Language Study: Sentence Patterns

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1 Language Study: Sentence Patterns Mastery of the English language allows you to understand most of the sentences that you read in a story such as The Phantom Dog Team. All these sentences contain the basic aspects of a sentence a verb, its subject, its object or completer, and some qualifies. Read and think about the following sentence and then try to answer the questions about it: The young trapper quickly caught and skinned a muskrat. 1. Who caught what? 2. When did it happen? Yesterday? Today? Not yet? 3. What was caught? What was skinned? Did the catching and skinning happen to the same object? 4. How many trappers were there? How many muskrat? 5. Who is telling about this action? The trapper or someone else? 6. Who was young? The muskrat or the trapper? 7. What does the word and in the sentence tell us?

2 Consider the following questions and the sentences that follow the. Answer all the questions about each sentence and tell how we know the answer by pointing to specific words and clues in each sentence. Do this on a separate sheet of paper. Questions: 1. Who is doing what to whom? 2. When does the action occur? 3. How many actors and how many receivers-of-action are there? 4. What words are qualified or described by other words? 5. How do you know which words are qualified? Sentences: 1. The tired trapper quickly crossed the lake. 2. The wind chilled him. 3. The trapper traded his furs. 4. He quickly fed his hungry team. 5. He slowly drank his hot tea. What happens when words are scrambled in English sentences? Consider: his closed pack he, deeply snow the heavy drifted, and the hungry barked loudly dog forest in a. Because of your understanding of English sentences, you can make sense of, create, and build on the basic sentence pattern of the English language. The action being performed in a sentence is the verb (V). The person or ting performing the action is the subject (S). Other than in commands (where the subject is understood) and conversation (where the listener understand the missing words), every sentence you create should have subject and a verb and be built on one of the basic three sentence patterns use in the English language: S-V S-V-O S-LV-C

3 Pattern 1 Sentences: S-V The first sentence type contains just two main element or key words a verb (V) and a subject (S). It is used to get across the basic idea that someone (who) or something (what) did something (the verb). Additional words (qualifiers) are added to give more information about the key words (and to answer questions like: Which one(s)? Whose? How many? What kind? When? Where? How? Why? Because a sentence can have many words but is built around the verb, it is best to try to identify the verb (the doing word). What questions from the list above are answered in the following sentences? Wolves howled. Hungry wolves howled loudly. Snowflakes fell. Snowflakes fell here. Snowflakes fell on the team. Heavy frost came early. Heavy frost came in the fall. Winds from the ocean blew toward the land. The weary trapper arrived at home in the early evening.

4 Pattern 2 Sentences: S-V-O The second type of sentence must have three main parts to be complete. Besides a verb (V) and subject (S), it also contains a word called a direct object (O). This type of sentence is used when we want to report the basic idea that someone or something (S) did something (V) to someone or something else (O). Label the subject (S), verb (V), and direct object (O) in the following sentences. The hunter shot a deer. The dog bit him. The trapper raised his gun. Sometimes, additional information follows the verb. They sent a message. They sent a message to the children. They sent the children a message. The subject-verb-indirect object-direct object (S-V-IO-O) pattern lets the direct object (O) answer the questions what? or who? The trapper left the dogs some meat. He built his dogs a shelter. He tossed the lead dog a bone.

5 Pattern 3 Sentences: S-LV-C The third type of sentence is quite different from the first two, which tell what actions someone or something did. This pattern simply explains who someone is or tells what someone or something looks like. It contains subject (S), a linking verb (LV), and a complement or completer (C) that refer to the same person or thing that the subject refers to or describes the subject. The verb in these sentences links the subject to the complement or completer and is not an action verb. Common linking verbs are: am, is, are, was, were, seem, become, appear, look, feel, taste, sound, smell, grow, turn. Circle the link verbs in the sentences below and draw arrows to the words it links. 1. Bill is a trapper. 2. He is cold. 3. He is young. 4. His face is red. 5. The dogs are a team. 6. The lead dog is wolfhound 7. He is a remarkable dog. 8. The two children were undismayed. Often the basic patterns are embedded in longer sentences but contain the main idea or key idea of the sentence.

6 For each sentence below, identify which pattern it is an example of. 1. They stopped again for a brief warm-up and a snack. 2. The evening was calm and fine. 3. His was a young team. 4. He walked out through the team and stood by the cairn. 5. Nine black and white dogs trotted. 6. Bill faced his team. 7. The dogs crowded around Joe. 8. Joe hoisted a heavy sack to his shoulder.