Basic Sentence Patterns1

Basic Sentence Patterns
We do not speak English by merely stringing words together in some random fashion. Instead, we arrange our words, for the most part unconsciously, into patterns. In English we use nine basic sentence patterns. It will now be our purpose to examine these basic sentence patterns of English. Any sentence you speak will probably be based on one of them.


e.g. Food is good.
In the nine basic patterns the subject always occurs in the first N position. In Pattern 1 the grammatical meaning of the subject is “that which is described.” Here the meaning of the verb is “may be described as” and third term must be adjective or adjectival. Be may be is, are, was, were, and am.
Examples:
That food is poisonous.
The box is large.
My mother is kind.
Ali is smart.
Her brother was hungry.


e.g. The girl is here.
Pattern 2 differs from Pattern 1 in these respects:
1- The verb be in this pattern usually has the meaning of “be located” or “occur.”
2- The third position is occupied by “the adverbial.” Words of this type include here, there, up, down, in, out, inside, outside, upstairs, downstairs, on, off, now, then, tomorrow, yesterday, over, through, above, below, before, after.
Examples:
The picnic was outside.
The jaunt is here.
They are on the lawn.
Our appointment is now.


e.g. My mother is a doctor.
The superscript after the second N (noun) means that this noun has the same referent as N1; that is, both brother and doctor refer to the same person. The meaning of to be in Pattern 3 is “be identified or classified as.” The first N1 (subject) has grammatical meaning of “that which is identified.” The second N1 means grammatically “that which identifies the subject” and this is called the subjective complement. Personal pronouns also occupy this position.
Examples:
This is she.
It’s me.
It was they.
That is mine.
They are my friends.
Ali was an instructor.