Download Subjects and Verbs - Mountain View College

Editing 1: Subjects and Verbs
Subject -- the person, thing, or idea that the sentence is about.
Finding the Subject:
1) To find the sentence's subject, ask yourself, "Who or what is this sentence
about?" or "Who or what is doing something in this sentence?" The subject of a
sentence will always be either a noun or a pronoun.
The subject is underlined in the sentences below:
Mary tripped on the stairs.
The brakes on my car make a strange noise.
She owns three cats.
Anxiety is common among college students.
2) The subject of the sentence will also never be in a prepositional phrase. A
prepositional phrase is a group of words that begins with a preposition and ends
with a noun or pronoun.
Some common prepositions are:
above
before
by
across
behind
down
along with
below
during
around
beside
except
at
between
for
from
in
into
of
off
on
over
through
to
toward
under
up
upon
with
without
Verb -- explains what that sentence says about the subject, either shows action or links
the subject to something that is said about the subject.
Finding the Verb:
1) Try putting a pronoun such as I, you, he, she, it, or they in front of the word
you think might be the verb. If the word is a verb, the resulting sentence will
make sense.
2) Look at what the verb tells us. In the sentences above, the verbs tripped,
make, and owns are called action verbs because they show action. The verb in
the last sentence, is, is a linking verb because it links (joins) the subject to
something that is said about the subject. It connects the subject, anxiety, with an
idea about anxiety (it is common among college students). Other linking verbs
are: am, are, was, were, look, feel, sound, appear, seem, and become.
More about Verbs
1. Sometimes verbs consist of a main verb plus one or more helping verbs, such as be,
is, do, have, may, might, will, would, can, could, or should.
2.
The verb of a sentence never comes after the word to.
3.
A word ending in -ing cannot by itself be the verb of a sentence. It can be a part of
the verb, but it needs a helping verb before it.
4.
A sentence may have a compound subject -- in other words, more than one subject.
Ellen and Amy have started their own business.
5.
A sentence may have a compound verb -- in other words, more than one verb.
They plan parties for other people and also can provide all the refreshments.
6.
A sentence may have both a compound subject and a compound verb.
In the last three weeks, Ellen and Amy arranged a wedding reception, catered a
dinner, and earned over four hundred dollars.
Verbals -- are used to name or describe people, places, and things. There are three kinds
of verbals:
Verbal
Infinitive
How Formed
To plus a verb
Example and Comment
The lost child began to cry.
Participle
Present: verb plus -ing
Past: verb plus -ed or
irregular form
The crying, frightened
child could not be
comforted. (Participles are
used as adjectives to
describe a noun; here the
adjectives crying and
frightened describe the
child.)
Gerund
Verb plus -ing
Crying is sometimes very
healthy. (Gerunds are used
as nouns; here the noun
crying is the subject of the
sentence.)
©ACW, Mountain View College, 2014