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 Finding Subjects, Finite Verbs, and Complements
Practice Exercise # 5

Directions: 
1. First place parentheses ( ) around every prepositional phrase.
2. Underline every subject once, every finite verb twice, and label complements (PA,PN, IO or DO). [Reminder: A predicate adjective describes the subject; a predicate noun "equals" the subject; an indirect object is someone or thing "to" or "for" whom (or what) the action of the verb is performed. Any other complement has to be a direct object.]
 

The text is:
      And one particular four-year-old prayed, "And forgive us our trash baskets as we forgive those who put trash in our baskets."
 
Note: In creating these pages, I cannot create a double underline. I will therefore underline both subjects and finite verbs once, but subjects will be in green; finite verbs in blue.

Sentence #1

Work your way through the text one sentence at a time.  The only sentence is:
       And one particular four-year-old prayed, "And forgive us our trash baskets as we forgive those who put trash (in our baskets)."
With the lone prepositional phrase marked, identify a finite verb or verb phrase:
       And one particular four-year-old prayed, "And forgive us our trash baskets as we forgive those who put trash (in our baskets)."
 To find the subject of "prayed," ask "Who or what prayed?" The answer in this sentence is "four-year-old."
       And one particular four-year-oldprayed, "And forgive us our trash baskets as we forgive those who put trash (in our baskets)."
To find the complement of "prayed," ask 'The four-year-old prayed whom or what?" The answer to that question is the entire quotation, "And forgive us our trash baskets as we forgive those who put trash in our baskets." Since this is more than one word (and more than just a series of words), I would not expect you to be able to give the grammatical name for it. [It is a clause.] You should, however, be able to determine the type of the complement:
1. Is it a predicate adjective? The quoted sentence does not describe the subject ("four-year-old"), so it cannot be a predicate adjective.
2. Is it a predicate noun? The quoted sentence does not "equal" the subject ("four-year-old"), so it cannot be a predicate noun.
3. Is it an indirect object? The four-year-old did not pray "to" or "for" what is in the quoted statement, so it cannot be an indirect object.
4. It must be a direct object. There is no other possibility. 
We need to check for another finite verb, which we find in "forgive."
       And one particular four-year-oldprayed, "And forgive us our trash baskets as we forgive those who put trash (in our baskets)."
The subject of "forgive," which we find by asking "Who or what forgives?" is an understood, and hence missing, "you."
     To find the complement of "forgive," we ask "forgive whom or what?" There are two answers to that question, "us" and "(trash) baskets."  To determine the types of these complements:
1. Is it a predicate adjective? Neither "us" nor "baskets" describes the subject (the implied "you"), so neither can be a predicate adjective.
2. Is it a predicate noun? Neither "us" nor "baskets" "equals" the subject (the implied "you"), so neither can be a predicate noun.
3. Is it an indirect object? The sentence is asking God to forgive something "for" us, so "us" is an indirect object.
4. The "something" is, in this sentence, the trash baskets, so "baskets" is a direct object, the only option left.
       And one particular four-year-oldprayed, "And forgive us (IO) our trash baskets (DO) as we forgive those who put trash (in our baskets)."
Having found the complements of "forgive," we need to check for another finite verb, which we find in the second "forgive."
       And one particular four-year-oldprayed, "And forgiveus (IO) our trash baskets (DO) as we forgive those who put trash (in our baskets)."
To find the subject of this "forgive," we again ask "Who or what forgives?" In this case, the answer is "we."
       And one particular four-year-oldprayed, "And forgiveus(IO) our trash baskets (DO) as weforgive those who put trash (in our baskets)."
To find the complement of "we forgive," we ask "We forgive whom or what?" Here the answer is "those." Having just finished with the preceding "forgive," we should quickly realize that this "those" is like the preceding "us," and thus an indirect object.
       And one particular four-year-oldprayed, "And forgiveus (IO) our trash baskets (DO) as weforgivethose (IO) who put trash (in our baskets)."
Having found the complement of the second "forgive," we need to check for still another finite verb, and we find one in "put."
       And one particular four-year-oldprayed, "And forgiveus (IO) our trash baskets (DO) as weforgivethose (IO) who put trash (in our baskets)."
To find the subject of "put," we ask "Who or what put?" In this sentence, the only word that can answer that question is the pronoun "who," so "who" must be the subject.
       And one particular four-year-oldprayed, "And forgiveus (IO) our trash baskets (DO) as weforgivethose (IO)whoput trash (in our baskets)."
To find the complement of "who put," we ask "Who put what or whom?" The answer to that is "trash," so "trash" is the complement.  To determine the type of the complement:
1. Is it a predicate adjective? "Trash" does not describe the subject ("who"), so it cannot be a predicate adjective.
2. Is it a predicate noun?  "Trash" and "who" do not refer to the same thing, so "trash" cannot be a predicate noun.
3. Is it an indirect object? The sentence does not mean to put something "to" or  "for" the trash, so "trash" cannot be an indirect object.
4. Thus "trash" is a direct object, the only option left.
       And one particular four-year-oldprayed, "And forgiveus (IO) our trash baskets (DO) as weforgivethose (IO) whoput trash(DO) (in our baskets)."
There are no more finite verbs in this sentence, so we are finished with it.
Go to Finding Clauses.