English I Sentence of the Day 10

Now that you've completed Sentence Basics Lessons 1 to 5, let's put your skills to work on a sentence from "The Gift of the Magi":

At 7 o’clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.

Let's pick out main parts!

First bracket off prepositional phrases: [At 7 o’clock] the coffee was made and the frying-pan was [on the back] [of the stove] hot and ready to cook the chops.

Then underline the verbs: [At 7 o’clock] the coffee was made and the frying-pan was [on the back] [of the stove] hot and ready to cook the chops.

"To cook" is a form of a verb, but we know it won't take a subject because it is in the infinitive, or unconjugated, form. Anytime we have "to" followed by a verb, we do not have to underline it as a possible predicate.

Who or what was made? The coffee. Coffee is the subject.
 Coffee was made who or what? The question doesn't make sense, so there's no complement.

Who or what was? Frying-pan. Frying-pan in the subject.
Frying-pan was who or what? Hot and ready. "Was" is a linking verb, and "hot and ready" are adjectives, thus they are the predicate adjectives.

There are two clauses in this sentence:

the coffee was made
the frying-pan was [on the back] [of the stove] hot and ready

The clauses are joined by a conjunction, "and." The first clause is independent, and so is the second, which makes this a COMPOUND sentence. Note, conjunctions must join grammatically equal parts, so if there's an independent clause on one side of the conjunction, there must also be one on the other side.

 

Sentence Basics: Nouns, Modifiers, Connectors (Lesson 2)

In the last lesson, we reviewed verbs. Now let's look at the other three main types of words that are used with verbs to form thoughts.

For a video version of this lesson, click here.

Nouns (and pronouns)

Nouns are words that name people, places, things, and ideas. Pronouns are stock words that replace nouns to help us avoid repetition.

Nouns (and pronouns) perform the verb’s action or receive something from the verb’s action, and a whole bunch of other things in a sentence, too.

Modifiers

A modifier is word that adds detail to a verb or noun (or pronoun). It changes a noun or verb or makes it more specific.

Example: Dress is a noun. If I want to refer to a specific dress and I say, "This red dress is my favorite." Red is a modifier.

Example: Run is a verb. If I want to say how someone ran, I might say, "Joe runs quickly." Quickly is a modifier.

Connectors

Connectors join words together to make pairs or lists or to show relationships between people, places, things, ideas, or actions.

There are many connectors, but two common types are conjunctions and prepositions.

Conjunctions join words and ideas (and, but, or, so, yet, for, nor, because, either…or, neither…nor, whether…or). To learn more about conjunctions, watch this short video from Schoolhouse Rocks.

Prepositions are short words that show relationships. Common prepositions are to, in, of, for, out, and on.

We’ll talk more about prepositions a little bit later.

Move on to Lesson 3