Clause Pattern: Subject – Verb – Adverbial

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

This pattern consists of a subjectSee the glossary definition , a one-placeSee the glossary definition (intransitiveSee the glossary definition ) verb, and an obligatory adverbialSee the glossary definition .

  • Sneezing is a phenomenon that occursintransitive verb in both people and animals obligatory adverbial . (Sorg 2021)     (info) Without the adverbial the sentence is syntactically correct but incomplete.

    • Without the adverbial the sentence makes no real sense - it is incomplete.

  • The answer to this questionsubject lies intransitive verb in how our brains are hardwired to think obligatory adverbial. (Anderson-Sieg 2021)      (info)"The answer to this question lies" is clearly incomplete; it needs an adverbial to make sense.

  • The first one subject ("one" refers to "ice age" mentioned earlier in the text) happenedintransitive verb about 2 billion years ago obligatory adverb and lastedintransitive verb about 300 million years obligatory adverb . (Su 2022)      (info)Two examples in this sentence.

  • The virus subject wasintransitive verb aggressive and lethal obligatory adverb . (Roossinck 2020)     (info)"The virus was" is clearly incomplete; it needs an adverbial to make sense.

  • Some [mushrooms] have pores that lookintransitive verb like sponges obligatory adverb (Hughes 2021)     (info)"that look like sponges" is a dependent (relative) clause so there is no subject here.

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

 

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