English grammar

English grammar

Basic English Sentence Structures

Basic English Sentence Structures

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Introduction and Notation

This manual provides an overview of common English sentence structures. The manual differs from traditional books on English grammar by providing formal descriptions that will enable a student of English to generate correctly formed sentences easily. Persons studying English as a second language (ESL) or those who would like to use English language interfaces in computer-based applications will find this approach particularly useful because it avoids the ambiguities encountered in traditional English grammars. The description uses the notation below.

Basic Tenses

For past and present, there are 2 simple tenses + 6 complex tenses (using auxiliary verbs). To these, we can add 4 "modal tenses" for the future (using modal auxiliary verbs will/shall). This makes a total of 12 tenses in the active voice. Another 12 tenses are available in the passive voice. So now we have 24 tenses.

24 Tenses		past	present	future*
ACTIVE	simple tenses	past	present	future
	complex tenses formed with auxiliary verbs	past perfect	present perfect	future perfect
		past continuous	present continuous	future continuous
		past perfect continuous	present perfect continuous	future perfect continuous
PASSIVE		past	present	future
		past perfect	present perfect	future perfect
		past continuous	present continuous	future continuous
		past perfect continuous	present perfect continuous	future perfect continuous