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A major sentence is a regular sentence; it has a subject and a predicate, e.g. "I have a ball." In this sentence, one can change the persons, e.g. "We have a ball." However, a minor sentence is an irregular type of sentence that does not contain a main clause, e.g. "Mary!", "Precisely so.", "Next Tuesday evening after it gets dark."
The declarative sentence is the most common kind of sentence, and can be considered the default form: when a language forms a question or a command, it will be a modification of the declarative. A declarative states an idea (either objectively or subjectively on the part of the speaker; and may be either true or false) for the purpose of ...
A sentence consisting of at least one dependent clause and at least two independent clauses may be called a complex-compound sentence or compound-complex sentence. Sentence 1 is an example of a simple sentence. Sentence 2 is compound because "so" is considered a coordinating conjunction in English, and sentence 3 is complex.
The combination of SVO order and use of auxiliary verbs often creates clusters of two or more verbs at the center of the sentence, such as he had hoped to try to open it. In most sentences, English marks grammatical relations only through word order. The subject constituent precedes the verb and the object constituent follows it.
In the following example sentences, independent clauses are underlined, and conjunctions are in bold. Single independent clauses: I have enough money to buy an ice cream cone. My favourite flavour is chocolate. Let's go to the shop. Multiple independent clauses: I have enough money to buy an ice cream cone; my favourite flavour is chocolate.
Each of the gerunds in the a-sentences (stopping, attempting, and cheating) constitutes a non-finite clause. The subject-predicate relationship that has long been taken as the defining trait of clauses is fully present in the a-sentences. The fact that the b-sentences are also acceptable illustrates the enigmatic behavior of gerunds.
The subject of a sentence is generally a noun or pronoun, or a phrase containing a noun or pronoun. If the sentence features active voice, the thing named by the subject carries out the action of the sentence; in the case of passive voice, the subject is affected by the action. In sentences with imperative mood, the subject may not be expressed.
yesterday wurde was nur only geschlafen. slept Gestern wurde nur geschlafen. yesterday was only slept 'Everybody slept yesterday.' The word gestern 'yesterday' is generally construed as an adverb, which means it cannot be taken as the subject in this sentence. Certain verbs in German also require a dative or accusative object instead of a nominative subject, e.g. Mir me- DAT graut is uneasy ...