Jose Carillo's English Forum
English Grammar and Usage Problems => Use and Misuse => Topic started by: lvlychild on January 05, 2012, 07:17:38 AM
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During the Great Depression of 1930s, the Sydney Harbor Bridge was built.
2. The Sydney Harbor Bridge was built during the Great Depression of 1930s.
Do we have a topic here about the four basic sentence types? That would be an amazing help.
Thanks
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The second sentence you presented, “The Sydney Harbor Bridge was built during the Great Depression of 1930s,” is the normal form of <subject + verb + complement> sentence type, where “the Sydney Harbor Bridge” is the subject, “was built” is the passive-form verb, and “during the Great Depression of 1930s” is the complement in the form of an adverbial phrase. On the other hand, the first sentence you presented, “During the Great Depression of 1930s, the Sydney Harbor Bridge was built,” positions the adverbial phrase “during the Great Depression of 1930s” as prepositional phrase modifier up front of the sentence. Generally, as in this case, adverbial modifiers have the flexibility to take alternative positions in the sentence.
There are actually not just four but five basic sentence types according to form, namely:
1. Subject + verb. Example: “He jumped.”
2. Subject + verb + object. Example: “She picked the ball.” (“ball” is the object)
3. Subject + verb + complement. Example: “They worked so hard.” (“so hard is the adverbial complement)
4. Subject + verb + indirect object + direct object. Example: “Anna gave John a music album.” (“John” is the indirect object, “music album” is the direct object)
5. Subject + verb + object + complement. Example: “The CEO appointed him general manager.” (“him” is the direct object, “general manager” is the object complement)
No, lvlychild, I don’t recall these basic sentence types being taken up at length in the Forum’s discussion boards. For a comprehensive discussion of them, click this link to About.com – English as 2nd Language (http://esl.about.com/od/writingintermediate/a/sentence_patterns.htm). The Forum does have several basic lessons on sentence construction. You can check the lineup of lessons by clicking this link to the “Getting to Know English” (http://josecarilloforum.com/getting2know.html) discussion boards. Check out also the Purdue Online Writing Lab (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/573/02/) for a discussion of the English sentence types according to construction.
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Obviously, lvlychild just copied and posted my question again I've asked on November 02, 2011, 11:42:15 PM.
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You're right, Sky! lvlychild just copied and posted your question in this discussion board last November 2, 2011 (http://josecarilloforum.com/forum/index.php?topic=2105.0). Sorry that lvlychild has turned out to be a bot or a copycat. If he or she does the same thing again, I'll ban lvlychild from the Forum for good.
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Yeah I like this topic this is very interesting..