Writing Strategies and Grammar

MERRIAM-WEBSTER SIMPLE DEFINITIONS

What is a NOUN?

a word that is the name of something (such as a person, animal, place, thing, quality, idea, or action) and is typically used in a sentence as subject or object of a verb or as object of a preposition

What is a VERB?

a word (such as jump, think, happen, or exist ) that is usually one of the main parts of a sentence and that expresses an action, an occurrence, or a state of being

What is a PRONOUN?

a word (such as I, he, she, you, it, we, or they ) that is used instead of a noun or noun phrase

What is a PROPER NOUN?

a word or group of words (such as “Noah Webster,” “Kentucky,” or “U.S. Congress”) that is the name of a particular person, place, or thing and that usually begins with a capital letter

What is an ADJECTIVE?

a word that describes a noun or a pronoun

What is an ADVERB?

a word that describes a verb, an adjective, another adverb, or a sentence and that is often used to show time, manner, place, or degree

The Subject Noun

The SUBJECT NOUN is the primary element (or elements if plural) that performs the action in a sentence.

Example:     The rattlesnake slithered in the grass.

• There are two nouns in this simple sentence: "rattlesnake" and "grass." However, there is only one subject noun. "Rattlesnake" is the subject noun because the rattlesnake is the noun doing the action. "The grass" isn't doing any action.

Example:     Billy loves rattlesnakes.

• In this simple sentence, "Billy" is the subject noun because he is the one doing the loving, so to speak. The "rattlesnake" is simply the object of Billy’s love.

Example:     Love is awesome.

• In this example, "Love" is the subject noun. Not all nouns are concrete, tangible things such as people, places, and objects. Concepts and actions can also function as nouns and as subject nouns. It depends on the construction of the sentence. As we've just seen, love can function as either a verb or a noun.

Example:     Believing he was invincible, Billy caught the rattlesnake with his bare hands.

• In this example, Billy is the subject noun. The main clause is "Billy caught the rattlesnake with his bare hands." The introductory element ("Believing he was invincible") functions to set up that main clause with more meaning and context. When the subject noun doesn't start a sentence, it's often because there's an introductory element like this (often with a comma separating the introductory element from the main clause).

Example:    Not surprisingly, the rattlesnake bit Billy’s hand and slithered away.

• Again, this sentence begins with an introductory element. The core sentence really begins after the comma. The subject noun is "rattlesnake" because the rattlesnake is the noun doing the action (it bit Billy and slithered away).

Example:     Becky and Roger then took Billy to the hospital.

• In this example, "Becky and Roger" serve as the subject noun. More than one individual noun can serve as a subject noun. “They” is a pronoun that can be used to replace Becky and Roger as the subject noun.

The Predicate Verb

The PREDICATE is everything else in a sentence that’s not technically the subject or a part of a subject phrase. This includes the PREDICATE VERB and any other OBJECTS (such as the direct object receiving the action of the predicate verb). Of particular importance is the predicate verb. For a sentence to be complete, there must be both a subject noun and a predicate verb. Everything else is technically optional. Let’s focus on the predicate verb.

The PREDICATE VERB signifies what the SUBJECT is actually doing.

Example:     The rattlesnake slithered in the grass.

• Because "rattlesnake" is the subject noun, "slithered" is the predicate verb. Slithered is what the rattlesnake did.

Example:     Billy loves rattlesnakes.

• In this example, "loves" is clearly the predicate verb; that’s what Billy is doing.

Example:     Love is awesome.

• Finally, because "love" is the subject noun, is is the predicate verb. Is, was, and have (and all their possible variations) are common predicate verbs.

For now, let’s focus again on our other three examples:

Example:     Believing he was invincible, Billy caught the rattlesnake with his bare hands.

• As "Billy" is the subject noun, "caught" is the predicate verb because that’s what Billy did. Everything else is simply providing context and more information.

Example:    Not surprisingly, the rattlesnake bit Billy’s hand and slithered away.

• What did the rattlesnake physically do? In this example, it actually did two things: bit Billy’s hand and slithered away. Thus, in this sentence, we actually have two predicate verbs following the single subject noun: "bit" and "slithered." This is, of course, totally permissible. Later, we’ll check out what happens when you have more than one subject noun and each subject noun has its own predicate verb (which makes a “compound sentence” possible).

Example:     Becky and Roger then took Billy to the hospital.

• We already know that the subject noun is "Becky and Roger." In this example, however, the predicate verb is not the next word. The predicate verb is actually "took," not "then." In this example, then functions simply as an adverb giving more detail to the predicate verb, took.

COMBINATIVE EXAMPLES: As we’ve already seen, sentences can contain more than one subject noun and/or more than one predicate verb in a number of combinations. Let’s check out a number of examples. Subject nouns are in bold font, and predicate verbs are italicized:

• Billy catches rattlesnakes with his hands.
• He loves to catch venomous snakes.
• Becky and Roger think Billy is insane.
• They believe he’s going to get bit one day.
• Becky thinks Billy is an idiot and believes he’ll get what he deserves some day.
• One day, Billy caught a large rattlesnake.
• It bit him.
• Beck and Roger were not surprised.
• Billy died and was buried in his snakeskin boots.