Structure of A Simple Sentence

From our last two discussions, we came to know that a sentence is the fundamental unit of a language to convey a meaningful communication.

Now the point is : how can we construct a simple sentence in English language.

Let's take the example of below sentence:

The girls watched a movie. 

A. Subject : 

In the above sentence, the phrase - 'The girls' - is known as Subject.  The subject of a sentence is a person(s), place(s), idea(s)  etc which are either performing a task or indicating of their being / existence (at some state).

Here, in the above sentence, the subject is 'The girls' and they performed an action , which is 'watched'.

B. Verb: 

In a simple declarative sentence, the subject is followed by an action word which denotes an action already performed / to be performed / are being performed. This action word is known as Verb.

Here, in the above example, the action word i.e. verb is 'watched'.

C. Object:

After the verb, there comes a single word or a group of words , which provides information about the action of the verb. In each case, they answer the question 'What?' or 'Whom?' . This part of sentence is known as object.

In the above example, if we ask the question, 'What did the girls watch?', the answer is  - 'A Movie'. This is the additional information about the verb.

In a sentence, there can be one object and can be more than one object. If there is more than one object, then the concept of direct and indirect object comes into the picture.

If we consider the below statement,

Rama bought a car for his brother

Subject : Rama 
Verb: bought
Object 1: a car
Object 2: for his brother

Direct Object: Direct object answers for 'What' or 'Whom'.
Indirect Object: It answers for  -- 'For what ?' / 'For whom ?' / 'To Whom ?'

So, in the above sentence, the direct object is : 'a car'
and, the indirect object is : 'for his brother'.


A simple sentence thus follows the below structure : 

1. Subject + Verb + Object

Or,

2. Subject + Verb + Object + Object 

Or, 

3. Subject + Verb + Object + Complement 

So, What is a 'Complement' ? 

A complement completes the object. As in the example:

The Company made him CEO

Here, the subject = The Company
Verb = made
Object = him
But, without the complement , the meaning of the sentence remains incomplete. If we consider the sentence, 'The Company made him' - here we get all the three parts i.e. subject, verb and object; still, something is missing here. The company made him 'What'? Complement answers this 'What' part of the Object. Here, in this sentence, when we add CEO to complement the object 'him', the sentence gets his complete meaning.


Stay tuned with us for our next post on Sentence Structure !!