This unit offers a review of word order in sentences for learners who have studied this grammar before.
Regular Word Order
English follows Subject-Verb-Object word order, generally speaking. However, there are a few rules to keep in mind. First, adverbs and adverbial phrases can be placed at the beginning of sentences to add emphasis, and then comes the subject, followed by a verb and then object and/or rest of the sentence (e.g. time, manner, and place elements).
Examples:
We drive to New York every summer.
Every summer, we drive to New York.
When an adverb comes first, it is usually set apart from the rest of the sentence by a comma.
Word order in English can get complicated as more elements and clauses are added, but, luckily, very lengthy sentences are not common in spoken or written English. This is not to say that nothing said or written is complex, but rather there is an emphasis on avoiding meandering and run-on sentences.
Direct & Indirect Objects
Normally, indirect objects come before direct objects in a sentence:
I gave him the ball.
Sometimes, the direct object will come first, but this requires a prepositional complement:
I gave the ball to him.
When the direct object is a pronoun, use “to”: I gave it to him. (Not: I gave him it.)
It is very uncommon and formal-sounding to place the prepositional complement containing the indirect object first in a sentence, but these constructions are seen in literature:
To his friends, he bid a final farewell.
Cleft Sentences
It-cleft and wh-cleft sentences combine two clauses that convey old and new information about something.
Example:
Eric, did you buy that new truck you were looking at?
-No, it was the Jeep Rubicon that I was considering. I bought it over the weekend.
In the example, the old information is that Eric was thinking about buying a new vehicle. The Jeep in the it-clause is the new information, and it is connected to the old information by “that.”
Wh-cleft sentences are similar to it-cleft sentences, except they begin with a “wh” word.
Example:
What I meant to say is I agree with you.
The old information is that something was said (wh-clause) and the new information is that the speaker agrees with someone.