English2Easy

3. Prerequisites of the constituents of a simple sentence:

Subject The war Tourism Conditions Restoration The Chinese space ship

Verb stopped. has flourished. have changed. continues. landed.

Or

Subject Washington The Chairman of the Board The Iraqis

Verb seeks will address demand

Object world support. the first session. sovereignty.

Or

Subject The Parliament Speaker Corruption The Palestinians

Verb travelled is Fight for

Complement abroad. a major problem. self-determination.

A) The Subject:

The subject is a noun, a pronoun or a noun phrase:

Nouns: boy, girl, garden, Washington, corruption, etc.

Pronouns: I, you, he, she, it, we, they {Subject Case}.

Noun phrases: a little boy, the Iraqis, the Parliament Speaker,

etc.

The noun phrase is a group of words (two or more) with a

noun as its head, e.g.:

article A A A

intensifier very

adjective Good Good

Noun boy boy boy

In all these examples, all words serve to modify, or describe, the noun. The noun is the most important element, and so we call it the head of the noun phrase.

The modifier can also occur after the noun, e.g.:

article The

Noun boy

prepositional phrase with a big nose [preposition + noun phrase]

B) The Verb:

It comes in the 2nd place of the sentence.

It changes according to time focus and its form changes to show the time of the sentence. This form is called tense.

He I (always) I The little girl

Verb Works take have written hid

in a bank. sugar in my tea. seven essays so far. her books yesterday.

C) The Complement:

This item includes many elements that can complete the sentence. (You can choose one or more of these elements to complete the meaning of your sentence).

1. Objects: (obligatory with transitive verbs only; [explained later])

They can be nouns, pronouns or noun phrases.

My friends bought books. {noun}

Sarah also bought a book. {noun phrase}

I’ve got an extremely good book. {noun phrase}

I thanked him. {pronoun [object case]}

To know the personal pronouns in the object case, compare:

Subject I He She It We You They

Object Me Him Her It Us You Them

With the transitive verbs that take two objects there are two

kinds of objects: direct & indirect.

indirect O. direct O.

I gave my friend a book.

Note:

There is another way to write this sentence with the use of “to”:

{direct object indirect object}

I gave the book to my friend.