Microsoft Word Theoretical Course of English Grammar

Nino Kirvalidze
72
an attribute to the subject; 
by the island shore 
= adverbial modifier of place; 
violently 
= 
adverbial modifier of manner; 
in the wind 
=
prepositional object.
One-member sentences contain only one principal member of the sentence which is not 
related to the other principal member as is the case in a two-member sentence where the 
subject and the predicate are grammatically correlated. There are the following one-member 
sentences in modern English: 

substantival one-member sentences: 
Morning. Autumn. Another day of fog
.
What a nice house! 

verbal one-member sentences mainly represented by impersonal sentences in which 
no agent is required, the position of the so-called “dummy subject” being assumed by 
the formal “it”. Impersonal sentences are used to denote: 
a)
atmospheric conditions:
It’s getting dark. It’s raining. It was very cold yester-
day.
b)
time:
It’s ten o’clock. It’s my birthday next Sunday
. 
c)
distance:
It’s not very far from here. It’s just one stop to the Opera House
. 
The composite sentence 
A composite sentence is a sentence which contains two or more clauses. A clause is a unit 
which consists of a subject (which may sometimes be ‘dummy’) and a predicate, and which is 
itself a part of a larger unit, i.e. a part of a sentence.
Clauses may be independent (coordinate) and dependent (subordinate). Independent 
clauses are of the same rank as none of them is a part of the other while subordinate clauses are 
always embedded (contained) within the main clause; hence they are also known as embedded 
clauses.
Structural-semantic types of composite sentences. According to the type of clauses, the 
composite sentence may be subdivided into two structural-semantic classes of sentences: 
compound and complex.

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Theoretical Course of English Grammar 
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