Elements Of The Clause Contents: Sentence Types, Formulas, And Patterns

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Sentence Formulas and Sentence Patterns

Syntax, rather than parts of speech, gave structural grammarians the most trouble in the realm of practical analysis. Working with detailed IC analyses, the structuralists nevertheless derived six basic syntactic patterns, which they called sentence formulas. A sentence pattern was a sequence of word classes and word groups. According to the Structuralists, the business of the grammarian was to determine sentence patterns of English and, if possible, to list them.

The following types of sentence patterns were identified:

Type 1: Noun/Pronoun + Verb

Type 2: Noun/Pronoun + Verb + Adjective

Type 3: Noun/Pronoun + Verb + Noun/Pronoun

Type 4: Noun/Pronoun + Linking Verb + (D) + N

Type 5: Noun/Pronoun + Verb + Noun/Pronoun + Noun/Pronoun

Type 6: Noun/Pronoun + OVerb + Noun/Pronoun + Noun/Pronoun

Type One

The first pattern is basically a Noun (or Pronoun) tied to a Verb. When a noun and a verb occur in a sentence in such a way that the form of one is affected by the form of the other, we say that the noun and the verb are tied. We further say that a noun tied to a verb is the subject of the verb. That is what a subject is: a noun (or equivalent) tied to a verb by occurrence or agreement of forms.

If we use the symbol N for Noun, P for Pronoun, and V for Verb and a two-ended arrow to show the tie, we can write the formula for this pattern as N V. Examples of patterns of this type are:

1. He left

2. Dogs bite

3. It hurts

4. They won

Actually, the pattern occurs rather infrequently in this minimal form. Usually there is some kind of expansion. For instance, the noun may be preceded by a determiner (D) or some other modifier as in:

5. The lion roared

6. My car knocked

7. The boys won

Or the verb may have an auxiliary. In this case, the tie is between the noun and the auxiliary (D + N Aux + V):

8. The lions were roaring

9. He had left

10. The car may knock

Or the verb may be modified by an adverb or other modifier (D Aux + V + Adv):

11. The lions were roaring loudly

12. Agnes has gone away

13. My brother may visit unexpectedly

All of these are variations of pattern one: NN. The pattern may be very considerably expanded and still be basically the same.

Type Two

This pattern is basically a noun tied to a verb with an adjective. This may be written as: N V + Adj. Only a limited number of verbs occur in this pattern. By far the most common is the verb be:

1. Agnes was unhappy

2. He seems better

3. Students are comfortable

4. John looked foolish

As in pattern one, all the usual kinds of expansion can occur without altering the pattern:

D N (Aux) V Adj

5. The boys were unhappy

6. The boys had been unhappy

7. The food tasted terrible

8. I am getting sick

Type Three

The third pattern consists of a noun tied to a verb with a second noun following: N V + N. The second noun in this pattern is what is traditionally called an object or a direct object. The verb in the pattern is sometimes called a transitive verb. The following are examples:

1. She plays soccer

2. Cows eat grass

3. He slapped her

With expansion, we could have:

(D) N Aux V (D) N

4. She was playing soccer

5. He was washing the car

6. My brother likes the girl

7. Nobody has seen the thief

Type Four

The fourth pattern also consists of a noun tied to a verb with another noun following. The difference is that in pattern three the two nouns refer to different people or different things, whereas in this pattern they refer to the same person or the same thing as in the following:

Type Three: That man killed my father

Type Four: That man is my father

In Type three, man and brother are different people; in Type four, they are the same person. The signal differentiating the two patterns is, of course, in the verb. The verb of Type four is what is called a linking verb. We shall write this as LV, and thus the formula for the pattern will be: N LV + N. By far, the most common linking verb is be, though become and remain occur in this pattern sometimes. Various other verbs may equally occur.

(D) N LV D N

1. That chief is her husband

2. He is a lawyer

3. Her father became my teacher

4. We remained friends

5. John looked a fool

Type Five

The fifth pattern consists of a noun tied to a verb with two other nouns (or noun equivalents) following. In traditional usage, the first of the

following

D N V D N D N

1. My father gave my brother a beating

2. She sent me her picture

3. Henry told us a lie

4. Mr. Fred taught his children French

5. The student asked him a question

Type Six

The sixth pattern has the components noun-verb-noun-noun. The difference between five and six is that in five the second and third nouns refer to different people or different things, whereas in six they refer to the same person or the same thing:

Pattern Five: John gave my uncle a car

Pattern Six: John thought my uncle a genius

In five above, uncle and car refer to different things; in six uncle and genius refer to the same individual.

The signal differentiating patterns five and six – like that distinguishing three and four – is the verb. Some verbs, like give and send, will ordinarily make the two following nouns refer to different people or things; others, like think and elect, will make the two nouns refer to the same person or thing. Oddly enough, traditional grammar has no special terms for these verbs, though it does have terms for the nouns involved. The nouns in five, as we have seen, are called, respectively, indirect object and direct object. Those in six are called object and object complement. Thus, in John thought my uncle a genius, uncle is an object and genius is an object complement.

Just to give it a tag, let us call the verb in type six an object complement verb and abbreviate it OV. Then we can distinguish the two types like this:

Type Five: N V+N + N

Type Six: N OV + N + N

Here are more examples of Type Six:

(D) N OV N (D) N

1. His teacher made him the captain

2. We elected Umaru President

3. Nobody considered him a pastor

There are a few verbs which occur in both types five and six. If there is then some additional signal telling which pattern is meant. If not, the sentence will be ambiguous, since part of understanding English is being able to tell these types apart. A verb occurring in both patterns is the verb "call." It occurs in type five in "He called me a taxi" and in type six in "He called me a slave," where it might mean 'The chief summoned a slave to wait on me' (type five) or 'The chief said I was a slave' (type six).

3.2 Summary of Sentence Types

Let us summarize our six main sentence patterns:

Type 1: N V (Mothers cook)

Type 2: N V + Adj (Students are noisy)

Type 3: N V + N (John eats apples)

Type 4: N LV + N (My son is a doctor)

Type 5: N V + N + N (James gave him a pen)

Type 6: N OV + N + N (He called her a whore)

As we mentioned at the beginning of this unit, the structural grammarians believed the work of a grammarian was to determine the sentence types or patterns that exist in a language and to list them. It is rather difficult to determine all the sentence types that exist in a language. Apart from being a boring adventure, usually at the end of the exercise, nothing new is said. Sentence formulas can generate a limited number of simple sentences without accounting for some distinctions. For example, the formula can generate "The boy showed me his car," but it cannot explain the underlying connection that holds between it and "The car was shown to me by the boy."

4.0 CONCLUSION

We have tried in this unit to show how structural analysis accounts for the sentences of English. With the use of templates, many simple sentence patterns of English can be generated, although this could not answer all the questions one could ask about English.

5.0 SUMMARY

You have learned in this unit:

• What is meant by sentence formulas.

• Sentence patterns of English that are derivable from sentence formulas.

• The limitations of this procedure in deriving English sentences.

6.0 TUTOR-MARKED ASSIGNMENT

1. Provide three sentences each from the following formulas:

(a) N V

(b) N V + N

(c) N LV + N

(d) N OV + N + N

2. Write the formula for each of the following sentences:

(a) The best student made the speech

(b) The Governor appointed him chairman

(c) Helen laughed

(d) The assembly was quiet

(e) His daughter is an engineer

(f) The principal awarded him a scholarship