Building a Sentence
As stated in the
previous chapter, a sentence only requires a verb, and then a noun or pronoun
to “do” the action of the verb. Nouns or pronouns that function in this
capacity are called the subject of the sentence.
Dogs eat.
This is a complete
sentence. It has a subject, a verb, and it expresses a complete thought. This
simple subject + verb construction forms the core of all sentences. Anything we
tack on is just a nice addition.
Let’s add a little more information. What do dogs eat?
Dogs eat hamburgers.
We just added
another noun that tells us what dogs eat. This is called the object of the
sentence. Where the subject is the “doer” of the verb, the object is the “receiver”
of that action.
Let’s say something about what kind of dogs. In other words,
let’s add an adjective.
The skinny dogs eat hamburgers.
Now, let’s say something about how the
dogs eat the hamburgers. In other words, let’s describe or modify the verb with
an adverb.
The skinny dogs eat hamburgers slowly.
Where does this eating happen? We can
add a prepositional phrase that locates this sen-tence in time or space.
The skinny dogs eat hamburgers slowly at the table.
Imagine the next sentence in this line of thought looking like
this:
Their owners don’t seem to mind.
These two sentences can stand alone as complete
thoughts. A group of words that con-tain a subject and a verb and express a
complete thought is called an independent clause. We can let these independent clauses stand alone as sentences, or we
can also choose to combine them with a conjunction. A coordinating
conjunction would put the two sen-tences in a kind of equal relationship.
The skinny dogs eat hamburgers slowly at the table, and their owners don’t seem to mind.
If we added a subordinating conjunction, the second sentence would become subordinate or dependent on
the first.
The skinny dogs eat hamburgers slowly at the table because their owners don’t seem to mind.
The second
sentence would then be called a dependent clause, while the first one is still an independent clause.
Sentences will often begin with the dependent clause and put the
independent clause on the end. When this occurs, a comma is placed at the end
of the dependent clause.
Because their owners don’t seem to mind, the skinny dogs eat hamburgers slow-ly at the table.
Just for fun, let’s keep building this sentence to make it increasingly
complex. We’ll use the construction with the coordinating conjunction and add
another dependent clause with a subordinating conjunction.
The skinny dogs eat hamburgers slowly at the table, and their owners don’t seem to mind as long as they use good manners.
What we have here are basically three different clauses strung together.
Each clause contains a subject and a verb. The conjunctions that join these
clauses indicate their rela-tionship to one another.
The
skinny dogs eat hamburgers slowly at the table.
Their
owners don’t seem to mind.
They use
good manners.
A phrase is a group of related words that lack a subject, a verb, or
both. Phrases can never stand alone as complete sentences. Remember that “at
the table” is a prepositional phrase. Let’s tack on a follow-up phrase to this
sentence separated by a comma.
The skinny dogs eat hamburgers slowly at the table, and their owners don’t
seem to mind as long as they use good manners, especially
when dining with guests.
Let’s add information about the owners.
We’ll interrupt the flow of the sentence by in-serting
the owner’s names. Because this information interrupts the sentence, it will
re-quire commas.
The skinny dogs eat hamburgers slowly at the table, and their owners,
Pat and John, don’t seem to mind as long as they use good manners, especially
when din-ing with guests.
We can add more information about
the guests.
The skinny dogs eat hamburgers slowly at the table, and their owners,
Pat and John, don’t seem to mind as long as they use good manners, especially
when din-ing with guests visiting from
foreign countries where things like dogs eating at tables is considered unusual and even
impolite.
The new information about the guests actually contains additional
clauses, phrases, and adjectives. We can also experiment with different
constructions to see what works best.
Using good manners so as not to offend guests from foreign countries,
Pat and John’s skinny dogs eat hamburgers slowly at the table, a practice Pat
and John don’t seem to mind.
The point of this exercise is to demonstrate how a
simple noun and a verb can serve as the foundation for complex sentences just
by adding additional clauses, conjunctions, phrases, adjectives, adverbs, etc.
Of course, you don’t want to get carried away with sim-ply adding stuff to a
sentence. Short and simple sentences belong in good writing just as much as
complex ones.
Building a Sentence–Exercise A
Using the “dogs
eat” example as a model, practice starting with a simple clause (subject +
verb) to create an increasingly complex sentence using the steps below.
(Remember that in real writ-ing, not all sentences must contain all the parts
of speech or combine clauses. This is just an exercise to introduce you to the
basics of sentence-building.)
1. Choose an interesting verb.
2. Choose a noun or pronoun to become the subject of
that verb.
3. Add an “object” to the sentence to receive the
action of the verb.
4. Add an adjective or adverb in an appropriate place.
5. Add a prepositional phrase.
6.
Using a
coordinating or subordinating conjunction, combine your sentence with another
clause.
7.
“Play”
with your new sentence by using different conjunctions, adding phras-es or
clauses, or rearranging words.
Building a Sentence–Exercis
