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For the first portion of the list, see List of words having different meanings in American and British English (A–L). Asterisked (*) meanings, though found chiefly in the specified region, also have some currency in the other dialect; other definitions may be recognised by the other as Briticisms or Americanisms respectively.
a; a few; a little; all; an; another; any; anybody; anyone; anything; anywhere; both; certain (also adjective) each; either; enough; every; everybody; everyone ...
Some languages, such as English and Spanish, use a periphrastic passive voice; that is, it is not a single word form, but rather a construction making use of other word forms. Specifically, it is made up of a form of the auxiliary verb to be and a past participle of the main verb which carries the lexical content of the predicate.
[5]: 71 This analysis was developed in a 1962 grammar by Barbara M. H. Strang [5]: 73 and in 1972 by Randolph Quirk and colleagues. [5]: 74 In 1985, A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language appears to have been the first work to explicitly conceive of determiner as a distinct lexical category. [5]: 74
[1]: 322 Conversely, British English favours fitted as the past tense of fit generally, whereas the preference of American English is more complex: AmE prefers fitted for the metaphorical sense of having made an object [adjective-]"fit" (i.e., suited) for a purpose; in spatial transitive contexts, AmE uses fitted for the sense of having made an ...
In an active voice sentence like Sam ate the apples, the grammatical subject, Sam, is the agent and is acting on the patient, the apples, which are the object of the verb, ate. In the passive voice, The apples were eaten by Sam , the order is reversed and so that patient is followed by the verb and then the agent.
The first English grammar, Bref Grammar for English by William Bullokar, published in 1586, does not use the term "auxiliary" but says: All other verbs are called verbs-neuters-un-perfect because they require the infinitive mood of another verb to express their signification of meaning perfectly: and be these, may, can, might or mought, could, would, should, must, ought, and sometimes, will ...
This is because English grammar requires that the verb and its subject agree in person. The pronouns I and he are first and third person respectively, as are the verb forms am and is . The verb form must be selected so that it has the same person as the subject in contrast to notional agreement , which is based on meaning.