How Words Work:6

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Oct 1, 1999

Syntax

The behaviour of words in relation to other elements in the sentence through syntactical patterns is another area which is neglected in the classroom. One reason for this might be the complexity of differences in style between, say, forms of spoken and written English. Yet both the spoken and written modes observe common practices which can be easily explained to learners. In order to understand the way the separate elements of a sentence interrelate and exert influence over each other, learners need to grasp the basic sentence patterns which can be formed in English.

The five elements which can be combined to form sentences are subject, verb, object, complement and adverbial. These elements are illustrated in the sentence:

They (subject) made (verb) him (object) mayor (complement) this year (adverbial).

In the cases of object and complement, further distinctions must be made. An object may be direct or indirect:

She wrote him (indirect object) a letter (direct object).

And complements may relate to the subject or the object:

She is happy (subject complement).

They made him mayor (object complement).

Learners need to be able to identify these sentence elements if they are to be able to form complex sentence patterns in acceptable ways. There is a tendency for syntactical structures to avoid redundancy (unnecessary repetition) and this tendency exerts an important influence over the way words work in relation to each other.

In the sentence:

London is England's largest city and Birmingham its second. Repetition has been avoided by the omission of the subject complement, so that the reduced sentence is understood as:

London is England's largest city and Birmingham is England's second largest city

In this case the reduction is achieved by ellipsis.

Common situations for ellipsis are:

- to avoid repetition of the subject in co-ordinated clauses (clauses joined by "and" or "but"):

Michael was eating his breakfast and (Michael was) reading the newspaper

- to avoid repetition of an auxiliary verb in co-ordinated clauses with different subjects:

Children should respect their elders and parents (should) encourage their children.

- to avoid repetition of a predicate in co-ordinated clauses:

I'll have the roast chicken and my wife will (have the roast chicken) too.

- to avoid the repetition of the verb in comparative clauses:

London is a bigger city than Paris (is).

- to avoid repetition in dialogue of information given by previous speaker: