clause structure
All clauses in English have at least two parts: a noun phrase and a verb phrase:
| Noun phrase (subject) | Verb phrase |
| The children All the people in the bus |
laughed were watching |
But most clauses have more than two parts:
| Noun phrase (subject) | Verb phrase | ||
| The children John All of the girls This soup Mary and the family She |
laughed wanted are learning tastes were driving put |
a new bicycle English awful to Madrid the flowers |
in a vase |
The first noun phrase is the subject of the sentence:
The children laughed.
John wanted a new bicycle.
All the girls are learning English.
She put the flowers in the vase.
English clauses always have a subject:
His father has just retired. Was a teacher. He was a teacher.
I’m waiting for my wife. Is late. She is late.
… except for the imperative which is used to give orders:
Stop!
Go away.
… and for "soft imperatives" like invitations and requests:
Please come to dinner tomorrow.
Play it again please.
If we have no other subject we use "there" or "it" as subject. We call this a ‘dummy subject’:
There were twenty people at the meeting..
There will be an eclipse of the moon tonight.
It’s a lovely day.
It’s nearly one o’clock.
I have toothache. It hurts a lot.
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Hello every body. I want to improve my English, like everyone :)Who can help me to practice English ? Thanks
its easy but I didn't understand well :(
Hello
what a useful things !
Hello, I'm not sure if this is the right arena for my question but perhaps you can help me figure this out. I am English and am in the process of trying to qualify to teach English as a second language and so I am looking at English grammar from a different perspective - not all of the english we are being taught is usage I agreed with and I am left questioning whether my English is in fact wrong...
We are told that English clauses mostly have a subject but in some cases like
'To find a house in this neighborhood means you have to be patient' the subject is absent.
I would have interpreted this as a complex sentence where the independent clause is placed second and 'you' is the subject of 'you have to be patient' so the start of the sentence is a complement.
What's the expert opinion?
Many thanks
team
Hello Becky,
I'm not sure if I can provide an 'expert opinion' - I'm a language teacher, not a linguist! Firstly, we have a site aimed at teachers (and trainee teachers) called TeachingEnglish, which is probably a better place for your question.
This site is aimed at learners of English and that's an important distinction. For example, I've been a teacher for over a decade and while I might find it interesting to analyse the clause structure of a sentence, I find it's almost never useful for my students. They might need to understand a complex sentence by breaking it down into useful parts or construct more complex sentences to make their writing more sophisticated, but I'd approach both of those in a different way.
Finally, to look at your specific example, I'm not sure it's actually well-formed English. I would say 'To find a house in this neighborhood you have to be patient' or 'The weak property market means you have to be patient'.
Best wishes,
Adam
The LearnEnglish Team
Thank you, will head to the watching English site. Before I sign ff I would like to say thank you to the authors of this site, I've found it extremely useful as a child of the seventies, educated in the eighties when grammar was mostly avoided in the curriculum) to be able to explain why one phrase is correct and another isn't from a different perspective than that's right and that's wrong!
Hello everybody.. I'm Tika from Indonesia. Nice to meet u here..
Hopefully this site gonna be help me to improve my english..
Spirit !!
how can strong our conversation i want easy form yuo
Hi Adam!Where can i find information in this page for my english project Cultural shock??Please let me know your answer as soon as possible.Best wishes,Helga!