Grammar: A Pocket Guide

Susan J. Behrens

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781136908736
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

If you've ever wanted a quick and easy guide to verbs and adverbs, commas and apostrophes, clauses and prepositions, then this is a must-have book for you. Easing readers gently into the study of the structure of English, Grammar: A Pocket Guide covers common questions such as:

• Is it "10 items or less" or "10 items or fewer"?
• Should I say "If I were you" or "if I was you"?
• Can you start a sentence with "And" or "Because"?
• When do you use "whom"?
• What is the difference between "lie" and "lay"?
• Is it "I feel bad" or "I feel badly"?

Using examples from everyday speech and writing, this handy book "cracks the code" of off-putting grammatical jargon so that readers can enjoy learning how to think and talk about grammar. With practice exercises, a glossary, and suggestions for further reading, Grammar: A Pocket Guide is the perfect foundation for anyone wanting to improve his or her writing and communication.

1
The great subject–predicate divide

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

Take the sentence

Nina, in her favorite flannel pajamas, slept soundly through the night.

If I ask you to divide the sentence into two smaller grammatical parts, what does your intuition tell you about grammatical boundaries (and why they are important)?

Question: What is a predicate?

Answer: The predicate is the part of the sentence that contains the verb and everything that goes with the verb.

The basics of the subject–predicate boundary

During grammar lessons in elementary school, hearing the word predicate would somehow numb my brain. I learned nothing after I heard that word, and neither teacher nor textbook ever gave a clear definition of the term. If you are like I was way back then, you’ll appreciate a basic definition, taken from Chapter 1 of a book called Grammar: the predicate is the part of the sentence containing the verb (which can be a single word or include helping verbs) and everything that goes with the verb. In writing, the predicate is usually on the right side of the sentence. (The left side usually contains the subject.)

While subsequent chapters give a fuller explanation of subjects and verbs, and what “everything that goes with the verb” means, for now we can say that the subject of a sentence is the entity either doing something or standing in the spotlight, i.e. the focus of the sentence. The verb is the word conveying action or some state of being or feeling. The subject–predicate boundary is of major importance in grammar.

Why is it important to be able to identify subjects and predicates? Actually, the subject–predicate divide is something we already know intuitively. Most people, if asked to find a natural breaking point in a sentence, would accurately divide the sentence, demonstrating an internal sense of grammatical boundaries.

Further, the subject and verb in Standard English must match up in a particular way: they must agree. Overtly identifying these major parts of a sentence helps with this subject–verb agreement. In addition, deviation in standard punctuation use, such as run-on sentences and sentence fragments, becomes more apparent when we are able to spot subjects and predicates.

Chapter 4 has more on subject–verb agreement.

Chapter 16 has more on run-on sentences and sentence fragments.

Uses of the subject–predicate boundary

Let’s start with the sentence

Nina slept.

If we wanted to divide the sentence into subject and predicate, we’d have no choice:

Nina = subject and slept = predicate.

In this case, the predicate is also (and only) the verb. However, we can add to both parts of the sentence:

Nina, in her favorite flannel pajamas, slept soundly through the night.

Now the subject and predicate are more informative. The word Nina in the sentence above is the simple subject, part of a fuller, complete subject; slept is the main verb in the predicate. The predicate (remember, the verb and everything that goes with it) is slept soundly through the night. Even with this more expanded sentence, we would still accurately divide the sentence after pajamas; in other words, between the subject and the predicate, as seen in Figure 1.1.

[[Nina] in her favorite pajamas]	[[slept] soundly through the night]
simple subject	main verb
full subject	predicate

Figure 1.1 : Subject–predicate division in a declarative

Note that the sentences we have so far been dealing with are declaratives, i.e. statements. Now let’s look at another sentence and try to divide it into subject and predicate:

Did Nina sleep well?

What does your intuition tell you about the subject–predicate boundary now? The verb has two components, did and sleep, and they are not contiguous. That is because this sentence is a yes–no interrog...

Table of contents

• Contents
• A note of thanks
• Introduction
• 1 The great subject–predicate divide
• 2 All types of verbs: beyond “action”
• 3 Verb forms telling time (and more)
• 4 Subjects and verbs agreeing
• 5 Nouns and their determiners
• 6 Objects and complements
• 7 Verb transitivity
• 8 The subjunctive: in the right mood
• 9 The passive (and active) structure: watch your voice
• 10 The case of pronouns
• 11 Adjectives and adverbs modifying
• 12 Prepositional phrases and verb particles
• 13 Conjunctions at junctions
• 14 Relative clauses (and more clauses and phrases)
• 15 Misaligned modifiers
• 16 Commas: more than pauses
• 17 Apostrophes: dueling functions
• 18 Applying the knowledge
• Further reading
• Answers to practice opportunity questions
• Cheat Sheet tables
• Glossary
• Index