Basic Parts of a Sentence
- In English, most sentences fit into five patterns:
Subject/verb: Maria ran.
Subject/verb/subject complement: Maria is a soccer player.
Subject/verb/direct object: Maria loves soccer.
Subject/verb/indirect object/direct object: Maria passed James the ball.
Subject/verb/direct object/object complement: Maria made her coach proud.
- Subject: As you can see from above, the subject should take the first place in a sentence and is then followed by the predicate (the verb + completer). The subject is the noun(s) or pronoun(s) that either performs the action that the verb describes or simply indicates the main idea of the sentence.
Here are some examples:
Tomas studied all night.
Studying math gives me a headache.
Stephanie and I laughed for hours.
*Note: in the command/imperative form, the subject is implied. For example, in the sentence "Clean your room" the implied subject is "you".
- Predicate: As you can see from above, the predicate is the part of the sentence that asserts something about the subject. It contains the verb and the completer (whatever other information is needed to make the sentence a complete thought). What is contained in the "completer" depends on the type of verb. There are three types:
1) Transitive verb: transfers action from a subject to an object
2) Intransitive verb: does not need an object to make a complete thought
3) Linking verb: a linking verb joins the subject with subject complement. It is a word that describes the subject; it can be an adjective or a noun/pronoun.
Ex. s v sc (noun)
Jenny is a student.
Ex. s v sc (adj.)
She seems tired.
Whenever used as the main verb, to be (am, is, are, was, were) functions as a linking verb. Also, certain verbs such as appear, become, feel, grow, look, make, seem, smell, and sound sometimes work like a linking verb, de- pending on the sentence. The noun or adjective following the linking verb, the subject complement, answers the questions "who" or "what" of the subject. So in the first example above, you asked the question, Jenny is what? your answer would be "a student."
*Note: Information taken from The Everyday Writer by Andrea Lundsford and Robert Connors