Major sentences contain a subject and predicate, while minor sentences do not. Major sentences can be analyzed through diagrams and express complete ideas, while minor sentences often rely on context and common expressions.
A major sentence is a complete linguistic unit expressing a complete idea, containing a subject and a predicate providing additional information about it. Most complete sentences are important and can be analyzed and broken down through diagrams of the structure and grammar used within them. An important sentence can be as simple as “The cat ran fast,” which contains both a subject and a predicate, or a more complicated utterance such as “Slowly walking, the man staggered out of his car and sat quickly next to the cat.” fallen tree”. Conversely, a minor sentence does not contain both a subject and a predicate and cannot be easily analyzed via diagrams.
The main distinction between a minor and a major sentence is the way it fully expresses an idea through the inclusion of each required element. When most people refer to a “complete sentence,” they are pointing to one that is important. It consists of two elements: the subject, which is the subject of the sentence, and the predicate which provides additional information. These two components create a complete idea in a main sentence, which can then be analyzed and broken down through the sentence diagram to determine the grammatical pieces used in its construction.
For example, in the short major sentence, “The cat is gray,” there is a subject, which consists of the noun phrase “the cat.” This noun phrase is composed of a determiner in the form of a definite article, “the” and a noun “cat”. The remainder of the main sentence, “it’s gray” is the predicate and provides a description of the subject. “È” in this case acts as a linking verb and connects the subject to the subject compliment, which is the adjective “gray”.
When this analysis can be performed, this is an important sentence, as it contains all the necessary elements within it. A more complex example could be a sentence like: “The man threw a ball to his son, who caught it while falling”. This still contains a subject, which is “the man” and everything else in it is the predicate. In this case, the predicate is a little more complex and includes the dependent clause, which requires the rest of the sentence to make sense, “who caught him as he fell.”
A minor sentence, on the other hand, does not contain a subject and a predicate, but still expresses a complete idea. These types of sentences are often found in common expressions. Repeated use of a given phrase often gives it meaning that allows others to understand what is being said, even if the phrase itself doesn’t seem inherently complete.
An example of this is a sentence like “The more the better,” where no particular topic is stated and without context it is essentially meaningless. This type of minor sentence cannot be diagrammed, because it lacks major elements which are not even hinted at by it. Greetings and other types of expressions are often minor, including “Hello” and “Goodbye,” as complete sentences.
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