Studied by 4 people
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
Direct object - answers ‘what’ or ‘who’ → eg. Kevin studies Art (asking what does Kevin study?
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).
