User:Tippen/GED - Cotr/Simple Sentence

NOUNS
 If you have ever listened to babies learning to talk, you'll have noticed that the first words they use are about things. Words which are about things are called NOUNS. Look around your room for a moment. Everything you can see, hear, touch or smell is a noun: a chair, a wall, a computer, a dog, noise, sausages; that is, any THING. A noun can also be an IDEA, such as democracy, beauty, religion, unionization, fun, health, friendship. It can also be a NAME, such as Mother, David, Dear Friend, Daljit, Doctor, Davit. Remember: any word that you can put the word "the" or "a" in front of, is a noun.

VERBS
 Nouns are not very interesting all by themselves. If I just say "dog", "door" I'm not telling you much. However, if I say, "The dog guarded the door", that's a whole idea. In order to get that idea across, I not only had to have a noun, dog I had to say what the noun was doing. I had to have a verb, "guarded", as the "doing something" part. The word "door" is another noun which completes the idea. So,

NOUNS and VERBS TOGETHER

 * every sentence (idea) has at least one noun
 * the noun must have a verb (it must be doing something)
 * a noun, together with its verb, makes a sentence, a complete or whole idea.
 * There usually are other words in the sentence, like the word, "door", in the sentence we just made, to make the idea more detailed.

The noun that is doing something in the sentence is called the subject. The noun that follows the verb is called the object.

What is the idea in this picture?  A person is running.

This is a complete (though a rather simple) idea.

* In fact, each of the words "is" and "running" are verbs, but for now, we will simply say "verb" to mean combinations of verbs also.

Let's try another one: see if you can pick out the subject and the verb in this picture 

The subject is A man and the verb is is sitting The whole idea is a man is sitting. That is a complete sentence

==== More about verbs ==== Verbs are words that tell what someone does. These words are all verbs, run jump       chew sew       knit         stand eat    listen       drink        sit decide      work          play watch      dance read         <BR><BR>

Punctuation Pointer When you are writing a sentence, always start your first word with a capital letter, and end the sentence with a period. There are often many other words in the sentence besides the subject and the verb, but the verb is the only word (or words) that tell what someone does.

She carries her groceries from the store. (What does she do? She carries. Carries is the verb in this sentence.)

They visited the park last week during the holiday. (What did they do? They visited. Visited is the verb in this sentence.) Try to find the verbs in the following sentences. (The subjects have been bolded -- shown in "extra-black" text.)

Sandy runs around the park every day. We went to Disneyland last spring. Too many cooks spoil the soup. Here are the answers:

runs, because runs is what Sandy does. went, because went is what we did. spoil, because the spoil is what the cooks did. The verb in a sentence must have a subject. The subject is the person, place or thing which is doing what the verb says. (Subjects are always nouns, but not every noun is the subject of the sentence.) Look at these sentences:

Sharon shops at Walmart. The verb is shops. Now you have to ask yourself: who shops? The answer is Sharon. Sharon is the one doing the shopping. So Sharon is the subject of this verb. They always work very late. The verb is work. Who works? They work. They are the ones who work, so They is the subject.

See if you can find the subjects in the following sentences. (The verbs have been bolded.):

Kathy loves her cat. He drove to Toronto. The children never clean their rooms. Ready for the answers?

Kathy, because Kathy is the one who loves. He, because he is the one who drove. The children, because the children are the ones who never clean. In this lesson, you've been introduced to nouns, subjects, verbs, and sentences. The homework for this lesson will help you (and your tutor) decide how well you understand what you've learned.