Robin Burden answered
'Sentence pattern' is the term given to the order in which different types of words should appear in a sentence, so that the whole construction makes grammatical sense.
In English, the most common sentence pattern (or structure) is subject-verb-object.
What is sentence pattern?
The best way to explain sentence pattern is to use an example:
Let's say you want to tell someone that there's a pink elephant in the room.
Even if a listener understands the individual words 'elephant', 'pink', and 'room' on their own, it's only through using the correct sentence structure that you can convey the meaning of the sentence accurately.
If you didn't stick to the rules of sentence structure, you might say something like, 'Elephant in the room pink' - which will totally confuse the listener!
Even though you may not realize it when you speak or write, you are using sentence patterns all the time. Your mind is constantly making decisions about the order in which the words should appear so that they make sense to the person that you're speaking to.
Is subject-verb-object the only sentence pattern, then?
Perhaps surprisingly, sentence patterns aren't the same in every language.
Although English tends to favor the subject-verb-object pattern (as in, 'James reads a book'), other languages don't always work in the same way. Take, for example, the words 'I love you':
In English, the subject is 'I', the verb is 'to love' and the object is 'you'.
The Italian translation for this is 'io ti amo' - which translates directly as 'I you love'.
Occasionally, different sentence patterns to the norm are even used in English, in order to convey ideas, or for emphasis - although, as I mentioned above, the most common structure is subject-verb-object.
In English, the most common sentence pattern (or structure) is subject-verb-object.
What is sentence pattern?
The best way to explain sentence pattern is to use an example:
Let's say you want to tell someone that there's a pink elephant in the room.
Even if a listener understands the individual words 'elephant', 'pink', and 'room' on their own, it's only through using the correct sentence structure that you can convey the meaning of the sentence accurately.
If you didn't stick to the rules of sentence structure, you might say something like, 'Elephant in the room pink' - which will totally confuse the listener!
Even though you may not realize it when you speak or write, you are using sentence patterns all the time. Your mind is constantly making decisions about the order in which the words should appear so that they make sense to the person that you're speaking to.
Is subject-verb-object the only sentence pattern, then?
Perhaps surprisingly, sentence patterns aren't the same in every language.
Although English tends to favor the subject-verb-object pattern (as in, 'James reads a book'), other languages don't always work in the same way. Take, for example, the words 'I love you':
In English, the subject is 'I', the verb is 'to love' and the object is 'you'.
The Italian translation for this is 'io ti amo' - which translates directly as 'I you love'.
Occasionally, different sentence patterns to the norm are even used in English, in order to convey ideas, or for emphasis - although, as I mentioned above, the most common structure is subject-verb-object.
