Basic Writing Skills Sentence

What is a sentence?

Definitions, Examples, . . . Compiled by: Belachew Weldegebriel

Jimma UniversityCSSH

Department of English Language and Literature

A sentence •is a group of words which consists of subject

and predicate and •expresses a complete thought.

Subject – names who/what is being talked about

Predicate – tells us something about the subject (action/ state of being).

Subject can be Predicate can beNoun Pronoun or Noun Phrase etc

Verb aloneVerb + adverb Verb + object (Direct and/or Indirect) Verb + complement etc

Examples: Subject + verb•The baby cried. •The old man died. •She has gone. •The game ended. •Everyone laughed. •The beautiful girl giggled.

Examples: Subject (verb + adverb) The baby cried bitterly.The old man died yesterday.We worked hard. They played well.

Examples: Subject + trans verb + object

•The boy kicked the ball. •The dog bit the girl.•The satellite rotates the earth. •Edison invented the electric bulb. •The chairman made a livelily speech.

Examples: Subject + trans verb + Direct object + Indirect Object•The President awarded him a gold medal.

•I bade my friends a sad farewell.

•He gave her some flowers.

•She told me an interesting story. 

Subject + link verb + complement

•The room smells bad. •She felt sick. •Samuel is an engineer. •The boy is clever. •We are soldiers. •This is a disastrous action. •She was a beloved girl. •They were very friendly.

To sum up, a sentence: •must have subject and predicate (verb); •must express a complete thought; •needs to make sense;•must have a logical word order; •has to begin with a capital letter and end

with appropriate terminal/end punctuation mark (./?/!)

•can be short or long. •should be acceptable to native speakers of

the language.

Look at the following group of wordsCan they qualify a sentence?

1. The clever student in our class. 2. If you go home earlier. 3. Samuel killed a big stone. 4. the party ruled South Africa for the past 40

years.5. are Ethiopians we all 6. The beautiful girl walking down stairs. 7. The rain was envious. 8. She sang a beautiful song.