Download Four-tiered Analyses

Four-tiered Analyses: Your task on the final exam!!!!
Tier One: Parts of Speech
Your task: Label the part of speech of each word in a sentence.
What you need to know: The eight parts of speech (nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs,
conjunctions, interjections, and prepositions). Understand that there are several subcategories of
each part of speech. (For example, there are proper and common nouns, plural and singular
nouns, and abstract and concrete nouns; there are helping verbs, linking verbs, transitive verbs,
and intransitive verbs; there are common adjectives and proper adjectives; and there are
coordinating, correlative, and subordinating conjunctions.)
Note: Articles (a, an, the) are considered adjectives; they are not a separate part of speech.
Note #2: Possessive nouns and pronouns sometimes function like adjectives, as in the
following sentences:
Please give me Bill’s coat. (Bill’s is a possessive noun (so label it as a possessive
noun), yet it functions like an adjective since it answers the question “Which coat?”)
Please hand me my coat. (My is a possessive pronoun (so label it as a possessive
pronoun), yet it functions like an adjective since it answers the question “Which coat?”)
Tier Two: Parts of Sentence
Your task: Label the “essential elements” (subjects, verbs, and subject complements) of
each sentence.
What you need to know: All clauses, whether independent or dependent, have essential
elements in one of the following five patterns:
S
IV
S
TV
DO
S
TV
IO
DO
S
LV
PA
S
LV
PN
Note: The essential elements may be a single word, a phrase, or a clause.
Note #2: Subject complements include all direct objects, indirect objects, predicate
adjectives, and predicate nominatives.
Our mantra: “Find the essential elements; everything else is a conjunction or a modifier.”
Tier Three: Phrases
Your task: Find all of the prepositional, infinitive, and participial phrases in sentences.
What you need to know:
(a) Prepositional phrases always begin with a preposition and end with an object
of that preposition. One preposition may have several objects, and those objects
may be modified. Prepositional phrases are always modifiers (either adjectives
or adverbs) and are therefore never essential elements of a sentence unless they
are a PA in the fourth pattern listed above.
(b) Participial phrases start with a verb (used as an adjective) or with an adverb that modifies
the participle. All regular verbs used as participles end in –ing (present participles) or –ed
(past participles). Irregular verbs have irregular forms. A participle may be used as a
single word modifier, or it may be the first word of a participial phrase. Participles and
participial phrases are always adjectives that modify nouns or pronouns and are
therefore never essential elements of a sentence unless they are a PA. Participial phrases
sometimes have prepositional phrases within them.
(c) Infinitives are phrases that include the word “to” and a verb. Infinitives may be used as
nouns, adjectives, or adverbs and therefore may or may not be essential elements in
a sentence. Infinitives may be used alone or as part of a larger infinitive phrase. Infinitive
phrases sometimes have prepositional phrases within them.
Note: We did not learn about some noun phrases, such as appositive phrases and gerund
phrases, so these types of phrases will not be included on the final exam.
Tier Four: Clauses
Your task: Find all the independent and dependent clauses in sentences.
What you need to know:
(a) Clauses, by definition, must have a subject and a verb. This is what distinguishes
them from phrases.
(b) All sentences contain at least one independent clause.
(c) There are two types of dependent (or subordinate) clauses: adjective clauses and
adverb clauses. The purpose of these clauses is to modify a word in the sentence,
just like any other type of modifier.
(d) Adjective clauses begin with a relative pronoun. There are only five relative
pronouns: who, whom, whose, which, that. These words can be used in other
ways; they are only relative pronouns when they begin an adjective clause.
Relative pronouns are either subjects or objects within the dependent clause. An
adjective clause almost always modifies a noun that directly precedes it.
(e) Adverb clauses begin with a subordinating conjunction, and they modify a
word inside the independent clause (most frequently the verb). Adverb clauses are
versatile, as they may be placed either at the beginning, in the middle, or at the
end of sentences.
(f) Punctuation cues will help you identify clauses as in the following patterns:
Adverb clause, IC. (There’s a comma in a complex sentence if the DC comes first.)
IC
adverb clause. (No comma in a complex sentence if the IC comes first.)
Split IC, adverb clause, rest of IC. (Commas around an adverb clause in the middle.)
Split IC, adjective clause, rest of IC. (The adjective clause is nonrestrictive.)
Split IC adjective clause rest of IC. (If there are no commas, the adjective
clause is restrictive—in other words, it restricts or limits the noun.)
IC, cc IC. (If a comma is used between two ICs, a coordinating conjunction is needed.)
(g) You will be asked to identify types of sentences on the final. Sentence types
depend on number and type of clauses. Use the following chart to determine
sentence types:
One independent clause (IC); zero dependent clauses (DC) = SIMPLE sentence
Two ICs; zero DCs = COMPOUND sentence
One IC; one or more DCs = COMPLEX sentence
Two or more ICs; one or more DCs = COMPOUND-COMPLEX sentence
(h) Noun clauses also exist, but since we didn’t learn about them, there will be no
noun clauses on the final exam.
Note: Conjunctions that join clauses together in compound sentences are not part of
either clause. However, all other conjunctions ARE considered parts of both
independent and dependent clauses.