English/Grammar/Word Order

Word order for english is quite complicated in the matter of that changing one word to the other end of a sentence could mean that your asking a question to that your complimenting someone. The same words can be used in the sentence "how are you?" to that of "you are how?".

Nouns

Nouns in English usually go after the verb so that the listener can identify what needs to be done before what needs to be done with what. If one were to say, for example "Go get me that" it means that the listener is told to first go but with the exclusion of the noun at the time. Then the noun is given so the action can be completed. If you were to say "That go get me" instead it would mean that the listener is told that something is in the process of getting the speaker.

Verbs

Verbs are used to state the action of a sentence. For each verb, there must be a noun - the doer of the action. Some sentences, such as "Go!", appear without a written noun. These are called imperative sentences. They are used to make commands, and the noun is an implied "you."

Adverbs

Adverbs are used to help highlight the use of a verb in a sentence like the use of "I will get".

Prepositions

Prepositons are used to state where a noun is located and is not always used to state a noun's position but rather to help the listener to understand the specificity of the noun's location. A good example is "It was lying on the table".

Articles

Articles are used to express the specificity of a noun and such are that of "the" or "a" so that the listener can determine the exact object the speaker is refering to. One such example is "The man over there".

Adjectives

Adjectives are only used before a noun and no time afterwards so that the listener knows which noun is being described by the Adjectives. "The hot towel hurt my face" is one such sentence.

Pronouns

Pronouns are used to take place of a noun like I, you, it, he, she, we, they,... so that they are used just like nouns.

Word Orders

Here are all the possibilities for a sentence word order: N (noun), V (verb), Adv (adverb), Pre (preposition), Adj (adjective), Pro (pronoun)

- N V

- V V N N

- V N

- N V N

- N N Adv V

- Pro N V N

- N V Pre N

- N Adj V