English Language Unit 3 - SYNTAX

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Subject

Subject

-Noun that the sentence is about WHO OR WHAT is ‘doing’ the verb.

-Eg. HELEN enjoys Biology.

Verb

-The ACTION or STATE OF BEING in the sentence.

Clause

-Contains both a SUBJECT and VERB.

-Eg. Jennifer wants some food.

Phrase

-Part of a sentence that DOES NOT contain both subject or verb.

Can be noun phrase, verb phrase etc.

-Eg. The old dog slept soundly. OR The Wiggles arrived in the big, red car.

Object

1. Direct object - answers ‘what’ or ‘who’ → eg. Kevin studies Art (asking what does Kevin study?

2. Indirect object - answers ‘for whom’ or ‘to whom’. → eg. Trang bought Sebastian a sandwich (asking whom did Trang buy for).

Complement

-Anything that completes a sentence BUT IS NOT AN OBJECT.

Eg. David is Hungry. OR Tamara felt ill.

Adverbial

-Word phrase/clause that shows place, time, reason, frequency, condition, comparison etc.

-Answers the question “where, when, why, how often, under which”.

-eg. “the cat ate in the kitchen” OR “Jenny finished the race even though she was exhausted”.

Declarative

-Makes a statement.

-Eg, “this soup is hot”.

Interrogative

-Asks a question. Ends with a “?”.

-Eg. “is your soup too hot?”

-Can lead to be declarative or imperative.

Imperative

-Gives a command, direction, or instruction.

-Usually starts with a verb or politeness marker “please”.

-Eg. “blow on your soup to cool it”.

Exclamative

-Shows emotion, ends with exclamation mark.

-Starts with “how OR what”.

-Eg. “how how is this soup!”

Fragment

-This is not a complete sentence.

-It is missing subject or a verb, or starts with a conjunction.

-Eg. “‘Macbeth’ by William Shakespeare”. OR “Although Shakespeare wrote ‘Macbeth’”.

Simple

-One clause (one verb).

-No conjunctions.

-Eg. “Linda ate the cake”.

Compound

-At least two independent clauses (2 verbs).

-At least one conjunction.

-FANBOYS.

-eg. “Linda ate the cake and ate all the donuts.”

Complex

-At least one independent clause and one dependent clause.

-At least one subordinate conjunction → must be on dependent clause.

Eg. “Linda ate the cake after she went to school”.

Compound-complex

-At least two independent clauses and at least one dependent clause (3 verbs).

-One coordinating conjunction and one subordinating conjunction.

-Eg. “Linda ate all the cakes and donuts after she went to school”

Active voice

-Consists of subject-verb-object (SVO).

-Subject is DOING the action.

-Eg. “The principal investigated the vandalism of the school”.

Passive voice

-SVO.

-Subject is the RECIPIENT of the action.

-Consists of auxiliary verb (am/is/are/was/were/been/being/be)

before past participle (eaten etc).

-Eg. “The vandalism of the school was investigated by the principal”

-Can end with ‘by zombies’.

Agentless passive

-Same concept as passive voice.

-But doesn’t contain ‘by…’

Reasons for using passives

-Act to be more formal.

-Changes focus of sentence to be on object/action rather than the person doing the action.

-We don’t care who’s doing the action.

Nominalisations

-Process of turning verbs/adjectives into nouns (adds suffix).

-ness (happi__ness__).

-ment (enjoyment)

-ion/tion/ation/ition/sion (igni__tion__).

-ism (sex__ism__).

-ance/ence (relev__ance__).

-ity/ty (cruel__ty__).

-y/ry (discover__y__).

-age (stopp__age__).

-al (arriv__al)__.

-dom (free__dom__).

-ure/ture (mix__ture)__.

-th/t (grow__th__).

Reasons for using nominalisations

-The focus is shifted to a concept, not an action or person.

-Text becomes more abstract & objective (less personal).

-Less room for responsibility or blame.

Listing (syntactic)

-3 or more related elements placed together, separated by commas or dot point.

-Makes text more cohesive.

eg. ‘I like pies, cakes, cats, sports and reading’.

Parallelism (syntactic)

-2 or more phrases/clauses/sentences are structurally similar & appear near each other.

-Helps reinforces a point/argument.

eg. ‘I came. I saw. I conquered’.

Antithesis (syntactic)

-2 or more phrases/clauses/sentences are structurally opposite & contrast with each other.

eg. ‘there’s a long version and a short version’.

Modality

-Words that indicates likeliness, possibility or request etc.

-will/would, shall/should, can/could, may, might, must.

-Verbs with higher modality (higher command) → increases formality.

Coherence

-Formatting → heading and subheadings (font.

-Inference → knowing/understanding what’s ‘left out’; prior knowledge.

-Logical ordering → text that’s structured both visually & textually to make sense eg. TEEAL.

-Conventions → rules the type of text follows.

-Consistency → having the same semantic field.

Cohesion (CARCASS)

-Collocation → words found together (eg. happy birthday).

-Anaphoric → pronoun/substitute comes after referent.

-Repetition → using same words, or variations of the word.

-Cataphoric → pronoun/substitute comes before referent.

-Antonymy → words with opposite meanings to create contrast.

-Synonymy → words with similar meaning to create connections.

-Substitution → using a pronoun/other word in place of a word to avoid repetition.

Information flow

-End focus → following SVO, standard way of writing sentences (eg. Tom walked to the shops).

-Front focus - subject at the front is replaced (eg. Suddenly, Tom bought groceries).