Sentence Structure

Starting Point: Parts of Speech

Parts of speech are one of the first things we learn about grammar, but it is easy to forget when you do not practice!

Nouns are people, places, and things. Cat, Ms. Feekes, coffee, school, Bastrop High School, and milk are all nouns. Ms. Feekes and Bastrop High School are capitalized because they are proper nouns. A proper noun is a SPECIFIC noun with a NAME.

Pronouns replace a noun in a sentence. For example, I could write: "Ms. Feekes looked at her classroom. Ms. Feekes smiled as they worked." Saying Ms. Feekes twice sounds a littel weird, so I could use a pronoun! "Ms. Feekes looked at her classroom. She smiled as they worked."

An adjective describes a noun. Sleepy, pretty, ugly, tall, thin, extravagant, and loud are all examples of adjectives.

Verbs are actions, but they don't always have to be big actions. Jump, run, swim, dance, and laugh are all examples that seem like obvious verbs. There are other words that don't seem like verbs... all forms of "to be" (am, is, are, was, were, has been, are being, might be), to become, and to seem are all considered verbs. There are known as "linking verbs".

Adverbs describe a verb. Adverbs usually end in -ly (quickly, slowly, badly), but not every adverb does.

A conjunction connects words, phrases, or clauses together. Coordinating conjunctions (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so) can connect independent clauses while a subordinating conjunction (As, although, after, while, when, unless, because, before, if, since) connects an independent clause with a dependent clause.

Interjections are words that are thrown between sentences! These are words like: Oh! Ouch! Wow! Yikes!

Prepositions tell you where or when something is. The list of preposition words is LONG, so here are a few to give you an idea of what they look like: about, after, at, around, in, on, until, up, across, above, below, by, of, out of, over.

Articles (not pictured above) are words that go in front of nouns. There are only two articles in English: the and a (an is a variant of "a" and only goes in front of a word that starts with a vowel)

Subjects and Verbs

A sentence requires a SUBJECT and a VERB. The subject is the person or thing that is DOING something. What they are doing is the verb.

"Ms. Feekes laughed." My subject here is "Ms. Feekes" and the action/verb is "laughed". That is pretty easy to figure out in a short sentence like this!

"The cow jumped over the moon." This sentence is a bit longer, but I can still tell that the cow is the subject and it is jumping.

Here is a more challenging one:

"Her biggest fear of all time is losing her lucky pen."

In order to correctly identify the subject, I have to look at all of my nouns (person, place, thing). It is important to note that "her" here is not a noun -- this is a pronoun. A pronoun can still be a subject!

"Her biggest fear of all time is losing her lucky pen."

I have quite a few possible subjects... Now I need to identify any actions. I see the remaining words are "biggest", "of", "all", "is", "losing", and "lucky". I know that the words "biggest" and "lucky" are adjectives, so they are out.

"Her biggest fear of all time is losing her lucky pen."

Now I am going to go back to my possible subjects. "Her" is not really doing anything, so that is out. "Fear" here is actually doing something... it is existing. "Is" is actually a verb -- it is called a linking verb. A linking verb connects a subject to a description. The subject "fear" is described as "losing her lucky pen", and the linking verb "is" connects those together.

My subject is "fear" and my verb is "is".

A complete sentence (with a subject and a verb) is called an independent clause. Think of them like an adult -- they are on their own and do not need any help!

An incomplete sentence (a sentence that is missing either a subject or a verb, OR a sentence that does not express a complete thought) is called a dependent clause. Think of these like a child who is dependent on someone in order to survive! These dependent clauses need some help in order to "survive"!

Now that we know what independent and dependent clauses are, we can look at specific sentence structures.

Sentence Structures

• Simple sentences are pretty easy! You just make sure that you have a subject and a verb. This should be ONE independent clause.

• Compound sentences can be a little tricky. You can have two or more independent clauses, but they should be joined with a comma and a conjunction (FANBOYS). Look below -- I will make the independent clauses BLUE.

  • • "Mary was out of milk, so she went to the store."

    • "We went to the mall; however, we only went window shopping." This one is tricky because we used a SUBORDINATING CONJUNCTION (AAAWWUBBIS) instead of a coordinating conjunction. We used a semicolon and a comma to do this.

    • "A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on." This time I am making a list, so I needed the conjunction at the last complete thought.

• A complex sentence joins an independent clause with one or more dependent clauses.

  • • "Tom cried because the ball hit him."

      • • "Tom cried" is a complete thought. "Because the ball hit him" is a dependent clause because it couldn't stand by itself as a complete sentence.

        • I could change the sentence to: "Because the ball hit him, Tom cried." You can put the dependent clause first if it has an "introductory phrase".

• A compound-complex combines two or more independent clauses with one or more dependent clauses.

  • • "Tom cried because the ball hit him, and I apologized immediately."

What could go wrong?

If you do not follow sentence structure rules, you will create a run-on, comma splice, or fragment.

• A fragment is an umbrella term for anything that is incomplete. "After the game" is a fragment. After the game what???

• Run-on sentences are when two or more sentences are connected incorrectly. If you read through a "sentence" without pausing (there are no commas/periods) and you run out of breath... that's a run-on.

• A comma splice happens when you connect two independent clauses with a comma, but NO FANBOYS!