Guided Practice

IDENTIFYING ENGLISH WORD ORDER PATTERNS

In each sentence below, words or phrases that represent major sentence elements appear randomly in different colors. These sentence elements include SUBJECTS (S), VERBS (V), and OBJECTS (O). For each sentence, identify the superficial word order pattern that it exhibits. Some sentences will exhibit basic SVO word orders; others will exhibit alternative word orders depending on the extent to which basic SVO order has been disturbed by the movement of elements, the interruption of elements, or the lack of explicit subjects for some structures.

For each sentence, write down its word order pattern, for example, SVOSVO, OSV, VSSVO, etc. Then click on "ANSWER" to see the correct pattern.

Label any VERB-ing element as a V, despite its actual function as a finite verb, infinitive, participle, or gerund. Label a verb along with any accompanying "helping verbs" as V (for example, will go = V). Also label as V any helping verb that occurs alone before a SUBJECT, as in questions.

1. The site visitor reloaded the document. ANSWER

2. Having reloaded the document, the site visitor updated the cache. ANSWER

3. Web developers can use style sheets for developing attractive presentations. ANSWER

4. The e-mail message which you sent finally arrived yesterday. ANSWER

5. Can we open a second browser window? ANSWER

6. When you click a link, you will see another document. ANSWER

7. Clicking a link will reveal another document. ANSWER

8. The system administrator decided to create a newsgroup for discussing local issues. ANSWER

9. Which URL did the administrator say that the programmer should omit? ANSWER

10. Most e-mail systems have address books which store and organize e-mail addresses. ANSWER