The English Language english language

Basic Clause Patterns

e. whenever the phone rings

Traditional (Reed/Kellogg) sentence diagramming represents the functional
subject/predicate relationship, as in (3).

(3) Head of subject head of predicate Birds twittered

Structural diagrams represent the basic elements of clauses, as in (4).

(4) S

NP VP

S is the abbreviation for “sentence,” and is the category/part of speech label
for both clauses and sentences. The tree (4) is generated by the phrase struc-
ture rule (4a).

(4) a. S  NP VP

This says that the category S is composed of an NP followed by a VP. The
constituents of NPs and VPs are discussed in our chapter on Phrases. The
NP in (4) functions as the subject of its clause while the VP functions as the
predicate. We deal with subjects in our Subjects section and with predicates
in our Basic Clause Patterns section later in this chapter. As we go along, we
will introduce complexities to the diagramming systems as needed.
In contrast to the expressions in (2), those in (5) are not clauses.

(5) a. twittered
b. all the birds of the neighborhood
c. approves of the decision
d. over here
e. when in the course of human events

The fact that a group of words has a certain length or can be understood
in some context is inadequate to define a clause. (5b), for example, contains
more words than (2a,d, or e). Likewise, over here can be understood if one
imagines a context.
Clause patterns provide the basic skeletons of English sentences. Full
sentences consist of clause patterns either minimally or extensively devel-