4.2 English word order

Image of a lined noted book. On it, there are wooden dice placed on top. Each of the dice have a letter on each side. The dice spell out ‘grammar’.
Figure 8 English grammar

Let’s take a generic sentence and compare how languages differ in their structures.

The sentence example: ‘The penguin walked over the bridge’.

In English, we would say exactly that: ‘The penguin walked over the bridge’. This is word order in English: Subject, Verb, Object.

The image is of a whiteboard. On it is written the sentence ‘The penguin walked over the bridge’.
Figure 9 English word order

Looking at the same sentence in a little bit more detail:

The image is of a whiteboard. On it is written the sentence ‘A penguin walked over the bridge’. An arrows points to the word ‘The’. It is labelled as the ‘definite article’. The ‘-ed’ at the end on the word ‘walked’ is labelled as the suffix. At the start of the sentence, the word ‘A’ is labelled as the indefinite article.
Figure 10 English articles and suffixes

In this sentence ‘A’ and ‘The’ are articles. They illustrate what type of noun they are. Using this sentence as an example, ‘a’ is before the word ‘penguin’ to show that it would be any penguin walking over the bridge. The word ‘The’ being used before the word ‘bridge’ shows that it is a particular bridge: the definite article.

Looking at the word ‘walked’, placing the suffix ‘-ed’ at the end of a verb signifies that it is in the past tense.

By looking at the structure of this sentence at a high level, we can see how complex the English language can be and how every part of the sentence informs the meaning.

4.1 How does BSL differ?

4.3 BSL word order