Sentence

Sentence is a group of words that contains at least a subject and a predicate. We sometimes find a long group of words but it does not have a subject and a predicate. We can say it is not a sentence because it does not have a subject and a predicate. It is just a phrase. To make it clearer, have a look the examples below and identify whether they are sentences or phrases.

»        The beautiful big tall white American lady

»        She sleeps.

»        The breaking heart Jakarta post news

»        The big boy kicks the ball quickly.

Can you identify which one is a sentence and which one is a phrase? To make it easier to identify those examples above, we can decide whether it has a subject and a predicate or not. If it does not have a subject and a predicate, it must be a phrase. In the contrary, if it has a subject and a predicate, it must be a sentence. If you are still hard to understand, please check the verb that you have already studied. Verb can be called as predicate because it takes place as the action of the subject.

Look at the first example above and compare with the second one! Is there any predicate in the first or second example? The first word is ‘the’. This word is not a subject or a predicate. It is just an article. It is used to modify the noun ‘lady’. How about the words ‘beautiful, big, tall, white and American’ in the example above? Are they categorized as a predicate? We can say they are not. Their function is just to modify or describe the noun ‘lady’. Therefore, the first example above is not a sentence but a phrase. It is just a group of words that does not have a subject and a predicate.

How about the second example? Is it a sentence or a phrase? The word ‘she’ in the example is a pronoun. It is a personal pronoun that functions to replace the noun. It must be in the subject position. The word ‘sleep’ is a verb. It becomes ‘sleeps’ is just because of the tense and the subject. It is the action word of the subject ‘she’. Therefore, it is clear that even it contains just two words-she and sleep, it is a sentence because it has a subject ‘she’ and a predicate ‘sleep’. How about the third and the forth examples above? Can you identify those examples whether they are sentences or phrases?