COMBINING SENTENCES

Simple sentences

Most of the sentences we’ve looked at so far are simple sentences, which means that they are sentences that are made up of just one sentence. But sentences can be made up of more than one sentence. Let’s start by looking at a few sentences and comparing them.

1. The little boy laughed.

2. The little boy laughed and the little girl smiled.

3. The little boy laughed and the little girl smiled and their dog ran around in circles.

 

You can see that sentence 2 consists of two sentences joined by and and that sentence 3 consists of three sentences joined by and. Each of the sentences that make up a larger sentence is called a clause. So sentence 1 contains one clause, sentence 2 contains two clauses, and sentence 3 contains three clauses. Just as words combine to form phrases, phrases combine to form clauses, and clauses can combine to form sentences. A clause must contain at least a noun phrase functioning as the subject and a main verb.

 

Quick tip

A clause is a free-standing sentence or a sentence within a sentence; a clause or sentence contains at least a subject and a main verb.

 

Quick tip

A sentence can contain one or more clauses.

 

Here are some more examples of sentences containing only one clause:

4. That magazine looks interesting.

5. The officer followed the rules.

6. She greeted me at the door.

Notice that each contains only one subject and one verb phrase.

 

Quick tip

A sentence that contains only one clause, that is, one subject and one verb phrase, is called a simple sentence.

 

Are the following simple sentences?

7. on the floor

8. the extremely tall boy

9. were reading newspapers on the train

None of these contains both a subject and a verb phrase, and so these are not sentences at all; they’re just phrases. You may recognize sentence 7 as a preposition phrase, sentence 8 as a noun phrase, and sentence 9 as a verb phrase.

 

Answers

 

Answers

What about sentences like the following?

10.That magazine and those books look interesting.

11.The officer and his men followed the rules.

12. She and her husband greeted me at the door.

 

The underlined part of each sentence is a compound noun phrase and is considered to be one subject. So, these sentences are all simple sentences. The same thing is true of compound verb phrases:

Is true of compound verb phrases:

13. That magazine looks and seems interesting.

14. The officer followed the rules and saved the day.

15. She met and greeted me at the door.

 

The underlined parts of sentences 13-15 are compound verb phrases and each is considered to be one verb phrase. So, again, these sentences are all simple sentences.

الاكثر قراءة في Sentences

Sentences with relative clauses

Compound sentences

THE FUNCTIONS OF SENTENCES Identifying sentences by function

GETTING STARTED WITH SENTENCES

Positive and negative sentences

COMBINING SENTENCES Simple sentences

RELATED SENTENCES Looking at related sentences

Phrases and phrasal categories

Compound-complex sentences

Tree diagrams: representing the constituents of a clause Phrase Structure diagrams

Active and passive sentences

Complex sentences

Phrase Structure rules

Simple sentences and propositions

Syntactic categories

اخر الاخبار

اخبار العتبة العباسية المقدسة

سماحة السيد الصافي يكرم عددًا من عوائل الشهداء ضمن فعاليات مهرجان روح النبوة النسوي العالمي الثامن

إحدى أمهات الشهداء: نعتز بتضحيات أبنائنا ونفتخر بشهادتهم دفاعًا عن الدين والمقدسات

ضمن فعاليات مهرجان روح النبوة… عرض فيلم يوثق نشاطات الشعب النسوية في العتبة العباسية المقدسة

فعاليات مهرجان روح النبوة الثقافي تشهد تقديم أوبريت الثقلين القرآني

المزيد

الآخبار الصحية

ماذا يحدث لجسمك عند تناول الوجبات السريعة يوميا؟

لصحة عظام المرأة.. الشاي أفضل أم القهوة؟

لبناء العضلات وإنقاص الوزن.. ما أفضل توقيت لتناول البيض؟

أطعمة صحية تساعد على التعافي من "الإنفلونزا الخارقة"

المزيد

الآخبار التكنلوجية

دراسة تكشف قدرة الحيتان على سماع الأصوات منخفضة وعالية التردد من مسافة بعيدة

تجربة جديدة: الأسفلت المدعوم بالطحالب يقاوم الحفر ويقلل الانبعاثات الكربونية

تسريبات تكشف ملامح أول هاتف قابل للطي من "أبل"

رصد نوع نادر من القطط في تايلاند للمرة الأولى منذ عقود

المزيد

مواضيع ذات صلة

Case and agreement Conclusion

Case

English NP structure (continued)

Recursive rules

Adjectives and Adjective Phrases (AP)

Complements and adjuncts of N

Lexical entries and well-formed clauses Conclusion

Further notes on English Phrase Structure

Uniqueness of oblique arguments

Well-formedness conditions

Subcategorization

Selectional restrictions