Flexibility of the Sentence Elements
Although the sentence has a normal order—subject, verb, object; or subject, verb, complement—it is rich and varied in the possibilities it possesses of variety and rearrangement, especially in the position of adjective, participial, and adverbial elements, and in the case of adverb clauses.
| Adjective: | The gloomy and portentous mountains towered above him. |
| Gloomy and portentous, the mountains towered above him. | |
| The mountains, gloomy and portentous, towered above him. | |
| Adverb: | The building may have been entered immediately. |
| The building may have been immediately entered. | |
| The building may have immediately been entered. | |
| Immediately the building was entered. | |
| The building was immediately entered. | |
| The building was entered immediately. | |
| Adverb Clauses: | As soon as he had knocked, he opened the door. |
| He opened the door as soon as he had knocked. |
Inflections
Nouns, pronouns, verbs, and two adjectives show changes in function and meaning by means of changes in form, by endings, or, sometimes in the case of verbs, by prefixing auxiliary verbs.
Noun Declension
Nouns are declined to show case and number.
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| Common | boy | boys |
| Possessive | boy’s | boys’ |
| Common | man | men |
| Possessive | man’s | men’s |
| Common | child | children |
| Possessive | child’s | children’s |