wegen des regen—on account of the rain
the bird flew out of the park just as the batter flied out
he goes tomorrow, just when I will be going as well
Words do things to each other. The German phrase is one Mark Twain made fun of as he characterized the difficulties of learning German. in "The Awful German Language." The preposition wegen threw the noun into genitive case, an outrageous complication for a speaker of that clear and sensible language, English. Nouns have cases that identify their roles. Verbs and other nouns affect the case of a noun.
When things get too "linguistic" say so. We're probably more interested in what words are like than in complicated syntax. I hope I'm limiting technical terms to a minimum, but stop me if I'm going too far.
Nouns
Case
Does English have cases?
He told her not to harm them.
She told him not to harm us
Pronouns seem to mark case in English
He gave the Queen's bracelet to the page in front of the throne
Gender
Relations to other parts of speech
Verbs
Time and tense
Some linguists say English has only two tenses--past and nonpast
Aspect
Relation to other parts of speech
Adjectives and adverbials
Degree