Universidade Estadual da Paraíba – UEPB

Centro de Educação – CEDUC II - Departamento de Letras e ArtesCurso de Letras - Habilitação: Língua Inglesa Componente Curricular: Redação em Língua Inglesa Professora: Telma S. F. Ferreira Ano: 2011.2

Sentences, Clauses and Phrases

Telma Ferreira – telmasff@hotmail.com

Parts of Speech

Verb

Noun

Adjective

Adverb

Pronoun

Preposition

Conjunction

Basic Grammar Terminology

Function

Refers to an action or state

Refers to things or people.

Describes a noun

Describes a verb, an adjective or adverb

Replaces a noun

Links a noun to a word

Joins clauses or words

Example

John explains the grammar.The students are interested.

My friend presented a seminar.

This subject is easy.

Our teacher speaks slowly a very important subject.

She give us time to take some notes.

The data show is on the desk.

I´ve made some questions and the teacher answered.

What Makes a Sentence?

Subject = noun or pronoun that does an action or experiences a state of being

Verb =

expresses the action or “state”of the subject

Object = noun or pronoun that receives the action of the verb

John explained the grammar.

This is also a sentence …

Subject Verb Complement

A complement is a great deal like an object, but it differs in that it does not “receive” the action of a verb. Instead it “is” the subject.

Complements can be nouns or adjectives. The key to understand them is to identify the verbs that they follow.

The students were interested.

Subject = noun or pronoun that does an action or experiences a state of being

Verb = expresses

the action or “state”of the subject

Adverbial = adverb or group of words that tells where, when, why or how the verb happened.

And this is a sentence as well.

John was in the classroom.

John was a student last year.

John reads English texts quickly.

John went to New York to visit his aunt.

More adverbial examples

S + V / O / C / A

So, we can symbolize the basic components of a sentence in the following way:

Where: S = subject (a noun or pronoun that does an action)V = verb (the action itself)/ = “optional” some verbs do not need an O, C or A O = object (a noun or pronoun that receives an action)C = complement (an adjective or noun that is the subject)A = adverbial (an adverbial that tells more about the action)

Sentence components

Is this a sentence?

The students were interested while John explained the grammar.

John spoke English

Subject

Verb

Object

We have the original subject John with its verb spoke and its object English

But the sentence continues with a second subject, this time he, a second verb, explained and a second object, the grammar.

while he explained the grammar

Our one sentence is basically two “mini” sentences hooked together by the word while.

“Mini” sentences, units of S+V/O,C,A, within a sentence are called clauses.

Clause

John spoke English while he explained the grammar

John spoke English while he explained the grammar.

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Clause

After studying, John spoke English while he explained the grammar.

In addition to the two clauses we are familiar with, this sentence has the added words after studying. These work together to give extra information about the clauses, but they do not form a clause. They form a phrase.

One way to define a phrase is to say it is a group of words that “belong together” in terms of meaning but do not have both a subject and a verb.

Phrase = a group of words that acts like one word

Phrase S + V

Another way to define a phrase is to think of how it works within a sentence. When you think of a phrase this way, you can define it as:

Phrase

• Prepositional phrase with a preposition as head (after studying)

• Noun phrase with a noun as head (the grammar)

• Verb phrase with a verb as head (spoke English; explained the grammar)

• Adjective phrase with an adjective as head (easiest part)

• Adverbial phrase with adverb as head (very carefully)

Types of Phrases

Types of Phrases

After studying, John spoke English while he explained the easiest part of the grammar very carefully.

Types of Phrases

Prepositional phrase

Adverb phrase

Noun phrase

Adjectivephrase

Verb phrase

My

My teacher

My friend taught us grammar

My teacher taught us grammar

because we needed to improve our English.

Word

Phrase

Clause

Sentence

Summarizing

Exercise

Identify the phrases, clauses and sentences bellow.

1. Across the Universe2. I Feel Fine3. She Loves You4. In My Life5. While My Guitar Gently Weeps6. I Want to Hold Your Hand7. A Hard Day’s Night8. Till There Was You9. I Saw Her Standing There10. All My Loving11. When I Get Home12. Lonesome Tears in My Eyes13. I Call Your Name14. When I’m Sixty-four15. The Long and Winding Road

1. phrase2. sentence/main clause3. sentence/main clause4. phrase5. dependent clause6. sentence/main clause7. phrase8. dependent clause9. sentence/main clause10. phrase11. dependent clause12. phrase13. sentence/main clause14. dependent clause15. phrase

Reference

-EASTWOOD, John. Oxford Guide to English Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.-THOMSON, A. J. and MARTINET, A.V. English Grammar 2nd Edition. London: Oxford University Press, 1974. -Site: http://www.google.com.br/#hl=pt-BR&source=hp&q=sentence%2C+clause%2C+phrase&oq=sentence%2C+clause%2C+phrase&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=2211l7096l0l7314l24l15l0l0l0l0l813l1366l5-1.1l2l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=b0bbe684c0ba1d3a&biw=1024&bih=677. Accessed on 13/08/11.