Clause Pattern: Subject – Verb (SV)

This is the simplest verb pattern. It consists of a subject and a one-place (intransitive) verb. It may also have an optional adverbial.

• I waited for hours in emergency last night with this dreadful headache but eventually gave up and left. (Yates 2021)      (info)
• And indeed, as you go deeper into the Earth, the temperature increases. (Huang 2023)     (info)
  The adverbial shows a relationship between going deeper into the earth and temperature increase so it seems obligatory, but the sentence makes sense without it.
  
• But even a tough old tree will eventually die. (Stevens-Rumann 2023)     (info)
• The trail of digital data you leave – both online and offline – is what makes you especially valuable. (Ashley 2019)     (info)
  Note that this is part of a larger structure: "you leave" is a postmodifier in a noun phrase which is the subject of the whole sentence."is" is the main verb in this sentence.
  
• A huge lake in Bolivia has almost entirely disappeared. (Marti-Cardona and Torres-Batlló 2021)     (info)
• The research may involve looking at archival documents, interviewing people or visiting locations where important events happened. (Farina 2022)     (info)
• This happens because onions release an irritating chemical that makes your eyes sting. (Daughtry 2020)      (info)

Although a subject - object pattern is described without adverbials, most intransitive verbs are used with adverbials of one kind or another, as you can see in the examples above - only four examples have no adverbials (there are two in example one).
Common verbs used in this pattern are: appear, arrive, begin, continue, die, disappear, emerge, exist, fall, float, go, happen, laugh, listen, live, occur, rise, sit, sleep, smile, start, stop, think, vanish, wait.

Test your understanding of this Subject – Verb (SV) pattern.