The Structure of a Sentence: By Dinzei Maureen Marris

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 The Sentence 

A sentence can be defined as a group of words that expresses a complete idea or a complete thought.

Features of a Sentence 

1. It must have a subject and a predicate. The subject tells us the part that does something in the sentence while the predicate tells us something about  the subject. E.g

The teacher resides in the school.

Subject              Predicate 

2. A sentence must contain a finite verb. E.g

Our principal comes early to school.

                          finite

3. A sentence must contain a complete thought.

My mother is a nurse.

4. A sentence begins with a capital letter and ends with a full stop. E.g:

Our house is very big.

The Structure of a Sentence 

The structure of a sentence is made up of three components:

a. subject 

b. verb

c. object 

a. The Subject can either be a noun, a noun phrase, a noun clause or a pronoun usually the first part of a sentence. For example:

The boys washed the car.

Subject 

b. The verb is a word that expresses action. E.g

They are watching us.

S            V                O

c.The Object is usually a noun or a pronoun. It comes after the verb and shows who is affected by the action of the verb. Example:

Tolu gave the boy his pen.

S        V        O


POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE SENTENCES

A positive sentence tells you what someone or something is, has or does. Example:

a) The dog is brown.

b) Joy enjoys swimming.

A negative sentence tells you the opposite of what someone has done. It is formed by adding the word 'not', nothing, nobody, none or never to a positive sentence. Example:

a) The dog is not brown.

b) Joy does not enjoy swimming.


EVALUATION

Analyze the following sentences, indicating the subject, verb and object.

  1. Daroye fought his teacher.
  2. Garry will see our friend.
  3. The teacher flogged the rude boy.
  4. Ikenna lost his books.
  5. We invited Danjuma to the party.







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