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am class 8.

My teacher was revising sentence pattern today, I got a thought of asking my friend a question that is:

Frame a sentence with pattern of V + S + V + O

He couldn't find an answer and asked to the teacher, the teacher wondered a pattern starting with Verb. Then I said the answer, "Were they playing cricket". The teacher told me that interrogative sentences do not have sentence pattern.

Then I thought for a while. Then I realized that the words like what and why cannot come as S, V, O, C or A. But can't a yes or no question have the sentence pattern? Can't a who question have a separate sentence pattern?

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I'm guessing V = verb, S = subject, O = object. What are C and A? –  mikhailcazi Oct 29 '13 at 14:06
@mikhailcazi C-complement A-Adjunct –  Govind Balaji Oct 29 '13 at 14:10
Thought so :) Interesting, I never knew students were taught english by structure in this manner. –  mikhailcazi Oct 29 '13 at 14:29

1 Answer 1

The seven English clause patterns are expressed as declarative sentences. They were playing cricket is on the pattern S-V-O, and the pattern remains the same even when the word order changes in the interrogative.

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No, my teacher said S-V-O-A is different from A-S-V-O –  Govind Balaji Oct 29 '13 at 13:55
"Were they playing cricket" is V-S-V-O, not A-S-V-O, unless your teacher is recategorizing the A as Auxiliary instead of Adjunct. –  StoneyB Oct 29 '13 at 15:55
Yes, the order needs to be abbreviated thus: Aux-S-V-O . Auxiliaries are very different from main verbs in various ways - some grammarians don't even accept them as verbs. –  Edwin Ashworth Oct 29 '13 at 17:49
Whatever you do with the word order, it remains a S-V-O sentence. 'Some grammarians' apart, were and playing are not separate verbs, but part of single verb phrase. –  Barrie England Oct 29 '13 at 17:54
Battistella in ‎Language Arts & Disciplines_1990 uses a logical description (Aux-S-V-O) for the structure rather than a traditional label here. –  Edwin Ashworth Oct 29 '13 at 19:31

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