Clause Pattern: Subject – Verb – Adverbial (SVA)

Understanding the construction and use of the subject – verb – adverbial clause pattern

This pattern consists of a subjectSA noun phrase (a person or a thing) or a nominal clause normally placed before a verb phrase and which acts as the performer of the verb., a copular verbA verb which links a subject to a complement., and an obligatory adverbialAn adverb phrase used to provide circumstantial information about a clause, to indicate the writer’s stance, or to link units of discourse by indicating their relationship.. (Mouse over the sentences to see information about the syntax.)

• Sneezing is a phenomenon thatrelativizer acting as subject occursintransitive verb in both people and animalsobligatory adverb. (info)Without the adverbial the sentence is incomplete.
  
  "that occurs in both people and animals" is a restrictive relative clause. The word "that" is a relativizer which connects the real subject to the verb "occurs" The real subject is "the phenomenon of sneezing".
  
  
• The answer to this questionsubject liesintransitive verb in how our brains are hardwired to thinkobligatory adverb. (Anderson-Sieg 2021) (info)'The answer to this question lies' is clearly incomplete; it needs an adverbial to make sense.
• The first onesubject ('one' refers to 'ice age' mentioned earlier in the text) happenedintransitive verb about 2 billion years agoobligatory adverb and lastedintransitive verb about 300 million yearsobligatory adverb. (Su 2022) (info)Two examples in this sentence.
• Some [mushrooms] have pores thatrelativizer acting as subject lookintransitive verb like spongesobligatory adverb. (Hughes 2021) (info)'that look like sponges' is a relative clause. The relativizer 'that' is a dummy subject.

Common verbs used in this pattern are: be, get, happen, last, lie, look, occur, remain.