1. Parts of Speech: This is the most common meaning. Grammatical items in this context are the different categories of words based on their function in a sentence. These include:
* Nouns: Words that name people, places, things, or ideas.
* Verbs: Words that describe actions or states of being.
* Adjectives: Words that describe nouns or pronouns.
* Adverbs: Words that modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs.
* Pronouns: Words that replace nouns.
* Prepositions: Words that show the relationship between a noun or pronoun and another word in the sentence.
* Conjunctions: Words that join words, phrases, or clauses.
* Interjections: Words that express strong emotion.
2. Morphemes: This refers to the smallest meaningful units of language. They can be individual words (like "dog", "cat", "run"), or parts of words that contribute to meaning (like prefixes "-un" in "unhappy", suffixes "-ing" in "running").
3. Grammar Rules: This is a broader interpretation where "grammatical items" could refer to the entire system of rules that govern how words are combined into meaningful sentences. This includes things like word order, verb conjugation, and the use of articles and tenses.
4. Specific grammatical features: This can refer to any aspect of grammar that has a specific function or structure, such as:
* Articles: "The", "a", "an"
* Tenses: Present, past, future
* Cases: Nominative, accusative, genitive (in some languages)
* Moods: Indicative, imperative, subjunctive
Example:
* Parts of Speech: In the sentence "The cat sat on the mat," "cat" is a noun, "sat" is a verb, "on" is a preposition, and "the" is an article.
* Morphemes: The word "unbreakable" is made up of the morphemes "un-", "break", and "-able".
* Grammar Rules: The sentence "I goed to the store" is grammatically incorrect because it violates the rule of past tense conjugation for the verb "go".
* Specific Grammatical Features: The use of the plural noun "cats" instead of the singular "cat" in the sentence "The cats sat on the mat" is an example of the grammatical feature of number.
To understand what "grammatical items" means in a specific context, it's best to consider the surrounding text or the question being asked.