Pennsylvania College of Technology
ENL 111 - Vavra (Homepage)
For more information on syntax, 
visit the KISS Homepage
Return to ENL111 Syntax Menu Return to Practice Exercises

 Finding Clauses
Practice Exercise # 5

Directions:  [Work through the text one sentence at a time.]
1. First place parentheses ( ) around every prepositional phrase.
2. Underline every subject once, every finite verb twice, and label complements (PA, PN, IO or DO). [Reminder: A predicate adjective describes the subject; a predicate noun "equals" the subject; an indirect object is someone or thing "to" or "for" whom (or what) the action of the verb is performed. Any other complement has to be a direct object.]
 

The text is:
      And one particular four-year-old prayed, "And forgive us our trash baskets as we forgive those who put trash in our baskets."
Note: In creating these pages, I cannot create a double underline. I will therefore underline both subjects and finite verbs once, but subjects will be in green; finite verbs in blue.
     Work your way through the text one sentence at a time. The first sentence is:
       And one particular four-year-oldprayed, "And forgiveus (IO) our trash baskets (DO) as weforgivethose (IO) whoput trash (DO) (in our baskets)."
Review Prepositional Phrases Review S/V/C patterns.

As usual, we need to begin with the last S/V/C pattern and work backward.

What is the last word in the "who put trash" clause? Because a clause is an S/V/C pattern and all the words that chunk to it, the "who put trash" clause obviously includes the prepositional phrase "in our baskets." When we look for the first word in the clause, we find that the subject is "who," a word that can also function as a subordinate conjunction. In front of "who," we find "those," but "those" goes with the "we forgive" pattern. Thus the first word in the last clause is "who," and the last word is "baskets." The "who," as noted, suggests that the clause is subordinate, but to be sure we need to find a word outside the clause that the clause  chunks to. We find that word in "those." The last clause describes (modifies) "those" because is tells us who "those" are.
       And one particular four-year-oldprayed, "And forgiveus (IO) our trash baskets (DO) as weforgivethose (IO)[Adjective to "those" whoput trash(in our baskets)]."
Finished with that clause, we turn to the next one (working backwards). Because a clause is a subject / finite verb / complement pattern and all the words that chunk to it, the "we forgive" clause has to include the "who" clause that chunks to "those." Thus the last word in the "we forgive" clause is "baskets."
     To find the first word in this clause, we need to look at the word in front of the subject ("we"). What we find is the subordinate conjunction, "as." This tells us that the clause is subordinate, but what does it chunk to? If we look at the meaning of the sentence, this "as" is saying that the Lord should forgive in the same way that "we forgive." The clause is thus adverbial to the first "forgive."
       And one particular four-year-oldprayed, "And forgiveus (IO) our trash baskets (DO) [Adverb to preceding "forgive"as weforgivethose[Adjective to "those"whoputtrash (in our baskets)]]."
We still have two unanalyzed S/V/C patterns, "four-year-old prayed" and "forgive us our trash baskets." Working backward, we look at "forgive us our trash baskets." Where does this clause end? Because a clause is a subject / finite verb / complement pattern and all the words that chunk to it, this clause must go all the way to "baskets" because we just noted that the "as we forgive those"  clause chunks to the first "forgive." 
    To find the first word in this clause, we need to look at the word in front of the first "forgive." Does the "And" go with "forgive us," or does it go with the "prayed" pattern? In this case, the quotation mark in front of "And" clearly indicates that it goes with the "forgive us" clause. Thus the "forgive us" clause begins with "And" and ends with "baskets."
     Is it a subordinate clause, or a main clause? In analyzing the S/V/C patterns in this sentence, we noted that the entire quotation (which is identical to this clause) functions as the direct object of "prayed." Because main clauses cannot have such functions, this clause has to be subordinate.
      And one particular four-year-oldprayed, [DO of "prayed""And forgiveus (IO) our trash baskets (DO)[Adverb to preceding "forgive"as weforgivethose[Adjective to "those"whoputtrash(in our baskets)]]]."
We are now down to one unanalyzed pattern. All we need to do is to put a vertical line at the end of the sentence.
     And one particular four-year-oldprayed, [DO of "prayed""And forgiveus (IO) our trash baskets (DO)[Adverb to preceding "forgive"as weforgivethose[Adjective to "those"whoputtrash(in our baskets)]]]."/
Note that, because a clause is a subject / finite verb / complement pattern and all the words that chunk to it, the main clause includes all the subordinate clauses and is the same as the entire sentence.