1. What is a
Sentence?
By Jaye Lynn Trapp

2. A sentence…..

3. How might you rearrange these words to form a sentence?do
jobs
space
many in
astronauts

4. Astronauts do many jobs in space.
Were you able to use all of the words in a way that makes sense?

5. Can you name two parts of speech necessary to make a sentence?

6. Divide each sentence between the noun and its verb.
The rabbits hopped.
The rabbits hopped in the tall grass.
A cat is eating.
A cat is eating a bird.

7. What are the differences between the words in the two lists below?
List # List #2
eating the
rabbits is
hopped a
tall in
grass
cat
The rabbits hopped in the tall grass.
A cat is eating a bird.

8. Parts of speech, then, have to do with meaning.
All of us have an unconscious knowledge of parts of speech categories.
We can describe content words by their meaning and function in a sentence.
Let’s try another sentence.

9. The froobling greebies snarfed the granflons with great libidity.
What are the English words that you know here?
Are there any pieces of the other words that you recognize from other English words?

10. In addition, we can use our syntactic knowledge to make meaning.
From this example, we can conclude that meaning is not the only way we understand parts of speech.
We can use our knowledge of other pieces of the sentence to figure out categories, or parts of speech.
In addition, we can use our syntactic knowledge to make meaning.

11. Syntactic rules of a language determine
the order of words in a sentence, and how the words are grouped.

12. How can I tell if I’ve written a complete sentence?
Linguists often use parse trees, also known as “tree diagrams,” to analyze the structure of a sentence.

13. Tree Diagrams
Think of a tree below the ground, with its roots branching out in the soil.
A tree diagram takes on this shape.
We can draw a tree diagram for every sentence in the English language.

14. Here’s how a tree diagram looks.
Article
Noun
Verb

15. Let’s try another one.
Article
Noun
Verb

16. Here’s a sentence with a prepositional phrase.
Article
Noun
Verb
Preposition

17. Now you try making your own tree diagram.
Article
Noun
Verb
Preposition
Adjective

18. Check your work to see how you did.
Article
Noun
Verb
Preposition
Adjective