12 Sentence Structure and Word Order

English follows the SVO pattern: Subject comes first, then the Verb, then the Object (or complement).

Basic pattern:
- "The cat (S) caught (V) a mouse (O)."
- "She (S) reads (V) books (O) every evening."

Questions flip the subject and (auxiliary) verb:
- Statement: "She is happy."
- Question: "Is she happy?"

Negation adds "not" after the auxiliary:
- "She does not like pizza."
- "They are not coming."

The critical difference from Norwegian — the inversion rule:

In Norwegian, when you start a sentence with an adverbial (time, place, etc.), the verb and subject swap places:
- Norwegian: "I går gikk jeg til skolen." (Yesterday walked I to school)

In English, the subject stays before the verb, even when the sentence starts with an adverbial:
- English: "Yesterday I walked to school." (NOT: "Yesterday walked I to school")

This is the single most common word order mistake Norwegian students make.

More examples of the V2 trap:
- Wrong: "Never have I seen..." is only correct in very formal/literary English.
- Wrong: "Always am I late." → Correct: "I am always late."
- Wrong: "In the garden played the children." → Correct: "The children played in the garden."

English has specific rules about where adverbs go in a sentence. Placing them in the wrong position is a common error.

1. Frequency adverbs (always, usually, often, sometimes, never, rarely)
Go between the subject and the main verb, or after the first auxiliary:
- "I always eat breakfast."
- "She never complains."
- "He has always been kind."
- "They are usually late."

2. Adverbs of manner (quickly, carefully, well, badly)
Usually go after the verb or object:
- "She sings beautifully."
- "He finished the test quickly."
- NOT: "She beautifully sings." (sounds unnatural)

3. Adverbs of time (yesterday, today, tomorrow, last week)
Usually go at the beginning or end of the sentence:
- "Yesterday I went to the shop."
- "I went to the shop yesterday."

4. Adverbs of place (here, there, outside, upstairs)
Usually go after the verb or object:
- "She waited outside."
- "Put the book there."

5. "Also", "too", "as well"
- also goes before the main verb: "I also speak French."
- too and as well go at the end: "I speak French too."

The general order when multiple adverbs appear:
Manner → Place → Time (MPT)
- "She sang beautifully (manner) at the concert (place) last night (time)."

Using only short, simple sentences makes your writing choppy. Combining clauses into complex sentences makes your texts more fluent and sophisticated.

Types of clauses:

1. Independent clause — can stand alone as a sentence.
- "She studied hard."

2. Dependent (subordinate) clause — cannot stand alone; needs an independent clause.
- "because she wanted good grades" (incomplete on its own)

Combining them:
- "She studied hard because she wanted good grades."

Common subordinating conjunctions:
- Cause/reason: because, since, as
- Time: when, while, before, after, until, as soon as
- Contrast: although, even though, whereas, while
- Condition: if, unless, provided that, as long as
- Purpose: so that, in order to

Coordinating conjunctions (FANBOYS):
Join two independent clauses: For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So
- "I was tired, but I kept working."
- "She likes coffee, and he prefers tea."

Relative clauses add information about a noun:
- who/that for people: "The student who sits next to me is from Spain."
- which/that for things: "The book that I borrowed was excellent."
- where for places: "The school where I study is very old."
- when for times: "I remember the day when we first met."

Punctuation tip: When the dependent clause comes first, use a comma before the independent clause:
- "Although it was raining, we went for a walk."
- "We went for a walk although it was raining." (no comma needed)