In this video we're going to review
sentence classification, and what that
means is that sentences can be
classified as either simple, compound,
complex, or compound-complex. I think
you'll see what that means as we go
through these [sentences], but basically we're trying
to take these sentences apart and figure
out how many clauses (independent or
dependent) these sentences consist of
So let's start with our
first one here: The white part of the
Ying Yang circle is the masculine side.
You can see that we have "part" -- that's
our simple subject, and in fact all of
this together here is our complete
subject ... so "The white part of the
yin-yang circle." And then we get to our
verb in "is." So if you want to break this
up a little bit more, you could say that
this is a prepositional phrase. It tells you
a bit more about the "part" and the word
"white" is an adjective. Again, it just
modifies this word "part." So this is our
subject then, and we have a verb over
here. And it's a linking verb. A linking
verb is usually followed by what's
called a subject complement: a noun or an
adjective that describes the subject.
Here we have a noun ("side") and it just
describes our subject over here ("the part
is the side"). Now, all of this is just one
clause because every clause has one
subject and one verb ... well, you can have
multiple verbs, but you usually just have
one subject. And this one [clause] can stand by
itself as a complete sentence so we have
one independent clause. When you have
this pattern -- when there's just one
independent clause -- we call this a simple
sentence. So that's the first one. Our
second sentence reads, "After a breakfast
of bacon and eggs we went on a fox hunt
that George had organized." We have a
couple of prepositional phrases that we
start with: "after breakfast" and "of bacon
and eggs." And you can see here that "after"
and "of" -- these are the prepositions. And
then these are followed by a couple of
nouns here that are the objects of the
prepositions.
So prepositional phrases are not going
to be part of the core of our sentence,
but then we get to our independent
clause here: We went on a fox hunt. And
you can see we have a subject and a verb
("we" and "went") and another prepositional
phrase over here ("on a fox hunt"), which tells you a little bit about
where we went. So this is our independent
clause, and if you want you can actually
include all of these prepositional
phrases in our independent clause. And
then we have this little word "that," which
in this case is a relative pronoun.
It refers back to the fox hunt and it
introduces a relative clause.
A relative clause is just one type of
dependent clause, so George here is the
subject and then we have "had organized"
[which] is the verb or the verb phrase. This then
is our dependent clause, and when we
have this pattern of one independent
clause and at least one dependent clause
we call this a complex sentence. Our
third sentence reads, "His victory in the
steeplechase surprised everyone--he
hadn't trained at all." You can see here
that this sentence is really two
independent clauses, and these
independent clauses are linked by the
dash over here. Each one has its own
subject, so "his victory" is the subject
over here, and if you wanted to include
this prepositional phrase that would be
fine. And then we have the verb, "surprised"
and a direct object in "everyone." Second
one: "he" is the subject, "hadn't trained" is
the verb, and then there's a bunch of
adverbial modifiers at the end here. Alright,
so we have two independent clauses
joined here by a dash, and when we have
two independent clauses in a sentence we
call this a compound sentence.
Let's move on to our next example: "If you're
not going to try your hardest, why should
I?" When you start with this little
word "if," which is a subordinating
conjunction, you right away get a clue
that you're starting with a dependent
clause, because if you say "if this ..." --
that's not complete. You need something
afterwards that's going to complete it.
So that's our independent clause. And now
we have a subject over here in "you" (in
our dependent clause). "Going" is the verb,
which is followed by an infinitive. So
this all together I guess you could say
is the verb phrase. And then after that
we have some other stuff over here, and
we won't go into too much detail.
Then after that we have our comma and
often you have this pattern where you
have a dependent clause, comma,
independent clause, and then in our
independent clause we have our verb in
"should" ... and "I" is the subject here. Okay, so
"I should," or "why should I?" Alright,
this kind of pattern -- we've seen this
before . This is a complex sentence.
And that brings us to the last couple here,
and we'll first look at this one:
"Joshua was late to the concert because
his motor bike had a flat tire and it
took him a while to change it." First
of all, if we look at the kind of major
breaks in the sentence, we see that
"because" is a subordinating conjunction
and "and" is a coordinating conjunction,
and that lets us figure out pretty
quickly (if we just sort of scanned the
landscape here) that Joshua here --
this is our first clause. Joshua [is the]
subject, "was" is the verb, and so
on. We have a little prepositional phrase here as
well, and then our second clause here ("his
motorbike...") -- there's another subject. "Had"
is the verb, and we have a nice direct
object here. And then the last bit
here -- "it" (it's kind of hiding now) --
that's our subject, "took" is the verb and
"him" is the direct object, and then
there's some other stuff after it as
well. So if we tally this all up then
we can see that this first bit here is
an independent clause ("Joshua was late to
the concert") -- you can say that by itself.
Then we have a dependent
because we have "because his motorbike
had a flat tire" -- and we typically include
the subordinating conjunction as part of
the clause that follows. So that's
our dependent clause, and then the last
little bit ... we ignore the coordinating
conjunction in terms of figuring out if
either clause on either side
is dependent or independent, and so this
whole last bit is independent ("it took
him a while to change it"). So this pattern
then (two independent clauses and at least
one dependent clause) -- we call this
a compound-complex sentence ... pretty fancy
term! One last one, and let's see if we
can figure this one out to end with. So
the last one here reads, "She is going to
Mongolia to participate in a horse race,
so we thought we would help with the
fundraising." You can see that this
whole first part here is an independent
clause. It has a few phrases in it as
well, so "to Mongolia" is a prepositional
phrase, "to participate" is an infinitive -- it
starts an [infinitive] phrase. And then we
have another prepositional phrase here
as well, but the core of the sentence, or
at least of this clause, is "She is going."
So "she" is the subject and "is going" is
the verb phrase. Then we get to "so" and
that also is a coordinating conjunction,
one of the fanboys. Then after that
we have "we thought." "We" is the subject and
"thought" is a verb. So this is our second
independent clause. This whole first part
here is our first independent clause and
then after that there's a little word
implied here, and that word is "that." So
"that" is in this case a subordinating
conjunction, and it ties the last clause
to the previous one, because otherwise we
would have two independent clauses in a
row here. This is an
independent clause too otherwise ("we would
help with the fundraising"), and you can't
really have that. So there has to be
something that connects these two things
and
that's that little word "that." So we're just
going to assume that this is here as
well, and we're going to say that this is
actually a dependent clause (if we
include "that"). So you'll see this quite
often, that "that" is missing and is
implied. Definitely something to watch
out for! If we do classify it this way
then we have two independent clauses and
a dependent clause and this one also is a
compound-complex sentence.