Mastering Subject/Verb Agreement

1. Force yourself to listen for s sounds as you write. In speaking, we sometimes drop these sounds as we fade one word into another. Because of this, we may forget the sounds are even there. Thus, we fail to make our subjects and verbs agree. Listening for those s sounds is the real key to getting rid of most agreement problems.

2. Don't be misled by false subjects. Be sure the word you make your verb agree with is actually the subject of the clause, not just another noun.

Change:	Those tomatoes from my brother looks juicy.
to:	Those tomatoes from my brother look juicy.

The first sentence gives mixed signals because the verb has been made to agree with the false subject "brother" rather than the true subject, "tomatoes." Here's another example of the false subject.

Change:	Forgetting your tickets cause problems.
to:	Forgetting your tickets causes problems.

At first glance "tickets" may look like the subject, but a moment's reflection tells us that "forgetting your tickets" causes problems, not the tickets themselves. Whenever such a verb phrase serves as the subject, consider it singular.

3. Treat collectives as singulars. Collective nouns identify a group: a team, a platoon, a class, a congregation, a family. Treat broadly inclusive nouns such as "nobody," "everybody," "anyone," "each," and "everyone" as singular also.

Change:	My family like to go to church together.
to:	My family likes to go to church together.

Even if the family has eight or nine people, it is still only one thing; therefore, it is considered singular.

Six Problem Areas - Subject/Verb Agreement

This rule comes first because understanding it can help you understand some of the others. In most sentences you follow it

naturally, but it can cause trouble. The rule is as follows: The subject and verb of each clause must agree in number.

The subject and verb of each clause must agree in number.

If you have a singular subject, you need a singular verb. If you have a pluralsubject, you need a plural verb. Singular and plural tell how many. Singular means one. Plural means more than one. Both your subject and verb must give the same signal as to how many you are talking about.

Read the following sentences and see if you can find any problems with subject/verb agreement.

1. The cat come home tired.

2. The cat comes home tired.

3. The cats come home tired.

4. The cats comes home tired.

Two Kinds of Connectors

Besides the uses already described, coordination and subordination are two basic ways of linking clauses. Sometimes we don't have much choice about how to make the connection, but often, if we see the options, we do.

These trees lose their leaves every winter, but they don't die.

The clauses in the example above are joined by coordination, but could as easily have been joined by subordination.

Although these trees lose their leaves every winter, they don't die.

Now, the first clause is subordinate to the second. The two words that make the difference are called conjunctions, or joining words. "But" belongs to a group of conjunctions that coordinate. "Although" belongs to a group that subordinates. Learning to recognize these two groups of conjunctions will not only help you with your sentence structure, but also with your punctuation.

Coordinating Conjunctions

Not too much needs to said about them. They are few in number: and, or, but, for, nor, yet, so, and they can always be found at the point where the two coordinate structures are joined together, as in the example above.

Expanding the Basic Pattern - Substitution

A third way of expanding the basic pattern is substitution, which means replacing a single word with a word group. Again, an example will help.

S V/C

I saved/my meager wages.

By substituting, we can expand the complement to read:

S V/C

I saved/what I earned, which wasn't much.

"My wages" has been expanded to "what I earned" and "meager" to "which wasn't much." As you can see, this adds more words without adding much meaning and so could be objected to as uneconomical. Still it's a perfectly grammatical way of expanding sentences, and there may be times when it will suit your needs exactly, either to give emphasis or to improve sound and rhythm.

Sometimes, as in the example below, you can use substitution to clarify or summarize your thoughts:

Change:	Harold and Arthur earn more than I do. This makes me furious.
to:	Getting paid less than my male coworkers makes me furious.

Expanding the Basic Pattern - Coordination

The basic S V/C pattern can also be expanded by coordination. Whereas subordination ranks one element as more important than the other, coordination places elements on an equal footing. If the relationship of subordination is that of child to parent, the relationship of coordination is that of spouse to spouse. In a sentence it works like this:

Esther types/letters.

The subject can be expanded by adding a coordinate element:

S V/C

Lois and Esther type/letters.

And coordination can also be used to expand the complement.

S V/C

Lois and Esther type/letters and memos.

Or the verb.

Lois and Esther type letters and memos but write-out short notes and signatures.

Now each element has been compounded with a resulting structure that might be represented as follows:

S	V/C
Lois and Esther	type/letters and memos
	but
	write-out/short notes and signatures.

This sentence has a compound subject, a compound verb, and two compound complements. In every case the compound elements are coordinate to each other and therefore, because they are of equal importance, may be said to balance.

And just as we can subordinate either individual words or whole groups of words, the same is true of coordination. In the previous example we compounded the various parts of a single independent clause, but we could also coordinate two separate clauses.

S	V/C	S	V/C
Esther	types/letters,	but Lois	types/memos.

Now our sentence has two independent clauses, each of which could stand alone as a complete sentence.

Modification and Subordination

Modification and Subordination

The easiest and most common way of developing the S V/C pattern is by adding a modifier. To modify means to change or alter. A modifier, therefore, is a word or word group that changes the meaning of another word or word group that is more basic to the sentence.

S V/C

Luis eats/apples.

By adding a modifier to the complement, we can alter the meaning of "apples."

S V/C

Luis eats/green apples.

We can also modify the subject.

S V/C

Little Luis eats/green apples.

And even the verb.

S V/C

Little Luis never eats/green apples.

Notice how the basic S V/C pattern remains even after several modifiers have been added. This is because modifiers cluster around base elements like iron filings around a magnet.

The principle that describes this relationship between modifiers and more basic sentence elements is subordination. Subordination means taking a position of lesser importance or rank. In the Army, for example, a private is subordinate to a captain and a captain to a general. Likewise, when we say a modifier is subordinate to the base element, we mean it has less importance and is dependent upon that more basic element for its claim to a place in the sentence. We can see this by looking at our last example.

Little Luis never eats green apples.

When we drop all the modifiers, we still have a sentence that feels complete.

Luis eats apples.

But when we drop the base words that the modifiers depend on, we are left with something entirely different.

Little never green.

The result is nonsense. Our minds want to process the data as a sentence, but it won't fit. We have modifiers, but we don't know what is being modified. The base elements are missing.

We've seen how these two principles, modification and subordination, join individual words in clusters. It's also worth noting how they join word groups together. Just as individual words cluster around more important ones, so the clusters they form attach themselves to more important elements. Notice how this happens in the following example.

S V/C

The river was/cold.

Adding a little modification, we get this:

S V/C

Basic Sentence Concepts

Our language organizes thoughts into sentences. As a core, these sentences have a two-part structure. For simplicity and easy reference, we can represent the two parts as follows:

SUBJECT   PREDICATE

The subject, a noun or noun-substitute, tells who or what is doing something. The predicate tells what the subject is doing.

SUBJECT	PREDICATE
This bird	sings.
Marcus	plays soccer.
My old Chevy	still runs.
This pen	leaks.
These books	are heavy.

This two part structure is so basic that a thought doesn't feel complete when one part is missing. Both are needed for a complete sentence. Of course most sentences are longer and more sophisticated than those above, but even the most complex sentences are based on this two part principle. Learning to recognize it, to listen for it, and to use it are the first steps to mastering English sentence structure.

The S V/C Pattern

Another step, slightly less important but still useful, is to see that the predicate is often composed of two parts.

SUBJECT         PREDICATE

SUBJECT         VERB/COMPLEMENT

The verb is the word or cluster of words actually naming the action performed by the subject. The complement comes after the verb. It may do a number of different things, but most often it's the receiver of the action performed by the subject and named by the verb:

SUBJECT          VERB/COMPLEMENT

John                           hit/the ball.

Here John is an agent, the one doing something. "Hit" names the action he's performing, and "the ball" receives the effect of the action. Not all cases are so clear, however. Sometimes the complement modifies the subject, as in "John is tall." Here, "tall" doesn't receive the effect of the action. In fact, there doesn't seem to be any action at all, unless we consider merely existing to be an action. But such cases need not cause problems as long as we recognize the basic pattern and sense that it has been completed. For us, as writers, a detailed understanding of linguistics is secondary. Learning to use the language effectively comes first.