Subordinated clauses

Identify the type of subordinated clause (nominal, relative or adverbial) in the following sentences and mark the subordinator:

1 I wonder if you can come to my party on Saturday.

2 I like the idea that Peter is going to take up Law when he finishes secondary school.

3 I don’t understand the proposal that the board of directors presented the other day.

4 She can’t stand Joe’s behaviour, which she finds quite inappropriate.

5 They really don’t know where they could set up their business.

6 You must find a place where you can settle down and raise a family.

Simple Sentences

We have learned that a Simple Sentence is a set of words which makes complete meaning.

We also have learned that a Simple Sentence has two main parts- the Subject and the Predicate.

The Subject denotes the person or thing about which something is said.

The Predicate is what is said about the person or thing denoted by the Subject.

Examples-1:

• Dogs bark.

In this sentence, the Subject is a single word-‘dog’.

The Predicate is also a single word ‘bark’.

Example-2:

• The hour to prepare the lessons has arrived.

In this sentence, the Subject is a group of words ‘The hour to prepare lessons’.

The Predicate is also a set of words ‘has arrived’.

So the Subject may be a single word as in the Example-1 or may be a set of words as in the Example-2.

So the Predicate also may be a single word as in the Example-1 and may be a set of words as in the Example-2.

Examples:

You can find the Subjects and the Predicates in the following sentences.

• Stone walls do not make a prison.

• We heard a barking sound.

• No man can serve two masters.

• All matter is destructible.

• The cackling of geese saved Rome.

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Few sentences may have a set of words as the subject. The main subject may be qualified by an adjective.

Such an adjective is called ATTRIBUTE.

• The brooms sweep clean.
In this sentence, the subject is ‘the brooms’.

• The new brooms sweep clean.
In this sentence, an adjective ‘new’ has been added to give an attribute to the subject.

In the following sentences, the attributes are colored blue.

• Barking dogs seldom bite.

• My views are quite different.

• The Poet, Goners wrote the Shahs nook.

• The burnt child dreads the fire.

• Ill habits gather by unseen degree.

Sometimes, the verb in the predicate is an intransitive verb of incomplete Predication.

That means such a verb will require a noun or an adjective or a pronoun to make the predicate complete.

• The baby seems happy.

In the sentence, the part ‘The baby seems” does not make the sentence complete one.

In order to make the sentences complete one, the verb requires an adjective ‘happy’.

Only with the adjective, the whole sentence becomes a complete one.

Such a complement of an intransitive verb serves to describe the Subject and is therefore called SUBJECTIVE COMPLEMENT.

Examples:

In the following sentences the Subjective Complements are colored blue.

• The sky grew dark.

• The building is in a dilapidated condition.

• The house is to let.

• The man seems worried.

• Venus is a planet.

Sometimes When the Verb in the Predicate is a transitive verb, that verb may take two objects.

1. A direct Object

2. An indirect object

Look at this sentence.

• He eats.

In this sentence which is complete one, there is no object at all.

• He eats bread.

In this sentence, the verb takes object ‘bread’. The object is “bread”.

• He teaches us English.

In this sentence, the verb take two objects ‘us’ and ‘English’.

The Direct object is ‘us’ whereas the Indirect object is ‘English’.

Examples:

The following sentences have two objects (direct and indirect objects).

• My father bought me doll.

• I promised him a dinner.

• He gave us his car.

• They taught us how to swim.

Subject and Verb Agreement

Basic Rule.	The basic rule states that a singular subject takes a singular verb, while a plural subject takes a plural verb. NOTE: The trick is in knowing whether the subject is singular or plural. The next trick is recognizing a singular or plural verb.
	Hint: Verbs do not form their plurals by adding an s as nouns do. In order to determine which verb is singular and which one is plural, think of which verb you would use with he or she and which verb you would use with they.
	Example:	talks, talk Which one is the singular form? Which word would you use with he? We say, “He talks.” Therefore, talks is singular. We say, “They talk.” Therefore, talk is plural.

 

Rule 1. Two singular subjects connected by or or nor require a singular verb.   Example: My aunt or my uncle is arriving by train today.

 

Rule 2. Two singular subjects connected by either/or or neither/nor require a singular verb as in Rule 1.   Examples: Neither Juan nor Carmen is available. Either Kiana or Casey is helping today with stage decorations.

 

Rule 3. When I is one of the two subjects connected by either/or or neither/nor, put it second and follow it with the singular verb am.   Example: Neither she nor I am going to the festival.

 

Rule 4. When a singular subject is connected by or or nor to a plural subject, put the plural subject last and use a plural verb.   Example: The serving bowl or the plates go on that shelf.

 

Rule 5. When a singular and plural subject are connected by either/or or neither/nor, put the plural subject last and use a plural verb.   Example: Neither Jenny nor the others are available.

 

Rule 6. As a general rule, use a plural verb with two or more subjects when they are connected by and.   Example: A car and a bike are my means of transportation.

 

Rule 7. Sometimes the subject is separated from the verb by words such as along with, as well as, besides, or not. Ignore these expressions when determining whether to use a singular or plural verb.   Examples: The politician, along with the newsmen, is expected shortly. Excitement, as well as nervousness, is the cause of her shaking.

 

Rule 8. The pronouns each, everyone, every one, everybody, anyone, anybody, someone, and somebody are singular and require singular verbs. Do not be misled by what follows of.   Examples: Each of the girls sings well. Every one of the cakes is gone. NOTE: Everyone is one word when it means everybody. Every one is two words when the meaning is each one.

 

Rule 9. With words that indicate portions—percent, fraction, part, majority, some, all, none, remainder, and so forth —look at the noun in your of phrase (object of the preposition) to determine whether to use a singular or plural verb. If the object of the preposition is singular, use a singular verb. If the object of the preposition is plural, use a plural verb.   Examples: Fifty percent of the pie has disappeared. Pie is the object of the preposition of. Fifty percent of the pies have disappeared. Pies is the object of the preposition. One-third of the city is unemployed. One-third of the people are unemployed. NOTE: Hyphenate all spelled-out fractions. All of the pie is gone. All of the pies are gone. Some of the pie is missing. Some of the pies are missing.     None of the garbage was picked up.     None of the sentences were punctuated correctly.     Of all her books, none have sold as well as the first one.

Words

The notion of  ‘word’ is complex, and so it is useful to identify a number of slightly different senses of ‘word’:

• Orthographic words: these are the words that we are familiar with in written language, where they are separated by spaces.  For example, They wrote us a letter contains 5 distinct orthographic words.
• Grammatical words: A word falls into one grammatical word class (or ‘part of speech’) or another. Thus the orthographic word leaves can be either of two grammatical words: a verb (the present tense -s form of leave) or a noun (the plural of leaf).
• Lexemes: this is a set of grammatical words which share the same basic meaning, similar forms, and the same word class. For example, leave, leaves, left and leaving are all members of the verb lexeme leave. this is the meaning of ‘word’ that is employed in dictionaries.

Major families of words

A Lexical words

• Lexical words are the main carriers of information in a text or speech act.
• They can be subdivided into the following word classes (or parts of speech): nouns, lexical verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
• Of all the word families, lexical words are the most numerous, and their number is growing all the time. In other words, they are members of open classes.
• They often have a complex internal structure and can be composed of several parts: e.g. unfriendliness = un+friend+li+ness.
• Lexical words can be heads of phrases: e.g. the noun completion is the head (or main word) of the noun phrase the completion of the task.
• They are generally the words that are stressed most in speech.
• They are generally the words that remain if  a sentence is compressed in a newspaper headline.

B Function words

• Function words can be categorized in terms of word classes such as prepositions, coordinators, auxiliary verbs and pronouns.
• They usually indicate meaning relationships and help us to interpret units containing lexical words, by showing how the units are related to each other.
• Function words belong to closed classes, which have a very limited and fixed membership. For example, English had only four coordinators: and, or, but, and (rarely) nor.
• Individual function words tend to occur frequently, and in almost any type of text.

C  Inserts

• Inserts are found mainly in spoken language.
• Inserts do not form an integral part of a syntactic structure, but tend to be inserted freely in a text.
• They are often marked off by a break in intonation in speech, or by a punctuation mark in writing: e.g. Well, we made it.
• They generally carry emotional and discoursal meanings, such as oh, ah, wow, used to express a speaker’s emotional response to a situation, or yeah, no, okay, used to signal a response to what has just been said.
• Inserts are generally simple in form, though they often have an atypical pronunciation (e.g. hm, uh-huh, ugh, yeah). Examples are: Hm hm, very good (conv), Yeah, I will. Bye. (conv), Cheers man. (conv)

Learn Syntax

Definition Syntax is the grammatical arrangement of words in a sentence. It concerns both word order and agreement in the relationship between words. Syntax is primarily concerned with structure of sentences. Examples The following statements follow normal English word order: The cat sat on the mat. My old brown leather suitcase. The following statements do not follow normal English word order: The cat on the mat sat. My brown leather old suitcase. Use Word order is very important in English, because the language is no longer inflected. That is, individual words do not have endings to show which parts of speech they represent. Changes to conventional synatx are often used to create dramatic, poetic, or comic effect. For instance, poets and song lyricists often change syntactic order to create rhythmic effects: “I’ll sing to him, each spring to him And long for the day when I’ll cling to him, Bewitched, bothered and bewildered am I.” [COLE PORTER] A normal sentence in English usually contains at least three elements: subject, verb, and object. Subject Verb Object The cat eats the goldfish John likes football Mary chose the wallpaper Every language has rules of syntax, and to the linguist the essential rules are descriptive. They are the rules which underpin the life of the language and which are extremely slow to change. These are not to be confused with the presecriptive ‘rules’ of traditional grammar [For instance, ‘Never end a sentence with a preposition’]. An example of a descriptive rule of English syntax is that in the imperative in English, the verb takes the initial position in the sentence, usually directly before the noun which is the object. Put those books on the table. Take the lid off after half an hour. Remove all packaging before heating the soup. Isolate the switch in case of fault. It is important to make a distinction between grammar and syntax, and to realise that syntax is a component of grammar. The term ‘grammar’ refers to the whole structure of the language including the naming of its parts, its rules of tense, and its sound system. It is a comprehensive term. Syntax only refers to the relationship between the grammatical components of language in use. In other words it is the nature, quality or type of relationship between terms in any given statement which is the province of syntax. The construction of the passive voice is a syntactic issue, as it involves word order. The following statement is in the passive voice: A woman was run over in central London today by a vehicle travelling at high speed. If we transfer this to the active voice, we have: A vehicle travelling at high speed ran over a woman in central London today. The semantic content is similar in the two statements, but the emphasis is changed according to whether it is expressed as active or passive. The difference between the two versions is dependent on the positioning of the subject and the object in the sentence. In the passive version, the object takes the initial position. This is a syntactic principle.