Finished Part 1 - Simple Sentence Grammar, my remaining notes on part 1 of the article: ### Step 3 - Object or Complement
Action sentences can have a “direct object” which I will call the “object”. Linking sentences have a “subject complement” which I will call the “complement”.
- Action sentences have a direct object.
- Linking sentences have a subject complement.
The object is a noun which is acted on. In I threw a red ball., “ball” is the object. The ball receives the throwing action.
- Object = noun which is acted on
The complement is a noun or adjective which is linked to. (Adjectives are explained in step 4.) In The house is very big., the complement is “big”. Bigness is the thing that the house is linked to.
The word “complement” is related to the word “complete”. It’s a completer. If you said “The house is”, that would be an incomplete thought.
- Complements complete the thought.
- Linking verbs are verbs that show the state of existence of something.
- Linking verbs need to be linked to something. In “The house is” ‘house is’ needs to be linked to something.
What’s the difference between an object and a complement? Objects go with action verbs, they’re always nouns, and they’re sometimes optional. Complements go with linking verbs, they’re nouns or adjectives, and they’re always required.
- Actions require things to act on. Objects. Though sometimes they can be implied and not be in the sentence.
- Objects are always nouns.
- Complements are always required. The link needs to be completed.
- Complements can be nouns or adjectives.
Finding the object or complement is step three. Look to the right of the verb. Finding that there is no object is fine too.
Objects answer the question, “What is acted on?”. Complements answer “What is linked to?”.
The verb, subject and object (or complement) are the most important part of the sentence. Sometimes they’re the only words.
- Step three is to find the Object or Complement. It should to the right of the verb. There should always be a complement. There doesn’t always have to be an object.
- In English, to form a complete sentence you need an actor(subject), an action (verb), and a thing being acted on (object).
Step 4 - Modifiers
A modifier changes something by giving more information. It adds detail, e.g. that walking is fast or that a steak is big. Modifiers can tell you attributes or qualities of the thing they modify. Modifiers describe or limit what’s being talked about. (There are fewer “purple cars” than “cars”, so adding the modifier “purple” restricts the cars being discussed.)
- A modifier changes something by giving more information about something. We can go from talking about cars in the sentence. “I like cars” to talking about a more specific type of car in “I like blue cars”.
Modifiers can be used with most things. The verb, subject and object (or complement) can be modified. Modifiers themselves can be modified, too.
- What can’t be modified?
To understand a modifier, you must figure out what it modifies. In “John throws red balls.” you need to understand that “red” applies to “balls” not to “John”.
- Modifiers modify something in specific not everything in a sentence.
There are two types of modifier. An adjective is a modifier for a noun, and an adverb is a modifier for anything else. The difference isn’t very important conceptually (they’re both modifiers, similar to how action verbs and linking verbs are both verbs).
- I wonder why they’re called adverbs.
- Adjectives only modify nouns.
- Adverbs modify everything else.
Adjectives usually go left of their nouns, and several adjectives can be listed in a row. Example adjectives: beautiful, tall, thin, round, young, blue, plastic.
- The big black cat.
- The beautiful young woman.
Let’s consider adverb examples. “Quickly” is an adverb which tells you how an action verb was performed. In “dark red ball”, “dark” is an adverb that tells you the shade of red. In “is not”, “not” is an adverb which modifies the meaning of “is”. Many adverbs end with the letters “ly”. Adverbs can be at many different locations in sentences.
- I guess depending on what is being modified certain words can either be considered adjectives or adverbs. on first read, and then checking on merriam-webster, dark is an adjective. If the sentence was “dark ball” dark would function as an adjective, but since dark is giving information about red its an adverb.
Finding modifiers, and figuring out what they modify, is step four for understanding a sentence. Each previous step involved only two possible questions. Modifiers answer a wide variety of questions. E.g.: “What type?”, “What size?”, “How much?”, “How many?”, “What material is it made of?”, “When?”, “Where?”, “To what degree?” or “In what manner was the action performed?”
Figuring out what question a modifier answers can be tricky even if you know what it means. An easy one is that “cold” answers “What temperature?”. A tricky one is that “cute” answers “How does it look and/or act?”. A reasonable person could write the question differently for “cute”.
- Using the some of the above examples:
- quickly answers how fast something was done
- dark answers the question of what shade of red is the ball
Now we’re ready to comment on every word from our example sentences. In I threw a red ball., “red” and “a” are adjectives which modify “ball”. In The house is very big., “the” is an adjective modifying “house”, and “very” is an adverb modifying “big”.
Detail: “The”, “a” and “this” are examples of a type of adjective called a “determiner” which answers “Which one?”. If I say “cat”, people won’t know which cat I mean. If I say “a cat” then I mean an indefinite, unspecified cat, “the cat” means a definite, particular cat, and “this cat” means the cat near me.
Detail: Verbs can be modified by other verbs. Modifier verbs are called “helper” or “auxiliary” verbs, not adverbs. In “I will practice grammar.”, the verb “practice” is modified by the helper verb “will” which changes it from present tense to future tense.
- From What Are Determiners? Definition and Examples | Grammarly
- “A determiner, also known as a limiting adjective, is a word that appears before a noun, providing clarifying context about the number, definiteness, or ownership of the noun.”
- “There are several common kinds of determiners, including articles, demonstrative determiners (or demonstrative adjectives), interrogative determiners (interrogative adjectives), possessive determiners (possessive adjectives), and quantifying determiners and numbers.”
- “… determiners modify nouns by a subtractive process rather than the additive one descriptive adjectives use. In other words: Descriptive adjectives add detail to our understanding of the nouns they modify, while determiners narrow down the identity of a noun by introducing specificity.”
- Hmmm but don’t adjectives limit. If you say “I like purple cars”. Purple is limiting the type of cars you like. I guess thats adding detail to car, not specificity?
- Detail vs. specificity. Detail is information about something, specificity in this case refers to which of something your talking about. “I’d like a purple car” - i would like any car that is purple. “I’d like the purple car” I’d like the specific car that is purple.
- From https://www.grammarly.com/blog/auxiliary-verbs/
- “Auxiliary verbs are a type of verb that takes a supportive role in a sentence, second to the main verb. They’re used mainly to create complex grammatical tenses, like the perfect and continuous tenses, which show different aspects of time, or how long an action takes place.”
- So does this mean that verbs that are considered auxiliary verbs cannot take take the place of the main verbs in sentences?
- “The three main auxiliary verbs are be, do, and have. However, all three of these can also be used separately as action verbs. When you see one of these verbs, look for a second verb to determine if it’s being used as an action verb or an auxiliary verb.”
Prepositional Phrases
Prepositions are words like “with”, “to”, “in”, “about” and “of” which relate a noun to something else in the sentence. For example, prepositions can indicate location (“on the table”) or time (“before midnight”).
- Prepositions state the relationship between a noun and something else in the sentence.
A preposition governs a noun which is normally located to the right of the preposition. Understanding the preposition requires finding its noun. “Governs” is a grammar word that basically means “has” or “uses”. A noun used with a preposition is never the subject, object or complement of the sentence. Each noun has one job in the sentence.
- A preposition such as “with” has or uses the noun that is typically located to the right of the preposition.
- So in, “He has the book with him”. The noun/pronoun “him” could not be the subject/object of the sentence.
- Each noun can only do one thing in the sentence.
Prepositions express a relationship between a part of the sentence and some additional information. The additional information is always a noun plus any modifiers that the noun has. In “I set my phone on my desk.”, the preposition “on” tells us the relationship between the action “set” and the additional information “my desk”. (“My” is an adjective modifying “desk”.) The type of relationship is “on”, which tells us that the desk is the location for the setting action. The preposition “on” also indicates the top of the desk (not “in”, “under” or “beside” the desk, which are different prepositions than “on”).
- These seem to be examples of positions. “on”, “in”, “under”, “beside”, is this where the position in preposition came from?
Prepositional Phrase Examples
Example full sentence analysis: John looks at stamps. Action verb: looks. Subject: John. Object: none. Preposition: at. Preposition’s noun: stamps. The prepositional phrase “at stamps” is an adverb modifying “looks”. It tells us what John is looking at.
- Hmm on first glance I would have thought the object to be stamps, since that is what is being looked at it. I guess the preposition at changes that whole part of the sentence.
Simple Sentence Analysis Example
The man with dark brown hair excitedly threw a little rock at the target.
- Step 1 - Verb
- threw
- Step 2 - Subject
- man
- Step 3 - Object/Complement
- rock
- Step 4 - Modifiers
- the - determiner, modifies man
- with - preposition, to its right is dark brown hair
- dark and brown are modifying hair
- hair - prepositional noun
- “with dark brown hair” is modifying the man
- excitedly - adverb, modifying threw
- a - determiner modifying rock
- little, adjective modifying rock
- at - preposition, to its right is the target
- the - determiner modifying target
- target - prepositional noun
- at the target is modifying threw? i’m a little unsure on this one. Hmm. What is at the target being related to? the rock right? so rock is being modified, but we’re not getting more information about the rock here, but more information about the throw, so threw. I’ll go with threw
Action verb: threw.
- correct
Subject: man.
- correct
Object: rock.
- correct
“Excitedly” modifies “threw”.
- correct
The first “the” modifies “man”.
- correct
“>A” modifies “rock”. - correct
“Little” modifies “rock”.
- correct
Prepositional phrase: “with dark brown hair”. This functions as an adjective which modifies “man”. The preposition is “with” and it governs the noun “hair”. It relates hair and man by telling us that the man has hair. It also tells us the type of hair (dark brown).
- mostly correct, didn’t say how the preposition functioned, it functions as an adjective here
“Brown” modifies “hair”.
- correct
“Dark” modifies “brown”.
- incorrect, woops. Yeah that makes sense the hair is being described as “dark brown” not “dark and brown”
Prepositional phrase: “at the target”. This functions as an adverb which modifies “threw”. The preposition is “at” and it governs the noun “target”. It relates throwing and the target by telling us that the throwing was directed towards the target.
- ok so i got that correct, nice
The second “the” in the sentence modifies “target”.
- correct
Conclusions: The sentence is about a man throwing a little rock. The throwing was excited. The man had dark brown hair. He threw the rock at the target.
- This makes sense. I’ll do a conclusion next time.
Simple Sentence Patterns
I now present the two simple sentence patterns:
- Subject + Action Verb + Object (noun or nothing)
- Subject + Linking Verb + Complement (noun or adjective)
- I kicked the ball.
- The house is cheap.
Conclusion of Part 1
For each sentence you practice, follow the steps. Find the action or linking verb, then the subject, then the object or complement. Then find the modifiers and figure out what each one modifies. For prepositions, find their noun and figure out what the whole prepositional phrase modifies. Finally, after you understand the individual parts of the sentence, consider what the whole thing means.
- Step 1 - Find the action or linking verb
- Step 2 - Find the subject
- Step 3 - Find the object/complement
- Step 4 - Find the modifiers and what they are modifying
- Step 5 - Figure out what the whole sentence means.
A good place to get sentences to practice on is a young adult novel . Books aimed at young people use simpler writing. Alternatively, get some grammar practice worksheets .
Should I do some practice with a young adult novel?
I’ll do the practice sentences tomorrow.
