Welcome to class! Today’s discussion promises to be educative and interesting.

If you are
familiar with my posts, you will recall that I have made references to the English Rankscale
which has the clause as one of its members. This post, Syntactic Elements of the Clause
Structure in English, focuses, at a micro level, on those items that make up the clause or sentence
structure. You are right to refer to a simple sentence as a clause, so both are used
interchangeably.

Syntactic Elements of the Clause Structure in English

There are four (4) elements that make up the English clause and we refer to them as the Elements
of clause structure. In other words, a clause in English has four (4) structural or syntactic
elements and they are the maximum a clause can have. Let us see the list of these four structural
elements and proceed to discuss each one of them in details with illustrative examples. They are:

Subject

Predicators

Complement

Adjunct

Model of Classification

There is need to state here that there are various models of grammar. See the post, What is
Grammar? for more clarifications. The model of grammar we subscribe to is the Systemic
Functional Grammar (SFG) which has M. A. K. Halliday and others as its proponents. In the
description of the structural elements of the clause, we have adopted the SFG model, that is: (S),
P, (C), (A). For the traditional grammarians, they classify the elements of the clause as follows:

Subject – S

Verb – P

Object – O

Adverbial – A

Description of Structural Elements of the Clause

The four structural elements of the clause or simple sentence, the S, P, C, A, have specific
groups that can operate under them. Under the subject, the nominal group operates; in the
predicator, the verbal group operates. Under the Complement, the nominal group operates, while
finally in the adjunct, the adverbial group operates.
Let us take each one of these structural elements and discuss them further:

The Subject

The subject is usually the first element in a clause, if we go by the basic patterns of the simple
sentence. The subject is the performer or initiator of an action which the verb describes in a
clause or sentence. It is the agent and it acts on the object. It is the element of a clause or simple
sentence which normally comes before the predicator or Verbal group and consists of a noun
phrase. In other words, in the subject, there is a nominal group. Usually, the subject normally
consists of any of the following items:

A Noun

Cars are expensive these days.

George left for Canada last week.

Bread is a staple food.

Mangoes are in season.

Rice and Beans is good for lunch.

A Pronoun

Theirs is a good case.

We are fine today.

She usually arrives late.

Everybody needs to work hard.

They could not arrive on time.

Verbal Noun or Gerund

Travelling at night could be fun.

Texting on the road is dangerous.

Comparing one’s ability with another’s is unnecessary.

Swimming is a good sport.

Nominal Group

The cake in the fridge is bad.

The baby in the cot is sleeping.

My leg aches badly.

The generous chief of staff distributed cash gifts to the villagers.

Her father’s house is under repairs.

Finite Nominal Clause

Where we go is none of your business.

What they hear is untrue.

Why they complain is understandable.

What we want is not available.

That he would win the election is certain.

Non-Finite Nominal Clause

To go home at this time is not reasonable.

Working for hours without resting is unhealthy.

Being taken for granted is discouraging.

Sleeping too late can cause red eyes.

To marry twice is folly.

Note that the subject must always be in agreement with the verb and the complement in any
given sentence. See the extensive discussion on Concord.

The Predicator

This is an important structural element of a clause or simple sentence. It usually comes after the
subject and characteristically precedes the complement. The predicator comprises the operator,
which is the first auxiliary verb or the finite verb ‘be’, a verb or verbal group, the non-finite part
of the verb phrase plus other elements relating to it like the negation, the catenative, and the
particle. It is in the predicator or the verbal group that we realise both tense and aspect. See The
English Verbal Group. See the following sentences that show the predicator:

We did not like the food they gave us.

The boy won’t leave until you buy him biscuits.

He could not attend the meeting.

The girls do not sing in the choir.

The woman does not go out on Sundays.

The farmers did not cultivate the land.

We like eating fried rice on Christmas day.

They kept borrowing to augment their meagre salaries.

It is important to note that if the only predicator in a sentence is an auxiliary verb, we reckon it as
a lexical verb! For example:

The sun is

The girls are

These babies are so cute.

Note also that we can modify the lone auxiliary verb that has assumed the status of a lexical verb
with a modal auxiliary. Take a look at these examples both in the finite and non-finite forms:

The students could be sometimes unruly.

He should be there by now.

You must be silly!

The man is being

They are being

He has been outside the country since independence.

The Complement

The complement has some features similar to the subject in the sense that the nominal group
operates under both. The complement comprises the following:

A Noun

We ate chicken.

The man bought a house.

The madman stole plates.

A Pronoun

The teacher punished them.

He visited me.

She cooked it.

An Adjective

The sums appear difficult.

The wine is expensive.

He looks unkempt.

The baby is quiet.

The man became happy.

The houses are new.

A Verbal Noun/Gerund

I love swimming.

She likes cooking.

The kids love travelling.

Nominal Group
We killed a very big snake.

He likes fried rice with plantain.

She likes roasted yam.

He bought a cheap brown American truck.

Noun/Nominal Clause (finite and non-finite)

I like the position he took.

She loves sewing children’s clothes.

They asked why we came.

We foolishly believed the lie he told.

The farmer prefers selling his old yams.

Types of Complements

It is essential to state that there are two types of complements. These are:

Complement Intensive

Complement Extensive

Let us take a look at each of them…

Complement Intensive

The complement intensive usually makes reference or expresses a relation to another element in
the sentence or clause structure. The element is usually the subject or the complement.

See these examples:

The governor is shrewd.

The students elected him their captain.

We considered him suitable for the job.

Complement Extensive

This makes reference to an entity outside the sentence or clause structure. It does not refer to any
element within the sentence or clause structure.

Examples include:

The senator built a new house.

They gave us papers for the exam.

He bought five bottles of wine.

She served biscuits.

In the complement extensive, we can recast the complement to be the subject of the sentence in
the passive mood e. g.

A new house was built by the senator.

Papers were given to us for the exam.

Double Complementation

There is the concept of ‘Double Complementation’ which we should examine. It simply has to
do with the presence of more than one complement in a clause structure. For example:

He bought his father a house.

They named him the champion.

Santa Claus gave the children some presents.

They decorated him a knight.

We made him our leader.

Adjunct

We have items like: this morning, last year, last semester, often, very slowly or quickly, down
the road, after the service etc. This position is occupied by the adverbial group. I have put
together a comprehensive post on the Adverbial Group in English. Do check it out. I have also
written on adjuncts and related concepts extensively in the post Types of Adverbs. Make sure
you look it up.

Note

It is important to state that of all these structural elements of the clause, the only obligatory
element is the predicator. All others, the subject, the complement and the adjunct are optional!
Let us consider some sentences to demonstrate the obligatory nature of the predicator and the
optionality of other elements:

Leave! P

Leave now! P, (A)

You can leave. (S), P

You can leave at once. (S), P, (A)

He left the book. (S), P, (C)

She can leave him alone. (S), P, (C), (A)

The man left there in anger. (S), P, (A), (A)

Summary

It has been an interesting discourse so far. Hasn’t it? The discussion on the English Clause will
be incomplete if we do not discuss Types of Clauses in English. Check out the post and please
endeavour to drop your comments on every post you read! The feedback is important! Thank
you so much for reading this post. I am sure you are better for it! Great

(I) Word Classes and Phrases

NOUN (N), VERB (V), ADJECTIVE (Adj) and ADVERB (Adv).

We can use these word classes to define four of the five kinds of phrases which occur in English
sentences:

(1) NOUN PHRASE (NP)

A phrase (a group of words) which has a NOUN as its head:

a student; the charming student; that grotty little first year English student; that grotty little
English student with green hair; a pint of Boddingtons

(2) VERB PHRASE (VP)

A phrase which has a VERB as its head:

guzzle; has guzzled; has been guzzling; is; might have been; yawned; had been yawning

(3) ADJECTIVAL PHRASE (AdjP)

A phrase with an ADJECTIVE as its head:

despicable; absolutely despicable; as despicable as possible

(4) ADVERBIAL PHRASE (AdvP)

quickly; too quickly; too quickly for comfort

In addition, we need one more phrase type:

(5) PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE (PP)

A phrase which consists of a preposition with a Noun Phrase joined to it:

up the road; down his throat; round the grotty student's ear

Chuckle Stop!

(II) How we make sentences

We can join words from the major word classes together to make very simple sentences:

1. John / hit / Mary (N V N)

2. Mary / hit / John (N V N)

In fact, the words in these two sentences are really one-word phrases and so really have the
structure NP VP NP. We can join other, longer, phrases together to make sentences which are a
bit more interesting:

3. The student / had been yawning (NP VP)

5. That grotty little first year English student / is / a pint of Boddingtons (NP VP NP)

The head word of a phrase is its most important word. However, we can also see that the labels
we have provided so far give sentences (1) and (2) above (John hit Mary and Mary hit John) the
same description when they mean very different things. In (1), John does the hitting and Mary is
hit, and in (2), Mary does the hitting and John is hit. Similar comments apply to sentences (4)
and (5). So, we need an additional set of labels to characterise how the phrases join together to
make these sentences. Remember, both Mary and John are NOUNS. But in John hit Mary, John
is the SUBJECT (S) and Mary is the OBJECT (O), whereas in Mary hit John it is the other way
round.

To parallel the distinction between NOUN on the one hand and SUBJECT and OBJECT on the
other, we also need a label to distinguish the VERB word class from its sentence element role.
We use the term PREDICATOR for this purpose.

(III) Types of predicator

Predicators are at the core of English sentences, and to understand how sentences work we have
to recognise that there are FOUR kinds of Predicator, which you can see in the following
sentences. These are TRANSITIVE, INTRANSITIVE and LINKING predicators.

(1) Mary hit John

hit is a TRANSITIVE predicator

hit is a verb which requires an object as well as a subject. It usually describes an action directed
from one participant to another. Notice how deviant Mary hit seems.

(2) The student yawned

yawned also expresses an action, but unlike hit, it does not require an object after it. Notice how
deviant The student yawned the apple seems.

(3) That student is utterly despicable

That student is a member of the Monster Raving Loony Party

In both of these cases is is a LINKING verb

is links together the subject Noun Phrase that student with another Noun Phrase or an Adjective
Phrase which expresses some attribute or role of the subject.

Chuckle Stop!

(IV) There are five major elements which can make up a simple sentence:

Dr SPOCA!!

S = SUBJECT

A Noun Phrase which refers to the entity which is the

topic of the sentence (what the sentence is about), and

if the predicator of the sentence is a dynamic verb,

the subject is the "doer" of the action. Usually comes

first in the sentence, before the Predicator.

P = PREDICATOR

A Verb Phrase which expresses the action/process or

relationship in the sentence.

O = OBJECT
A Noun Phrase which refers to the entity which is the recipient of the action/process. Only
occurs with transitive

Predicators. Usually comes after the Predicator.

C = COMPLEMENT

A Noun Phrase or Adjective Phrase which normally comes after a linking Predicator and
expresses some attribute or role of the SUBJECT. Sometimes it expresses an attribute or role of
the OBJECT. Almost always comes after the Predicator.

A = ADVERBIAL

An Adverbial, Prepositional or Noun Phrase which usually specifies some condition related to
the Predicator, e.g. when, where or how some action occurred. It is by far the most mobile of the
sentence elements, and can occur in many different positions in a sentence (the other four
sentence elements are much more fixed). Its most normal position is at the end of the sentence,
however.

Hence the ordering S-P-O-C-A

(V) What phrases will we find in each of the sentence elements?

arrow pointing right

Noun Phrase

arrow pointing right

Verb Phrase

O
arrow pointing right

Noun Phrase

arrow pointing right

Adjective Phrase or

Noun Phrase

arrow pointing right

Adverb Phrase or

Prepositional Phrase or

Noun Phrase

(VI) What are the most common (conventional) orderings of the sentence elements?

S P Mick / laughed

S P O Mick / ate / the student

S P C Mick / is / crazy

S P A Mick / laughed / mysteriously

S P O A Mick / ate / some more students / on Thursday

S P O C The rest of the students / voted Mick / maniac of the year

S P O O The students / gave / Mick / his bus fare to the asylum

(i) Crazy Mick is.

(ii) Mick on Thursday some more students ate.

How to identify elements of simple sentences

Go through the following procedure step by step:

Find the VERB

What form? (single Verb or VP)

Is there only one?

Is there more than one?

Pick out the VP which describes the action/process/state of the SUBJECT

Label this the PREDICATOR (P)

Find the SUBJECT of the main verb(s)

(the person or thing doing the action of a 'dynamic' verb): the TOPIC of the sentence.

What form? (single Noun or NP)

Label this the SUBJECT (S)

IMPORTANT NOTE: The remaining elements will now be O, C or A. CHECK BACK TO THE
PREDICATOR. Is it transitive, intransitive or linking? The kind of predicator governs what
sentence elements can come next.

IF THE PREDICATOR IS TRANSITIVE

(a) Find the OBJECT of the main verb(s)

What form? (N or NP)

Bracket the word or phrase and label it OBJECT (O)

(b) IF THERE SEEM TO BE TWO OBJECTS as in e.g.

S P Oi Od

Our landlady / cooks / us / strange dishes.

S P Oi Od

The student / sent / Mick / poison pen letters.

One is the direct Object (Od) and one is the indirect Object (Oi)

You can test for an INDIRECT Object:

Can you put to or for in front of it? (e.g. for us, to Mick)'

S P Od Oi

Our landlady / cooks / strange dishes / for us .

S P Od Oi

The student / sent / poison pen letters / to Mick.

IF THE PREDICATOR IS LINKING

(e.g. BE, SEEM, APPEAR, BECOME, LOOK, etc.)

Find the COMPLEMENT element:

(the unit of structure which specifies or describes the SUBJECT (or, occasionally, the OBJECT)
in more detail)

IS IT SEPARATE FROM THE S OR O IN THE SENTENCE?

What form? (Noun or NP , Adjective or AdjP. Can you replace the phrase with a single
Adjective?)
IF SEPARATE FROM S or O, bracket the word or phrase and label it COMPLEMENT (C)

IF THE PREDICATOR IS INTRANSITIVE,

the only other element which can occur in a simple sentence is an ADVERBIAL.

But ADVERBIALS can also occur with both transitive and linking Predicators.

Find the ADVERBIAL element:

Does the unit of structure specify or describe the nature of the action/process in more detail?

Does it function very like an ADVERB?

(See WORD CLASS CHECKSHEET)

Can it easily be moved to different parts of the sentence?

What form?

(Noun, NP, Adverb, AdvP, PP)

Bracket the word or phrase and label it ADVERBIAL (A)

You now have the main elements of any simple sentence.