Sentence Patterns from a Functional Perspective

As we've seen, the Subject is usually (but not always) the first element in a sentence, and it is followed by the verb:

Pattern 1

Subject	Verb
David The dog Susan	sings barked yawned

In this pattern, the verb is not followed by any Object, and we refer to this as an intransitive verb. If the verb is monotransitive, it takes a Direct Object, which follows the verb:

Pattern 2

Subject	Verb	Direct Object
David The professor The jury	sings wants found	ballads to retire the defendant guilty

In the ditransitive pattern, the verb is followed by an Indirect Object and a Direct Object, in that order:

Pattern 3

Subject	Verb	Indirect Object	Direct Object
The old man My uncle The detectives	gave sent asked	the children me Amy	some money a present lots of questions

Adjuncts are syntactically peripheral to the rest of the sentence. They may occur at the beginning and at the end of a sentence, and they may occur in all three of the patterns above:

Pattern 4

Pattern 4 is essentially a conflation of the other three, with Adjuncts added. We have bracketed the Adjuncts to show that they are optional. Strictly speaking, Objects are also optional, since they are only required by monotransitive and ditransitive verbs, as in the examples [2] and [3] above.

Match the sentences to the patterns:

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