+456.+ There is no more important part of the study of English than the
analysis of sentences. The very best result that can come to one from
the study of grammar is the logical habit of mind. The effort to analyze
a difficult passage gives us a fuller appreciation of its meaning. This
cultivates in us accuracy, both of thought and of expression. So, spend
as much time as you can on the analysis of sentences.
The subject and the predicate are the very body of the sentence, upon
which all the rest of the sentence is hung. The other parts of the
sentence are but the drapery and the garments which clothe the body of
the sentence. Hence, the most important thing in sentence analysis is to
be able to discover the _subject_ and _predicate_.
In the expression of a thought, there are always two important
essentials, that about which something is said,--which constitutes the
subject,--and that which is said about the subject, which constitutes
the predicate.
There may be a number of modifying words, phrases or subordinate
clauses, but there is always a main clause which contains a simple
subject and a simple predicate. Find these first, and you can then fit
the modifying words and phrases and clauses into their proper places.
+457.+ Let us take for study and analysis the following paragraph from
Jack London:
Man's efficiency for food-getting and shelter-getting has not
diminished since the day of the cave-man. It has increased a
thousand-fold. Wonderful artifices and marvelous inventions have been
made. Why then do millions of modern men live more miserably than the
cave-man lived?
Let us take the first sentence out of this paragraph and analyze it.
_Man's efficiency for food-getting and shelter-getting has not
diminished since the day of the cave-man._ What is the main word in this
sentence--the word about which the entire statement is made? Clearly it
is the word _efficiency_. _Efficiency_ is the noun which is the subject
of the sentence.
Then you might ask _what sort of_ efficiency and _whose_ efficiency?
What sort of efficiency is explained by the adjective phrase, _for
food-getting and shelter-getting_. Whose efficiency is explained by the
possessive noun, _man's_. Therefore, the complete subject is, _Man's
efficiency for food-getting and shelter-getting_.
Now we are ready to consider the predicate. What has efficiency done? It
_has not diminished_. _Has diminished_ is the verb phrase, which is the
simple predicate of this sentence. It is modified by the adverb _not_,
so we have _Man's efficiency has not diminished_. Then we might ask,
_when_ has it not diminished? And this is answered by the phrase, _since
the day of the cave-man_. So we have our complete predicate, _Has not
diminished since the day of the cave-man_.
In this way we can analyze or break up into its different parts, every
sentence. First find the subject, then ask what that subject does, and
the answer will be the predicate or verb. Do not confuse the verb with
the words which state _how_ or _why_ the action is performed, and do not
confuse the verb with the _object_ of the action. The verb simply
asserts the action. The other words will add the additional information
as to how or why or when or upon whom the action was performed.
Let us finish the analysis of the sentences in the paragraph quoted from
Jack London. In the second sentence, _It has increased a thousand-fold_,
the personal pronoun _it_, which refers to the noun _efficiency_, is the
subject of the sentence; and when you ask what _it_ has _done_, you find
that the question is answered by the verb, _has increased_. Therefore,
_has increased_ is the verb in the sentence. The noun, _thousand-fold_
is used as an adverb telling how much it has increased. It is an
adverb-noun, which you will find explained in Section 291.
In the next sentence, _Wonderful artifices and marvelous inventions have
been made_, we find two _nouns_ about which a statement is made.
_Artifices_ have been made and _inventions_ have been made; so
_artifices_ and _inventions_ are both the _subjects_ of the sentence.
Therefore, we have a compound subject with a single verb, _have been
made_. _Artifices_ is modified by the adjective _wonderful_, and
_inventions_ is modified by the adjective _marvelous_, so we have
_wonderful artifices and marvelous inventions_, as the complete subject,
and _have been made_, as the complete predicate.
In the last sentence, _Why then do millions of modern men live more
miserably than the cave-man lived?_, we find a sentence which is a
trifle more difficult of analysis. It is written in the interrogative
form. If you find it difficult to determine the subject and the verb or
verb phrase in an interrogative sentence, rewrite the sentence in the
assertive form, and you will find it easier to analyze.
When we rewrite this sentence we have, _Millions of modern men do live
more miserably than the cave-man lived_. Now it is evident that the noun
_millions_ is the subject of the sentence. We see quickly that _men_
cannot be the subject because it is the object of the preposition _of_,
in the phrase, _of modern men_. So we decide that the noun _millions_ is
the simple subject.
When we ask the question what millions _do_, our question is answered by
the verb phrase, _do live_. So _do live_ is the simple predicate, and
the skeleton of our sentence, the simple subject and the simple
predicate, is _millions do live_. The subject _millions_ is modified by
the adjective phrase _of modern men_.
Then we ask, _how_ do men live? And we find our question answered by
_they live miserably_. But we are told _how_ miserably they live by the
adverb _more_ and the adverb clause, _than the cave-man lived_, both
modifying the adverb _miserably_. So we have our complete predicate, _do
live more miserably than the cave-man lived_.
This interrogative sentence is introduced by the interrogative adverb
_why_.
Do not drop this subject until you are able to determine readily the
_subject_ and _predicate_ in every sentence and properly place all
modifying words. There is nothing that will so increase your power of
understanding what you read, and your ability to write clearly, as this
facility in analyzing sentences.