ENGL1007 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Tag Question, Present Tense

• School: University of Sydney
• Department: English
• Course: ENGL1007
• Professor: Nick Reimer

Document Summary

Lecture 8 the clause and the text. The basic structure/order of a clause is subject, verb, object; the basic word order rule. The relative order of subject and verb, the subject preceding the verb, applies in clauses without objects as well. In order to convey the meaning expressed in a sentence, this must be order, otherwise the meaning would be flipped. "the people (s) love(v) a hero(o). " when the subject and object are flipped the meaning is completely different: "a hero loves the people. " There is a step missing here, the subject first principle is only useful if the speaker knows what a subject is. John is the focus of the sentence): the subject is the noun phrase with which the present tense form of the verb agrees. Therefore, the only criteria that we should use are: the subject is the noun phrase that would be copied in a question tag - an interrogative version of that sentence.