The KISS Approach to
Sentence Structure
-- by Dr. Ed Vavra
Notes for Level Two
Counting / Identifying
Verbs in Verb Phrases
There is disagreement about what
is part of and what is not part of a "verb phrase." In Level Two, our objective
is to locate basic S / V / C patterns, so we will count everything that,
in my experience, it is easiest for students to find. In the following
examples, the verb phrases are in blue:
They are going to go
home soon.
She has to leave at midnight.
He wanted to go with her.
They are helping to repaint
the church.
In Level Four we will see that these verb phrases can be
looked at in different ways in more detail.
Expletives "It" and "There"
Traditional grammar has a category
called "expletives." It includes the two words, "it" and "there" when they
are used in the subject position, as in:
There are five people here.
It is nice to sleep late.
If you already understand this concept and want to use it,
there is nothing wrong with it -- except that it clutters grammar and provides
still another concept to frustrate students with. KISS grammar avoids the
concept and simply treats both words as regular subjects.
The only serious question raised
about the KISS approach to "there" involves
subject/verb agreement. In traditional grammar, "there" is an expletive
and, in our example, "people" is the subject. Thus the verb must be plural
("are") to agree with the subject. But in the KISS approach, with "there"
as the subject, the verb, which is always a form of "to be" ("is," "are,"
"was," "were," etc.) implies equality and thus requires a predicate noun.
Because of this equality, the verb must agree in number with the predicate
noun. KISS, in other words, will not allow "There is five men here." because
"there" must equal "men" and therefore requires "are."
The KISS avoidance of expletive
"it"
is actually a meaningful improvement over traditional grammar, but to see
this, we need to peek ahead to Level Five, where we will deal with Delayed
Subjects. A major problem of traditional grammar is that it treats constructions,
not sentences. Thus, our example (It is nice to sleep late.)
could be used as an example of expletive "it." What traditionalists would
do with the rest of this sentence is difficult to determine because
traditional grammar treats constructions, not sentences -- it would
use this example in a section on expletives and then forget the rest of
the sentence. In the KISS approach, on the other hand, at Level Two we
explain this sentence as a regular S / V / PA pattern ("it" / "is" / "nice").
"Late," of course, is an adverb modifying "to sleep." At Level Four, we
will see that "to sleep" is an infinitive, but its function will still
not be clear. At Level Five, however, we will see that "to sleep" is a
delayed subject -- the "it" is a meaningless place holder, and the sentence
MEANS "To sleep late is nice." Whereas the traditional approach teaches
a bunch of unrelated, often meaningless categories, the KISS approach forces
students to consider the MEANING of the sentences they are analyzing.
If you understand expletives
and want to use them, fine, but before you teach them to your students,
please consider the preceding, and ask yourself why students need the category
-- and which explanation is more meaningful.
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