simple complex and compound sentence part 2

Simple sentence

A simple sentence  has a subject and a verb 

A simple sentence can be very short, but some are long too, so long as they only have one subject-verb combination. Here, the subjects are orange and the verbs are green.

§  I played.

§  I played football

§  I played football with my brother and sister.

§  Today morning, I played football in the ground with my brother and sister.

As you can see, even though some of these sentences are long, each only has one subject and one verb (one clause).

The most important thing to remember about simple sentences is that they never have more than one subject or more than one verb. In other words, there is only one subject doing one thing. A simple sentence CAN have a compound subject (two people using the same verb), but that’s still just one subject.

§  (WRONG) Ramu went to the market and bought an apple. One subject, two verbs

§  (WRONG) Bindhya drove to the market and the dog went with her. Two subjects, two verbs

§  (CORRECT) Vishnu went to the market. One subject, one verb

§  (CORRECT) Ramu and Vishnu went to the market. One compound subject, one verb

We played chess. (one finite verb in the simple past tense)

We wanted to play chess. (One finite verb-wanted and one infinite verb ‘to play’)

I watched birds sitting in the balcony. (One finite verb-watched and adjective participle-sitting)

Swimming is the best exercise. (One finite verb-is and a gerund-swimming)