What do sentences consist of? How are they formed? Are there different types of sentences? Learn answers to all these questions and also create grammatically correct sentences in this article.
Let us consider the first question – What do sentences consist of? Sentences consist of words; these words combine to form phrases and clauses. A sentence can have one or more phrases and clauses or just one clause, depending on the type of sentence. To understand how sentences are formed, you will need to understand what a subject and predicate are. A subject can be any noun, pronoun, noun phrase, gerund, or gerund phrase. It normally appears at the beginning of sentences and is the factor that carries out the action in the sentence. The predicate, on the other hand, includes the latter part of the sentence. It starts with the verb, or in some cases, an adverb. Its main function is to showcase the action performed by the subject.
How many different types of sentences do you think there are? Sentences can be classified into four types based on the tone and intention behind the sentence. They are declarative sentences, exclamatory sentences, interrogative sentences, and imperative sentences. Declarative sentences present general ideas, habitual actions and scientific truths. Sentences intended to ask questions are called interrogative sentences, and those expressing requests, commands and orders are called imperative sentences. Exclamatory sentences can be said to be more subjective as they denote sudden emotions of happiness, excitement, sadness, disgust, pain, and so on.
We have already seen that sentences contain phrases and clauses. Based on the number and nature of clauses, sentences in the English language can be divided into four categories – simple sentences, compound sentences, complex sentences and compound-complex sentences. Simple sentences have one independent clause; compound sentences have two main or independent clauses; complex sentences have one dependent and one independent clause; and compound-complex sentences have two independent clauses and one dependent clause.
In addition to learning the parts and types of sentences, having an understanding of the five different components of sentences and sentence structure can help you write meaningful, well-structured sentences. The subject, verb, complement, object and adjunct are the five components of a sentence. It is not necessary that sentences must always contain all five components. Every sentence should contain at least a subject and a verb. Only imperative sentences have the liberty to avoid the subject. Now that you know all about sentences, let us look at a few examples too and analyse how they are formed.
- The sky is blue in colour. (Declarative sentence)
- What is the colour of the sky? (Interrogative sentence)
- Oh, how blue the sky is! (Exclamatory sentence)
- Look at the blue sky. (Imperative sentence)
- The car broke down. (Simple sentence)
- The car broke down, and so we took a cab. (Compound sentence)
- As the car broke down, we took a cab. (Complex sentence)
- Since the car broke down, we dropped the car at a mechanic shop and took a cab. (Compound-complex sentence)
