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Concept
Sentence clause structure
Summary
In grammar, sentence and clause structure, commonly known as sentence composition, is the classification of sentences based on the number and kind of clauses in their syntactic structure. Such division is an element of traditional grammar.
In standard English, sentences are composed of five clause patterns:
Subject + Verb (intransitive)Example: She runs.
Subject + Verb (transitive) + ObjectExample: She runs the meeting.
Subject + Verb (linking) + Subject Complement (adjective, noun, pronoun)Example: Abdul is happy. Jeanne is a person. I am her.
Subject + Verb (transitive) + Indirect Object + Direct ObjectExample: She made me a pie.This clause pattern is a derivative of S+V+O, transforming the object of a preposition into an indirect object of the verb, as the example sentence in transformational grammar is actually "She made a pie for me".
Subject + Verb (transitive) + Object + Object ComplementExample: They made him happy.They did not make "him", and they did not make "happy"; they made "him happy"—the object and its complement form a syntactical unit.
Sentences – which are composed of these clauses, in either "dependent" or "independent" form – also have patterns, as explained below.
A simple sentence consists of only one clause. A compound sentence consists of two or more independent clauses. A complex sentence has at least one independent clause plus at least one dependent clause. A set of words with no independent clause may be an incomplete sentence, also called a sentence fragment.
A sentence consisting of at least one dependent clause and at least two independent clauses may be called a complex-compound sentence or compound-complex sentence.
Sentence 1 is an example of a simple sentence. Sentence 2 is compound because "so" is considered a coordinating conjunction in English, and sentence 3 is complex. Sentence 4 is compound-complex (also known as complex-compound). Example 5 is a sentence fragment.
I like trains.
I don't know how to bake, so I buy my bread already made.
I enjoyed the apple pie that you bought for me.
Official source
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