yOu muSt knoW>>>>>
This is a summary of the 8 parts of speech:
part of speech
|
function or "job"
|
example words
|
example sentences
|
|
action or state
|
(to) be, have, do, like, work, sing, can, must
|
EnglishClub.com is a
web site. I like
EnglishClub.com.
|
|
Thing,
person,places and ideas
|
pen,
dog, work, music, town, London, teacher, John
|
This
is my dog. He lives in my house. We live in London.
|
|
describes a noun
|
a/an, the, 69, some, good, big, red, well, interesting
|
My dog is big. I like big dogs.
|
|
describes
a verb, adjective or adverb
|
quickly,
silently, well, badly, very, really
|
My
dog eats quickly. When he is very hungry, he eats really quickly.
|
|
replaces a noun
|
I, you, he, she, some
|
Tara is Indian. She is
beautiful.
|
|
links
a noun to another word
|
to,
at, after, on, but
|
We
went to school on Monday.
|
|
joins clauses or sentences or words
|
and, but, when
|
I like dogs and I like
cats. I like cats and dogs. I
like dogs but I don't like cats.
|
|
short
exclamation, sometimes inserted into a sentence
|
oh!,
ouch!, hi!, well
|
Ouch! That hurts! Hi! How are you? Well,
I don't know.
|
sentense
§ Simple
§ Compound
§
Complex
Experienced
writers use a variety of sentences to make their writing interesting and
lively. Too many simple sentences, for example, will sound choppy and immature
while too many long sentences will be difficult to read and hard to understand.
This page contains definitions of
simple, compound, and complex sentences with many simple examples. The
purpose of these examples is to help the ESL/EFL learner to identify sentence
basics including identification of sentences in the short quizzes that
follow. After that, it will be possible to analyze more complex
sentences varieties.
SIMPLE SENTENCE
A simple sentence, also called an
independent clause, contains a subject and a verb, and it expresses a complete
thought. In the following simple sentences, subjects are in yellow, and verbs
are in green.
A. Some students
like to study in the mornings.
B. Juan
and Arturo play football every afternoon.
C. Alicia
goes to the library and studies every day.
|
The three examples above are all simple
sentences. Note that sentence B contains a compound subject, and sentence
C contains a compound verb. Simple sentences, therefore, contain a
subject and verb and express a complete thought, but they can also contain a
compound subjects or verbs.
COMPOUND SENTENCE
A compound sentence contains two
independent clauses joined by a coordinator. The coordinators are as follows: for,
and, nor, but, or, yet, so. (Helpful hint: The first letter of each of the
coordinators spells FANBOYS.) Except for very short sentences,
coordinators are always preceded by a comma. In the following compound
sentences, subjects are in yellow, verbs are in green, and the coordinators and
the commas that precede them are in red.
A. I tried to speak Spanish, and my friend tried to speak English.
B. Alejandro
played football, so Maria went shopping.
C. Alejandro
played football, for Maria went shopping.
|
The above three sentences are compound
sentences. Each sentence contains two independent clauses, and they are
joined by a coordinator with a comma preceding it. Note how the conscious
use of coordinators can change the relationship between the clauses.
Sentences B and C, for example, are identical except for the
coordinators. In sentence B, which action occurred first?
Obviously, "Alejandro played football" first, and as a consequence,
"Maria went shopping. In sentence C, "Maria went shopping"
first. In sentence C, "Alejandro played football" because,
possibly, he didn't have anything else to do, for or because
"Maria went shopping." How can the use of other coordinators
change the relationship between the two clauses? What implications would
the use of "yet" or "but" have on the meaning of the
sentence?
COMPLEX SENTENCE
A complex sentence has an independent
clause joined by one or more dependent clauses. A complex sentence always has a
subordinator such as because, since, after, although, or when or
a relative pronoun such as that, who, or which. In the following
complex sentences, subjects are in yellow, verbs are in green, and the
subordinators and their commas (when required) are in red.
A. When he handed in his homework, he forgot to give the teacher the last page.
B. The teacher returned the homework after she noticed
the error.
C. The students are studying because
they have
a test tomorrow.
D. After they
finished studying, Juan and Maria went
to the movies.
E. Juan and Maria went to the movies after they
finished studying.
|
When a complex sentence begins with a
subordinator such as sentences A and D, a comma is required at the end of the
dependent clause. When the independent clause begins the sentence with
subordinators in the middle as in sentences B, C, and E, no comma is required.
If a comma is placed before the subordinators in sentences B, C, and E, it is
wrong.
Note that sentences D and E are the
same except sentence D begins with the dependent clause which is followed by a
comma, and sentence E begins with the independent clause which contains no
comma. The comma after the dependent clause in sentence D is required,
and experienced listeners of English will often hear a slight
pause there. In sentence E, however, there will be no pause when the
independent clause begins the sentence.
COMPLEX SENTENCES / ADJECTIVE CLAUSES
Finally, sentences containing adjective
clauses (or dependent clauses) are also complex because they contain an
independent clause and a dependent clause. The subjects, verbs, and
subordinators are marked the same as in the previous sentences, and in these
sentences, the independent clauses are also underlined.
A.
The woman
who(m) my
mom talked to sells cosmetics.
B. The book that Jonathan
read is on the shelf.
C. The house which AbrahAM Lincoln was born in is still standing.
D. The town where I grew up is
in the United States.
|
Adjective Clauses are studied in this site separately, but
for now it is important to know that sentences containing adjective clauses are
complex.
“The Structure of a Sentence”
Remember that
every clause
is, in a sense, a miniature sentence.
A simple sentences contains only a single clause, while a compound sentence, a
complex sentence, or a compound-complex sentence contains at least two clauses.
The most
basic type of sentence is the simple sentence, which
contains only one clause. A simple sentence can be as short as one word:
Run!
Usually,
however, the sentence has a subject
as well as a predicate
and both the subject and the predicate may have modifiers.
All of the following are simple sentences, because each contains only one
clause:
Melt!
Ice melts.
The ice melts quickly.
The ice on the river melts quickly under the warm
March sun.
Lying exposed without its blanket of snow, the ice on the river melts
quickly under the warm March sun.
As you can
see, a simple sentence can be quite long -- it is a mistake to think that you
can tell a simple sentence from a compound sentence or a complex sentence
simply by its length.
The most
natural sentence structure is the simple sentence: it is the first kind which
children learn to speak, and it remains by far the most common sentence in the
spoken language of people of all ages. In written work, simple sentences can be
very effective for grabbing a reader's attention or for summing up an argument,
but you have to use them with care: too many simple sentences can make your
writing seem childish.
When you do
use simple sentences, you should add transitional phrases to connect them to
the surrounding sentences.
Simple
Canada is a rich country.
Simple
Still, it has many poor people.
Compound
Canada is a rich country, but still it
has many poor people.
Compound sentences
are very natural for English speakers -- small children learn to use them early
on to connect their ideas and to avoid pausing (and allowing an adult to
interrupt):
Today at school Mr. Moore brought in his pet rabbit, and he showed
it to the class, and I got to pet it, and Kate held it, and we coloured
pictures of it, and it ate part of my carrot at lunch, and ...
Of course,
this is an extreme example, but if you over-use compound sentences in written
work, your writing might seem immature.
A compound
sentence is most effective when you use it to create a sense of balance or
contrast between two (or more) equally-important pieces of information:
Montéal has better clubs, but Toronto
has better cinemas.
There are two
special types of compound sentences which you might want to note. First, rather
than joining two simple sentences together, a co-ordinating conjunction
sometimes joins two complex sentences, or one simple sentence and one complex
sentence. In this case, the sentence is called a compound-complex
sentence:
compound-complex
The package arrived in the morning,
but the courier left before I could check the contents.
The second
special case involves punctuation.
It is possible to join two originally separate sentences into a compound
sentence using a semicolon
instead of a co-ordinating conjunction:
Sir John A. Macdonald had a serious drinking problem; when sober, however, he could be a formidable
foe in the House of Commons.
Usually, a conjunctive
adverb like "however" or "consequently" will appear
near the beginning of the second part, but it is not required:
The sun rises in the east; it sets in the west.
A complex sentence contains one independent clause and at least one dependent
clause. Unlike a compound sentence, however, a complex sentence contains
clauses which are not equal. Consider the following examples:
Simple
My friend invited me to a party. I do not want to go.
Compound
My friend invited me to a party, but I do not want to go.
Complex
Although my friend invited me to a party, I do not want to go.
In the first
example, there are two separate simple sentences: "My friend invited me to
a party" and "I do not want to go." The second example joins
them together into a single sentence with the co-ordinating conjunction
"but," but both parts could still stand as independent sentences --
they are entirely equal, and the reader cannot tell which is most important. In
the third example, however, the sentence has changed quite a bit: the first
clause, "Although my friend invited me to a party," has become incomplete,
or a dependent clause.
A complex
sentence is very different from a simple sentence or a compound sentence
because it makes clear which ideas are most important. When you write
My friend invited me to a party. I do not want to go.
or even
My friend invited me to a party, but I do not want to go.
The reader
will have trouble knowing which piece of information is most important to you.
When you write the subordinating
conjunction "although" at the beginning of the first clause,
however, you make it clear that the fact that your friend invited you is less
important than, or subordinate, to the fact that you do not want to go.