Plain English

Interrogative sentence;Do you not remember the day?

Imperative sentence;Remember the day.

In Exclamatory Form

Assertive;Nonsense! I remember the day.

Interrogative;What! Do you not remember the day?

Imperative;Oh come! Remember the day.

ANALYSIS—SIMPLE SENTENCES

402. Now that we have finished the study of the various parts of speech, we are ready for sentence building and for sentence analysis. Sentence analysis is the breaking up of the sentence into its different parts in order to find out how and why it is thus put together. To analyze anything is to break it up or separate it into its different parts. We speak of analyzing a sentence when we pick out the subject and the predicate and their modifiers, because we thus unloosen them or separate them from one another.

These parts of the sentence are called the elements of the sentence. The elements of a sentence consist of the words, phrases and clauses used in forming the sentence.

403. Let us begin from the simplest beginning and build up our sentences, using the various parts of speech as we have studied them. Let us take the simplest form of sentence which we can consider. For example:

Men work.

There are only three parts of speech which can be used to make a simple sentence in this manner, and these are, either the noun and the verb, or the pronoun and the verb. We might say instead of Men work, They work, and have a complete sentence.

In the sentence Men work, men is the subject and work is the predicate. The subject and the predicate are the two principal elements in a sentence. No sentence can be formed without these two parts and these two parts can express a thought without the help of other elements. Now we may begin to enlarge the subject by adding modifiers.

You remember we have found that a noun may be modified by an adjective. So we add the adjective busy, and we have:

Busy men work.

Our simple subject is still the noun men, but the complete subject is the noun with its modifier, busy men. We may add other adjectives and say:

The busy, industrious men with families work.

Here we have our simple subject men modified by the adjectives, the, busy and industrious, and also by the adjective phrase, with families. So the complete subject of the sentence now is, the busy, industrious men with families.

Our predicate is still the single verb work. Let us now enlarge the predicate. We have found that adverbs are used to modify verbs, and so we may say:

The busy, industrious men with families work hard.

The busy, industrious men with families work hard in the factory.

Our simple predicate, work is now enlarged. It is modified by the adverb, hard and the adverb phrase, in the factory. So our complete predicate is now, work hard in the factory.

404. These sentences with the simple subject and the simple predicate and their modifying words and phrases form simple sentences.

A simple sentence is one which expresses a single statement, question or command.

405. A simple sentence, therefore, will contain but one subject and one predicate. The subject may be a compound subject and the predicate may be a compound predicate, but still the sentence expresses a single thought. For example: The boys sing. This is a simple statement with a simple subject and a simple predicate. Then we may say: The boys sing and play. We still have a single statement, but a compound predicate, sing and play.

Now we may make a compound subject, and say, The boys and girls sing and play, but we have still a single statement, for both predicates are asserted of both subjects. So, The boys and girls sing and play, is a simple sentence.

If we say, The boys sing and the girls play, we have a compound sentence, composed of two simple sentences, The boys sing, The girls play.

If we say, The boys sing while the girls play, we have a complex sentence formed of the simple sentence, The boys sing, and the dependent clause, while the girls play.

406. Now let us sum up our definitions:

Every sentence must contain two parts, a subject and a predicate.

The subject of a sentence is that part about which something is said.

The predicate is that part which asserts something of the subject.

The simple subject of a sentence is a noun, or the word used in place of a noun, without modifiers.

The simple predicate is the verb or verb phrase without its modifiers.

The complete subject of a sentence is the simple subject with all of its modifiers.

The complete predicate of a sentence is the simple predicate with all of its modifiers.

A simple sentence is one which expresses a single statement, question or command.

A complex sentence is one containing an independent clause and one or more dependent clauses.

A compound sentence is one containing two or more independent clauses.

A clause is a part of a sentence containing a subject and a predicate.

Exercise 1

In the following sentences the simple subject and the simple predicate are printed in italics. Find all of the modifiers of the subject and all of the modifiers of the predicate, and draw a single line under the complete subject and two lines under the complete predicate.

1. Beautiful pictures hang on the wall.

2. Those elm trees grow rapidly every year.

3. A terrible storm broke unexpectedly at sea.

4. The clear, crystal water runs swiftly to the sea.

5. The beautiful flowers fade quickly in the heat.

6. The happy, boisterous children play at school every day.

7. The sturdy oak in the forest stands bravely through every storm.

8. Their arching tops almost speak to us.