Sentence Types

Activity 3.5: Transitive or Intransitive?

Identify the verbs in these sentences as transitive or intransitive.

Exercise 8:Click on words to turn the verb in each sentence blue. After finding each verb, type (or copy/paste) whether it is transitive or intransitive in the appropriate box on the right.

Click on the check button to check your selection. Release to reset the sentence and try again. If you err three times, hold the check button for correct answer.

Only action verbs are described as transitive or intransitive; linking verbs never are.  The difference lies in the fact that the ways the sentences end after the verb are different.  In a linking verb sentence, what comes after the verb is a subject complement because it always refers back to and tells something about the subject.  For example, the sentence my father was a doctor means that I am talking about my father (the subject) and I am describing my father by providing the name of his profession; the noun phrase a doctor refers back to the subject my father.

Transitive verbs are those whose action carries over to another entity.  For example, in the sentence my father bit a doctor, I am again talking about my father (the subject), but here I am not describing him, and the noun phrase after the verb, a doctor, refers to a completely different person, one who was directly affected by the action my father engaged in.

The action of an intransitive verb, on the other hand, does not carry over to anything else.  Essentially, the subject engages in the action all alone, and there is never another entity mentioned immediately after the verb.  Other information may be included, but that information will provide the time, location, manner, or some other type of information about the action, not another entity that it affected.

Activity 3.6: Direct or indirect?

Identify the objects in these sentences as either direct or indirect. Any modifiers are included as part of the objects.

Exercise 9: Click on the object(s) in each sentence and drag each to either the Direct Object or Indirect Object box. When done correctly, direct objects in the sentence will turn blue; indirect objects will turn green. If you drag to the wrong box, the words will turn red.

When a verb is transitive, its action can carry over either directly to another entity or indirectly.  The entity that is affected by that action is called an object, and there can be direct and indirect objects.  If there is only one entity mentioned immediately after the action verb, it is a direct object.  If there are two, the first is the indirect object and the second is the direct object.

Some sentences can carry the same meaning but have different structures to do so.  In these cases, one must clarify whether one is discussing the structure of the sentence or the meaning of the sentence.  The terms direct object and indirect object are grammatical terms, not semantic terms.  Therefore, they refer to the structure of the sentence, not the meaning.  Different terms are used to refer to the meanings.  For example, the sentence John gave Marsha a flower consists of a subject (John), an action verb (gave), an indirect object (Marsha), and a direct object (a flower); this is the structure of the sentence and the terms refer to the syntactic roles of the words.  In discussing the meaning, we would say that John is the agent of an action, gave is the action, Marsha is the recipient of the flower, and the flower is the theme.  These terms are the semantic roles of the words and tell nothing about the grammatical structure of the sentence. 

We can change the structure of the sentence but not change the meanings, and we’d still use the terms for the semantic roles to describe the meanings of the words, but we’d have to use different terms to express the new structure.  For example, we can say a flower was given to Marsha by John.  In this sentence, a flower is the subject, but in meaning it still refers to an entity that an action was directed towards (theme), and John is the object of the preposition by, but still refers to the agent of the action in meaning.  Likewise, Marsha is also the object of a preposition, to, but still refers to the recipient of the theme.  Very commonly certain words with certain meanings are found in certain grammatical roles, so there is some relationship between the structure of the sentence and its meaning, but teachers must be careful not to overemphasize these common relationships because they are not true of all sentences.  They can serve as useful beginning points, but teachers should bear in mind that later on the need to move away from these mappings will arise.

Activity 3.7: Subjects and Predicates

Find the subjects and predicates in the following sentences:

Exercise 10: Click to turn each word that is part of the subject blue. Click again to turn each word that is part of the predicate green.

Click on the check button to check your selection. Errors will show in red. Release to reset errors and try again.

As just explained, the common mappings of grammatical roles with semantic roles must be tempered with restraint.  The default rules for the location of the subject in relationship to its predicate must also be recognized as less than absolute.  While simple sentences in English follow the “default rules” just given, there are exceptions, and the sentences in Activity 10 introduce some of those exceptions.  The subject can be shifted from its basic position left of the predicate, as happens in sentences 2 and 5.  Additionally, the subject can be suppressed in a few very particular cases, such as with imperative verb forms in sentences 6 and 7.  The subject can lack a clear referent, as in sentences 1, 3, and 4.  Sentences 1-5 exemplify nonreferential sentences, and sentences 6 and 7 exemplify sentences with deleted subjects.  Nonreferential sentences are discussed in chapter 3 and imperatives in the verb unit.

Sentence Complexity

Examples:

Simple Sentences