WHAT IS A SENTENCE?
So far, we have looked at words and phrases. Now it is time to try to answer
the question, “What is a sentence?” As we discuss this question, we will think
about English grammar as it relates to the written language. In English 0346, the
focus is on the construction and punctuation of written sentences. Take a look at
the following “sentences.” You probably have heard someone say something
like the following:
1. "I been workin real hard."
2. "She better call me."
3. "He's gunna take English next year."
4. "I should of gone there last night."
5. "She hasta go now."
If you heard these sentences, you would probably understand the meaning.
However, when you read them, the meaning may not be clear because the
grammar is not accurate. In our class, we will study the rules that govern the
grammar of writing because one of our purposes in this class is to learn how to
express ideas clearly in written English. The way to express the ideas above in
standard written English is:
1. I have been working really hard.
2. She had better call me.
3. He is going to take English next year.
4. I should have gone there last night.
5. She has to go now.
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How do we know when a sentence is correct? In English, there are five rules
that every sentence must follow. All sentences:
1. begin with a capital letter
2. end with a period, question or exclamation mark
3. have at least one subject and a verb with tense
4. express a complete idea
5. make logical sense and follow the rules of grammar
Look at the following group of words for an example of what can go wrong
with a sentence.
in Hermann koala the zoo Houston bears at live Park
This “sentence” breaks all the rules, and as a result, it is confusing to native
speakers. The grammar that native speakers expect is missing from this
“sentence.” There is no capital letter at the beginning, no punctuation at the end,
the words are out of order and do not follow the rules of grammar. On the line
below, write a good English sentence with these words.
________________________________________________________________________
When you read a sentence, you usually know if it is grammatical without
even thinking about it. If you understand the sentence, you will probably
assume it is grammatically correct even if it isn’t. When you write a sentence,
you need to pay close attention to the grammatical correctness of the sentence.
In order to determine if a sentence is grammatically correct, you need to make
sure that it follows the five rules listed above. Let's take those five rules one by
one and apply them to sentences in exercise 1-5 on pages 39-41, which go
together and tell a story.
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Exercise 1 All sentences begin with a capital letter.
Read the following paragraph. Change the first word of each sentence to a
capital letter.
it was a dark and stormy night. i was in a part of town that was
unfamiliar to me. the rain made it difficult to see beyond the front of my
car. there were no signs to help me know where I was. my map was old,
and it wouldn't have helped me much anyway.
That wasn't hard, was it? Beginning each sentence with a capital letter is
probably the easiest thing to remember about writing good sentences.
Exercise 2 All sentences end with a period, question or exclamation mark.
Read the following paragraph. Decide where each sentence ends and add the
correct punctuation.
Suddenly, a shot rang out My windshield broke into a thousand
pieces The rain started to pour into the car Who would shoot at me I
couldn't see or hear anyone I was sure I was going to die
It isn't too hard to remember to end each sentence with a period, question
mark or exclamation point. You may not be sure sometimes which is the best
one to use, but using the wrong ending punctuation will rarely cause a lot of
confusion for your reader. HOWEVER, a comma is never used to mark the end
of a sentence in English. The comma + conjunction, such as ,and/,but/,so/,or join
sentences.
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Exercise 3 - All sentences have at least one subject and a verb with tense.
Read the following paragraph and decide if each sentence has a subject and a
verb with tense. We have already studied noun phrases and verb phrases, but
we haven’t discussed the idea of a verb’s tense yet. To see if a verb has tense, ask
yourself if the verb tells what time the action happened.
If any of the sentences in the paragraph do not have a subject, add one. If any of
the sentences are missing a verb, add one. If any of the sentences have a verb
which does not have tense, correct the verb.
The rain soaked me completely.
I driven on wildly looking for
someone to help me. I didn't what time it was. A faint light appear in the
distance. Decided to drive toward that light. I looking at my watch. 2:30
in the morning. Why not I at home in my warm bed? Help!
Was this exercise a little harder to do? Capitalization and punctuation are
called mechanics. That is, they help us understand what we are reading, but
they are not really necessary to the grammar of the sentence. Subjects and verbs,
however, are basic parts of any sentence. If they are missing from a sentence, it
will be difficult or impossible to understand that sentence.
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Exercise 4 All sentences express a complete idea.
Read the following paragraph. Decide if each sentence expresses a complete
idea, or if it ends before you get all the information you need. Fix any sentences
that are not good. You may have to add some words or ideas of your own.
When I approached the light. I could see that it was a huge fire.
People in strange costumes were dancing around it. I had never seen
before. I got out of my car. I asked one of the dancers. He said that they
enjoy. Then, I began.
Was this paragraph frustrating to you? Did you wonder what the writer was
trying to say? Did you have to work a little harder to fix the sentences than you
did in the previous exercises? It should be clear to you now why a sentence must
express a complete idea.
Exercise 5 All sentences make logical sense and follow the rules of grammar.
Read the following paragraph, which concludes the story. What's wrong with
the sentences? Can you fix them?
finally, i knew the secret, all ESL teachers dance. all of them sing.
At the beginning of every semester. They hope for patience. Inspiration.
And guidance from the Great Grammar God. Is one way to excite their
creativity and enthusiasm. The teachers told me not to tell. About their
secret ceremony. Or the magic power of the Great Grammar God would be
destroyed.
Probably, this exercise was the hardest of all. Some of the sentences in the
paragraph do not make sense because they are incomplete. Others don’t follow
the basic rules of grammar. The writer paid almost no attention to capitalization
and punctuation. It is a very frustrating paragraph to read, much less to try and
fix.
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Exercise 6
Read the following sentences and decide if they are good or bad. If the sentence
is good, put a “+” next to it. If the sentence is bad, put a “-” next to it.
1. _____ Did she leave?
2. _____ After the sun goes down.
3. _____ He likes eggrolls.
4. _____ Mary always enjoys.
5. _____ Help!
6. _____ There’s the President on a bike.
7. _____ If I have time when I get home.
8. _____ Is very expensive.
9. _____ At 10:00 the student in the front row.
10. _____ John had an accident, he called his lawyer.
How did you decide if the sentences in Exercise 6 express a complete
thought? You probably considered the meaning of each sentence. When you
read the sentences to find the meaning, you probably saw the words that belong
together and you tried to understand the meaning of a few words before you
continued to read each sentence. In your mind you divided the sentences into
smaller parts. In other words, you divided the sentences into phrases.
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Exercise 7
On the lines below, rewrite the ungrammatical sentences from Exercise 6, and
fix them in some way to make them good sentences. For each sentence, there is
more than one possible way to edit it.
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
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You may have also noticed that we usually need more than one word to
express a complete thought in English. There are, of course, many examples of
one-word answers to questions which express a complete idea. For example,
look at the following question and its answer:
Do you have green hair? No!
The answer is only one word, and it lacks a subject NP and a VP. In fact, it
violates almost all the rules of an English sentence. Nevertheless, it is a clearly
understood sentence. One-word sentences are more common in speaking than in
writing. In this course you will be writing compositions, not conversations, so
you will be writing complete grammatical sentences.
There is one major exception to this rule, however. There is one type of
sentence that is correct even though it appears to be missing a necessary part. It
is the verb form called the imperative. Are the following complete sentences?
Stop!
Look!
Wait!
Sit down!
Eat your soup!
These sentences seem to be missing a subject NP. These are complete sentences, however, because the person who uses this kind of sentence is addressing
another person directly, a listener or reader. The subject of each sentence is
YOU, but both the speaker and listener, or writer and reader, know this. That is
why this kind of sentence has the “understood YOU” subject. The structure of
these sentences is really:
(You) stop!
(You) look!
(You) wait!
(You) sit down!
(You) eat your soup!
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So far we have looked at four different types of sentence patterns. Let’s
quickly review them.
PATTERN
SYMBOL
EXAMPLE
Subject Noun Phrase +
Transitive Verb + Object
Noun Phrase
Subject NP + Vt+ Object NP
We like cake.
Subject Noun Phrase +
Intransitive Verb
Subject NP + Vi
They slept.
Subject Noun Phrase +
Linking Verb + Noun
Complement
Subject NP + Vl+ NC
You are students.
Subject Noun Phrase +
Linking Verb + Adjective
Complement
Subject NP + Vl+ AdjC
This looks funny.
There is another type of sentence in English, and you are already familiar
with it. What is the subject of this sentence?
There is a fly in my soup.
If you said that the subject was a fly, you are correct. It is possible to write a
sentence where the subject actually comes after the verb. Basically there are only
two ways to do this. The first way is to start a sentence with the word there or
here. These words show that something exists, and that thing is always the
subject of the sentence. However, the subject in these cases has been moved after
the verb.
It is also possible to write a sentence which starts with a prepositional phrase
followed by the verb and then the subject. Look at this example.
On the wall hangs a picture.
In this sentence, the subject is a picture, the verb is hangs, and on the wall is a
PP acting as an adverb. Of course, it is more normal, and more acceptable, to
write the sentence this way:
A picture hangs on the wall.
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These sentences can be identified like this: VP + Subject NP. Please note that
a question is not this type of sentence. When we make a question, we move an
auxiliary, or helping verb, in front of the subject, but a question really has the
same sentence pattern as the statement that it is made from. There are actually
only two types of statements in English where the verb really comes before the
subject. The great majority of English sentences have the subject before the verb.
Exercise 8
Circle the subject NP in the following sentences.
1. Here are the dried squids that you ordered.
2. Down the street came the parade.
3. There used to be many students in this class.
4. In my hand is a big surprise for you.
5. Here comes Mr. Jordan.
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CLAUSES
So far, we have studied about words and the parts of speech. Then we took
those parts of speech and put them together into phrases. Next, we took those
phrases and put them together into sentences. A sentence that is made up of
only NPs, VPs and possibly PPs is called a simple sentence. Sometimes,
however, we need more than a simple NP or VP to express our ideas. Look at
the following sentences that are taken from Exercise 11 in Chapter 2.
The man who was hit by the car died yesterday.
Mary said that she would be late.
In the first sentence, we see that the words who was hit by a car are acting as an
adjective. They are modifying the subject of the sentence - man. In the second
sentence, the words that she would be late tell what Mary said. These words are
acting as the object of the sentence.
You should also see that the boldface words in each sentence contain a subject
and a verb. In the first sentence, who is a subject and hit is a verb, but they are
not the main subject and verb of the sentence. The main subject and verb of the
sentence are man and died. In the second sentence, she is a subject and would be is
a verb, but again, they are not the main subject and verb of the sentence. Mary
and said are the main subject and verb.
The boldface words in the examples are called clauses. A clause is a group of
words that contains a subject and its verb, but a clause is not a sentence. You will
learn more about clauses next semester, but right now it is important to be able
to recognize them and know how they fit into sentences.
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There are three basic kinds of clauses that can be put into a simple sentence:
adjective clauses (also called relative clauses,) adverb clauses (also called
subordinate clauses) and noun clauses.
Adverb clauses act like adverbs.
something happened.
They tell how, where, why or when
Before I left the house, I remembered to set the alarm.
(adverb clause)
You will fail the test because you didn't study.
(adverb clause)
Adjective clauses describe a noun, but unlike regular adjectives, they always
come after the noun.
The woman who drives a white Miata is the dean.
(adjective clause)
The computer that broke yesterday is mine.
(adjective clause)
A noun clause does the same thing that a simple noun can do in a sentence.
In other words, a noun clause can be the subject, object or complement of a
sentence.
Whoever stole my keys is in trouble.
(subject noun clause)
Joe hinted that he wasn't ready to get married.
(object noun clause)
That is why I can't stand to be late.
(complement noun clause)
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Can you identify the clauses in the following sentences? Put parentheses
around them. It isn't necessary to tell what kind of clauses they are, but you
might want to try just for practice.
1. I forgot my keys when I went to school today.
2. Mary likes any man who wears expensive clothes.
3. I know why you don't understand.
4. Before Jane went to work, she stopped at the store.
5. Do you have a bird that can say your name?
6. Whatever you want to do is fine with me.
It is important not to let clauses confuse you when you are trying to figure
out the pattern of a sentence. Clauses are usually part of the subject or object
noun phrase. They make the subject or object more complicated, but they don't
change the pattern of the sentence. The patterns of the six sentences above are
written below. See if you can match the words in the sentences with the
grammatical sentence part. Omit any clauses; then, fill in the spaces below. You
will see the main idea in each sentence. (The clauses only give additional details.)
1. (Subject NP)__________ (Vt)__________(Object NP)__________
2. (Subject NP)__________ (Vt)__________(Object NP)__________
3. (Subject NP)__________ (Vt)__________(Object NP)__________
4. (Subject NP)__________ (Vi)__________
5. (Subject NP)__________ (Vt)__________(Object NP)__________
6. (Subject NP)__________ (Vl)__________(AdjC)_____________
By now you should have a better understanding of sentence structure. Think
of English grammar this way: parts of speech (including nouns, verbs,
adjectives, adverbs) make phrases and clauses. Phrases and clauses make sentences. Parts of speech, phrases and clauses are like the building blocks you use
to construct good English sentences. If you put them together in the correct or
grammatical way, the sentences that you build will be strong. Also, the ideas
that the sentences express will be clear.
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Exercise 9
Read the following sentences and decide if they are good or bad. If the sentence
is good, put a “+” next to it. If the sentence is bad, put a “-” next to it.
1. _____ May I help you?
2. _____ She listens to everyday.
3. _____ There's a great restaurant off I-10 it’s called the Mason Jar.
4. _____ Because Richard tries hard.
5. _____ The student who sits in the front row.
6. _____ I that she can't come.
7. _____ After school in the library, you can study quietly.
8. _____ When we don't have time.
9. _____ Elizabeth likes to talk although she's shy.
10. _____ Bill plays a lot of sports, he especially likes soccer.
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Exercise 10
Read the following paragraph. You will notice that there is no punctuation. All
of the sentences are grammatical, but we do not know where they begin and end.
Add a period at the end of each sentence. Use a capital letter to show the
beginning of each new sentence. Do not add or change any commas.
every year the Miller Outdoor Theater in Hermann Park presents
free performances between April and October for example, the theatrical
group called Theater Under the Stars performs a musical show the
Houston Ballet gives a dance performance it often dances a popular ballet,
such as Cinderella the musicians of the Houston Symphony perform
classical music usually for the 4th of July celebration during August and
September two plays by Shakespeare are presented by drama students
from the University of Houston also one of the last events of the season in
the Miller Outdoor Theater is the Asian Festival food, dancing, arts and
crafts from the Near and Far East can be enjoyed by everyone all of the
events in the theater are open to the public they usually occur
Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8:00 pm
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Exercise 11
Read the following paragraph. This paragraph has punctuation, but it is not
correct. Put periods in where they are needed, and take them out where they are
not needed. Also, make any capitalization changes that are necessary. All of the
sentences are grammatical, and all of the commas are correct, so don't change
any words or commas.
One of the most pleasant places to visit in Houston is the Rice
University campus this school was built in 1912. With money and land
donated by a cotton merchant, William Marsh Rice. The campus looks
like a medieval city. Because the architecture is not modern. Like the
other buildings in Houston. It has approximately 4,000 students, many of
whom live on the campus in dormitories. Although Rice is a private
school. Everyone can go to its public places. Such as the athletic facilities,
book store, art gallery, media center, auditorium and library. The large,
old trees and green, grassy areas make Rice a kind of oasis in the middle
of the concrete and asphalt of downtown Houston.
Exercise 12
Complete the sentences below with your own words. Each sentence contains at
least one clause, and it needs a main idea to complete it.
1. After I came to the United States,_____________________________
2. _________________________________who was in my math class.
3. Wherever you want to go is________________________________
4. _______________because he got up on the wrong side of the bed today.
5. ________________________________________,but they got lost.
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Exercise 13
Read the following sentences and decide if they are good or bad. If a sentence is
good, put a “+” next to it. If the sentence is bad, put a “-” next to it. On the blank
lines below, rewrite the bad sentences. If the sentence is good, write "No Change"
on the line.
1. _____ I bring.
2. _____ When they went to the hospital.
3. _____ We dislike cleaning the restrooms.
4. _____ Come here!
5. _____ My teacher at the students.
6. _____ Is always exciting to win the lottery.
7. _____ It had been a successful semester, they had a party.
8. _____ The exercise that you are doing right now.
9. _____ The president had a bad cold, so his secretary entertained the
prime minister.
10. _____ If you want to know the best way to avoid getting stuck in
traffic.
1.________________________________________________
2.________________________________________________
3.________________________________________________
4.________________________________________________
5.________________________________________________
6.________________________________________________
7.________________________________________________
8.________________________________________________
9.________________________________________________
10._______________________________________________
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Exercise 14
None of the sentences below are correct. In the space provided, rewrite the
sentence. Make it a good, complete sentence.
1. The driver talking nervously to the policeman.
__________________________________________________________________
2. We aren't sure if they wanted to take.
__________________________________________________________________
3. While you are having a good time.
__________________________________________________________________
4. Do you know why they?
__________________________________________________________________
5. The money that was stolen last week.
__________________________________________________________________
6. On Tuesday have another grammar test.
_________________________________________________
7. Before you leave class today.
_________________________________________________
8. Because I'm looking for a new job.
_________________________________________________
9. Is the best time of the year.
_________________________________________________
10. With a lot of patience finished the class.
_________________________________________________
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Exercise 15
Carefully read each sentence and then write the number of the pattern that
corresponds to the sentence in the space provided.
1. Subject NP + Vt + Object NP
2. Subject NP + Vi
3. Subject NP + Vl+ NC
4. Subject NP + Vl + AdjC
5. V + Subject NP
1. _____ We write compositions nearly every day.
2. _____ The air smells awful today.
3. _____ They always arrive late.
4. _____ Susan put the money in the cookie jar.
5. _____ There are not many honest people around anymore.
6. _____ In English 0346 there are excellent students.
7. _____ The teacher is hiding behind the desk.
8. _____ After a dirty campaign, he became president.
9. _____ Up the chimney rose the smoke.
10. _____ We are smart.
11. _____ She put on the sweater before she went outside.
12. _____ He stood on the table during class.
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REVIEW POINTS
All sentences begin with a capital letter.
SIMPLE
SENTENCE
RULES
All sentences end with a period, question or exclamation
mark.
All sentences have at least one subject and a verb with
tense.
All sentences express a complete idea.
All sentences make logical sense and follow the rules of
grammar.
SIMPLE
SENTENCE
PATTERNS
1. Subject NP + Vt + Object NP
2. Subject NP + Vi
3. Subject NP + Vl+ NC
4. Subject NP + Vl + AdjC
5. V + Subject NP
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