Grammar time!

Today’s grammar time with Nicky, the head of our wonderful #‎peartreeourfamily‬, was all about where to put articles (and, of course, where not to put them), about prepositions as well as “like”, “such as” and “as”. Therefore, we want to remind you of how nice grammar is in our weekly blog post.

The confusing nature of “as”, “like” and “such as”

The uses of as, like and such as are very similar. In some languages, indeed, all three are sometimes translated by the same word. Explanations of the difference between as and like are easily found in mainstream grammar books, but mentions at the same time of such as are rare.

My hope here is to offer a clear explanation of the more confusing aspects of these three expressions.

Part of the problem with investigating how the three expressions differ is that grammar is involved as much as meaning. There are both preposition uses to consider and conjunction ones.

The definite article “the”

The word "the" is one of the most common words in English. It the only definite article in the English language. Nouns are preceded by the definite article when the speaker believes that the listener already knows what he is referring to.

To complete the picture, you can see below a set of rules for combining words to express meaning. We wish you a lot of fun while studying over the rainy weekend!

GRAMMAR TERMS: PARTS OF SPEECH

NOUNS: Label things
	common	cat, chair, woman
	proper	Jane, England, London, Mr. Jones
	abstract	happiness, hope, courage, joy
	countable/uncountable	chairs/furniture, pound/money
	number (singular/plural)	chair/chairs
	possessive	Tom’s - i.e. belonging to Tom
	Jane bought cheese and two rolls. Jane’s cheese was mouldy and the rolls were stale.
	We can see from this sentence that not only must we think about nouns but the nouns must agree with the verb.

PRONOUNS: Replace nouns
	personal	he/she
	demonstrative	this/these
	relative	who/which/that
	interrogative	who/what/whose
	possessive	mine/yours/his
	She said “This is the boy who took mine. Which is his?”

ADJECTIVES: Describe nouns
	qualities	square, good, heavy
	comparative	dark/darker, important/more important
	superlative	dark/darker/darkest, most important
	He used to be a strong fellow but now he is weak and feeble. She is taller and prettier and more intelligent. (we understand (person)).

ARTICLES:
	definite	the
	indefinite	a/an
	The hotel we stayed in was a hotel of the highest standard. A dog is an animal (consonant/vowels)

ADVERBS: information about frequency/degree/manner/time. Intensify
	He always works fairly quickly. He sang absolutely beautifully yesterday.
	Adverbs are generally made by adding “ly” to the adjective e.g. quick (adj)/quickly (adv), beautiful (adj)/beautifully (adv).

PREPOSITIONS: have no independent meaning but are tied to an adjective or verb to care for.
	She’s been looking after her old mother, who lives in Bristol for three years.

CONJUNCTION: join clauses - join subordinate to main clause.
	He arrived on Saturday and left on Monday. She left because she was tired.
	Also - however, in spite of, while, neither…nor
	There are many different conjunctions but there isn’t time to analise them all here and now. Thompson and Martinet explain them in very simple vocabulary.

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About Peartree Languages

Peartree Languages is a language school located in Cardiff.