English Grammar/Subject and Predicate/What is a Sentence

The sentence is the basic structure that writers use to make the statements that form a paragraph. It begins with a capital letter and ends in a form of punctuation such as a full stop, exclamation mark or question mark. The sentence uses words to express a complete thought and normally has at least one subject and one predicate.

Sentence Patterns

Pattern 1; Subject-Verb

The simplest sentence pattern is the subject-verb pattern. To complete this pattern, a subject and an intransitive verb, the kind of verb that takes no object, are used.

For example:


 * 1) Birds fly.
 * 2) Fish swim.

Pattern 2: Subject-Verb -Subject Complement

This pattern uses a linking verb (a form of the verb be or verbs such as appear, become, feel, grow, look, make, seem, smell, and sound) to connect a subject to its complement (the word or words that describe the subject).

For example:


 * 1) The pie smells delicious.
 * 2) She is a lawyer.
 * 3) He seems preoccupied.