Page 6 Sentence Structure
Completion requirements
Page 6 Sentences
Sentence Structure Barriers
Language is mathematical and corresponds to reality.
Taught to Talk
A child who has lived away from human contact from a very young age, and has little or no experience of human care or language will not be able to talk.
For example, a seven-year-old boy in Russia was discovered living in an apartment with his mother and dozens of birds. His mother never spoke to him. The boy chirps, but cannot speak.
| Sentence Structure | |
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What is a Sentence? |
Discussion |
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Children are born with an internal grammar sense. A child who listens to others speak will naturally learn how to structure sounds and sentences.
This child has learned that -ed goes on the end of most verbs. |
Complete Sentences
A sentence is a complete thought containing a subject (noun) and a predicate (verb).
A sentence contains the thing you are talking about (subject) and what you say about it (predicate).
The subject of an sentence can be a
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person
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place
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thing
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idea, concept, or emotion
The essential part of the predicate is the verb. Verb (from the Latin, verbum, word) is a word used to express action (sit, fight, walk, sing) or state of being (feel, seems, exists, appears).
The verb is the most important word in the sentence. Every sentence must have a verb, either expressed or understood. The verbs in the sentences below are italicized in green.
George, could you please stand as silent as the g in lasagna?
Silent as the g in lasagna, George stood.
George was standing as silent as the g in lasagna.
George cannot stand as silent as the g in lasagna.
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Self-Assessment
Click here to practice recognizing subjects and predicates. |
An
incomplete sentence or
sentence fragment often looks like a sentence, but does not contain a complete thought because either the subject or verb is missing.
Nobody is perfect and since I am nobody...
(The thought (I am perfect) is implied, but it is missing).
In the following incomplete sentences, subjects are
purple and verbs are
green.
The following sentence is missing a subject.
To make the sentence complete, you could write the following:
The following sentence is missing a subject.
finds dwarves in short supply.
To make the sentence complete, you could write the following:
Disney
finds dwarves in short supply.
The following sentence is missing a
predicate.
To make the sentence complete, you could write the following:
The
breeze rustling tops of the trees, the
feel of the wind in my hair...
To make the sentence complete, you could write the following:
The
breeze rustling tops of the trees, the
feel of the wind in my hair
is fabulous.
Some common fragments convey significant meaning:
...because I don't want to!
"No way!"
"You, too?"
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Self-Assessment Click here to practice identifying complete sentences or sentence fragments. |
Please contact your teacher if you have questions.