Lesson 1: The Basics of a Sentence
What is a Sentence?
A sentence is a group of words connected to each other by grammatical relationships, and distinguished from another group of words by punctuation. Furthermore, a sentence presents a complete thought.
In English, we can identify four necessary parts of a sentence:
- Subject
- Verb
- Capital first letter
- End mark
1. Subject
Every sentence needs a Subject (S). The subject is who or what the sentence is about. In English, subjects appear early in a sentence, often as the first word. Look at the sentence, “Birds fly.” Who or what is the sentence about? The sentence is about “birds,” and so this is its subject. When parsing a sentence (labeling its parts), we will write the role of each word above that word. For example, the subject “birds“ is labeled with a capital “S.”
2. Verb
Every sentence needs a Verb (V). We will look more closely at verbs in a few steps, but for now, let’s call a verb an action word. Here, we are looking for the verb that tells us what the subject is doing. The birds fly. The verb in our sentence is “fly.” When we parse, we will label verbs with a “V.”
3. Capital first letter
The third thing every English sentence needs is a capital first letter on the first word in the sentence.
4. End mark
And the final thing needed is an end mark: either a period (.), question mark (?), or exclamation point (!). The capital letter and end mark are signals to readers that help us quickly identify the beginning and end of a sentence (besides identifying the sentence as a question, statement, or exclamation). This might seem really obvious, but did you know that Koine Greek, which is the original language of the New Testament, had no capital letters and no punctuation...and no spaces between words, for that matter? How difficult it must have been to figure out where a sentence began or ended! The addition of capitals and punctuation makes reading much easier.
Remember: A sentence needs to be a complete thought!
“When Martha ran.” This fragment has a subject (“Martha”), a verb (“ran”), a capital letter, and an end mark, but is not a complete thought and so is not a sentence.
“First, I woke up.” This might seem like a fragment at first glance. However, it is actually a complete sentence. It has a subject (“I”), a verb (“woke up”), a capital first letter, and an end mark...and it makes a complete thought.
The Subject of a Command
All sentences will have one of four purposes. Declarative sentences make a statement, exclamatory sentences exclaim,
interrogative sentences ask questions, and imperative sentences are commands.
The subject of every command is “you.” However, in English, the “you” in a command is always implied. Let’s look at an example for clarification:
“Run!”
This sentence is only one word long, but it is a complete sentence! You can see the verb (“run”), the capital letter, the end mark, and, yes, it makes sense. But where is the subject? Who or what is the sentence about? “You!” The speaker is looking at somebody (or many somebodies) and telling them in effect, “[You] run!” However we do not say the “you” in English; rather, it is simply implied.
When parsing (labeling the role of a word in a sentence), we will indicate an implied subject of a command in the following way:
Don’t get confused with a different sentence, “You run.” This sentence is not a command; it is a statement (declarative sentence). In such a statement, there will be an explicit “you,” for the subject. Also, do not get confused with the sentence, “You, run!” This sentence is indeed a command, and there is an explicit “you”…so what is the difference? The comma after the “you,” is the difference. Don’t worry about it now; we will take a good look at this kind of sentence later. For now, just know that in English, commands always have an implicit subject of “you.”
Now that we have defined what a sentence is, let’s look at a “super sentence.”