Pattern 2: subject + verb + object

The shortest sentence you can make starting with the word elephants consists of two words, a subject and a verb:
Elephants exist.
You can't, of course, make sentences of the subject + verb type with just any old verb. This is not a complete sentence:
Elephants like
The immediate response to that is: 'like what?' The sentence is missing a key part: the object. So Pattern 2 covers sentences like this:

The object

The object of a simple sentence:

• normally comes after the verb
• is a noun or 'noun-like thing'
• usually refers to a different person, thing or idea from the subject. (The exception to this is objects that include the part-word -self, as in I cut myself, where subject and object refer to the same person.)
• very often tells us about a person or thing that is
  - affected by the action of the verb, or
  - 'acted upon' in some way.
  In the example, the grass is clearly affected by the action of eating.

The simple pattern of subject + verb + object can be used to generate thousands of sentences. They may have just two words like the sample sentence, or they may have many more:

Although the last two sentences have many more words than the first, they still have the same two clause elements: subject and verb.

© John Seely 2008