ENGLISH WRITING Part III 1.pptVIP

ENGLISH WRITING CHAPTER THREE THE SENTENCE 1 I. CONCEPTS OF SENTENCES 1. Sentence: A complete and grammatically correct sentence is a group of words that contains at least one subject and one predicate verb and that begins with a capital letter and ends with a period, a question mark or a exclamation mark. 2. Clause: A clause is part of a sentence with also a complete subject-predicate structure but only serving as one element of a sentence such as subject, object, etc. 3. Sentence Fragment: Part of a sentence or a incomplete sentence without a subject or a predicate verb is called a sentence fragment. But in some cases a sentence fragment can be accepted as a correct sentence with a capital letter at the beginning and a period a question mark or a exclamation mark at the end for its brevity and forcefulness. E.g. Silent ! Why not ? No problem. etc. 4. Comma Fault: The use of a comma in place of a period, a colon, a semicolon, or a dash, to connect or separate 2 grammatically correct subject-predicate structures is called comma fault. That is, whenever a comma is used between two structures, only one of them can be a complete sentence, and the other, just part of a sentence. In other words, whenever you have to connect 2 or more grammatically correct subject-predicate structures, instead of using only a comma in between, you have to use a period, a colon, a semicolon, a dash, or a comma with a coordinator or subordinator (to form a compound or complex sentence). Ex. P.73, II 5. Members of a sentence: 1) Subject: the doer(s) of action or what is described by the predicate in a sentence or a clause. Nouns (or anything used as a noun), pronouns, numerals, infinitive phrases, gerund phrases, noun clauses can be used as a subject. 2) Predicate: One of the two main constituents of a sentence, modifying the subject and including the verb, objects, or phrases governed by the verb. Only finite verbs can be used as a predicate. 3) Predicative ( or subject complement):