Syntax -
Advance English sentence structure
Introduction: This page contains some
basic information about sentence structure (syntax) and sentence types. It
also includes examples of common sentence problems in written English. ESL
students who understand the information on this page and follow the advice
have a better chance of writing well.
Definition: Linguists have problems in agreeing how to define the
word sentence. For this
web page, sentence will
be taken to mean: 'a sequence of
words whose first word starts with a capital letter and whose last word is followed
by an end punctuation mark (period/full stop or question mark or exclamation
mark)'. On the basis of this definition, some of the sentences written
by ESL students (indeed by all writers) will be correct, and other sentences
will be problematic. Good readers (English teachers, for example!) can
quickly see the difference between a correct and a problematic sentence.
|
Subject/predicate: All sentences are about
something or someone. The something or someone that the sentence is about is
called the subject of
the sentence. In the following sentences the subjects are shown in red. Note
how the subject is often, but not always, the first thing in the sentence.
|
The predicate contains information
about the someone or something that is the subject. The example sentences
above are shown again, this time with the predicate marked in green.
|
Simple
subject/predicate: As you can
see from the example sentences above both the subject and the predicate can
consist of many words. The simple
subject is the main word
in the subject, and the simple
predicate is the mainword
in the predicate. The simple subject is always a noun/pronoun and the simple predicate is always a verb. In the following sentences
the simple subject is shown in red and the simple predicate is shown in
green.
From the last three examples sentences above you will
notice that the simple subjects and simple predicates can be more than one
word.
|
Advice: To
write strong, clear sentences you must know who or what you are writing about
(subject) and what you want to say about them or it (predicate). Your writing
will be more interesting if the subject is not the first thing in every
sentence you write.
|
Sentence types: One way to categorize
sentences is by the clauses they contain. (A clause is a part of a sentence
containing a subject and a predicate.) Here are the 4 sentence types:
|
|
Note: A dependent clause
standing alone without an independent clause is called a fragment
sentence - see below.
|
|
Advice: Writing
that contains mostly short, simple sentences can be uninteresting or even
irritating to read. Writing that consists of mostly long, complex sentences
is usually difficult to read. Good writers, therefore, use a variety of
sentence types. They also occasionally start complex (or compound-complex)
sentences with the dependent clause and not the independent clause. In the
following examples the dependent clause
|
Great source of information . Thanks again. You are the best because you are providing so much of valuable content on Sentence Types . This is something I have been considering for a year now. Thumbs Up!
ReplyDelete