Understanding clauses

Verbs such as 'to unwrap', 'to find', or 'to cover' that require an object are called 'transitive verbs' because the action transitions to the thing it is being done to:

• "Corinne unwrapped her father's bandage."
• "Corinne found a soft red scab."
• "A soft red scab covered the wound."

Verbs like 'to scowl' or 'to sigh' that don't have an object are called 'intransitive verbs'. They aren't 'done to' anything. They're just done:

• "Mr Cartright sighed."
• "Sajid scowled."

We usually see adverb groups and prepositional phrases playing the role of modifiers, so it can be tricky to recognise when they are objects.

This is why it's useful to analyse clause components in terms of the real world categories ('thing', 'place', etc.) they represent rather than grammatical categories.

When we know a verb like 'to put' requires a 'place', we can look for the word group that is playing that role, whether that's an adverb group, a prepositional phrase, or something else.

In the Verb Groups lesson we talked about the passive voice. We can use the concept of subjects, objects, and modifiers to help understand what is happening in passive voice.

For example, compare the subjects and objects in these two almost-identical snippets:

The original (active voice)

Corinne unwrapped her father's bandage.

The rewrite (passive voice)

Her father's bandage was unwrapped by Corinne.

Using the passive voice does two things:

• The object moves into the subject slot—meaning the person or thing the action was happening to now becomes the focus of the sentence.
• The original subject becomes a modifier—meaning we could remove it from the sentence and thus hide the person doing the action if we want to.

The passive voice only works when a verb has an object. Try turning "He ran" into a passive sentence. "Was run"? It doesn't make sense on its own.

There are a few tricks to passive voice when it comes to objects that aren't noun groups, but the ins and outs of it will not be gone into here. *wink*