Corporación Universitaria Minuto de Dio

Bachelor Program in English Language Tea

Structures and Functions of Language
Student Name: ____________________________________ ID ________________ NRC _________________
Week: SECOND

SENTENCES AND STRUCTURE

A sentence is a complete and independent unit of communication. A sentence is group

of words, which expresses a complete thought.
i.e. He ate an apple.

A sentence consists of two parts i.e. subject and predicate.

Sentence = Subject + Predicate

Subject: The part of sentence, which performs some action in a sentence, is called
Subject. A subject is sometimes also defined as the part of sentence which is being spoken
about in sentence (especially in sentences having a static verb). A subject has a close
relationship to what is being discussed in sentence. A subject can be a noun, pronoun,
and noun clause or noun phrase.
Examples
He is flying a kite. She ate an apple
John is driving a car. I wrote him a letter.

Predicate: The part of sentence, which tells about the subject, is called predicate.
Examples

He is flying a kite. She ate an apple

John is driving a car. I wrote him a letter.

Subject refers to the actor of a sentence. The part of a sentence about which something
is told in a sentence is the subject of sentence. While the part of a sentence that tells
something about subject is the predicate of sentence.
Example.

In the above example, “she” is a subject because it performs an action of washing clothes.
We can also say that “she” is a subject because something (that she is washing her
clothes) is told about it in sentence. While the rest part of the sentence “is washing her
clothes” is predicate of sentence because it tells something (washing her clothes) about the
subject.

SUBJECTS AND PREDICATES

Simple Subject and Simple Predicate

Noun or pronoun (or more) that, when stripped of all the words that modify it, is known
as the simple subject. Consider the following example:

A piece of pepperoni pizza would satisfy his hunger.

The subject is built around the noun "piece," with the other words of the subject -- "a"
and "of pepperoni pizza" -- modifying the noun. "Piece" is the simple subject.

Likewise, a predicate has at its center a simple predicate, which is always the verb or
verbs that link up with the subject. In the example we just considered, the simple
predicate is "would satisfy" -- in other words, the verb of the sentence.

A sentence may have a compound subject -- a simple subject consisting of more than
one noun or pronoun -- as in these examples:

Team pennants, rock posters and family photographs covered the boy's
bedroom walls.
Her uncle and she walked slowly through the Inuit art gallery and admired the
powerful sculptures exhibited there.

The second sentence above features a compound predicate, a predicate that includes
more than one verb pertaining to the same subject (in this case, "walked" and
"admired").
 PREDICATES, OBJECTS, COMPLEMENTS

1. Predicates: A predicate is the completer of a sentence.

A simple predicate consists of only a verb, verb string, or compound verb:

 The glacier melted.

 The glacier has been melting.
 The glacier melted, broke apart, and slipped into the sea.

A compound predicate consists of two (or more) such predicates connected:

 The glacier began to slip down the mountainside and eventually crushed some
of the village's outlying buildings.

A complete predicate consists of the verb and all accompanying modifiers and other
words that receive the action of a transitive verb or complete its meaning.

A predicate adjective follows a linking verb and tells us something about the subject:

 Ramonita is beautiful.
 His behavior has been outrageous.
 That garbage on the street smells bad.

A Predicate nominative follows a linking verb and tells us what the subject is:

 Dr. Couchworthy is acting president of the university.

 She used to be the tallest girl on the team.

Direct and Indirect Object

What is an object?

An object in grammar is a part of a sentence, and often part of the predicate. It refers
to someone or something involved in the subject's "performance" of the verb. It is what
the verb is being done to. As an example, the following sentence is given:

Subject Verb Object

Leila Wrote the poem

 "Leila" is the subject, the doer or performer,

 "wrote" is a verb that refers to the action,
 "the poem" is the object involved in the action.
Transitive and intransitive verbs

A verb can be classified as transitive or intransitive according to whether it takes or

doesn't take an object:

 If a verb takes objects, then it is a transitive verb.

Example:
They played soccer. → (The verb play takes ONE object 'soccer')
They sent him a postcard. → (The verb send takes TWO objects 'him' and 'a
postcard')
 If a verb doesn't take an object, then it is an intransitive verb.
Example:
She lies. → (The verb 'lie' doesn't take any object)
The building collapsed. → (The verb 'collapse' doesn't take any object)

Types of objects

There are two types of objects: direct and indirect objects:

Direct object

A direct object answers the question "what?" or "whom?"

Examples:

 David repaired his car → his car is the direct object of the verb repaired. ( What
did David repair?)
 He invited Mary to the party → Mary is the direct object of the verb invited.
(Whom did he invite?)

Indirect Object

An indirect object answers the question "to whom?", "for whom?", "for what?"...

An indirect object is the recipient of the direct object, or an otherwise affected

participant in the event. There must be a direct object for an indirect object to be placed
in a sentence. In other words an indirect object cannot exist without a direct object.

Examples:

 They sent him a postcard - him is the indirect object of the verb sent. (To
whom did they send a postcard?)
 He bought his son a bike - his son is the indirect object of the verb bought. (For
whom did he buy a bike?)
Parts of the speech
Although there are only eight parts of speech, it can be difficult to classify some
words.Some words are easy to classify: “Is it a person, place, or thing?” (noun); “Does it
modify a noun?” (adjective), etc. But many words are less obvious and can be different
parts of speech depending on how they are used. When in doubt, the best option is to
consult a dictionary, which lists the various parts of speech for a word in the order of most
common usage along with definitions and examples. But even a dictionary may not make
classifying easy when a word’s shades of meaning and usage are nearly identical. For
example, looking up “when” in the Random House Webster’s College Dictionary © 1996
yielded four parts of speech and ten alternate definitions. Here’s a sampling:

Part of Speech First Definition First Example

Adverb at what time or period? When are they to arrive?
Conjunction at what time to know when to be silent.
Pronoun what time Till when is the store open?
Noun the time of anything the when and the where of an act.

The following table lists a dozen words (in alphabetical order) that can be difficult to
classify. The parts of speech are ranked (1, 2, 3...) in the order they are listed in
Webster’s dictionary.

Adapted from: http://www.studyandexam.com/sentence-kinds.html