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A Brief Review of the Parts of SpeechYou probably already know more grammar than you think you do! Remember this poem from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland? 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe[.] What on earth? We can analyze it! There are two "sentences" here: 1) 'Twas brillig; 2) The slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe. If we parse (analyze) the first, we get Subject: "it," Verb: "was." Cool! "'Twas" is a complete sentence! If we parse the second, we get Subject: "toves," Verb: "did gyre" and "did gimble." "Brillig" and "slithy" are adjectives; "in the wabe" is a prepositional phrase; "and" is a coordinating conjunction joining the two sentences. Very cool. How do they do that? English is an SVO language. That means Subject-Verb-Object and refers to word order. Subjects and objects are nouns, whereas verbs are . . . you guessed it! verbs. A complete sentence in English requires a subject and a complete verb. A sentence can also be called a "clause." A complete simple sentence is an independent clause. The couplet above contains two independent clauses. Noun: a person, place, or thing. A noun can be abstract or concrete. "Dog" is a concrete noun; yours might be yellow with a wet nose and a fluffy tail. "Honor" is also a noun, but it's abstract; you can't smell it or touch it. Verb: the action of a sentence. "Run," "kick," and "swim" are verbs; they are things you can do. But "be" and "think" are also verbs. Note: an infinitive always has "to" at the front of it: to do, to be, to go, to fight, to pontificate. But an infinitive can never be the main verb of a sentence. Adjective: modifies a noun: furry cat, big yaller dog, noisy kids, convoluted thoughts, extraordinary idea. Adverb: modifies everything except a noun. (Note: adverbs don't just modify verbs!) Adverbs often end in "ly" in English. swim fast, understand thoroughly, read well but also: pretty big allowance quite large swimming pool There are adverbs of place and time: back then, over there. Preposition: those little words that locate things. Imagine a desk. Prepositions locate things with reference to that desk, in both concrete and abstract ways: to the desk, over the desk, of the desk, under it, beside it, in it, etc. Tip: if you cross out all the prepositional phrases in a sentence, you're typically left with not much more than Subject, Verb, Object. For example: I hurried "I" is the subject; "hurried" is the verb. Conjunction: is a joining word. There are two kinds: a) coordinating. There are exactly 7 of these in English: for and nor but or yet so. You can remember these with the word FANBOYS. b) subordinating. There are many of these, too many to list; but some examples are as follows: when, because, since, while, if, etc. Subordinating conjunctions create a sense of expectancy, and they make one clause dependent on another. Note: Coordinating conjunctions can only go between things like nouns or clauses. For example: I was angry, but you were only sad. NOT: But you were only sad, I was angry. Subordinating conjunctions can come at the beginning of sentences, which makes them very flexible. For example: Because you seemed anxious, I came early. S V S V dependent clause independent clause OR: I came early, because you seemed anxious. |
