The rules

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Grammar — Tense, Articles, Prepositions, Pronouns, Questions

Fixes §4 Countability, §6 Pronouns, §7 Grammar systems, §8 Sentence structure.

These are systems, not single-word exceptions — the hardest grammar in English because there is no rule to memorize, only probabilities. World English replaces each probabilistic system with one explicit rule.

Rule G1 — A leaner tense/aspect system

Rule. World English keeps three tenses (past, present, future) and one optional aspect (continuous, with -ing). It removes the perfect as a separate form. What the perfect used to encode splits by a single deterministic test: if the situation still holds, use the present tense + a time phrase (I live here for ten years); if it is finished, use the past tense + a time word (I finished already). No wavering between forms — the “still true?” question has one answer, and it picks the tense. The same test extends to a future reference point: the future perfect (“I will have lived here by then”) asks whether the situation still holds at that future point, not now — since it does, the same “still holds” branch applies and the tense collapses to present tense + a time phrase marking the future point (I live here by then), exactly as the present-tense branch does for a present reference point.

Problem it solves. The present perfect is the single most-cited tense difficulty (see §7), and the simple/continuous/perfect choice rarely maps onto a learner’s L1.

Divergence & trade-off. Loses the perfect’s fine “past-with-present-relevance” nuance, recovered with explicit time words (already, since, still). Trade subtlety for a rule a beginner can apply.

Rule G2 — One article rule

Rule. World English has one article: the, used for definite, already-known things. For indefinite things, use no article (singular or plural) or a number/quantifier when count matters. The a/an distinction is removed.

Generics. A generic statement names a whole kind, not one already-known thing, so it takes the zero article — the same “indefinite → no article” case, applied to a class instead of an instance. Standard English spreads generics across three patterns (bare plural, generic the+singular, generic a+singular); World English uses one, the bare plural, already licensed by morphology M4:

One word, every kind of “known.” Linguists distinguish four reasons a thing can count as definite — shared world knowledge, the immediate situation, an earlier mention, or the structure of the phrase itself (see PAIN-POINTS §3, Liu & Gleason 2002) — and standard English learners acquire these at different rates even though the surface word never changes. World English makes that fact explicit: it is always just the, so a learner never has to classify which kind of “known” applies.

Problem it solves. Articles are the single hardest grammatical feature for many learners (see §7); a vs an adds a phonetic sub-rule on top, and standard English spreads one job (marking definiteness) across four unpredictable surface behaviors of the plus a three-way generic split.

Divergence & trade-off. Drops the indefinite article entirely and the a/an sound agreement. Definiteness — the one genuinely useful distinction — is preserved in the, and applies unchanged to plurals (M4) and to newly-countable nouns (G5) with no extra rule. Collapsing the four definiteness “uses” into one the is not a new divergence — they were always the same word — only the acquisition burden of distinguishing them disappears. The one real loss is in generics: standard English’s generic-the-singular (species framing) and generic-a-singular (“any one member”) both fall away in favor of a single bare-plural pattern. Diverges from standard English but removes the largest single grammar burden.

Rule G3 — Regular prepositions for time, place, and verbs

Rule. Where a preposition’s choice is arbitrary — fixed by idiom, carrying no meaning a learner could derive — World English removes the guesswork: the time/place choices collapse to one default each. Where a preposition marks a real relation (surface, direction, topic), it keeps its meaning. A verb keeps its own standard preposition (listen to, wait for, depend on): the verb+preposition pairing is learned together as vocabulary, not derived from a rule.

Time and place — one default each.

Only the arbitrary location choice collapses. The topological prepositions that mark a genuine spatial relation keep their meanings — the cup is on the table (surface contact), under the bridge, behind the door, between the trees. You say in the shop (being located there) but on the table (resting on its surface): the first was arbitrary, the second is real.

Verb-selected prepositions stay. A verb that demands a fixed preposition (listen to, wait for, depend on, look at) keeps it, standard and unchanged. One L1 preposition maps to several English ones with no derivable rule, so the pairing is memorized — but it is memorized the same way the verb itself is, as vocabulary, one lexical item. World English does not coin a transitive form (listen music); it leaves the verb+preposition as standard English. Particles that change a verb’s meaning (look after, give up, look for) are a separate case, handled by S2, which swaps in a plain verb (look after → mind, look for → seek).

Problem it solves. The time/place slot forces an arbitrary at/in/on choice with no rule behind it (see §7). World English fixes one default per slot, so the learner never again guesses which of at/in/on a time or place takes.

Divergence & trade-off. Meaningful spatial and relational prepositions (on = surface, under, between, with, directional to) keep their jobs; only the arbitrary time/place choices change. On Monday and on July read slightly off to a native ear but are never ambiguous. Verb-selected prepositions are left standard, so nothing about them needs a reverse mapping — listen to is listen to in both directions.

Rule G4 — Regular pronoun case

Rule. Pronouns keep their standard forms — a subject form, an object form, a possessive determiner (my, your, his…), and a standalone possessive (mine, yours, his…). World English makes one change: the who/whom distinction is removed — the object form is always who (the man who I seed). whose is kept.

Problem it solves. The dying who/whom distinction — the one pronoun choice learners, and many natives, get wrong (see §6). Everything else in the pronoun grid is a small, already-learned closed set, so World English keeps it standard rather than coining new forms.

Divergence & trade-off. Only whom changes (→ who), a collapse everyday spoken English mostly made already. Every other pronoun is standard English, so a page reads normally.

Rule G5 — All nouns are countable

Rule. Every noun can be counted and pluralized (by morphology M4). The uncountable category is removed.

Problem it solves. The arbitrary, L1-dependent uncountable list (information, advice, furniture) that blocks informations, an advice (see §4).

Examples. some information → informations (when plural is meant); a piece of advice → one advice; furniture → furnitures; much information → many informations; how much furniture → how many furnitures.

Quantifier consequence. Once every noun counts, the count/non-count quantifier split has nothing left to split for the much/many pair, so the determiner much → many everywhere a noun is involved (many informations, not much informations). little/few are the mirror case and are not abolished the same way: per morphology M5, little/few keep less/least (alongside the regular littler/littlest) as a valid, optional World English form — so fewer furnitures and less furnitures are both grammatical; this rule does not force fewer “in all cases.” The learner never again decides whether a noun is “mass” before choosing much vs many; whether to say less or littler for little/few is a separate, already-resolved morphology choice. (This is only the determiner much, the quantifier meaning “a lot of.” The degree adverb much — the intensifier in much gooder, meaning “by a large margin” — is a different word: it modifies a comparative adjective, not a noun, so this much→many swap never touches it and much survives unchanged before any comparative.)

Divergence & trade-off. informations is non-standard English but grammatical in many languages and instantly clear. Removes a noun-by-noun memorization list and its knock-on effects (much vs many, article choice).

Rule G6 — Regular questions and negation (no do-support)

Rule. Form a question with no dummy do and no subject–auxiliary inversion. For a wh- question, the question word moves to the front of the clause; everything after it keeps normal SVO order — there is no inversion of subject and verb the way standard English inverts after the fronted word (who did you call → subject/verb stay in place behind the fronted who). For a yes/no question, nothing moves or is inserted at all; only the punctuation/intonation marks it. In writing, a question takes a trailing ? only: You like it?. In speech, a yes/no question is carried by rising intonation (P7); a wh- question is carried by its fronted wh-word (who, what, where…). Form a negative by placing not immediately before the main verb — in every clause type, including be-clauses, the continuous, the passive, and existential there be clauses: I not be living, It not be red, There not be problem. When a pre-verb adverb is also present, not takes precedence and comes first, immediately before the verb, with the adverb before it: She not often call, never she often not call (see style S4 for the shared adverb/negation slot).

Problem it solves. Do-support inserts a meaningless auxiliary into every question and negative, plus inversion (see §8). Learners already drop it naturally (You like it?).

Divergence & trade-off. Removes do-support and inversion outright and adds no replacement word — so questions are purely subtractive (they drop the meaningless do and put nothing back). A yes/no question is marked by rising intonation in speech and the ordinary trailing ? in writing; a wh- question by its question word (Who you seed?). Tag questions (…isn’t it?) collapse to a single invariant tag — right? — eliminating the mirror-the-auxiliary computation. The one cost is that the yes/no question becomes the single construction that rides on pitch (see P7): a deliberate choice to keep questions natural and the language free of coined particles, accepting the flat-intonation-L1 difficulty. In writing the question is unambiguous — the trailing ? marks it exactly as in standard English.

Extension — the rest of the negation/question system. Four related constructions follow from the same two moves (marker for questions, not before the verb):

• Modal negation places not in the same slot as everywhere else — right before the content verb — which after a modal means modal + not + verb: I will not go, She can not swim, You must not go.
• Negative imperative is just not + the bare verb: Not go!, Not touch it! — no do-support, consistent with the main negation rule. (An alternative, No go!, was considered and rejected: No is the invariant short answer below, so reusing it as the imperative negator would overload one word; Not go! keeps the not-before-verb rule exceptionless. Recorded as a resolved decision.)
• Short answers are the invariant words Yes / No alone — no do-echo, no auxiliary to mirror (standard Yes, I do / No, she doesn’t both collapse). Add the clause in full if more is wanted: Yes, I like it.
• Existential there is/are collapses to invariant there be (past there beed), since M2 already removes is/are and M3 removes number agreement: There be many persons, There beed a problem.
• Embedded/indirect questions keep the question word — the wh-word or whether for a yes/no embedded question — but use normal declarative word order with no fronting, since there is no inversion to undo in the first place: He asked where he goed, I not know whether it will rain. if is never used for an embedded question — G13 reserves if for conditionals, so an embedded yes/no question always takes whether, never if (He asked whether it rained, not he asked if it rained).

Rule G7 — A reduced modal set, shades by adverb

Rule. World English keeps four modals, one per core meaning, each invariant:

Finer degrees of probability — the work may/might/could/must used to do — are carried by ordinary adverbs before the verb: maybe, probably, certainly. Modals take no past -ed and no -ing; past and hypothetical meaning come from time words (style.md S5) and the conditional rule (G8).

Problem it solves. The modal cluster overlaps on two axes with no rule for which to pick, and carries suppletive pasts (can→could) and defective morphology (see §7).

Examples.

Divergence & trade-off. Loses the modal system’s fine gradient of certainty and politeness, recovered with plain adverbs — the same plain-phrasing trade as style.md S2. would is not kept as a modal here; its one surviving job is the hypothetical marker in G8.

Rule G8 — One conditional shape

Rule. Every conditional is if + clause, + result clause, each in its natural tense — no tense-backshift. There are two patterns, by how real the result is:

• Generic/zero conditional — a general truth or habitual result, true whenever the condition holds. Both clauses are present tense; no will/would appears at all (standard zero conditional): If it rain, the ground get wet.
• Predictive/hypothetical conditional — a specific real-or-expected future result, or a hypothetical/unreal one. The result clause marks how real it is with one word:
  • will — a real or expected result (standard first conditional): If it rain, I will go.
  • would — a hypothetical or unreal result (standard second + third conditional): If I have money, I would buy it.

The if-clause is always present tense in both patterns (never backshifted to a past-tense hypothetical the way standard English does for the second conditional); only the result clause changes, and only between the predictive and hypothetical patterns — the generic pattern takes no marker word in either clause.

Past-unreal (“if it had happened”) is carried by a time word (style.md S5), since World English has no perfect (G1).

Problem it solves. The five-way conditional grid graded by backshift + would — and the third conditional’s reliance on had + participle (see §7).

Examples.

Divergence & trade-off. Drops backshift, had + participle, and would have + participle — four forms collapse to present tense + will/would. would keeps the one job an English reader already reads as “unreal,” so the shape stays legible; only the certainty/time split is preserved, everything else is dropped.

Rule G9 — Passive voice

Rule. The passive is be + the verb’s -ed form, with an optional by-phrase naming the agent. Because M1 gives every verb one -ed form and M2 gives be one present and one past, the passive needs no separate participle and no auxiliary juggling.

Problem it solves. Standard passives ride on the irregular past participle — the third principal part a learner must memorize per verb (build → built, break → broken) — stacked on the eight-form be. World English removes both: the participle is just the regular -ed, and be is invariant, so the passive is fully derivable.

Divergence & trade-off. The forms (beed builded, be washed) are non-standard but transparent. Style prefers the active (S1): the passive exists for when the agent is unknown or irrelevant, not as a default. Keeping the optional by-phrase preserves the one thing the passive is genuinely for — dropping the agent while keeping the patient as subject.

Rule G10 — Noun possessive

Rule. The noun possessive keeps standard 's (singular) and s' (plural) unchanged. This is one of the few places World English keeps a standard-English form verbatim.

's vs the of-genitive. Use 's (this rule) or the pronoun possessive (G4: my, his) for genuine possession — a possessor that has or owns the thing (the dog’s bone, Mary’s car, his car). Keep of for the non-possessive genitives it already carries: part-whole and relational (the captain of the team, the top of the hill) and fixed superlative frames (the goodest trip of his life). The two are not interchangeable, so neither is mandated over the other — the same “keep the real distinction, drop only the arbitrary choice” line as S3’s for / since. (Partitive/measure of is separately removed by G5: a piece of advice → one advice.)

Problem it solves. Nothing new to learn — but it must be stated, because M4 makes every plural end in -s, so without the apostrophe dogs (plural), dog’s (singular possessive), and dogs’ (plural possessive) would collapse in writing. The apostrophe is what keeps the three apart on the page.

Divergence & trade-off. None from standard punctuation — deliberately. In speech all three are /dɒgz/, but that ambiguity is exactly what standard English already has, so World English is no worse; context resolves it, and the apostrophe fully disambiguates the written form. (This is the noun possessive; the pronoun possessive is the standard determiner/standalone set in G4 — my/mine, his — which takes no apostrophe either.)

Rule G11 — Subordinate clauses introduced by that

Rule. One invariant word, that, introduces every subordinate clause of two kinds — relative clauses (modifying a noun) and content clauses (the object of a reporting or mental verb: say, think, know, hope). that is never dropped in either job, including where standard English allows a “zero relative” (the man I saw → the man that I seed) or a dropped complementizer (he said it was cold → he sayed that it beed cold). A learner meets one rule for the word — “a clause follows” — in both places.

Relative clauses. that introduces every relative clause — for people or things, subject or object. The who / whom / which / whose-relative set is dropped, and so is the restrictive/non-restrictive comma rule (that vs which + comma).

Content clauses and reported speech. A clause serving as the object of a reporting or mental verb is introduced by the same that — always kept — and stands in its natural tense: no backshift. G1’s one test picks the reported clause’s tense exactly as it does anywhere else — still true → present, finished → past — regardless of the reporting verb’s own tense.

Problem it solves. Standard English splits relativizers by animacy (who vs which), by case (who vs whom), and adds a possessive relative (whose) plus a punctuation-borne restrictive/non-restrictive distinction (that/which + comma) that §8 notes “many natives ignore and few can state.” Separately, English backshift (the sequence-of-tenses rule — say → said drags is → was) is grammatical agreement carrying no meaning, and the content-clause that is optionally droppable by a feel few learners share. World English collapses all of it: one word introduces every clause, and the tense states the real time (per G1).

Divergence & trade-off. that for people (the man that I seed) is already everyday spoken English. Possessive relatives use a resumptive pronoun (the man that his car breaked) instead of whose — slightly longer but fully regular. Keeping that everywhere is a word longer than the common spoken drop, but it unifies the subordinate-clause marker: the same that introduces relative and content clauses. The lost restrictive/non-restrictive nuance is recovered, when it matters, by rephrasing into two sentences (S1). Dropping backshift means He sayed that it be true reads present because the fact still holds.

Rule G12 — Verb complementation

Rule. When an ordinary verb takes another verb as its complement, the complement is always to + base verb. The gerund-vs-infinitive choice (enjoy doing vs want to do) is removed — it is always the to-infinitive. This rule has two closed exceptions, both already ruled on elsewhere and not reopened here:

• Modals (G7: can, must, should, will) take the bare infinitive, never to: You must go (not must to go), She can swim. Modals are not “verbs taking a complement” in the sense this rule covers — they are the fixed functional set G7 already closes.
• Causative/perception verbs — a separate closed class (let, make, help, see, hear + object + verb) — also take the bare infinitive after their object: Let him go, She made me wait, I saw him fall, I heard her sing. This is a fixed lexical pattern (object + bare verb), not an instance of the to-infinitive default.

Outside these two closed classes, every other complement-taking verb uses to + base verb:

Problem it solves. Which complement a verb takes is lexically fixed and unpredictable — enjoy demands the gerund, want the infinitive, begin allows either, and a few verbs (stop, remember) change meaning with the choice (see PAIN-POINTS §3, gerunds vs infinitives). A learner memorizes it verb by verb. One default form erases the list.

Divergence & trade-off. The one real cost is the stop pair: standard English contrasts stop doing (cease) with stop to do (pause in order to). Collapsing both to stop to X makes She stop to smoke ambiguous. World English accepts the ambiguity as rare and resolves it with plain phrasing when it matters — cease for the “quit” sense (She cease to smoke), pause for the “interrupt” sense (She pause to smoke) — the same plain-verb move as S2. Recorded as a known trade-off.

No subjunctive mood. World English has no subjunctive — this is a stated design decision, not an accidental silence. Standard English’s mandative subjunctive (I insist that he go, using the bare base form regardless of subject) and its formulaic subjunctive (if I were you) are both dropped: the indicative is used everywhere, including inside a content clause after a verb like insist/demand/suggest. G11’s ordinary that-clause rule already covers the mandative case with no special form: I insist that he go → I insist that he goes (present indicative, M3’s no-agreement present); if I were you → if I be you (G8’s ordinary conditional, natural tense, no special “were”). One mood, no exceptions.

Rule G13 — Subordinating conjunctions

Rule. Adverbial clauses are joined with a closed, one-per-meaning set of subordinators, each used on the standard-English model: one word, natural tense (no backshift, per G1 / G8), and one comma rule — a leading subordinate clause takes a comma, a trailing one takes none.

If it rain, I will go. I not drink it while it be too hot. We leaved because it beed late.

Causal since is dropped in favor of because, which leaves since with only its S3 starting-point sense (since 2015) — removing the one real overlap.

Problem it solves. English offers several subordinators per meaning (because / since / as / for; although / though / even though; while / whilst), split by register and subtle nuance a learner cannot derive. Fixing one default per meaning erases the choice without losing any meaning-bearing distinction — the register-variant synonyms route to S2.

Divergence & trade-off. The kept words are all everyday standard English used on the standard model — this rule subtracts the synonyms rather than reforming anything, so a page reads normally. The only loss is stylistic variety (always because, never since), accepted under the ease-over-entertainment priority.

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