Lesson 8, Word Order in Sentences:

English sentences follow a set of rules which governs the position of each of the elements of the sentence between the capital letter at the beginning and the punctuation mark at the end.  These rules allow for some variation of position in order to emphasize particular elements within the sentence.  Here is an example, growing from the most basic N+TV+N form.

That is a lot to absorb.   As you can see, this sentence could grow larger and larger by adding more descriptions of the dogs, the rabbits or the chase.  Look at it carefully.  Do you see the pattern in the sentences above? 

• Articles (words that point out nouns - the, a, an, this, that) are always placed before a noun. 
• Adjectives, words that describe a noun (what kind, what size, what color, how many) are also placed before the noun they tell about, but always between the article and the noun.
• Adverbs, words that describe the action ( where, when, how, in what manner) most of the time will be immediately before or after the verb they are telling about.  Their exact location depends on which adverb it is and which idea in the sentence is being stressed or emphasized.
• Prepositional Phrases can be found anywhere in a sentence.  We will deal with them in another lesson.  In the sentence above, the prepositional phrases are doing the job of adverbs.  'In the morning' tells us when the chase takes place and 'into the woods' tells us where.  Most of the time, expressions of time will come before the verb and expressions of location will come after, but there are enough exceptions to this to keep us from saying it is a rule.

Exercise A: Write the sentence below five times on the numbered lines, but each time you write it, add one more descriptive word or phrase, similar to the earlier example.

• Boys eat pizza.

1._________________________________________________________________

2. _________________________________________________________________

3. __________________________________________________________________

4. _________________________________________________________________

5. _________________________________________________________________

Exercise B: Unscramble each of the sentences below and rewrite them correctly on the lines.  Put the capital letters and periods where they belong.  (Example:  new drove man a old volkswagon the = The old man drove a new Volkswagon.)

1. taking difficult were nurses the test forty

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2. cards John received Mary Christmas beautiful and

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3. telephone the car my shiny night last new pole hit

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4. slot dollars I fifty the night dropped into deposit

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5. death valley the hundred rode six into of the

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Exercise C: On the numbered lines below, write each of the unscrambled sentences from Exercise B.  On the line beneath each sentence, write the Part of Speech of each word or phrase.  Use these abbreviations:  N = noun; V = verb; Adj = adjective; Adv + adverb; Art = article; PP=prepositional phrase;  DO = direct object (same as object noun); SN = subject noun; TV = transitive verb.  This will help you to see there is a system of sorts in English word order.

1. _________________________________________________________________

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2. _________________________________________________________________

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3. __________________________________________________________________

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4. __________________________________________________________________

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5. ___________________________________________________________________

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Examination: The numbered lines below contain the grammatical plans for five sentences.  On the line beneath each Plan, write words of your own that match the parts of speech on the line above.  There is no one correct answer, and you may have to change words if they do not make sense at first.  The important thing is to use words that match the parts of speech in the Plan.  Look at this example carefully.  There are a limited number of 'sentence plans' in English, but there are millions of sentences made from those plans.

1. prepositional phrase + noun + adverb + verb + adjective + noun + prepositional phrase

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2. art + adj + adj + noun + prepositional phrase + verb + art + adj + noun

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3. noun + verb + article + adjective + noun + adverb

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4. article + adj + adj + noun + verb + adj + adj + noun + prepositional phrase

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5. noun + verb + article + noun + prepositional phrase

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-The End-

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