The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. 1996. Page 268

Reference > Usage > American Heritage^® Book of English Usage > Page 268

CONTENTS · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD · WORD INDEX · SUBJECT INDEX

The American Heritage® Book of English Usage.

A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.

Page 268

gender
A category used in the selection or agreement of nouns, pronouns, and adjectives with modifiers, words being referred to, or grammatical forms. Grammatical gender may be arbitrary, or it may be based on characteristics such as sex or the quality of being animate. In English grammatical gender applies only to pronouns, which normally coincide with the sexual identity of their antecedents. In other languages, abstractions and inanimate objects may be grammatically masculine or feminine. In German, for example, the word for fork is feminine, the word for spoon is masculine, and the word for knife is neuter.	1
Sexual identity	2
gender-neutral
Free of explicit or implicit reference to biological gender or sexual identity, as the term police officer instead of policeman. See Gender, epicene pronouns and he.	3
genitive case
The case that expresses possession, measurement, or source. See Grammar, possessive constructions and pronouns, personal.	4
gerund
A noun derived from a verb and retaining certain features of verbs; in English gerunds end in -ing, as singing in We admired the choir’s singing. See Grammar, gerund.	5
grammar
The system of inflections, word order, and word formation of a language.	6
The system of rules that allows the speakers of a language to create sentences.	7
A set of rules setting forth the current standard of usage in a language.	8
Writing or speech judged in relation to this set of rules	9
head
The word in a construction that has the same grammatical function as the construction as a whole and that determines relationships of agreement to other parts of the construction or sentence. The word variety is the head of the phrase a wide variety of gardening tools in the sentence You can buy a wide variety of gardening tools at that store.	10
imperative
The verbal mood that expresses a command or request. Stop in Stop running and Give in Give me a break are in the imperative mood. See Grammar, verbs, mood of.	11
imperfect tense
The tense of a verb that shows, usually in the past, an action or a condition as incomplete, continuous, or coincident with another action or condition.	12
indefinite article
An article that does not fix the identity of the noun it modifies. In English the indefinite articles are a and an. They are typically used when the noun has not been mentioned before and so is unfamiliar: A waiter appeared and asked to take our order.	13
indefinite pronoun
A pronoun such as any or some that does not specify the identity of its object.	14

CONTENTS · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD · WORD INDEX · SUBJECT INDEX

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