Lesson 4: Seven Basic Sentence Patterns

Hierarchy of Grammatical Forms

A grammatical form is a word or a group of words that functions as a single wording unit within a sentence. There are four ranks of grammatical forms. These four ranks form the Hierarchy of Grammatical Forms:

· word,

· phrase,

· dependent clause, and

· sentence.

The members of hierarchy can be shown as a Grammatical Form Triangle below:

A sentence must make complete sense. It is composed of words，begins with a capital letter, and ends with a period, question mark or an exclamation point. In terms of its constituents, a sentence is made up of a number of basic sentence elements needed for the sentence to make complete sense.

There are a total seven basic sentence elements that a sentence can have. They are:

1. Subject (S)

2. Verb (V)

3. Direct Object (dO)

4. Indirect Object (iO)

5. Subjective Complement (sC)

6. Objective complement (oC), and

7. Adverbial (A).

They are explained in the table below:

In some grammar books, both the direct object and indirect object are lumped together simply as object. Similarly, subjective complement and objective complement are lumped together simply as complement. In that way, the number of basic sentence elements becomes five instead of seven. It is simply a different way of counting without any change in substance.

The remaining two ranks of grammatical forms, words and phrases, have been discussed in Lesson 1 to Lesson 3.

Readers should be alerted of the ambiguity that in most of English grammar books, “sentence elements” are “also referred to as clause elements.

It is true that a clause can either be an independent clause or a dependent clause. To avoid this ambiguity, sentence elements are referred to as sentence elements, and only dependent (subordinate) clause elements are referred to as clause elements.

Dependent Clauses

What is a dependent clause?

A dependent clause is comprised of sentence elements, but it differs from a sentence in that it does not give a complete meaning as a sentence does.

The dependent clauses, also referred to as subordinate clauses as the third rank in the hierarchy of grammatical forms. They usually begin with a subordinate conjunction. The subordinate conjunctions in the two dependent clauses below are italicized.

(a) because I was tired

(b) before I fell asleep

Since they are dependent clauses, they are not sentences. Hence, neither of them gives a complete meaning. Either of them can be joined to an appropriate simple sentence to become a part of a complex sentence.

Three Types of Sentences

Sentences can be classified into:

(1) simple sentences.

(2) compound sentences, and

(3) complex sentences.

To demonstrate how the hierarchy of grammatical forms works in composing sentences, let us use the nine words listed in the following table to form phrases, dependent clauses and sentences:

To summarize, by using the nine given words in the table, we have formed:

· three phrases,

· one dependent clause, which is an adverb clause, and

· two simple sentences (i) and (ii).

Then, by combining the dependent adverb clause with the simple sentence (i), the following complex sentence is formed:

· Since you went away, I have been thinking about you.

The two simple sentences (i) and (ii) can be combined to form the compound sentence:

· You went away; I have been thinking about you.

They are two joined together by a semicolon instead of a coordinate conjunction because such a conjunction is not included in the word list.

Grammatical Functions and Grammatical Forms

There exist many grammatical forms that belong to the same category of speech, and can perform the grammatical functions of sentence elements. Various grammatical forms are listed in the table below. The sentence elements whose grammatical functions can be realized by the grammatical forms are listed in the right-most column of the table.

In the case of the verb element, its grammatical function can only be realized by either by a finite verb or a finite verb phrase. Such a verb clause, which is composed of the verb element and all its complements, is essentially the predicate of a sentence.

Seven Basic Patterns of Declarative Sentences

In terms of grammatical forms, sentences can be classified into three types: simple, compound, and complex, as we have seen earlier.

In terms of grammatical function, sentences can be classified into four types: declarative, interrogative, imperative and exclamatory.

· A declarative sentence is a statement that ends with a period.

· An interrogative sentence is a question that ends with a question mark.

· An imperative sentence is used to make a request or give a warning or an order and ends with a period.

· An exclamatory sentence is used to express emotion and ends with an exclamation point.

For example:

1. Declarative sentence：I am a grandfather.

2. Interrogative sentence：Did you call me?

3. Imperative sentence：Be careful.

4. Exclamatory sentence：What a nice day it is!

Among the four types of sentences, the declarative sentence is the most common.

It is interesting to note that, for quite a long time, there were only six sentence elements, S, V, dO, iO, sC and oC, that can be combined to yield five basic patterns of declarative sentences. They are: (1) S + V + sC, (2) S + V, (3) S + V + dO, (4) S + V + iO + dO, and (5) S + V + dO + oC.

However, the meaning of some sentences written with some verbs such as “live” and “put” according to the two patterns S +V and S + V + dO of the five basic patterns shown above turn out to be incomplete. In recent two decades, a consensus seems to have been emerging that the adverbial element A should be included such that the number of basic patterns is increased from five to seven shown in Table 4.5 below.

Depending upon tense, the verb element V can be realized either by

(a) a finite verb V_f, or

(b) a finite verb phrase VP = AV_1f + RVP.

The subscript f of V_f denotes finite form of verb, and the subscript 1f of AV_1f denotes the finite form of the first auxiliary verb or the only one auxiliary verb in the verb phrase VP. RVP stands for Remaining Verb Phrase.

Two sets of seven basic patterns of declarative sentences are shown below for the verb element (a) or (b):

All the sentence elements in the seven basic patterns are obligatory. The obligatory basic sentence elements that a sentence must have are determined by the main verb in the sentence as follows:

· Linking verb

As the name of the verb implies, a linking verb links the subject S and the subjective complement sC. So, sC is the third sentence element that a sentence with a linking verb must have. With the three sentence elements S, V and sC, the meaning of sentence is complete. Hence, a sentence with the linking verb as the main verb has only the Basic Sentence Pattern (1): S + V+ sC.

· Intransitive verb

Sentences with intransitive, verbs, in addition to having no subjective complement sC to link, they have neither a direct object dO nor an indirect iO. Hence, they cannot have an objective complement oC. So sentences with intransitive verbs do not have sC, oC, dO and iO. Some intransitive verbs must have an adverbial element A to make the meaning of sentence complete. Hence, sentences with intransitive verbs can have Basic Declarative Sentence Pattern (2): S + V and Basic Declarative Sentence Pattern (3): S + V +A.

· Transitive verb

Transitive verbs must have a direct object dO. Some transitive verbs with dO can also have objective complement oC. Some transitive verbs with dO must also have an adverbial element A. Some transitive verbs can have both direct object dO and indirect object iO. So, sentences with transitive verbs may have Basic Declarative Sentence Patterns (4): S +V+ dO, Basic Declarative Sentence Pattern (5): S + V + dO + A , Basic Declarative Sentence Pattern (6): S + V + iO + dO , and Basic Declarative Sentence Pattern (7): S + V + dO + oC.

Therefore, it should be noted that, though there exist seven basic sentence elements, the number of basic sentence elements needed in the Seven Declarative Basic Patterns is only two to four.

In linguistics, word order in an important concept. Three out of the seven basic Patterns of Sentences, namely, (4), (5) and (7), have the three sentence elements S, V and dO in successive linear order. Among the world’s languages, sentences that involve these three sentence elements are variously arranged in six different orders: S + dO + V, S + V + dO, V + S + dO, V + dO + S, dO + V + S and dO + S + V. It turns out that the second pattern S + V + dO, which is the order in Basic Pattern (4), is common to Chinese, English, Indonesian and Russian languages, as shown in the following table. According to population, about three billion people in the world are accustomed to the S + V + dO linear order.

The orders of sentence elements in the seven basic patterns shown in the above table are the so-called canonical order. Sometimes it may be necessary or desirable, if grammatically permissible and semantically acceptable, to change the order of sentence elements to achieve particular communicative effects. However, the seven basic patterns in the above table are the blueprint for constructing declarative sentences.

The sentence elements in sentence are referred to as constituents of sentences. The subject element and the predicate of a sentence are known as the“immediate” constituents of a sentence. The head of predicate is the verb element, which can be a finite verb or an infinite verb phrase.

Accordingly, the seven basic sentence patterns in the following table yield the following seven basic patterns of predicates of declarative sentences:

The seven basic patterns of declarative sentences therefore provide a blueprint for composing declarative sentences.

Sentence Element - Slot (SES) Diagrams

The Reed-Kellogg diagrams, developed in the late 19^th century, have been used as a visual aid to parse sentences.

The following is a Sentence Element - Slot (SES) diagram to be used in parsing sentences. It resembles a three-layered multi-compartment file shelve. It is based upon the notion that the composing of a sentence is tantamount to inserting an appropriate word or a string of words into a number of slots. Each of the three-layered slot depicts the three-fold significance of a sentence element, namely,

(1) wording (words used) for the sentence element that contributes its share of meaning to

the overall meaning of the sentence,

(2) the grammatical form assumed by the sentence element, and

(3) the grammatical function performed by the sentence element.

Take for instance the sentence:

· The parents had found their children safe at home.”

Basic Declarative Sentence Pattern (7): S + V + dO + oC.

With the use of SES diagram, the sentence can be parsed as follows:

MIT Prof. Noam Chomsky developed the Transformational Grammar in the 1960s. Based upon phase-structure and binary branching, a diagrammatic representation in the shape of an Inverted Tree can be obtained as shown below:

As can be seen, after two binary parsing into immediate constituent, the Inverted Tree diagram yields the same result shown in boldface as what the SES diagram presents.

Examples of Basic Declarative Sentences

In this section, we will make use of the Sentence Element -Slot (SES) diagrams to analyze all the illustrative sentences of the seven basic patterns of declarative sentences.

· Basic Declarative Sentence Pattern (1): S + V + sC

In the set of three simple past tense sentences above, the subject element of the first simple sentence is realized by the noun phrase “that young man’s father”. It becomes the antecedent of the third-person singular pronoun “he” in the other two simple sentences. Hence, in accordance with subject-verb agreement, their simple past verb V is realized

· either by a finite past tense predicate verb V_f = was,

· or by a third person singular number finite present perfect tense verb phrase VP = AV_perf + RVP = has been,

The sentence element sC in these three sentences are realized by a noun phrase, an adjective phrase, and a prepositional phrase, which are in fact the three choices available.

· Basic Declarative Sentence Pattern (2): S + V

The subject of this illustrative sentence “autumn leaves” is a third-person plural compound noun. So, the finite auxiliary verb AV_conf in the verb phrase is the present continuous tense verb phrase VP is “are” in compliance with subject-verb agreement.

· Basic Declarative Sentence Pattern (3): S + V + A

The subject is a first person plural noun. The past tense verb“lived”is used as the verb element of the sentence. Obviously, the adverbial element A in this example is obligatory, w ithout which the meaning of the sentence becomes incomplete or entirely different.

· Basic Declarative Sentence Pattern (4): S + V + dO

The subject of this sentence is the plural noun“parents”. The plural possessive pronoun “their” is used in the noun phrase “their children” because its antecedent is the plural noun “parents”. Since the sentence is a statement of fact, the simple present tense is used, and the verb element is realized by V_f = love.

· Basic Declarative Sentence Pattern（5）: S + V + dO + A

The subject is the plural common noun “students” without any article in front of it. This means the students can be any group of students. The present tense auxiliary verb AV_perf = have in verb phrase “have put” is used to comply with the subject-verb agreement. The adverbial element A in this sentence is obligatory because, if omitted, the remaining sentence “Students have put their names”does not make complete sense. See the detailed discussions on obligatory and optional adverbial element in the next section.

· Basic Declarative Sentence Pattern（6）: S + V + iO + dO

The plural possessive pronoun “their” in the noun phrase “their children” functioning as the indirect object is used because its antecedent is the plural noun “parents”, the head of noun phrase that functions as the subject element. The verb “bring” complies with subject-verb agreement.

· Basic Declarative Sentence Pattern（7）: S + V + dO + oC

According to custom, the man masquerading Santa Claus at Christmas time always wears a white beard.

Optional Adverbial Element

Except the adverbial element A, all the other mandatory sentence elements in simple sentences of the seven basic patterns are limited to one of its kind. However, one or more optional adverbial elements can be added whether or not there is already an obligatory adverbial element present or not. The only difference between an obligatory adverbial element and an optional adverbial element is that obligatory adverbial element is always placed at the end of a sentence while the latter can be arbitrarily placed. In the following examples, some optional adverbial elements are placed at the end of sentences.

First, let us consider the Basic Sentence Patterns (1), (6) and (7), which do not contain an obligatory adverbial element.

The Basic Declarative Sentence Patterns (3) and (5) already have an obligatory adverbial element. Additional optional adverbial element or elements can be added to provide additional information to enrich the sentence content.

Optional adverbial elements can be used to enrich the contents of sentences. For example:

· John bought a new car.

Basic Declarative Sentence Pattern (4): S + V + dO. It does not have any adverbial element.

The following sentence has three several adverbial elements:

· A few years ago, John drove his new car to attend his nephew’s wedding in New York City.

The resulting sentence pattern is A₁ + S + V + dO + A₂, where

A₁ = a few years ago (indicating time)

A₂= to attend his nephew’s wedding in New York City.（indicating purpose）

Therefore, with two optional adverbial elements, the resulting sentence offers a more detailed narration.

Parallel Constructions

The following English translation of a world-renown Sanskrit motto also exemplifies parallel construction:

· Every today well-lived will make every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope.

This simple sentence has the pattern: S + V + dO + oC + coordinate conjunction + dO + oC. It is the Basic Declarative Pattern (7) with the last two sentence elements, dO and oC repeated and joined by a coordinative conjunction “and” to form the parallel construction. The sentence is analyzed below:

Recursion

Different sets of wordings can be used to compose sentences of the same sentence pattern. This is called recursion. A well-known saying in states:

· Studying without thinking is frivolous; thinking without studying is perilous.

The sentence happens to have the Basic Declarative Sentence Pattern (1).

In the Chinese text, the saying appears as two simple sentences without any coordinate conjunction in between. Here, to conform to English grammar, a semicolon is inserted between them. It can be parsed in a SES diagram as follows:

To see how the basic sentence patterns can be used as templates recursively, take for example the following three sentences:

1. The drug company has found a new vaccine for malaria.

2. A homeless child has found a home.

3. A snake has swallowed an elephant.

These three declarative sentences have different wordings, yet they happen to have the same Basic Declarative Sentence Pattern (4): S + V + dO, with N=3 basic sentence elements. Thus, these two sentences can also be parsed by inserting different wordings into a set of three identical slots in an SES diagram as follows:

All the algebraic equations for sentence patterns have provided a blueprint and templates for composing sentences recursively.

Recursion is a mathematical concept underlying arithmetic sequence and geometric sequence. Recursion in linguistics is an indispensable and inevitable tool by which a countless number of sentences have been composed by following all the basic patterns that can be found in this book. It is conceivable that, by recursively using the basic patterns, all sentences in all books on all library shelves in the world are written.

(c) 2019 by Augustine C. Chen