Honors English 9
Intro to Sentence Diagramming
(1.1) Basic Syntactic Structure of Sentences
Name ____________________________________________________
Date _____________________________________
In order to understand syntactic structure, it is necessary to group the words that make up sentences into WORD CLASSES, such as noun, adjective, verb, etc., and into CONSTITUENTS or groups of words smaller than the sentence. According to ancient tradition, the sentence consists of two major constituents, the SUBJECT and VERB PHRASE.
(1.1a)
(1.1b)
SUBJECT
Zeke
It
VERB PHRASE eats leeks was snowing
As a syntactic constituent the verb phrase is of little use, being defined simply as that portion of the sentence that is not the subject. But the subject is a very useful constituent. In English the subject is usually the sentence TOPIC, i.e., what the sentence is about. Thus given its most likely interpretation,
(1.1a) would be a sentence about Zeke. But sentences like (1.1b) show that the subject of the sentence may not always be the topic. Further subjects are usually the first constituent in an English sentence, but again this is not always the case with subjects:
(1.1c)
(1.1d)
(1.1e)
Does
Fortunately
Up the street waddled
SUBJECT
Zeke
Zeke
Zeke eat leeks eats leeks
Subjects do, however, condition AGREEMENT, or concord, with certain kinds of verbs:
(1.1f)
(1.1g)
(1.1h)
I
She
They
VERB eat eats eat leeks leeks leeks
The verb phrase is divided into a number of constituents of major importance. The first constituents we will consider are VERB COMPLEX and the DIRECT OBJECT. These are illustrated in the following sentences:
(1.1i)
(1.1j)
(1.1k)
(1.1l)
SUBJECT
Mort
Zelda
Floyd
Algernon
SENTENCE
VERB PHRASE
VERB COMPLEX dislikes might desire will have flunked could have been cheating
DIRECT OBJECT noodles a guava
Flemish the IRS
* An asterisk ‘*’ before a sentence means that the sentence is ungrammatical or unacceptable

Honors English 9
Intro to Sentence Diagramming
(1.1) Basic Syntactic Structure of Sentences
Name ____________________________________________________
Date _____________________________________
The verb complex consists of the verb and any auxiliaries that may accompany it. Except for some cases described in the next section, the verb complex contains the predicator, always as its last element:
(1.1m)
(1.1n)
(1.1o)
(1.1p)
VERB COMPLEX
AUXILIARIES n/a might will have could have been
PREDICATOR dislikes desire flunked cheating
The order of major constituents in an English sentence is subject-verb-object, usually abbreviated
SVO by linguistic typologists. There is nothing logically or grammatically necessary about this particular order, and indeed the majority of the world’s languages commonly use another order for their major constituents. Some languages like French (and Spanish) are SVO like English when the direct object is a noun, but SOV when the direct object is a pronoun:
(1.1q) je bois le vin
I drink the wine
“I’m drinking the wine”
(1.1r) je le bois
I it drink
“I’m drinking it”
In English, the order SVO is almost always required. Direct objects are not a required sentence constituent, as we note in
(1.1s) Charlie belched but with few exceptions the subject and the verb complex are obligatorily present. This means that
English does not allow sentences like*
(1.1t) *fell requiring instead an overt subject, as in:
(1.1u) He fell
Both the subject and the direct object take the form of NOUN PHRASES. Noun phrases consist of pronouns or nouns and their modifiers (or clauses). The following are all noun phrases: she it
Zeke the pregnant giraffe the monster that devoured Cleveland
* An asterisk ‘*’ before a sentence means that the sentence is ungrammatical or unacceptable

Honors English 9
Intro to Sentence Diagramming
(1.1) Basic Syntactic Structure of Sentences
Name ____________________________________________________
Date _____________________________________
In organizing information about sentences, it is useful to distinguish labels of syntactic FORM from labels of syntactic FUNCTION. Form is the label of what kind of thing a grammatical entity is , and function describes what it does and how it relates to other grammatical entities .
 The term ‘sentence’ and labels of syntactic constituents, such as ‘noun phrase,’ ‘verb phrase,’ and
‘verb complex,’ and word classes such as ‘noun’ and ‘adjective’ are labels of form .
 Terms like ‘predicator,’ ‘subject,’ and ‘direct object’ are labels of function .
We can display information about form and function in diagrams like the one below:
(1.1v) The purple watermelon frightened Nell
S
NP VP
FORM Art A N VC NP
N
The purple watermelon frightened Nell
FUNCTION
Su Pred DO
In form/function diagrams like this, the lines in the upper half of the diagram define a ‘consists of’ relationship: the S (sentence) consists of a NP and a VP. The NP consists of an Art, an A, and a N. The
VP consists of a VC and a NP. The Art consists of the article the, the A consists of the adjective purple, and so on. In the function half of the diagram, each constituent and each word within each constituent can
(potentially) be labeled for function – we haven’t yet enough function labels to mark all the words and constituents even in a sentence as simple as (1.1v), though eventually we will.

In diagramming the verb complex (VC) , we will leave out form labels for the words therein for now. We will do this even where the form label is perfectly obvious, as in (1.1v), where frightened is straightforwardly a verb. The reason for omitting such labels is that we lack, for the time being, appropriate labels for VC’s more complicated than the one in (1.1v). The VC might be shucking will, for now, be diagrammed as:
(1.1w) VC might be shucking
Aux Pred
* An asterisk ‘*’ before a sentence means that the sentence is ungrammatical or unacceptable

Honors English 9
Intro to Sentence Diagramming
(1.1) Basic Syntactic Structure of Sentences
(1.1-Practice)
Name ____________________________________________________
Date _____________________________________
Create a diagram for the following sentences (be sure to label both the forms and functions).
* An asterisk ‘*’ before a sentence means that the sentence is ungrammatical or unacceptable