MINISTRY OF THE EDUCATION OF AZERBAIJAN

NAKHCHIVAN STATE UNIVERSITY

FACULTY: FOREIGN LANGUAGES

FREE WORK
NAKHCHIVAN-2020
THEME: THE PARTICIPLE AND VERBAL NOUN

PLAN:

1.Introduction

 What is grammar?

2. Body part

 Part 1: Simple Sentence Grammar

3. Conclusion

 Example Question-Based
Grammar is about how to talk, listen, read, write and think. Language has two
main purposes, communication and organizing ideas. Putting your ideas into
sentences helps you understand them better and think more clearly, even if you
never share those sentences with other people.
English is simpler than people think. Once you know what the patterns are, you
can understand most writing while using only a small set of grammar concepts.
This article focuses on major concepts and makes English simple. It doesn’t cover
some typical details like verb tenses or commas.
Knowing how sentences work lets you be a better thinker and learner. People
fluent in English intuitively know grammar. Usually their intuition works, but
when something confuses them, then they get stuck. They don’t know how to
consciously analyze sentences, step by step, to get unstuck. Analysis is also easier
to communicate to other people than intuition is. Clear, precise, conscious
understanding, in words, gives you a powerful tool for thinking (in addition to
intuition, which is also valuable).
Part 1: Simple Sentence Grammar
There are four main steps for understanding simple sentences, and one more
step for understanding complex sentences. Complex sentences involve multiple
simple sentences joined together.
There are only two types of simple sentences in English. And they’re similar
enough to share the same analysis steps.
Step 1 – Verb
The verb is the most important part of a simple sentence because it tells us what’s
happening in the sentence. There are two types: action verbs and linking verbs. The
verb determines which of the two sentence types you’re dealing with (action
sentence or linking sentence).
Example actions: write, feel, sew, run, throw, eat, talk, play, think, love, hate, sit.
Linking verbs link or relate two things. They describe or rename the first thing
with the second thing. They’re sort of similar to an equals sign. The most common
linking verb is “be”. (“Is” is present tense of “be” and “was” is past tense.)
A simple sentence only has one verb. In part 1, I use the word “sentence” to mean
“simple sentence”.
Example action sentence: I threw a red ball.
Example linking sentence: The house is very big.
The first step for analyzing a sentence is finding the verb. The verbs in the
examples are “threw” and “is”.
An action verb answers the question, “What action happens?”. A linking verb
answers “What type of linking is this?”.
Tip: If you’re not sure if a verb is action or linking, don’t get stuck worrying about
it. It doesn’t make a big difference.
Step 2 – Subject
Nouns are things. They include objects, people, places and abstract things like a
thought or an emotion. Example nouns: Joe, California, dog, chair, car, opinion,
dream, happiness.
Step two is finding the subject. The subject is the noun that does the action or has
the link. The subject is always a noun, and it’s the noun that does the verb.
If the verb is “ate”, then the subject is whatever did the eating. If the verb is
“helped”, then the subject is whatever did the helping. If the verb is “is”, then the
subject is whatever is something.
Subjects are normally to the left of verbs. In “John hit Fred.”, word order is the
only way to know that John did the hitting rather than getting hit.
In I threw a red ball., the subject is “I”. In The house is very big., the subject is
“house”.
The subject for an action verb answers the question, “What does the action?”. The
subject for a linking verb answers “What has the link?”.
Warning: The “subject” does not mean the topic of the sentence. In “I like big,
warm, fluffy, delicious pancakes.”, you could consider pancakes the topic. But the
subject is “I” – the person doing the liking action.
Note: Some people teach finding the subject before the verb, mostly because it
comes first (to the left) in the sentence. But it makes more sense to look for an
actor after you know what the action is. And sentences tend to have more nouns
than verbs, so starting with verbs gives you fewer things to deal with.
Step 3 – Object or Complement
Action sentences can have a “direct object” which I will call the “object”. Linking
sentences have a “subject complement” which I will call the “complement”.
The object is a noun which is acted on. In I threw a red ball., “ball” is the object.
The ball receives the throwing action.
In action sentences, the subject does an action to the object. Or if there’s no object,
the subject just does an action. “I already ate.” is an action sentence with no object
to specify what was eaten.
The complement is a noun or adjective which is linked to. The house is very big.,
the complement is “big”. Bigness is the thing that the house is linked to.
The word “complement” is related to the word “complete”. It’s a completer. If you
said “The house is”, that would be an incomplete thought.
What’s the difference between an object and a complement? Objects go with action
verbs, they’re always nouns, and they're sometimes optional. Complements go with
linking verbs, they’re nouns or adjectives, and they’re always required.
Finding the object or complement is step three. Look to the right of the verb.
Finding that there is no object is fine too.
Objects answer the question, “What is acted on?”. Complements answer “What is
linked to?”.
The verb, subject and object (or complement) are the most important part of the
sentence. Sometimes they’re the only words.
Step 4 – Modifiers
A modifier changes something by giving more information. It adds detail, e.g. that
walking is fast or that a steak is big. Modifiers can tell you attributes or qualities of
the thing they modify. Modifiers describe or limit what’s being talked about.
(There are fewer “purple cars” than “cars”, so adding the modifier
“purple” restricts the cars being discussed.)
Modifiers can be used with most things. The verb, subject and object (or
complement) can be modified. Modifiers themselves can be modified, too.
To understand a modifier, you must figure out what it modifies. In “John throws
red balls.” you need to understand that “red” applies to “balls” not to “John”.
There are two types of modifier. An adjective is a modifier for a noun, and
an adverb is a modifier for anything else. The difference isn’t very important
conceptually (they’re both modifiers, similar to how action verbs and linking verbs
are both verbs).
Adjectives usually go left of their nouns, and several adjectives can be listed in a
row. Example adjectives: beautiful, tall, thin, round, young, blue, plastic.
Let’s consider adverb examples. “Quickly” is an adverb which tells you how an
action verb was performed. In “dark red ball”, “dark” is an adverb that tells you the
shade of red. In “is not”, “not” is an adverb which modifies the meaning of “is”.
Many adverbs end with the letters “ly”. Adverbs can be at many different locations
in sentences.
Warning: Despite having the word “verb” inside it, an “adverb” doesn’t only
modify verbs. Adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and more.
Finding modifiers, and figuring out what they modify, is step four for
understanding a sentence. Each previous step involved only two
possible questions. Modifiers answer a wide variety of questions. E.g.: “What
type?”, “What size?”, “How much?”, “How many?”, “What material is it made
of?”, “When?”, “Where?”, “To what degree?” or “In what manner was the action
performed?”.
Figuring out what question a modifier answers can be tricky even if you know
what it means. An easy one is that “cold” answers “What temperature?”. A tricky
one is that “cute” answers “How does it look and/or act?”. A reasonable person
could write the question differently for “cute”.
Now we’re ready to comment on every word from our example sentences. In I
threw a red ball., “red” and “a” are adjectives which modify “ball”. In The house
is very big., “the” is an adjective modifying “house”, and “very” is an adverb
modifying “big”.
Detail: “The”, “a” and “this” are examples of a type of adjective called a
“determiner” which answers “Which one?”. If I say “cat”, people won’t know
which cat I mean. If I say “a cat” then I mean an indefinite, unspecified cat, “the
cat” means a definite, particular cat, and “this cat” means the cat near me.
Detail: Verbs can be modified by other verbs. Modifier verbs are called “helper”
or “auxiliary” verbs, not adverbs. In “I will practice grammar.”, the verb “practice”
is modified by the helper verb “will” which changes it from present tense to future
tense.
Prepositional Phrases
Prepositions are words like “with”, “to”, “in”, “about” and “of” which relate a
noun to something else in the sentence. For example, prepositions can indicate
location (“on the table”) or time (“before midnight”).
A prepositional phrase is a type of modifier. It consists of a preposition, a noun
(called the “prepositional object”) and, optionally, other modifiers. A prepositional
phrase that modifies a noun is an adjective; otherwise it’s an adverb. (Phrases are
explained in part 2.)
A preposition governs a noun which is normally located to the right of the
preposition. Understanding the preposition requires finding its noun. “Governs” is
a grammar word that basically means “has” or “uses”. A noun used with a
preposition is never the subject, object or complement of the sentence. Each noun
has one job in the sentence.
Prepositions express a relationship between a part of the sentence and some
additional information. The additional information is always a noun plus any
modifiers that the noun has. In “I set my phone on my desk.”, the preposition “on”
tells us the relationship between the action “set” and the additional information
“my desk”. (“My” is an adjective modifying “desk”.) The type of relationship is
“on”, which tells us that the desk is the location for the setting action. The
preposition “on” also indicates the top of the desk (not “in”, “under” or “beside”
the desk, which are different prepositions than “on”).
Part 2: Complex Sentence Grammar
A complex sentence contains multiple simple sentences in one sentence. Simple
sentences follow the patterns learned in part 1: verb, subject, object or
complement, and modifiers. The most common way to combine them is by using a
conjunction, which is a word like “and” that can join things together.
Analyzing a complex sentence has one new step. You’ll analyze each simple
sentence using the four steps from part 1. And you’ll also analyze how the simple
sentences are connected together.
The next section explains the general concepts for how words are grouped together
in English, then conjunctions are explained after that.
Grouping
The words in sentences are organized in groups. A group is stuff which can also be
viewed, together, as one thing. Groups can contain other groups.
Examples of groups: “My lunch” is a group with a sandwich, soup, and a drink.
“Soup” is a group with broth, chicken, rice, and carrots. “Sandwich” is a group
with bread, meat, tomatoes, pickles, mustard and mayo. “Pickles” is a group with
five individual pickles. And an individual pickle is a group of atoms.
A group can be viewed as one thing, one unit. I can talk about the sandwich as a
whole. The parts of a group can also be discussed separately. Grouping lets us
condense information. We can’t think about hundreds of things at once, but we can
think about three groups at once, even if they’re big groups (a pickle has over a
billion trillion atoms, but it’s still easy to think about as one thing).
A sentence is a group of words. You can talk about the individual words or about
the whole sentence. There can also be groups of words inside a sentence, like “the
red ball” is a group of words that work together to express one idea.
English has two types of word groupings within sentences. A clause is a group of
words that express a complete thought. A phrase is a group of words that express
an incomplete thought.
A complete thought (clause) means a simple sentence. ”Clause” is the grammar
word for “simple sentence”.
An incomplete thought (phrase) generally means a noun, verb, adjective or adverb,
plus modifiers. It takes at least two phrases to make a sentence (a verb and a noun,
the subject).
Note: A phrase can be a single word. It’s not wrong, and sometimes convenient, to
say that the subject of a sentence is always a “noun phrase” (a phrase which
functions as a noun) because there’s nothing wrong with groups with only one
thing in them.
Phrases
Most phrases have a main word (a noun, verb, adjective or adverb) and zero or
more modifiers. We’ll call phrases by the type of their main word, e.g. “big, red
car” is a noun phrase because it’s a noun (“car”) with modifiers. A noun (or verb,
adjective or adverb) phrase functions as a noun (or verb, adjective or adverb) and
can be used anywhere a noun (or verb, adjective or adverb) would be used.
A prepositional phrase has a preposition and a noun phrase. As a whole, it
functions as an adjective or adverb. FYI, other types of phrases exist too.
Let’s look at the phrases in an example sentence:
The unusually cute cats very quickly ate kibble during the day.
The sentence’s verb is a verb phrase, “very quickly ate”. The phrase’s main word
is the verb “ate”, and it has one modifier, “very quickly”.
“Very quickly” is an adverb phrase consisting of the main word (“quickly”, an
adverb) and the modifier “very”.
The subject is a noun phrase, “the unusually cute cats”. The main word is the noun,
“cats”, and the modifiers (adjectives) are “the” and “unusually cute”.
“Unusually cute” is an adjective phrase. The main word is the adjective, “cute”,
which is modified by the adverb “unusually”.
The verb’s object is the noun “kibble”, which has no modifiers.
“During the day” is a prepositional phrase. The preposition “during” governs the
noun phrase “the day”. As a whole, “during the day” functions as an adverb which
modifies the verb. It tells us when the eating took place.
“The day” is a noun phrase consisting of noun “day” and its modifier “the”.
Note: Phrases can go inside other phrases, e.g. “unusually cute” is an adjective
phrase inside the noun phrase “the unusually cute cats”.
Detail: It’s ambiguous whether “during the day” modifies the verb “ate”, the whole
verb phrase “very quickly ate”, or the whole clause (“cats ate kibble” plus
modifiers). This ambiguity is typical of adverbs at the ends of clauses. However, it
doesn’t matter. The sentence means the same thing regardless.
Warning: Standard terminology uses the term “verb phrase” to mean “predicate”:
the verb plus its object or complement, plus modifiers. It’d be reasonable to use
“simple verb phrase” to mean a verb plus the adverbs modifying it.
Clauses
Clauses are the “simple sentences” that I’ve already explained. Let’s look at a
couple examples in complex sentences:
John likes cats, but Sue likes dogs.
The clauses are “John likes cats” and “Sue likes dogs”. “But” is a conjunction
which joins the clauses together into one sentence.
If it’s a weekday, I relax after I snore through school.
The clauses are “it’s a weekday”, “I relax”, and “I snore through school”. They are
connected by the conjunctions “after” and “if”.
Note: Conjunctions aren’t always in between the clauses they join. “Conjunction +
clause 1 + comma + clause 2” is a common sentence pattern. It means “clause 2 +
conjunction + clause 1”. E.g. “While you sing, you should dance.” means “You
should dance while you sing.”
Conjunctions
Conjunctions are joiner words. They “conjoin” things (phrases or clauses)
together. They connect or relate things.
Coordinating conjunctions join equally important things. You can remember all
seven with the FANBOYS acronym (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so). Coordinating
conjunctions can join phrases or clauses together.
Subordinating conjunctions join something less important with something more
important. They often have to do with time or reasoning, e.g.: “after”, “before”,
“although”, “because”, “while” and “if”. Subordinating conjunctions can only join
clauses, not phrases. Example: “I sing while I drive.”
Only phrases of the same type can be joined, e.g. two nouns or two adjectives. The
result is a single phrase of the same type. In “I want a cat or a dog.”, the
conjunction “or” joins the noun phrases “a cat” and “a dog” to make the noun
phrase “a cat or a dog”. Conjunctions can join a list of more than two phrases, e.g.
“I plan to buy milk, butter, steak and waffles.”.
Conjunctions can join phrases in simple sentences. You’ll need to keep that in
mind when doing the four steps from part 1. For example, the subject could be “Joe
and Sue” or the object could be “glass and aluminum”.
“And” is the most basic conjunction; it tells you two things are connected. Other
conjunctions give more information about the relationship. “But” tells you that
there’s a contrast between the two things. “Because” tells you that the second thing
is a reason for the first. “After” tells you that the first thing happens later in time
than the second.
Conjunctions that join clauses are more complicated than conjunctions that join
phrases. First, you should know when not to use them. A sentence should express
one thought. Only join two clauses in one sentence when they’re part of the same
thought. Don’t use conjunctions to join unrelated things.
Now let’s look at how to analyze an example sentence with two clauses:
I want pizza because I am hungry.
First, look for the verb as usual. When you see two separate verbs (“want” and
“am”), you know it’s probably a complex sentence. That means you should look
for clauses and conjunctions. Conjunctions usually go between clauses.
Once you find the clauses (“I want pizza” and “I am hungry”) and conjunctions
(“because”), analyze the clauses as individual simple sentences. Then consider the
combined meaning of the clauses and the conjunction. This sentence tells us three
things. First, it tells us about wanting pizza. Second, it tells us about being hungry.
Third, it tells us the hunger is a reason for wanting pizza.
Communicating What’s Important
When you write a paragraph, not everything is equally important. You have some
main points and some helper points. It’s important to communicate to the
reader which are which. There are four main ways to do this. They’re imperfect
and have exceptions. The fourth one is what to do when the first three don’t work
well enough.
First, use the verb, subject, object and complement for main points. Use modifiers
for helper points. Modifiers are subordinate to (less important than) the words they
modify.
Second, put main points in main clauses, and put helper points in subordinate
clauses. Clauses are automatically main clauses by default. They become
subordinate only if there’s something to make them subordinate, such as a
subordinating conjunction in front of the clause.
Detail: Relative pronouns can also make subordinate clauses. I won’t cover them,
but I’ll give one example. In “John, who is a mechanic, loves restoring cars.”,
“who” is a relative pronoun. It creates a subordinate clause that functions as an
adjective that modifies “John”.
Third, writing is always full of hints. Readers can usually pick up on what you
think is important based on the words you use and by trying to understand your
point. You can give extra hints with italics and by where you put words (the start
and end are generally more important locations than the middle).
Fourth, you can just plain tell the reader, in words, what’s important. You can say
things like “My main point is”, “Detail:”, or “The idea about phones is a
tangent.”. This is often useful in non-fiction, which tries to clearly communicate
ideas, but it’s generally too inelegant for fiction.
Subordinating Conjunctions
Subordinating conjunctions are important for letting your reader know which
clauses are helper clauses rather than main points. Helper clauses are generally
more important than modifiers (which don’t have a complete thought) but less
important than main clauses.
The subordinating conjunction always goes immediately in front of the clause it
subordinates. In front of a main clause is either no conjunction or a coordinating
conjunction.
Compare “I ate my steak after I cooked it.” to “I cooked my steak before I ate it.”.
People fluent in English can intuitively tell the difference. In the first one, eating
the steak is more emphasized. In the second one, cooking the steak is more
emphasized. The main clause has the main point of the sentence.
Optional Detail: There is a second way to interpret subordinating conjunctions
which I don’t recommend. I’m only mentioning it because most other grammar
materials do, so I want to explain what’s going on. In this alternative view,
“subordinating conjunctions” are misnamed; they aren’t conjunctions. Instead,
they go before a clause to make it function as an adverb. In “I sing after I eat
lunch.”, the italic part is an adverb clause nested inside the main clause and there is
no conjunction. That sentence is just verb, subject and adverb. Most grammar
materials unclearly teach a confused, contradictory mix of both views. They say
“after I eat lunch” is an adverb clause and say “after” is a conjunction and say that
the main clause is only “I sing” without the adverb that modifies “sing”. That’s
wrong. A subordinating conjunction can either be viewed as a conjunction or it can
be viewed as governing a clause which it converts into an adverb by relating that
clause to another part of the sentence, but not both at once. As long as you don’t
mix them, either viewpoint can analyze sentences successfully. I recommend
viewing subordinating conjunctions as conjunctions because it organizes sentences
better. And a subordinate clause is a complete thought, which is more important
than a mere modifier.
Part 3: Verbals, References and Implied Words
We’ve now covered how sentences work and most of what goes in sentences. Next
we’ll cover three more things commonly found in sentences. Then we’ll be done
with grammar concepts. You can study details elsewhere if you want to; I’m only
covering the key ideas that are useful for everyone.
Verbals
Verbals are words which are based on a verb but aren’t a verb. For example,
“sewing”, “to eat”, and “broken” are verbals. Because they come from verbs,
verbals have some features of verbs, e.g. they can have an object or complement.
However, verbals usually don’t have a subject.
There are three types of verbals:
A gerund is noun based on a verb. It has “ing” on the end. In Playing is fun. the
gerund “playing” is a noun. In Playing sports is fun. The gerund “playing” has an
object, “sports”, which receives the playing action.
A participle is an adjective based on a verb. In Help me find an interested party to
buy my interesting book., the participle “interested” is an adjective modifying
“party” and the participle “interesting” is an adjective modifying “book”.
An infinitive is the form of a verb that can have “to” in front of it. “To sit” and “to
be” are infinitives. Infinitives can be used without “to” and can play a variety of
roles in English. In I want to sit., “to sit” is a noun infinitive and is the object of
“want”. In I made a request to see John., “to see” is an adjective infinitive which
modifies “request”, and “John” is the object of “to see”.
Tip: When you’re trying to find the verbs in a sentence, the verbs won’t be words
ending in “ing” or words with “to” in front. Those are verbals, not verbs.
References
People often write something that means something else. The written words
somehow refer the reader to some other words. There are four main types of
references: pronouns, reference adjectives, abbreviations and explanations.
Pronouns are common words, like “he”, “me”, “myself”, “it” or “that”. They refer
to other words (usually previously stated). Pronouns are always nouns. In John
went to the store because he wanted milk., the pronoun “he” refers to “John”. In I
wanted an iPhone so I bought it., the pronoun “it” refers to “iPhone”.
Reference adjectives are similar to pronouns, but they’re adjectives like “my”. In
“John liked his job.”, the adjective “his” refers to “John” and means “John’s”.
(These adjectives are also possessive.)
Abbreviations include acronyms like “BTW”, which means “by the way”, and
contractions like “don’t”, which means “do not”.
Explanatory references use words to explain to the reader what you want to refer
to. For example, “the thing you said yesterday about cats” is a reference to
something said previously. It explains what it’s referring to by giving clues: “you”
said it, it was said “yesterday”, and it’s “about cats”. Be careful with explanatory
references because they’re often unclear. When in doubt, it’s better to give extra
information than give too little information. Reading a few extra words is a minor
downside; being unable to figure out what a reference means is a major downside
(and misunderstanding the reference as referring to something else is even worse).
To fully understand a sentence, you must find every reference and figure out what
it refers to.
Implied Words
Writers and speakers often leave out some words. It’s your job to figure out what
they didn’t say. It’s often somewhat ambiguous, so you’ll have to make reasonable
guesses that make sense.
Perhaps the most commonly omitted word is “that”. The sentence “I think Joe is
smart.” means “I think that Joe is smart.”.
People leave out words that seem obvious. In “The house has big windows in
front.”, what are the windows in front of? It doesn’t actually say, but we can guess
it means big windows in the front of the house.
An “indirect object” is a shortcut involving an implied word. They are nouns that
come after verbs and have an implied “to” or “for” in front. In “I threw her the
ball.”, “her” is an indirect object which means “to her” (which is a prepositional
phrase modifying “threw”). In “I built him a house.”, “him” is an indirect object
which means “for him” (which is a prepositional phrase modifying “built”).
Implied words are common with conjunctions because people don’t want to repeat
themselves. Consider “Trees often have acorns under them, and dirt.”. I wouldn’t
recommend writing it that way, but sometimes people do, so you should be able to
read it. It means: “Trees often have acorns under them, and trees often
have dirt under them. “The comma before “and” indicates that “and” is joining a
whole clause instead of a phrase, so repeating the verb and subject is implied (a
verb and subject are needed to make a clause). I also read the modifiers “often”
and “under them” as repeating by implication (that’s a judgment call, not a
grammatical necessity).
I’d read “The first book is around 25 thousand words and the second is 135
thousand.”, as meaning “The first book is around 25 thousand words and the
second book is around 135 thousand words.”. Each implied word was used before
the conjunction “and”.
Some words aren’t really implied, but you can pretend they are to make a sentence
clearer. The sentence “I eat steak and lobster.” means “I eat [group of nouns].” It
has a group (or “compound”) noun as the object of “eat”. No words are missing.
However, you can read it as “I eat steak and I eat lobster.” in order to make the
meaning extra clear. As long as you don’t change the meaning, you’re not doing
something wrong.
Tip: Look for implied words whenever you’re confused. If you’re having trouble,
there could be an implied word which will help clarify.
Note: Formal writing leaves out fewer words because it’s used for complicated
ideas. Understanding complicated ideas is hard enough without also guessing a
bunch of unwritten words. Informal writing says simpler, easier stuff, so it can get
away with more shortcuts.
Example Question-Based Analysis
John quickly threw the large, dark red ball after he ate a large lunch.
What action happened? Threw. (An optional second question is “When did the
throwing happen?”. The answer is in the past.)
Who threw? John. (The more generic question for subjects is “What does the
action?”, which is also fine to use.)
What was thrown? Ball. (The more generic question for objects is “What is acted
on?”, which is also fine to use.)
How was the throwing performed? Quickly.
What color ball? Red.
What type of red? Dark.
What size ball? Large.
Which ball? The. (That means it’s a definite (particular) ball, rather than any ball.
The ball would normally have been specified in a previous sentence.)
When was the throwing? After. (An alternative way to deal with conjunctions is
to ask “What else happened?”, ask questions for the second clause, then ask “How
are the two actions linked?”)
After what action happened? Ate.
Who ate? He = John. (It’s good to say what references refer to. You could also
ask a second question like “Who is he?”)
What was eaten? Lunch.
What size lunch? Large.
Which lunch? A. (It’s an indefinite (unspecified) lunch, not a definite lunch.)
We’ve now identified the main purpose of each word in the sentence. This helps us
think it through and provides a list we can refer to. Without doing this, we might
misunderstand a word without even realizing there was a problem.
Tip: It’s best to phrase questions so they don’t have a yes-or-no answer. I don’t
recommend questions like “Was lunch the thing that was eaten?” or “Was the size
of the lunch large?”.
Tip: It works well for questions about the subject and object (or complement) to
include the verb. E.g. “Who threw?” asks about the subject and includes the verb
“threw”. For modifiers, it works well for the question to include the thing being
modified, e.g. “What size lunch?” instead of “What size?”.
References:
1. “ Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English” by Logman
2. “English Grammar in Use” by Raymond Murphy
3. “ The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation” by Jane Straus,
Lester Kaufman, Tom Stern
4. “Natural Grammar: The key words of English and how they work”
by Scott Thornbury
5.“ English Grammar: Understanding the Basics ” by Evelyn P.
Altenberg, Robert M. Vago
6. “Grammar Scan (Upper-intermediate, Advanced, Expert)” by
Michael Swan, David Baker
7. “A-Z of English Grammar and Usage” by Geoffrey N. Leech,
Benita Cruickshank, Roz Ivanic