Now that you've completed Sentence Basics Lessons 1 to 5, let's put your skills to work on a sentence from "Champion of the World":
At last the talking finished and the string-along songs about razor blades were over and the fight began.
At last the talking finished and the string-along songs about razor blades were over and the fight began.
Pick out main parts!
Bracket off prep phrases: [At last] the talking finished and the string-along songs [about razor blades] were over and the fight began.
Find the verbs:
[At last] the talking finished and the string-along songs [about razor blades] were over and the fight began.
Finished. Who or what finished? Talking.
Bracket off prep phrases: [At last] the talking finished and the string-along songs [about razor blades] were over and the fight began.
Find the verbs:
[At last] the talking finished and the string-along songs [about razor blades] were over and the fight began.
Finished. Who or what finished? Talking.
- "Talking" looks like a verb, but we know it is not one because it is an -ing verb with no helping verb, and because it has "the" in front of it, so it must be acting like a noun. In fact it is the subject.
Were over. Who or what were over? Songs.
- Songs is the subject of "were over." Like "set up" from a previous sentence, "were over" is a phrasal verb in which a verb and a preposition work together to express an action.
Began. Who or what began? The fight.
- Fight in the subject.
We have three independent clauses in this sentence, so this is a compound sentence.