COMBINING SENTENCES Simple sentences
المؤلف:
EVELYNP.ALTENBERG & ROBERTM.VAGO
المصدر:
English Grammar Understanding the basics
الجزء والصفحة:
P207-C16
2025-11-18
22
COMBINING SENTENCES
Simple sentences
Most of the sentences we’ve looked at so far are simple sentences, which means that they are sentences that are made up of just one sentence. But sentences can be made up of more than one sentence. Let’s start by looking at a few sentences and comparing them.
1. The little boy laughed.
2. The little boy laughed and the little girl smiled.
3. The little boy laughed and the little girl smiled and their dog ran around in circles.
You can see that sentence 2 consists of two sentences joined by and and that sentence 3 consists of three sentences joined by and. Each of the sentences that make up a larger sentence is called a clause. So sentence 1 contains one clause, sentence 2 contains two clauses, and sentence 3 contains three clauses. Just as words combine to form phrases, phrases combine to form clauses, and clauses can combine to form sentences. A clause must contain at least a noun phrase functioning as the subject and a main verb.
Quick tip
A clause is a free-standing sentence or a sentence within a sentence; a clause or sentence contains at least a subject and a main verb.
Quick tip
A sentence can contain one or more clauses.
Here are some more examples of sentences containing only one clause:
4. That magazine looks interesting.
5. The officer followed the rules.
6. She greeted me at the door.
Notice that each contains only one subject and one verb phrase.
Quick tip
A sentence that contains only one clause, that is, one subject and one verb phrase, is called a simple sentence.
Are the following simple sentences?
7. on the floor
8. the extremely tall boy
9. were reading newspapers on the train
None of these contains both a subject and a verb phrase, and so these are not sentences at all; they’re just phrases. You may recognize sentence 7 as a preposition phrase, sentence 8 as a noun phrase, and sentence 9 as a verb phrase.
Answers
Answers
What about sentences like the following?
10.That magazine and those books look interesting.
11.The officer and his men followed the rules.
12. She and her husband greeted me at the door.
The underlined part of each sentence is a compound noun phrase and is considered to be one subject. So, these sentences are all simple sentences. The same thing is true of compound verb phrases:
Is true of compound verb phrases:
13. That magazine looks and seems interesting.
14. The officer followed the rules and saved the day.
15. She met and greeted me at the door.
The underlined parts of sentences 13-15 are compound verb phrases and each is considered to be one verb phrase. So, again, these sentences are all simple sentences.
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