English Sentence Analysis : An Introductory Course

If we want to describe the English language, we ¼rst have to decide which type of
language we are going to focus on. Not only are there hundreds of di¬erent English
dialects all over the world, even within dialects there are varieties, ranging from
substandard and slang to informal and formal ones, which in turn may be spoken or
written. In this book, we will concentrate mainly on a rather formal, standard, written
variety, not only because this is the variety that we will come across most in academic
books and articles, but especially because it is more carefully thought about before put
on paper and therefore does not show the kinds of gaps and un¼nished sentences that
may occur in spoken language. Another reason is that a more formal written variety
often contains sentences that are longer and are therefore more complex than spoken
sentences. Actually, many of the exercises in this book contain passages from famous
authors, who are known to be especially creative in their sentence use. In the Practice
Program you will also ¼nd ‘real’ examples from ¼ction and popsongs.
In this chapter, we will ¼rst take a look at sentences in general to narrow down our
object of analysis, then we will introduce you to the basic constituents of a sentence,
and ¼nally we will show you how these may or may not be combined in typical sentence
patterns.