PART OF noun names a person, place, thing, or concept girl, Eleanor, street, Walsh Avenue, calculator, happiness pronoun takes the place of a noun so that noun I, you, he, she, us, the
Trang 1I NDEPENDENT AND D EPENDENT C LAUSES
A clause is a group of words that has a subject and a predicate (clauses can have direct and indirect objects, too) A clause that expresses a complete thought is called an independent clause; it can stand on its own as
a sentence A dependent clause, on the other hand, cannot stand alone because it expresses an incomplete thought When a dependent clause stands alone, the result is a sentence fragment.
Independent clause: It rained.
Dependent clause: Because it rained.
Notice how the dependent clause is incomplete; it requires an additional thought to make a complete sentence The independent thought, however, can stand alone
What makes the dependent clause above dependent is the word because Because is one of many
subor-dinating conjunctions like the following:
SUBORDINATING CONJUNCTIONS:
When a clause has a subordinating conjunction, it must be connected to an independent clause to become a complete thought:
Because it rained, the game was cancelled.
dependent clause independent clause
I was so hungry that I ate a whole pizza.
independent clause dependent clause
A sentence with both a dependent and independent clause is called a complex sentence Both of the
sen-tences above are complex sensen-tences
When two independent clauses are combined, the result is a compound sentence like the following:
It rained, so the game was cancelled.
The most common way to join two independent clauses is with a comma and a coordinating
con-junction: and, but, or, nor, for, so, yet Independent clauses can also be joined with a semi-colon if the ideas
in the sentences are closely related
Trang 2I was starving, so I ate a whole pizza.
The dog needs to be fed daily, but the fish only needs to be fed every other day.
He is from Australia; she is from New Zealand.
P HRASES AND M ODIFIERS
Sentences are often “filled out” by phrases and modifiers Phrases are groups of words that do not have both
a subject and predicate Modifiers are words and phrases that qualify or describe people, places, things and
actions The most common phrases are prepositional phrases, which consist of a preposition and a noun or
pronoun (e.g., in the kitchen) Modifiers include adjectives (e.g., dark, stormy) and adverbs (e.g., slowly,
care-fully) In the examples below, the prepositional phrases are underlined and the modifiers are in bold:
I gave Xiomara a beautiful, hand-made gift for her sixteenth birthday.
Yesterday I ate a large pizza with mushrooms and anchovies.
On Friday, it rained all day, so the baseball game was cancelled by the league.
Practice 2
For the following sentences, please:
A Place brackets “[ ]” around any dependent clauses.
B Underline any prepositional phrases.
C Circle any modifiers.
PREPOSITIONS are extremely important They help us understand how objects relate to each other in space and time But they can also be one of the most difficult aspects of a foreign language to learn Here are the more com-mon prepositions See page 83 for notes about the most comcom-mon prepositional idioms.
Prepositions: A Short List
Trang 3A word’s part of speech determines its function and form The word quiet, for example, can be either a verb or
an adjective; it changes to quietly when it is an adverb Be sure you know the different parts of speech and the
job each part of speech performs in a sentence The following table offers a quick reference guide for the main parts of speech.
PART OF
noun names a person, place, thing, or concept girl, Eleanor, street, Walsh Avenue, calculator,
happiness
pronoun takes the place of a noun so that noun I, you, he, she, us, they, this, that, themselves,
does not have to be repeated somebody, who, which
verb describes an action, occurrence, or jump, becomes, is, seemed, clamoring
state of being
helping verb combines with other verbs (main verbs) forms of be, do and have; can, could, may, might,
(also called to create verb phrases that help indicate must, shall, should, will, would
auxiliary verb) tenses
adjective describes nouns and pronouns; red, small, glorious, unexpected; that (e.g.,
can also identify or quantify that car); several (e.g., several dogs)
adverb describes verbs, adjectives, other adverbs, slowly, happily, always, very, yesterday
or entire clauses
preposition expresses the relationship in time or space in, on, around, above, between, underneath,
between words in a sentence beside, with, upon (see list on page 83).
1 Since interest rates have dropped considerably in the last month, it would be wise to refinance the
mortgage on your new home
2 I finally reached Tom in his office, and he said he would ship the redesigned brochures by express mail.
3 When I mailed the 200-page manuscript to my editor, I didn’t realize that the pages were completely
out of order
4 Whether you are ready or not, the chemistry test is tomorrow at 9:00 in Room 213.
5 The seven-foot-tall ostrich is the fastest two-legged animal on Earth.
Parts of Speech
Trang 4The hunter approached the white-tailed deer silently,
but the deer had sensed him and escaped into the woods
helping verb pronoun verb preposition noun
Verbs
Verbs are the agents of action in a sentence They are the “heart” of a sentence because they express the action
or state of being of the subject:
It rains a lot in Seattle (action)
I feel really good about this deal (state of being)
The poor cat is starving (state of being)
Chester smiled broadly (action)
Verbs have five basic forms:
1 Infinitive base: the base form of the verb plus the word to.
to go to be to desire to arrange
To indicate tenses of regular verbs (when the action of the verb did occur, is occurring, or will occur), we use the base form of the verb and add the appropriate tense endings
2 Present tense: the verb form that expresses what is happening now.
I am glad you are here.
Chester smiles a lot.
The present tense of regular verbs is formed as follows:
third person (he/she/it, they) base form + -s/-es (dreams) base form (dream)
3 Present participle: the verb form that describes what is happening now It ends in -ing and is
accom-panied by a helping verb such as is.
Chester is smiling again.
They are watching the stock market very carefully.
NOTE: Words that end in -ing don’t always function as verbs Sometimes they act as nouns and are
called gerunds They can also function as adjectives (called participial phrases).
Present participle (verb): He is eating the plastic fruit!
Gerund (noun): That plastic fruit is not for eating!
Participial phrase (adjective): The sleeping baby awoke when the phone rang.
(You will learn more about gerunds later in this chapter.)
Trang 54 Past tense: the verb form that expresses what happened in the past.
It rained four inches yesterday.
The cat felt better after it ate.
5 Past participle: the verb form that describes an action that happened in the past and is used with a
helping verb, such as has, have, or had.
It had rained for days.
Chester has not smiled for days.
R EGULAR V ERBS
Regular verbs follow a standard set of rules for forming the present participle, past tense, and past participle
forms The present participle is formed by adding -ing The past and past participle are formed by adding -ed.
If the verb ends with the letter e, just add d If the verb ends with the letter y, for the past tense, change the y
to an i and add -ed Here are some examples:
Some verbs in the English language have the same present, past, and past participle form
Here is a partial list of those verbs followed by several examples:
SAME PRESENT, PAST, AND PAST PARTICIPLE FORM:
Present: I bet that he will be late.
Past: Yesterday I bet $20 that he would be late.
Past participle: Yesterday I had bet $20 that he would be late.
Present: That antique lamp cost Jude over $500.
Past: That antique lamp cost Jude over $500.
Past participle: That antique lamp had cost Jude over $500.
Trang 6I RREGULAR V ERBS
About 150 verbs in the English language are irregular They don’t follow the standard rules for changing tense.
We can divide these verbs into three categories:
■ irregular verbs with the same past and past participle forms
■ irregular verbs with three distinct forms
■ irregular verbs with the same present and past participle forms.
The table below lists the most common irregular verbs
Same past and past participle forms:
Three distinct forms: