Language Arts: Grammar and Punctuation Basics ... - Pearson

The subject never appears within a prepositional phrase, so you should ignore prepositional phrases when looking for thesubject of a sentence. In the examples below, the prepositional phrases are crossed out.■ Through the night, we heard a strange tapping sound.Subject:Who? WeVerb:What did we do? We heard.■ The music at the party was boring.Subject:What? The musicVerb:What about the music? It was.Helping Verbs and Verb PhrasesBoth action and linking verbs often are accompanied by other special verbs called helping verbs. Helping verbs frequentlyshow time. Listed below are some frequently used helping verbs.Helping Verbscan Might shouldcould Must used tohave need willmay shallMain verbs accompanied by one or more helping verbs are called verb phrases. For example, following are some verbphrases formed by adding helping verbs to the main verb learn:Helping Verbs and Verb Phrasesis learning has learned should have learnedwas learning will learn should have been learnedhad been learning had learnedhas been learned should have been learningBelow are sentences that contain verb phrases:■■Eliza will be moving to Washington next week.Subject:Who? ElizaVerb phrase:What about her? She will be moving.We should have left hours ago.Subject:Who? WeVerb phrase:What about us? We should have left.