Overview

You can combine the basic parts of speech to form a sentence, a group of words that has a subject and a predicate. A sentence must express a complete thought. The simple subject is the key noun or pronoun that tells who or what the sentence is about. The simple predicate is the verb or verb phrase that expresses the essential thought about the subject. In other words, a sentence identifies a person, place, thing, or idea and what the person, place, thing, or idea is or does. In most English sentences, the subject comes before the verb.

As you know, a sentence can be as simple as Spot runs; but, sentences can be much longer and more complicated. Adding other words and/or phrases to the simple subject and/or the simple predicate can expand or modify the meaning of a sentence. The complete subject and complete predicate include all the words that modify the simple subject and/or simple predicate.

A compound subject consists of two or more simple subjects that are joined by a conjunction and share the same verb. A compound predicate consists of two or more verbs or verb phrases that are joined by a conjunction and share the same subject. A complement is a word or group of words that completes the meaning of a verb.