Subjects, Verbs and Objects

Subjects, verbs and objects are the basic units of any sentence; to be able to identify them and use them correctly is the one of the first steps to writing and speaking good English.

A sentence, of course, is the conventional unit of connected speech and writing: it is a grouping of words that together make sense as a statement, question, command or exclamation.

Sentences

• Begin with a capitalized letter,
• Conclude with a full stop, a question mark or an exclamation mark,
• And are, at the most basic level, comprised of a subject and a predicate, or verb.

The subject is generally a noun, a noun phrase, or pronoun, about which something is said in the predicate, which usually follows it. Take the following sentence:

The dog barked.

Here, the subject is the dog, and the verb ‘barked’ describes what it is/was doing. The place of the noun in the sentence as the subject can be taken by noun phrases, such as the five dogs, or by pronouns, such as I, you, he and she.

Another role played by nouns in sentences is that of the object: that which, directly or indirectly, receives the action performed by the subject. For example:

The dog barked at the postman.

Here, the postman is obviously the object: that which the subject’s action (the barking of the dog) is directed at. In this role too, pronouns such as they, it, us, them, me, etc can replace nouns.

To conclude, let us analyse another sentence and see if we can identify the subject-verb-object pattern:

Rita was furious with me.

Here,

‘was’ acts as the verb that links the subject, ‘Rita’,

1. with the adjective ‘furious’,
2. and together they establish the relationship between the subject and the object, ‘me’ (used in place of the narrator’s name).

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