Nouns can form [[noun phrase]]s (NPs) where they are the syntactic head of the words that depend on them such as determiners, quantifiers, conjunctions or adjectives.{{sfn|Huddleston|Pullum|2002|page=55}} Noun phrases can be short, such as ''the man'', composed only of a determiner and a noun. They can also include modifiers such as adjectives (e.g. ''red'', ''tall'', ''all'') and specifiers such as determiners (e.g. ''the'', ''that''). But they can also tie together several nouns into a single long NP, using conjunctions such as ''and'', or prepositions such as ''with'', e.g. ''the tall man with the long red trousers and his skinny wife with the spectacles'' (this NP uses conjunctions, prepositions, specifiers, and modifiers). Regardless of length, an NP functions as a syntactic unit.<ref name="EGT" /> For example, the possessive enclitic can, in cases which do not lead to ambiguity, follow the entire noun phrase, as in ''The President of India's wife'', where the enclitic follows ''India'' and not ''President''.

The class of determiners is used to specify the noun they precede in terms of [[definiteness]], where ''the'' marks a definite noun and ''a'' or ''an'' an indefinite one. A definite noun is assumed by the speaker to be already known by the interlocutor, whereas an indefinite noun is not specified as being previously known. Quantifiers, which include ''one'', ''many'', ''some'' and ''all'', are used to specify the noun in terms of quantity or number. The noun must agree with the number of the determiner, e.g. ''one man'' (sg.) but ''all men'' (pl.). Determiners are the first constituents in a noun phrase.{{sfn|Huddleston|Pullum|2002|pages=54–5}}

==== Adjectives ====

Adjectives modify a noun by providing additional information about their referents. In English, adjectives come before the nouns they modify and after determiners.{{sfn|Huddleston|Pullum|2002|page=57}} In Modern English, adjectives are not inflected so as to [[agreement (linguistics)|agree]] in form with the noun they modify, as adjectives in most other Indo-European languages do. For example, in the phrases ''the slender boy'', and ''many slender girls'', the adjective ''slender'' does not change form to agree with either the number or gender of the noun.

Some adjectives are inflected for [[comparison (grammar)|degree of comparison]], with the positive degree unmarked, the suffix ''-er'' marking the comparative, and ''-est'' marking the superlative: ''a small boy'', ''the boy is smaller than the girl'', ''that boy is the smallest''. Some adjectives have irregular comparative and superlative forms, such as ''good'', ''better'', and ''best''. Other adjectives have comparatives formed by [[periphrasis|periphrastic constructions]], with the adverb ''more'' marking the comparative, and ''most'' marking the superlative: ''happier'' or ''more happy'', ''the happiest'' or ''most happy''.{{sfn|König|1994|page=540}} There is some variation among speakers regarding which adjectives use inflected or periphrastic comparison, and some studies have shown a tendency for the periphrastic forms to become more common at the expense of the inflected form.{{sfn|Mair|2006|pages=148–49}}

==== Pronouns, case, and person ====

English pronouns conserve many traits of case and gender inflection. The personal pronouns retain a difference between subjective and objective case in most persons (''I/me, he/him, she/her, we/us, they/them'') as well as an animateness distinction in the third person singular (distinguishing ''it'' from the three sets of animate third person singular pronouns) and an optional gender distinction in the animate third person singular (distinguishing between ''she/her'' [feminine], ''[[Singular they|they/them]]'' [neuter], and ''he/him'' [masculine]).<ref name="oedthey">{{OED|they|id=200700}}</ref><ref name="apathey">{{Cite web|title=Singular "They"|url=https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/grammar/singular-they|access-date=24 November 2021|website=APA Style|archive-date=21 October 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201021234745/https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/grammar/singular-they|url-status=live}}</ref> The [[subjective case]] corresponds to the Old English [[nominative case]], and the [[objective case]] is used in the sense both of the previous [[accusative case]] (for a patient, or direct object of a transitive verb), and of the Old English dative case (for a recipient or [[indirect object]] of a transitive verb).{{sfn|Leech|2006|page=69|ps=: "Nominative is a traditional name for the subjective case"}}{{sfn|O'Dwyer|2006|ps=: "English has subjective, objective and possessive cases."}} The subjective is used when the pronoun is the subject of a finite clause, otherwise the objective is used.{{sfn|Greenbaum|Nelson|2002}} While grammarians such as [[Henry Sweet]]{{sfn|Sweet|2014|page=52|ps=: "But in that special class of nouns called personal pronouns we find a totally different system of case-inflection, namely, a '''nominative''' case (he) and an '''objective''' case (him)"}} and [[Otto Jespersen]]{{sfn|Jespersen|2007|pp=173–185}} noted that the English cases did not correspond to the traditional Latin-based system, some contemporary grammars, for example {{harvcoltxt|Huddleston|Pullum|2002}}, retain traditional labels for the cases, calling them nominative and accusative cases respectively.

Possessive pronouns exist in dependent and independent forms; the dependent form functions as a determiner specifying a noun (as in ''my chair''), while the independent form can stand alone as if it were a noun (e.g. ''the chair is mine'').{{sfn|Huddleston|Pullum|2002|page=425–26}} The English system of grammatical person no longer has a distinction between formal and informal pronouns of address (the old second person singular familiar pronoun ''[[thou]]'' acquired a pejorative or inferior tinge of meaning and was abandoned).

Both the second and third persons share pronouns between the plural and singular:

* Plural and singular are always identical (''you'', ''your'', ''yours'') in the second person (except in the reflexive form: ''yourself/yourselves'') in most dialects. Some dialects have introduced innovative second person plural pronouns, such as ''y'all'' (found in [[Southern American English]] and [[African American Vernacular English|African American (Vernacular) English]]), ''youse'' (found in [[Australian English]]), or ''ye'' (in [[Hiberno-English]]).
* In the third person, the ''they/them'' series of pronouns (''they'', ''them'', ''their'', ''theirs'', ''themselves'') are used in both plural and singular, and are the only pronouns available for the plural. In the singular, the ''they/them'' series (sometimes with the addition of the singular-specific reflexive form ''themself'') serve as a gender-neutral set of pronouns, alongside the feminine ''she/her'' series and the masculine ''he/him'' series.<ref name="oedthey" /><ref name="apathey" /><ref name="apawelcome">{{Cite web|url=https://apastyle.apa.org/blog/singular-they|title=Welcome, singular "they"|website=American Psychological Association|access-date=24 November 2021|archive-date=14 February 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200214220442/https://apastyle.apa.org/blog/singular-they|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="pedantthey">{{cite web|last=Kamm|first=Oliver|title=The Pedant: The sheer usefulness of singular 'they' is obvious|access-date=24 November 2021|date=12 December 2015|website=The Times|url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-pedant-the-sheer-usefulness-of-singular-they-is-obvious-3qs05ngflkj|archive-date=19 June 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190619175236/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-pedant-the-sheer-usefulness-of-singular-they-is-obvious-3qs05ngflkj|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="denverthey">{{cite web|url=https://www1.ucdenver.edu/docs/librariesprovider102/default-document-library/resources-for-using-they-as-a-singlular-pronoun.pdf|title=Resources for using "they" as a singular pronoun|website=www1.ucdenver.edu|access-date=24 November 2021|archive-date=25 January 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210125205916/https://www1.ucdenver.edu/docs/librariesprovider102/default-document-library/resources-for-using-they-as-a-singlular-pronoun.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="chicagothey">{{cite web|title=Chicago Style for the Singular ''They''|date=3 April 2017|url=https://cmosshoptalk.com/2017/04/03/chicago-style-for-the-singular-they/|website=cmosshoptalk.com|access-date=24 November 2021|archive-date=22 February 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200222164116/http://cmosshoptalk.com/2017/04/03/chicago-style-for-the-singular-they/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="themself">{{Cite web|url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/themself|title=Themself|website=merriam-webster.com|access-date=24 November 2021|archive-date=11 November 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201111225310/https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/Themself|url-status=live}}</ref>

{| class="wikitable"
|-
|+ English personal pronouns
|-
! scope="col" | Person
! scope="col" | Subjective case
! scope="col" | Objective case
! scope="col" | Dependent possessive
! scope="col" | Independent possessive
! scope="col" | Reflexive
|-
! scope="row" | 1st p. sg.
| ''I'' || ''me'' || ''my'' || ''mine'' || ''myself''
|-
! scope="row" | 2nd p. sg.
| ''you'' || ''you'' || ''your'' || ''yours'' || ''yourself''
|-
! scope="row" | 3rd p. sg.
| ''he/she/it/[[Singular they|they]]'' || ''him/her/it/them'' || ''his/her/its/their'' || ''his/hers/its/theirs'' || ''himself/herself/itself/themself/themselves''
|-
! scope="row" | 1st p. pl.
| ''we'' || ''us'' || ''our'' || ''ours'' || ''ourselves''
|-
! scope="row" | 2nd p. pl.
| ''you'' || ''you'' || ''your'' || ''yours'' || ''yourselves''
|-
! scope="row" | 3rd p. pl.
| ''they'' || ''them'' || ''their'' || ''theirs'' || ''themselves''
|}

Pronouns are used to refer to entities [[Deixis|deictically]] or [[Anaphoric reference|anaphorically]]. A deictic pronoun points to some person or object by identifying it relative to the speech situation—for example, the pronoun ''I'' identifies the speaker, and the pronoun ''you'', the addressee. Anaphoric pronouns such as ''that'' refer back to an entity already mentioned or assumed by the speaker to be known by the audience, for example in the sentence ''I already told you that''. The reflexive pronouns are used when the oblique argument is identical to the subject of a phrase (e.g. "he sent it to himself" or "she braced herself for impact").{{sfn|Huddleston|Pullum|2002|page=426}}

==== Prepositions ====

Prepositional phrases (PP) are phrases composed of a preposition and one or more nouns, e.g. ''with the dog'', ''for my friend'', ''to school'', ''in England''.{{sfn|Huddleston|Pullum|2002|page=58}} Prepositions have a wide range of uses in English. They are used to describe movement, place, and other relations between different entities, but they also have many syntactic uses such as introducing complement clauses and oblique arguments of verbs.{{sfn|Huddleston|Pullum|2002|page=58}} For example, in the phrase ''I gave it to him'', the preposition ''to'' marks the recipient, or Indirect Object of the verb ''to give''. Traditionally words were only considered prepositions if they governed the case of the noun they preceded, for example causing the pronouns to use the objective rather than subjective form, "with her", "to me", "for us". But some contemporary grammars such as that of {{harvcoltxt|Huddleston|Pullum|2002|pp=598–600}} no longer consider government of case to be the defining feature of the class of prepositions, rather defining prepositions as words that can function as the heads of prepositional phrases.