At school, the study of the Russian language begins with getting to know letters and sounds, and then moves on to getting to know parts of speech and parts of a sentence. Students learn to independently compose phrases and related text. They learn what connections exist between words in a sentence, how it is built, and most importantly, they learn to parse a sentence into members. But in the early stages, difficulties may arise.
Therefore, in this article we will analyze how to parse a proposal by members, and find out what pitfalls can be encountered.
Word order in a sentence
First of all, you need to figure out the order in which words are put when constructing a sentence. You can swap the members of a sentence in Russian, rearrange them, but the meaning will still be preserved. This phenomenon is called free word order. For example, for a Russian person, the phrases “I went for bread” and “I went for bread” will sound equally clear.
However, it is still worth paying attention to the members that are the main ones. If the subject comes first, followed by the predicate, then the word ordertraditionally considered direct. If the predicate comes first and the subject follows, then this technique is called inversion. But there is no clearly fixed word order.
How do parts of speech and parts of a sentence relate?
Auxiliary questions allow you to determine the type of part of speech used.
For example, a noun denotes an object and answers the question "Who? What?", an adjective indicates a sign of an object, and the question "What?" helps to see it in a sentence. This question can be changed depending on the number and gender of the adjective. The verb denotes an action, therefore, the questions "What to do / do?" help to see it in a sentence. etc.
Different members can be expressed by different parts of speech. For example, the role of the subject is most often nouns or pronouns. In the role of a predicate, a verb usually occurs, but other members of the sentence can also play the same role. Adjectives usually act as definitions, nouns act as complements, circumstances are usually expressed by adverbs. But it is worth remembering that these are not the only possible options.
Determining the main members
In the sentence there are main members, as well as minor ones. So how do you parse a sentence into members? First you need to find those that are the main ones. This is the subject and the predicate.
In a sentence, you can highlight the main character or the main subject in question. Usually this is the subject. In order to identify it accurately, you can set toto the member of the sentence the question "Who?", Used for animated objects, and "What?" for inanimate.
The predicate indicates the action performed by the subject, or its state. Answers the question "What does he do?" if it is present tense, "What did you do?" if it is past tense, and "What will you do?" if it is future tense.
Let's try to figure out which word is the subject and which is the predicate in the following sentence:
I'm going to the pharmacy today.
Asking questions to the members of the proposal: "Who will go to the pharmacy?" The answer is "I". So the pronoun "I" is the subject. I "What am I doing?" The answer is "I'm going to". That is, the verb "I'm going to" is a predicate. Moreover, it is worth noting that in writing the subject will be marked with one line, and the predicate - with two.
What else is there in the offer?
The second step to understanding how to parse a sentence into members is to determine what role all other words that are not main members play.
In addition to the main ones, there are also secondary members: definition, circumstance and addition.
To find out which of them each word refers to, you need to ask auxiliary questions from the subject and predicate.
Definition answers the question "Which? What?" etc. Case questions help to see the addition, andcircumstances indicate the place of events, time, etc. Usually circumstance answers questions such as "How much? How? Where? How? When?"
Let's try to fully parse the following sentence:
Today I will watch a very interesting movie with a friend.
"Who's watching?" - I. The pronoun "I" is the subject. I "What will I do?" - I'll look. The verb "look" is a predicate. Those. now it is known who is performing the main action (I), and what action is being performed (I will look).
Next, you need to choose questions for all the other words. Today answers the question "when?". "I'll see when?" - today.
This circumstance is expressed by an adverb. "I'll see with whom?" - with friend. This word answers a case question, therefore, it is the complement of a pronounced noun.
"See what?" - film.
"Film" also answers a case question and is an addition. Film "What?" - interesting.
This is a matter of definition, hence "interesting" is a definition expressed by an adjective. The film is interesting "how, how much?" - very interesting. "Very" is an adverbial circumstance.
To better understand howparse the sentence by members, it is worth doing several such parsing yourself.
