Grammar
We saw in the grammar section of the unit on Freedom that a sentence can consist of clauses and phrases.
Let us now look at the basic form of a sentence and study its parts. A sentence consists of a subject and a predicate. Take the sentence
My grandmother had a very large old apartment in Uppsala.
The sentence here talks about ‘the grandmother’. ‘The grandmother’ is the subject of the sentence. What is said about the subject ‘grandmother’ is the predicate of the sentence. ‘had a very large old apartment in Uppsala’ is the predicate.
Generally a sentence begins with the subject. The predicate begins with a verb. ‘had’ is the verb in the example above. The subject answers the question ‘who’ or ‘what’ before the verb.
Question: ‘Who had?’
Answer: ‘the grandmother had’.
The object of a sentence generally comes after the verb. It answers the question ‘what’ after the verb. ‘Had what?’ ‘had an apartment’ is the answer. ‘Apartment’ is the object of the sentence. The word ‘apartment’ has an article and two adjectives preceding it.
‘a very large old apartment’; the word ‘very’ is an intensifier for the adjective ‘large’. We are also given information about the location of the apartment, ‘in Uppsala’. This is a prepositional phrase and consists of a preposition and a noun. ‘in Uppsala’ is an adjunct. It gives additional information.
TASK
Analyse the parts of the following sentences according to the pattern above
• My association with film goes back to the world of childhood.
• This is an almost impossible task.
• Thus the script is a very imperfect technical basis for a film.
• I would play my part in the collective building of the cathedral.
• The ability to create was a gift.
