Topics
Grammar concepts
126 grammar concepts documented across Spanish, English, and Chinese.
126 topics
Adjective Order
Learn how Orden de los Adjetivos works in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Adjectives
How adjectives modify nouns in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Adjuncts
How Spanish, English and Chinese add optional information about time, place, manner, and reason.
Explanation →Adverbs
How adverbs modify verbs, adjectives and other adverbs in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Anaphora
How Spanish, English and Chinese refer back to previously mentioned entities.
Explanation →Apposition
How nouns are placed next to each other for identification or clarification in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Articles
How definite and indefinite articles work in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Aspect
How grammatical aspect expresses whether an action is completed, ongoing, habitual, or repeated in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Binding & Reflexivity
How Spanish, English and Chinese constrain the relationship between pronouns and their antecedents.
Explanation →Causative Constructions
How to express 'making someone do something' or 'having something done' in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Classifiers
How classifiers (measure words) work in Chinese, compared to articles and gender in Spanish and English.
Explanation →Clitics & Pronoun Placement
How unstressed pronouns attach to verbs in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Code-Switching & Borrowing
How speakers alternate between Spanish, English and Chinese in multilingual contexts.
Explanation →Complement Clauses
How clauses function as subjects, objects, and complements in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Compounding
How words are combined to form new lexical items in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Concessive Clauses
How languages express that something is true despite contrary expectations in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Concord & Agreement
How subjects agree with verbs, and modifiers agree with nouns in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Conditional Mood
How languages express hypothetical, counterfactual, and uncertain situations in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Conditionals
How if-clauses express hypothetical, probable, and impossible situations in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Conjunctions
How conjunctions connect clauses and ideas in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Consonants
The consonant inventories and phonotactic patterns of Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Coordination
How Spanish, English and Chinese join words, phrases, and clauses with conjunctions.
Explanation →Copula & Linking Verbs
How Spanish, English and Chinese link subjects to predicates that are not actions.
Explanation →Correlative Constructions
How paired elements work together in comparative, conditional, and alternative structures across Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Dative Shift & Indirect Objects
How objects are reordered when an indirect object is present in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Deixis
How languages point to people, places and times relative to the speaker in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Demonstratives
How demonstrative pronouns and adjectives work in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Determiners
How Spanish, English and Chinese use words that specify or quantify nouns.
Explanation →Dialects & Variation
Regional and social dialect variation across Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Direct and Indirect Objects
The distinction between Spanish direct and indirect objects, their pronouns, and how English and Chinese express equivalent relationships.
Explanation →Directional Verbs
How movement, direction and path are expressed in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Discourse Connectors
How ideas are linked across sentences and paragraphs in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Double Negation
How multiple negatives interact in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Ellipsis & Dropping
How subjects, objects and verbs are omitted in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Emphasis & Cleft Sentences
How to emphasize specific parts of a sentence in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Equatives
How Spanish, English and Chinese express equality or similarity between entities.
Explanation →Etymology
The origins and historical development of words in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Evidentiality
How speakers mark the source of their information in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Exclamations
How surprise, admiration, anger and intensity are expressed in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Existence & Location
How existence, presence and location are expressed in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Existential Constructions
How languages express that something exists or is present in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →False Friends
How cognates and similar-looking words can mislead learners across Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Finite vs Non-Finite Verbs
How Spanish, English and Chinese distinguish verbs that carry tense from those that do not.
Explanation →Focus
How Spanish, English and Chinese mark the most important information in a sentence.
Explanation →Formal vs Informal Register
How politeness, formality and social distance are encoded in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Future Forms
Learn how to express the future in English (will, going to, present continuous), Spanish (futuro simple, ir a + infinitivo), and Chinese (会, 要, 将).
Explanation →Grammatical Case
How Spanish, English and Chinese mark the grammatical role of nouns and pronouns through case.
Explanation →Grammatical Gender
How grammatical gender works in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Grammaticalization
How lexical words become grammatical markers in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Hedges & Mitigation
How speakers soften statements, express uncertainty, and avoid commitment in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Honorifics & Social Register
How respect, hierarchy and social distance are encoded in grammar in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Idiomatic Phrases
Common idiomatic expressions that don't translate literally across Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Imperatives
How commands, requests and instructions are formed in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Impersonal Constructions
How languages express actions without a specific agent in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Indirect Questions
How yes/no and wh-questions are embedded as complements in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Infinitives
How infinitive forms work in Spanish, English, and Chinese.
Explanation →Interjections
How Spanish, English and Chinese use exclamatory words to express emotion.
Explanation →Intonation & Sentence Melody
How pitch and tone convey meaning in statements, questions, and emphasis in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Inversion & Fronting
How word order is reversed or rearranged for emphasis in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Light Verbs
How common verbs combine with nouns to create verbal meaning in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Loanwords & Borrowing
How Spanish, English and Chinese adopt and adapt words from other languages.
Explanation →Making Comparisons
How to compare things in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Measure Words
How units, containers and portions are expressed in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Modals
How modal verbs express possibility, obligation, permission and ability in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Mood
How grammatical mood (indicative, subjunctive, imperative, conditional) works in Spanish, English, and Chinese.
Explanation →Morphemes
How Spanish, English and Chinese build words from the smallest meaningful units.
Explanation →Negation
How sentences are negated in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Nominalization
Learn how Nominalización works in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Nouns
How Spanish, English and Chinese form and use nouns: countability, gender, proper vs common, and abstract vs concrete.
Explanation →Numbers & Counting
How cardinal and ordinal numbers work in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Orthography
The visual representation of language in writing across Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Participles
How present and past participles work in Spanish, English, and Chinese.
Explanation →Particles
How Chinese particles express aspect, mood and tone, compared to verb conjugation in Spanish and auxiliaries in English.
Explanation →Partitive & Quantitative Expressions
How languages express a part of a whole in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Passive Voice
How the passive voice is formed and used in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Phonology
The sound systems of Spanish, English and Chinese: consonants, vowels, syllable structure, and phonotactics.
Explanation →Phrasal Verbs
How English verb-particle combinations contrast with Spanish and Chinese verb constructions.
Explanation →Plurals
How nouns form their plural in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Por vs Para
The distinction between Spanish prepositions por and para and how English and Chinese express equivalent semantic relationships.
Explanation →Possession
How ownership and relationships are expressed in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Predication
How Spanish, English and Chinese structure predicates around verbs, adjectives, and nouns.
Explanation →Prepositions
How prepositions work in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Preterite vs Imperfect
The distinction between Spanish past tenses and how English and Chinese express completed versus ongoing past actions.
Explanation →Pro-Drop
How Spanish, English and Chinese omit subject pronouns in finite clauses.
Explanation →Pro-Verbs & Verb Substitution
How languages substitute for a repeated or understood verb phrase in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Prohibitives & Negative Commands
How languages express commands not to do something in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Pronouns
Learn how Pronombres works in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Punctuation
How Spanish, English and Chinese use marks to structure written text.
Explanation →Quantifiers
How quantity and scope are expressed in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Question Tags & Echo Responses
How speakers seek confirmation, express doubt, or echo statements in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Questions
How yes/no and wh-questions are formed in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Reciprocal Constructions
How mutual actions are expressed in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Reduplication
How words are repeated for emphasis, affection, and distributive meaning in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Reflexive Verbs
How reflexive verbs express actions done to oneself in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Register & Formality
How Spanish, English and Chinese vary language according to social context.
Explanation →Relative Clauses
How relative clauses modify nouns in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Relative Time Expressions
How ongoing, completed, and no-longer states are expressed in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Reported Speech
How direct speech is converted to indirect speech in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Result Clauses
How to express consequences and degrees in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Semantic Roles
How Spanish, English and Chinese encode who does what to whom in a sentence.
Explanation →Sentence Types
How Spanish, English and Chinese form declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamatory sentences.
Explanation →Sentence-Final Particles
How Spanish, English and Chinese mark sentence tone, attitude and illocutionary force at the end of utterances.
Explanation →Ser vs Estar
The fundamental distinction between Spanish copulative verbs and how English and Chinese handle equivalent meanings.
Explanation →Serial Verb Constructions
How multiple verbs combine in a single clause in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Sounds & Interjections
How sounds, interjections and expressive words work in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Speech Acts
How Spanish, English and Chinese perform actions through language — promising, requesting, apologizing, and more.
Explanation →Spelling & Writing Systems
How Spanish, English and Chinese represent language in writing.
Explanation →Subjunctive Mood
How the subjunctive expresses doubt, desire, emotion and unreality in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Subordination
How Spanish, English and Chinese embed clauses within larger structures.
Explanation →Superlatives
How Spanish, English and Chinese express the highest degree of comparison.
Explanation →Syntax & Constituents
How Spanish, English and Chinese organize words into phrases, clauses, and sentences.
Explanation →Temporal Clauses
How time relationships are expressed in subordinate clauses in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Time & Dates
How to express time, days, months, years and duration in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Topic vs Subject Prominence
How Spanish, English and Chinese organize sentences around topics or subjects.
Explanation →Topic-Comment Structure
How information is organized into topic and comment in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Transitivity & Argument Structure
How verbs take objects, drop them, or shift between transitive and intransitive uses in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Valency & Argument Structure
How Spanish, English and Chinese distinguish transitive, intransitive, and ditransitive verbs.
Explanation →Verb Complementation
What verbs require infinitives, gerunds, or clauses as objects in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Verb Tenses
How past, present and future are expressed in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Vocative & Direct Address
How languages directly address people, get attention, and use names in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Vowels
The vowel inventories and phonological patterns of Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Wh-Movement
How Spanish, English and Chinese form questions by moving or placing wh-words.
Explanation →Wishes and Hypotheticals
Learn how Deseos e Hipotéticos works in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Word Formation
How new words are created through affixation, compounding, and conversion in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Word Order
How sentences are structured in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →Yes-No Questions
Learn how Preguntas Sí/No works in Spanish, English and Chinese.
Explanation →