Essentials Week Five (5th Edition)

Today, we are going to focus on Interrogative Sentences.  We won't be introducing any new parts of speech or new sentence patterns today, so you can take this week to Review what we've learned so far.  So let's dig in to Sentences with an Interrogative Purpose

Interrogative Purpose

Interrogative Purpose is the final sentence purpose to study.  Can you name the others?  (Declarative, Exclamatory, Imperative). What is an Interrogative sentence? An Interrogative sentence asks a question and ends with a question mark.

While the other sentence purposes always follow the same construction or pattern, the interrogative sentence offers at least three options for how to build a sentence.  The way we remember them is CIA.  

C - Change the punctuation and voice inflection.  

    Jesus forgives?

I - Insert an interrogative pronoun. Do you remember what those are? (who, whom, whose, which, what)

    Who forgives?

A - Add a Helping Verb.

    Does Jesus forgive?

Parsing and Diagramming Interrogative Sentences

(In this format, I am unable to draw the vertical lines for the division of subject and verb.  So make sure to include those on the board.)

C - The diagram for this construction looks like that of a declarative sentence.  Based on the diagram alone, you wouldn't be able to tell if the sentence were declarative or interrogative.

Who/what is this sentence about? (Jesus) S
What is being said about Jesus? (forgives) V
Jesus forgives what? (no answer) i (intransitive verb)

 

      S        Vi

    Jesus forgives?

    Jesus     forgives   

              

I - When diagramming this sentence, use SP to label the subject, because the subject is the interrogative pronoun.

Who/what is this sentence about? (Who) SP
What is being said about Who? (forgives) V
Who forgives what? (no answer) i (intransitive verb)

 

      SP     Vi

    Who forgives?

    Who    forgives  

              

A - This one is a little tricky.  Because we used a helping verb at the beginning of the sentence, we have to rearrange the words in the diagram.  Note that the helping verb retains its capital letter.  This is because it was the first word in the sentence.  

This is a question with a helping verb, so we first invert the subject/helping verb.  

Jesus does forgive.

Who/what is this sentence about? (Jesus) S
What is being said about Jesus? (Does forgive) V
Is there a helping verb? (yes) Vh
Jesus does forgive what? (no answer) i (intransitive verb)

  

    Vh     S        Vi

   Does Jesus forgive?

    Jesus        Does forgive

This week

1. Practice charts A-E.  You can do this verbally from memory, or (if you're having trouble remembering some) write them each out several times.

2. Practice sentences and analytical tasks. You'll find these on p. 317 in the Essentials Guide.