9. The cookies were spicy and made Willie's mouth water. 10. A cool, deep swimming pool is almost hidden under the willows.

11. The swimming pool under the willows is always cool and shady.

12. The coolest, shadiest swimming pool in the country is under the old willows on the bank of our creek.

13. The breaking waves dashed high

On a stern and rock-bound coast.

14. And the woods against a stormy sky

Their giant branches tossed.

15. The United States government spent $72,000 in 1918 to teach farmers to avoid unnecessary waste in threshing.

16. Kansas alone saved 8,000,000 bushels of wheat for a hungry world.

17. The $72,000 spent brought a return of $45,000,000. 18. Little leaks may cause great losses.

19. The brave boy held his fingers in the hole to stop the leak in the dike.

20. My pocketbook has been leaking badly for the past year.

PROBLEM XI

UNDERSTANDING SENTENCES: ANALYZING THEM TO FIND THEIR ELEMENTS

You have learned that every sentence is the expression of a complete thought in words; that in expressing a complete thought you predicate some characteristic of something; and that you must have a part of the sentence to stand for what you are talking about and a part to say or tell or predicate something. Define the complete subject of a sentence; the complete predicate.

If you are to understand sentences well, you will need to analyze further these two parts. To analyze anything is to separate it into its elements. Ordinarily when we use sentences we do not stop to think of these elements separately, any more than we taste separately the flour and the moistening and the sweetening in a cake. But in learning to make either good sentences or good cakes it is well to understand what elements are in them.

If the complete subject of a sentence is one word, that word is, of course, the subject element; as, "People were running past him toward the great cloud of black smoke." But if the complete subject consists of several words, you may be able to find in it a single word that stands for the bare idea about which something is said; as, "People that live in glass houses should not throw stones." The word people" is here the subject element. The subject element is

the smallest group of words in the sentence that may stand for what is talked about. Sometimes all the words in the complete subject are necessary; no one word used in it expresses the idea; as," That he has already gone is not generally known." But this type of sentence you will not often meet.

EXERCISE 1

FINDING OUT MORE ABOUT SENTENCES: THE SUBJECT

ELEMENT

A. In each of the following sentences tell what characteristic is predicated of what. Find the complete subject and the complete predicate, and point out the subject element.

1. The climate of California is mild and pleasant.

2. Many beautiful varieties of wild flowers grow in the higher altitudes of our mountain ranges.

3. The red salmon, called sockeye in Puget Sound and blueback on the Columbia River, is commercially the most valuable salmon in Alaska.

4. The king salmon, or Chinook, the largest of all the species, sometimes pushes its way two thousand miles from the sea.

5. Salmon fishing is carried on in Alaska with all the devices known to the ingenuity of man.

6. The herring of Alaska equal in quality and value the herring of western Europe.

7. The blue jay of the Rocky Mountains is handsomer than his lowland cousins.

8. In New Orleans and Quebec America has two cities as picturesque as those of the Old World.

9. The national parks in Colorado, California, Montana, and North Carolina include some of the most beautiful regions in America. 10. The whole of the United States, not merely one section, belongs to every citizen.

11. "Treasure Island" is an interesting story.

12. William the Conqueror brought the French language to England.

B. Find the subject element in each sentence of Exercise 1, Problem X.

C. If you are talking of two or more different people, things, or ideas, the subject element will have two or more parts; for example, "Champlain and La Salle were great explorers,' "" Virginia and I are on the committee," " Vega, Sirius, and Arcturus are among the brightest of the stars." A subject element composed of two or more parts is said to be compound. (In Problem XXVI you will study compound elements.)

Make ten interesting sentences in which the subject element is compound. Let some of them have more than two parts. Use the words he, I, and she in some of them.

EXERCISE 2

STUDYING SENTENCES: TWO ELEMENTS OF THE
SIMPLEST PREDICATE

Since the predicate of a sentence says something, that is, predicates some characteristic of whatever we are talking about, we find when we analyze it that it must contain at least two elements, one element to do the predicating and one element to stand for what is predicated. In the sentences of the simplest type, such as "Asbestos is a mineral" or "She will laugh at you," these two elements of the predicate are easily distinguished. In the first sentence quoted the word "is" does the predicating, or asserting, and the word "mineral" stands for the characteristic predicated of asbestos. In the second the word "will" does

the predicating, and the word "laugh" stands for the predicated characteristic. The element that stands for the characteristic predicated is called the predicate element. Like the subject element it is the fewest words that will stand for the idea, generally only one. The element that does the predicating or asserting may be called the asserting element; or, since it joins or links the predicate element to the subject element, it may be called the linking element. It may consist of more than one word; as, "He has been very ill."

A. After deciding in each case what characteristic is predicated of what, find the subject element, the predicate element, and the linking element in each of the easy sentences below, and make ten more of the same general type to use in testing your classmates. After you have made sure that you can recognize the three elements in these easy sentences, learn the following definitions and illustrate each:

I. The subject element is the part of a sentence that stands for the person, thing, or idea about which something is said.

2. The asserting, or linking, element is the part of the sentence that does the predicating.

3. The predicate element is the part of the sentence that stands for the characteristic predicated.

1. Stars are suns.

2. The toad is a useful animal in a garden.

3. Ichabod Crane was the schoolmaster in Sleepy Hollow.

4. Well begun is half done.

5. The prairie dog is a destructive animal.

6. Alice was talking to the caterpillar.

7. The children have been playing hard all day.

8. Mary and I were late for school.

9. He and Susan will compete for the prize.

10. Both the boys and the girls are studying earnestly.