Language Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ====Grammatical categories==== {{main|Grammatical category}} Grammar can be described as a system of categories and a set of rules that determine how categories combine to form different aspects of meaning.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Allerton|1989}}</ref> Languages differ widely in whether they are encoded through the use of categories or lexical units. However, several categories are so common as to be nearly universal. Such universal categories include the encoding of the grammatical relations of participants and predicates by grammatically [[morphosyntactic alignment|distinguishing between their relations]] to a predicate, the encoding of [[Grammatical tense|temporal]] and [[Preposition and postposition|spatial]] relations on predicates, and a system of [[grammatical person]] governing reference to and distinction between speakers and addressees and those about whom they are speaking.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Payne|1997}}</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page