Sentence Structure: Subject-Verb-Prepositional Object Sentences

Understanding Subject-Prepositional Verb-Prepositional Object (SVO_p ) sentences

A subject - verb - prepositional object sentence consists of a subject, a prepositional verb, and a prepositional object. The subject is always filled by a noun phrase or a nominal clause. Prepositional verbs (such as deal with, look at, depend on, consist of, contribute to, lead to, come from, etc.) consist of a lexical verb plus a preposition and take a prepositional object. The prepositional object is a noun phrase or a nominal clause.

The subject in the sentence above is a one-word noun phrase. The verb is a prepositional verb (come from) and the prepositional object is a noun phrase (many different type of storms).

Here are a few more examples (click and drag to stop, start and find the sentence you wish to examine):

You can view an analysis of some of the noun phrases in the above examples in the animations below (click on Subject to view each noun phrase).

In the above example the prepositional verb is "depend on" and the prepositional object is "the mass" modified itself by a prepositional phrase "of the star".

In the above example the prepositional verb is "refer to" and the prepositional object is "the likelihood" modified itself by a prepositional phrase "of heat exhaustion".

In the above example the prepositional verb is "add to" and the prepositional object is "this problem".

In the above example the subject phrase "Knowing these answers" is a nominal in the form of an ing-clause. The prepositional verb is "lead to" and the prepositional object is "inventions" modified by the prepositional phrase "of new materials and medicines".

You can see further examples of this structure on the SVO_p page and test yourself on the SVO_p exercise page.