Sentences: Subject & Verb

Let’s start with the absolute basics. Grammar is all about creating sentences with meaning, by putting words in the right order. (And sometimes the right spelling.)

Without sentences, language would become a never-ending mess of words:

the apple tree fell ground shone grass was green the on sun the from

As such, a sentence is meant to group words to make a point. Ideally, each sentence should say one thing, and then end. If you want to talk about something else, start a new sentence.

Start with a capital letter (A instead of a) and end with a full stop (.). Like this:

Fell tree from the apple the ground the to. Shone grass on the sun the.

But wait, that’s still unreadable, right? What does this mean? The second step to grammar is putting words in the right order within a sentence. Like this:

The apple fell from the tree to the ground. The sun shone on the grass.

That’s all grammar is. It uses the vocabulary of a language to tell you how to group and order words.

To help with this, words have different roles within a sentence. These first chapters will explain the most important word roles.

Subject and Verb

Every sentence needs these.

Subject? What or who is doing something
Verb? What the subject is actually doing.

Example

The man eats. (👨 🍽️)

The man is the subject. He is the one doing something. What he does is eating, the verb.

Example

The dog runs. (🐕 🏃‍♀️)

The dog is the subject. What is he doing? Running, the verb.

If you create a sentence and can’t find the subject and/or verb, something went wrong.

Every language around the world needs these two elements. For some reason, humans can only communicate in sentences where something happens and somebody is doing that.

Example

We say “it rains” (☔). We don’t just say “RAIN!” or “WATER!”

Even though nobody is making that rain happen. And all we care about is that water is falling from the sky. We still add a subject and a verb to that sentence.

The subject comes right before the verb. This is not a strict rule, but it’s good writing advice. As humans understand a language better, we tend to complicate our sentences, moving verb and subject all over the place. Try not to do that. It makes your communication easier to follow.

Negation

This little rule is typically English. That’s why I explain it so early.

All sentences above are true. “The man is old” is what it is.

But what if we want to communicate that something is false? What if we want to turn it around? What if it is actually a young man?

We can “negate” the sentence by adding the word not.

Example

The man is not old. (👨❌👴)

The girl is not a book. (👧❌📖)

Your pet is not a dog. (❌🐕)

This word should come right before the thing it negates. That’s a prime example of grammar!

If you placed the not anywhere else, the reader wouldn’t know what was negated. So grammar adds a rule about the order of your words.

Think about language that way. Not “strict annoying rules to remember”, but “rules to help communicate better and without mistakes”.

Throughout this course, you’ll see many contractions. Contraction means to “make smaller” or “pull together”. That’s when you combine a verb and not, like …

Example

Does not => doesn’t.
Is not => isn’t.
Would not => wouldn’t

These contractions are what make English so small and compact. They are used a lot. Once you get used to them, you’ll also use them without thinking. (See that? You + will = you’ll.)

Once we get to the chapters on verbs, I will explain them more in-depth.

Continue with this course