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

Asentence is the conventional unit of connected speech and writing. It is a group of words that together makes sense as a statement, question, command or exclamation.

Sentences:

• Begin with a capitalised letter,
• Conclude with a full stop, a question mark or an exclamation mark,
• And are, at the most basic level, comprised of asubjectand apredicate, orverb.

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 was doing. The place of the noun in the sentence, as the subject, can be taken by noun phrases, such asthe five dogs, or by pronouns, such asI, you, heandshe.

Another role played by nouns in sentences is that of theobject 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 the subject's action (the barking of the dog) is directed at. In this role too, pronouns such asthey, 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

1. 'was' acts as the verb that links the subject, 'Rita',

2. with the adjective 'furious',

3. and together they establish the relationship between the subject and the object, 'me' (used in place of the narrator's name).

• Tags:
• Subjects
• Verbs and Objects
• english grammar