Another edition of me trying to justify my graduate study

This is my textbook for my Language & Style summer class. Doesn't it look super interesting‽ * I especially love the completely unrelated cover art depicting water. Or is that cigarette smoke? Either way, couldn't we find a more interesting way to depict grammar? How about this:


Much better.

Anyway, I'm studying for my test tonight on sentence structure, and I saw this as an opportunity to a) educate the world, b) defend my choice of master's study, and c) procrastinate while actually sort of studying in a way kinda.

Turns out everyone who's been freaking out about English grammar since, er, grammar school is sort of overreacting. This is mostly because we teach grammar really badly. In truth, there are only six possible sentence structures in English. Six. Total. If you want to feel like a grammar gorilla on cocaine -- all-powerful, all-knowing, and sort of depressingly manic -- then lend me just five minutes of your day.** Here's what you need to know:

You are aware, of course, that all sentences include a subject and a verb. "The grammar gorilla likes cocaine." "The grammar gorilla chortles." "The grammar gorilla does not give a crap what you think of his hairdo." All perfectly acceptable American English sentences.

I'm going to give you a chart now, but please don't freak out. You can skip it and come back for reference.

SIX BASIC ENGLISH SENTENCE PATTERNS

be patterns SUBJ-VERB-SUBJECT COMPLEMENT
linking patterns SUBJ-VERB-SUBJECT COMPLEMENT
intransitive patterns SUBJ-VERB
transitive patterns SUBJ-VERB-DIRECT OBJECT
di-transitive patterns SUBJ-VERB-INDIRECT OBJECT-DIRECT OBJECT
complex transitive patterns SUBJ-VERB-DIRECT OBJECT-OBJECT COMPLEMENT

Hi! Okay glad to still have you here. So listed above are the six possible sentence structures in English. I'm going to glaze over the actual definitions and just use a transitive sentence as an example so I can get to the cool part, which is the fact that you can take any of those sentences and make them negative, passive, perfect, progressive, interrogative, or change tense (past/present/future) -- and it REMAINS THE SAME SENTENCE STRUCTURE. So for example:

You like occlupanids.

This sentence contains a subject, a verb, and a direct object (takes the action of the verb; what I like are occlupanids) -- so it's a transitive sentence. Now let's have some fun with it:

You liked occlupanids. (past)
You will like occlupanids. (future)
You don't like occlupanids. (negative)
You are liking occlupanids. (progressive)
You have liked occlupanids. (perfect)
Occlupanids are liked by you. (passive)
Do you like occlupanids? (interrogative)

So we've made seven new sentences that say completely different things -- BUT IT'S STILL THE EXACT SAME SENTENCE STRUCTURE. It's still got a subject, a verb, and a direct object. It's still a transitive sentence.

Is anyone else as bowled over by this as I am? I mean, the sentence element mix-and-match possibilities are literally infinite, and if you know how to boil it down to the basic elements of the sentence -- that is, the form word slots (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs) as opposed to the structure words (conjunctions, pronouns, prepositions, determiners, etc.) -- then you can create anything. This, my friends, is what I went to graduate school to learn: how to finesse and manipulate sentences. Because, again, that's what writers do. Let's make this sentence as crazy as we possibly can:

Have occlupanids not been being liked by you?
(past passive perfect progressive interrogative)

It's still the same sentence: "you" is the subject, "liked" is the verb, and "occlupanids" is the direct object; we've just thrown a bunch of other elements in there to mess with tense, aspect, positive/negative, and form. Nevermind the fact that there are probably very few opportunities to use a sentence like this. It is grammatically correct, and that's what matters.

For the record, this works for really long sentences too:

Last year, you definitely liked bright green and orange occlupanids despite the fact that my mother's best friend's uncle's sister gave you a huge bag of twist ties for your birthday instead.

All of the information beyond the basic sentence is adverbial; that is, if we stripped it all away, we'd still be left with a grammatical sentence:

You liked occlupanids.

And that concludes our lesson for the day. I hope you learned something. At the very least, you should now know what an occlupanid is.


* Yes, that is an interrobang. No, interrobangs do not get the respect they deserve from English grammarians. Fight the power.
** Satisfaction not guaranteed. But I'm gonna try really hard.