Background

I feel that there are still many deficiencies in my English, so I studied some English grammar a while ago. In fact, many of them are things that need to be learned in junior high school, but I didn’t take it seriously at that time, and I didn’t learn anything from the teacher. I can’t say that I gave everything back to the teacher, because the scenarios where English is needed in work are increasing, so I still followed Youtube and learned a lot, so I wrote this summary article.

Components of English Sentences

The most important thing in English is the subject and predicate, and the predicate is the soul and core of a sentence.

Declarative Sentences

There are five basic sentence patterns for a declarative sentence

  1. Subject + intransitive verb eg: the telephone rang.
  2. Subject + transitive verb eg: I love you.
  3. Main clause + transitive verb + double object eg: He lent me a book.
  4. Subject + transitive verb + object + object complement eg: He is finding this trip very exciting.
  5. Subject + linking verb + predicate eg: She looked a little tired.

Maybe everyone here will look confused. If you are confused, it means that everyone does not understand the components very well.

Let me introduce a few important components in the sentence:

Subject: It is the main object described in this sentence.

Predicate: Mainly used to “state the status of the subject” or “indicate the action issued by the subject”. The former is generally a linking verb like feel, looked indicating a certain state of the subject. The latter is a more common sentence pattern.

Object: It is generally the structure after the transitive verb, called the object.

Predicate: It is generally the structure at the end of the linking verb, called the predicate, usually an adjective.

Everyone will find that the verb, that is, the predicate is still very important in the sentence. The type of a verb will determine the meaning expressed by the entire sentence. So a very important point is that when everyone looks up a verb in the dictionary, they can’t just look at its meaning, but also determine what kind of verb it is.

Transitive verb: vt.

Intransitive verb: vi.

Linking verb: linking verb

Interrogative Sentences

Interrogative sentences are generally divided into general interrogative sentences and special interrogative sentences.

General Interrogative Sentences

General interrogative sentences are a form of questioning that starts with a verb. The form is mainly the inversion of the subject and the verb, and can generally be answered directly with yes or no.

eg: Have you locked the door?

Special Interrogative Sentences

Special interrogative sentences in English begin with special interrogative words, and they ask about a certain component of the sentence. The respondent cannot directly answer with yes or no, but needs to briefly answer the question.

Special interrogative sentences are divided into two types:

Special interrogative words as the subject: Generally, it is the normal word order eg: Whose bike is locked?

Special interrogative words ask about components: Special interrogative words + general interrogative sentences + be verbs/auxiliary verbs/modal verbs + subject + predicate eg: Where are you going?

Parts of Speech in English

Verbs

For the classification of verbs, it is important to distinguish between transitive verbs and intransitive verbs.

Transitive Verbs

Generally speaking, verbs that require a recipient are called transitive verbs. eg: I like him.

Intransitive Verbs

Generally speaking, verbs that do not require a recipient are called intransitive verbs.

eg: I wait. Correct I wait you. Incorrect

Generally, intransitive verbs can be converted into transitive verbs by connecting prepositions.

I wait for you.

These are generally fixed collocations that need to be accumulated.

Linking Verbs

Words that connect the previous and the next structures, linking verbs can be followed by nouns and adjectives, and linking verbs can also be followed by adjectives, which is a feature that transitive verbs do not have.

That is, one of the sentence patterns mentioned above:

Subject + Linking Verb + Predicate

She looked a little tired.

The adjective at the end is the predicate.

Summary

The summary of English grammar will be written here for now, and there will be more summaries about clauses, etc.