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Text Chapter 4
Text Chapter 6
Chapter 5
Normal Sentence Order and Introduction to Basic Sentence Patterns
A. Normal Sentence Order.
Although it is possible and even stylish to write sentences [we are talking about simple sentences (sentences made up of one independent clause) here.] in English with many different orders of syntactic constituents, there is one specific sentence order that is considered standard:
SVC*
That stands for "Subject, Verb, Complement." (Note: The verb and the complement make up the predicate.) We are not, as you should realize by now, going to begin any of our studies by defining. Therefore, you will have to be happy now just knowing what to call the 1st, 2nd, 3rd major constituents of a normal order sentence in English.
*Some designate this as SVO for "Subject, Verb, Object." It means about the same thing.
B. Basic Sentence Patterns.
Below I list seven basic sentence patterns with no discussion until the next chapter. Rather, I want us to experiment in trying to find models for them using what you bring with you in terms of your knowledge of the English language. Get ready for "the group thang"! Do not, under any circumstances, look ahead at Chapter 6 until we finish this lesson. I want you to think, not just copy stuff.
Basic Sentence Pattern #1: Intransitive Verb
Subject + Vi (Intransitive Verb)
Examples:
John fell.
The red house on the hill would have deteriorated rapidly into a shambles.
Basic Sentence Pattern #2: Direct Object
Subject + Vt (Transitive Verb) + Direct Object (DO)
Examples:
Carol threw the ball.
The swarthy old man in the dirty sweatshirt and torn slacks has been eating a slimy lunch of fried worms and pickled beets.
Basic Sentence Pattern #3: Indirect Object
Subject + Vt + Indirect Object (IO) + DO
Examples:
Carol threw John the ball.
Big boys and little boys often give their mothers trouble
Basic Sentence Pattern #4: Adjectival Subject Complement
Subject + VL (Linking Verb) + Subject Complement (SC) Adjectival (Adj)
Examples:
Eagles are large.
Parents residing permanently in the village usually seem happier with the mayor.
Basic Sentence Pattern #5: Nominal Subject Complement
Subject + VL + SC Nominal (Nom)
Examples:
Teachers are professionals.
To dance is to live.
(Notice that the subject and complement in this example are infinitive phrases.)
Dancing bears become overnight stars by strutting their stuff in public.
Basic Sentence Pattern #6: Object Complement (Adjectival)
Subject + Vt + DO + Object Complement (OC) (Adj)
Examples:
Sheila made Karen angry.
Poor brakes make deadly auto accidents on America's highways
and byways inevitable.
Basic Sentence Pattern #7: Object Complement (Nominal)
Subject + Vt + DO + OC (Nom)
Examples:
They crowned Victoria queen.
The students and the faculty have unanimously elected Willy outstanding male athlete of the year.
Most of the above squiggles are probably a total mystery to you. Don’t worry. They will all come clear over the next couple of weeks. We will spend significant time on each of the basic sentence patterns. For today, we are going to intuit. That is, we’re going to put to use what you intuitively know about English grammar. Some of you might even actually have "booklarnin'" about grammar. That’s another category to consider in the diversity of your groups. Each group should have one person who has, at some time or other, experienced the formal study of grammar and (miracle of miracles!) some of it actually rubbed off on that person.
What I want you to do in your groupsF2F is to try to find sentences for each of the seven sentence types. (I’ll provide a text in which you may look for them below.) Before you start, I'll explain a few symbols from the formulae.
There are three kinds of verb: transitive, intransitive, and linking. These are marked in the basic sentence patterns as Vt, Vi, and VL. Take note that the same word might be a transitive verb in one sentence, an intransitive verb in a second, and a linking verb in the third.
Major constituents that follow the verb are called complements (not compliments) because they complete (or complement) the sentence. A complement can be a subject complement or an object complement, or it can be a direct object or indirect object. Remember in your deliberations that, at the moment, we are dealing only with simple sentences with no compound constituents (e.g., John and Mary . . . .). Also, we are not yet considering such constituents as prepositional phrases, verbal phrases, or adverb phrases. Sentences need not have any modifiers except SC(Adj) or OC(Adj) in the two sentences patterns that call for them.
Each group should find in the following exercise at least one sentence for each of the seven basic patterns.
(Note: The following selection is a description of a ceramic bird skull given to me by a high school student during the Pleistocene era.)
"It's alive!!!"
It is a pound. The pound is clay. The clay is lifeless. It is ceramic. Someone formed it. The form is a
skull. They made it a bird. They made it multicolored. Someone gave the bird-skull a sense. The
sense is macabre. The sense is terrifying. The top is shiny. The top oozes. The ooze seems slimy.
Some slime is green. Some slime is gray. Some slime is brown. The eye-sockets are orange. The
orange glows. The beak is hooked. It craves flesh. Flesh is bloody. Birds swallow flesh. Birds drink
blood. I call the bird-skull alive.
Homework Assignment: Type seven sentences (either of your own making or that you find in written sources), one for each of the seven basic sentence patterns. Mark the parts of each sentence as they represent the basic sentence pattern formulae. Don't get lazy and borrow sentences from the textbook.
Example:
Sentence Pattern #1: The dog howled.
Subject: The dog Vi: howled
Avoid writing sentences that contain constituents such as modifiers (adjectives, adverbs), prepositional phrases, verbal phrases, etc. Don’t write any compound or complex sentences. In other words, for the moment, keep your sentences about as simple as the first example for each of the sentence patterns above. We will be making them more complicated (like the longer sentences above) soon enough. We will deal with compound and complex sentences later in the semester.