What is a Sentence?
What is a Sentence?
A sentence is a group of words that expresses a complete idea.
It always contains a verb.
A sentence almost always contains a noun or a pronoun. (The exceptions are “imperative” sentences, but we’ll hear more about them soon).
It technical terms a sentence contains a “subject” (the noun or pronoun) and a “predicate” (everything else).
A written sentence starts with a capital letter.
It ends with a full stop, a question mark or an exclamation mark.
Here are some examples of simple sentences:
- He ran.
- The girl won a prize.
- They are watching TV.
- Is it time for school?
- Eat your breakfast!
There are four sentence forms:
Declaration (or Statement). It tells us something:
- Today is Thursday.
Question (or Interrogative). It asks us something:
- Did you see the film?
Command (or Imperative). It tells us to do something:
- Sit down!
Here there is no noun to act as a subject. But the subject is “understood” or “implied” – (You) sit down!
Exclamation (or Exclamatory). It expresses surprise or a strong opinion:
- You hurt me!
So far we have looked at “simple” sentences. They contain just one main clause. When a sentence has two main clauses we call it a “compound” sentence:
- I was tired so I went to bed.
- Are you coming with me or are you staying at home?
- Mum wanted me to do my homework but I wanted to go out.
Notice that we use particular words to join the main clauses together. We call these “connectives”. Connectives include: so, but, and, or, yet and however.
When a sentence has one main clause and one or more minor (or “subordinate” clause), we say it is a “complex” sentence. In the following examples, the main clause is in bold and the subordinate clause is in italics:
- You should work harder if you want to earn more money.
- He was late because his train was delayed.
- When I visited him, he was looking much better.
We’ll look again at subordinate clauses in another post.
See here for a basic introduction to sentences, clauses and phrases.
Posted by Graham
