The sentence: subject and predicate, phrase and clause, kinds of sentences, punctuation
LUG-105 English and Legal Language, Unit II: Sentence: subject and predicate; phrase and clause. · LLB · 60 min
The first grammar lecture of the paper: what a sentence is, how it divides into subject and predicate, how a phrase differs from a clause (noun, adjective and adverb clauses), the five kinds of sentences by purpose, and the punctuation marks a drafter uses. Every example is a sentence a lawyer will read or write: a plaint, an order, a cross-examination question, a proviso. The examiner asks these as 3.5-mark definitions ("define sentence and distinguish subject and predicate", "define punctuation and its use").
Objectives
- Define a sentence and identify its subject and predicate, including an understood or inverted subject
- Distinguish a phrase from a clause and name the three kinds of subordinate clause
- Classify sentences by purpose: assertive, interrogative, imperative, exclamatory, optative
- Use the full stop, comma, semicolon, colon, quotation marks and apostrophe correctly in legal drafting
- Answer the past-paper questions on subject and predicate and on punctuation in exam shape
Slides
- What is a sentence?
- Subject and predicate
- Why the subject matters in drafting
- Phrase and clause
- Noun, adjective and adverb clauses
- Kinds of sentences by purpose
- Punctuation I: full stop, comma, semicolon, colon
- Punctuation II: quotation marks, apostrophe and the rest
- Exercise: analyse and punctuate
- How the examiner asks it
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