When we think about the grammar of a
sentence, we tend to distinguish between
clauses and phrases. So phrases are
smaller units (and in fact clauses are
made up of a number of phrases), and the
other thing that distinguishes them is
that clauses always contain at least a
subject and a verb, so we need a subject
and a verb. In this video we're going to
ignore phrases for the most part, and
we're going to look instead at how
clauses have different patterns
typically that allow us to distinguish
them. So you don't have to memorize all
these patterns necessarily, but just
going through them and spending a bit of
time with them may help you figure out
how particular clauses are constituted.
So let's get started and give some
examples of all of these patterns. We'll
start here with our basic subject and
verb. So let's just pick a subject: "she,"
and then we'll give a verb: "smiled,"
and we have a sentence. But
we can also use a passive verb. So this
is where the action happens to the
subject. And let's make this into a
little love story here: "he sees her and
he was struck," and then we'll
add a little phrase here: "by Cupid's
dart." So this last bit is just a little
prepositional phrase--it's not part of
the core of the sentence, but we have our
core here: subject, "he" and "was struck," now
you can see that the action happens to
him as opposed to him doing the action.
So now it's going to get a little
bit more complicated here. We're going to
add a direct object, so we'll go back to
our first pattern and just pick a
regular verb. And let's write, "he (there's
our subject) bought (he's a romantic fellow)
some roses." So in this case, the
verb is "bought," and it takes an object--
bought who or what? Some roses. And now
we have a more complex clause. Let's go
on to the next one.
So in this case we're going to add
something new. We still have our direct
object, but we're going to add an
indirect object. So here's our
sentence: "he gave the roses." So "the
roses" is the direct object--this is what
receives the action of the verb. And now
the roses are going somewhere--they're
going to her. So, "he gave the roses to her."
And the indirect object always has to do
with "for" or "to." So the direct object is,
in a sense, sent somewhere--it has an
indirect object, a kind of second object
that receives the action. Let's go
on to something a little bit different
here, and we're going to use a
linking verb this time. So we'll write,
"she (there's our subject) seemed." And when
you have a linking verb, you can describe
the subject in a different way, so a
linking verb is a bit like an equal sign.
"She seemed," and then we have two
possibilities for subject complements--
it's either going to be a noun, or it's
going to be an adjective. So let's just
say, "she seemed pleased," and "pleased" here
is an adjective and it describes "she." But
we can also use a noun. So let's just
change it a little bit--we'll write, "he
was a happy man." And
you can see now that "man" is a noun.
There's some modifiers here as well, but
the main thing here is that
"man" is a noun. So those are our two
options then if we use this pattern. If
we use a linking verb followed by a
subject complement, then this last little
bit is just going to be a noun or an
adjective that describes the subject.
Two more here, and you can see that
we're making good progress. So in this
case we're going to use an object
complement, and this object complement is
going to describe the direct object. So
let's write, "he soon
called (called is our verb; soon is just
an adverb) her." And you can
see this is our direct object--he
called somebody, so he called "her." And now
we're going to describe her, so we're
going to say, "his sweetheart." And you can
see that "sweetheart" becomes a
description of "her," and that's our object
compliment. The same thing that we had
before for the subject complement
applies here too. So our object
complement is going to be a noun or an
adjective--the same kind of rule applies.
And you can see that "sweetheart" is a
noun, but we can use an adjective as well.
So you could say, for instance, "everyone
(there's our subject) thought (there's our
verb) them (direct object) cute (there's
our adjective, which is the object
complement, and it's describing 'them.')" One
final pattern that we'll finish with here,
and this is where we have an inverted
kind of sentence. And that happens quite
often if you use "there" or "it" to start
your sentence. So if you say, for instance,
"it was"--there's our linking verb (these
inverted sentences often use a linking
verb), and then we have, "a great match," and
"match" is our subject. "It was a great
match." The subject comes later in this
sentence, and that seems a bit
weird, but that's quite common with this
pattern. So those are your basic patterns
for how clauses are formed. And you can
see now that, even though they all have a
subject and a verb, we can see some
different ways to flesh things out and
to make the clause a little bit more
complex. Hopefully this helps you
recognize how clauses function. And do
the exercise on the website as well to
really get better at spotting different
patterns.