Chapter 2 - Recognizing Subjects & Verbs Flashcards
What does a complete sentence require?
Must contain a subject and a verb, as well as express a complete thought.
What is the subject of a sentence?
It’s the person or thing about which the rest of the sentence makes an assertion.
What is a compound subject?
A compound subject is made up of two or more nouns joined together by and, or, either/or, neither/nor.
What are some commonalities between subjects?
They usually come early in a sentence
Subjects can be modified by adjectives
Subjects can be compound
What is the object of a sentence?
The word that receives the subject(s) action.
What is a prepositional phrase?
Is a group of words containing a preposition and an object of the preposition with its modifiers.
Prepositional phrases contain nouns but these nouns are never the subject of a sentence.
They always start with a preposition.
Name 10 prepositions.
About, above below, in, toward, under, until, up, within, without, past, over, outside, of, off, on, inside, into, during, except, down, by, for, from, between beneath, beyond.
Name 6 prepositional combinations.
Ahead of, at the time of, because of, by means of, except for, for the fear of, for the purpose of, for the sake of.
In addition to, in between, in case of, in common with, in contrast, in exchange for, in reference to, in regard to, in spite of, instead of.
On account of, similar to, with regard to.
Tip!!!
Notice that when a preposition al phrase begins a sentence, a comma usually follows the phrase.
Sometimes if the prepositional phrase is short the comma is omitted.
Tip!
The words here & there can never be the subject of a sentence.
In commands such as “Go to Halifax” or “Help your sister” this subject you is not written but understood.
What is an appositive sentence?
Is a group of words in a sentence that gives us extra information about a noun in a sentence.
The subject of a sentence is never in an appositive phrase.
Tom Jones, the retired chemist, sat at his desk.
“the retired chemist” is the appositive phrase.
What are gerunds?
Words that end in -ing but have no helping verb in front.
They act as nouns, not verbs and can therefore be the subject of a sentence.
They commonly get mistaken for verbs.
Tip!
If you can put a verb in all 3 different tenses - it’s a verb.
What is a complete verb?
A singular verb or verb phrase (made of 1 or more verbs and an adverb) that is the subjects performance.
