Week 17: A sunny EEL day makes me sunny. (S/Vt/DO/OCA)

We are beginning to wind down for the year.  It may not feel that way as we tackle more difficult sentences, but really, we only have one more structure to introduce.  One great thing to recognize is that each of us is a student of our language our entire life.  The ultimate goal of language is to convey truth, beauty and virtue, and since these flow from God, the ultimate goal of language is to convey what we know of God.  And because God is infinite in his truth, beauty and virtue, we will always be students, forever learning, forever expanding, forever penning new understanding. So, with that perspective in mind, there will be no crying in Essentials; this is just one little stop on a much longer journey.  Save the tears for moments of being overwhelmed by the goodness of our Savior.

Class Overview

Yesterday, we introduced the last sentence pattern, S/Vt/DO/OCA.  We also identified all the adjectives in a very long complex sentence, (pp. 268--269 in EEL guide) diving deeper into understanding adjectives.  We referred to Chart L to determine if each adjective was descriptive, possessive or limiting.  In my second class we covered grammar rule #3 about colon use in lists and quotes.

S/Vt/DO/OCA

Determine the object complement adjective by asking the following questions:
1) (V) (DO) whom/what?
2) does it follow the direct object?
3) is it an adjective?
4) does it describe the direct object?

Some examples from class...
Jon painted the car green.
Hank calls her sister.
God called the ground good.

Here is a good one for a complex sentence with an OCA.
As long as he treats the horse badly, consider the horse wild!

Adjectives

Using Chart L (adjectives chart) we determined if adjectives in our example sentence were descriptive, possessive or limiting.  The sentence (pp. 268-269 in the EEL guide) was

Old farmer John painted some parts of his barn bright purple, although he was color blind and thought it was red.

From there, we determined that old was a descriptive, positive degree adjective, and farmer was a noun acting as a descriptive adjective, and some was a limiting, indefinite pronoun acting as an adjective...

Pegging adjective types was not the challenge as much as wrestling with identifying each part of the complex sentence.  We even found a noun clause acting as a direct object (Thank you, Patrice for steering me the right way). Here is a clickable link to the English Grammar Revolution page (always on the blog sidebar) where I find all kinds of diagramming answers.  Fun! Fun!

Grammar

Drill Chart L grammar, further than you went with your student last semester.
If you have memorized www.asia.wub, try adding to that list.  Many more subordinating conjunctions are on the conjunctions chart (Chart H).  More importantly, ask the right questions to determine if the clause is adverbial or adjectival.  Remember that adverbial are subordinating conjunctions, adjectival are relative pronouns.

Dialectic

Wrestle through some complex sentences that you find in a favorite book.  Identify adjectives and whether they are descriptive, possessive or limiting.

Compose some S/Vt/DO/OCA sentences of your own.  This is a much harder task than identifying.

Have a great week!