ANALYSIS—SIMPLE SENTENCES
402. Now that we have finished the study of the various parts of speech, we are ready for sentence building and for sentence analysis. Sentence analysis is the breaking up of the sentence into its different parts in order to find out how and why it is thus put together. To analyze anything is to break it up or separate it into its different parts. We speak of analyzing a sentence when we pick out the subject and the predicate and their modifiers, because we thus unloosen them or separate them from one another.
These parts of the sentence are called the elements of the sentence. The elements of a sentence consist of the words, phrases and clauses used in forming the sentence.
403. Let us begin from the simplest beginning and build up our sentences, using the various parts of speech as we have studied them. Let us take the simplest form of sentence which we can consider. For example:
- Men work.
There are only three parts of speech which can be used to make a simple sentence in this manner, and these are, either the noun and the verb, or the pronoun and the verb. We might say instead of Men work, They work, and have a complete sentence.
In the sentence Men work, men is the subject and work is the predicate. The subject and the predicate are the two principal elements in a sentence. No sentence can be formed without these two parts and these two parts can express a thought without the help of other elements. Now we may begin to enlarge the subject by adding modifiers.
You remember we have found that a noun may be modified by an adjective. So we add the adjective busy, and we have:
- Busy men work.
Our simple subject is still the noun men, but the complete subject is the noun with its modifier, busy men. We may add other adjectives and say: