simple sentence

Definition:

A sentence with only one independent clause. See also:

• Segregating Style
• Simple and Compound Sentences in Gilbert Highet's "Diogenes."

Examples and Observations:

• "Children are all foreigners."
  (Ralph Waldo Emerson)



• "Of course, no man is entirely in his right mind at any time."
  (Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger)



• "Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead."
  (James Thurber)



• "I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph."
  (Ken Kesey)



• "Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise."
  (Alice Walker)



• "With regard to simple sentences, it ought to be observed first, that there are degrees in simplicity. 'God made man,' is a very simple sentence. 'On the sixth day God made man of the dust of the earth after his own image,' is still a simple sentence in the sense of rhetoricians and critics, as it hath but one verb, but less simple than the former, on account of the circumstances specified."
  (George Campbell, The Philosophy of Rhetoric, 1776)



• "A sentence is classified simple even when it has a compound subject or predicate (or both) and includes modifying words and phrases:
  • You and your friends can see the mountain on your next trip.
  • You can see the mountain and climb to the top.
  (R. DiYanni and P. C. Hoy II, Scribner Handbook for Writers, Allyn and Bacon, 2001)



• "The syntactically most straightforward sentences have the form of a single clause . . .
  
  CLAUSAL SENTENCES (having the form of a clause)
  a. Kim is an actor.
  b. Pat is a teacher.
  c. Sam is an architect.
  
  In traditional grammar [these] examples are called 'simple sentences,' but we don't use this term; it covers only a subset of what we call clausal sentences."
  (R. Huddleston and G. K. Pullum, A Student's Introduction to English Grammar, Cambridge University Press, 2006)



• "Atheism is a non-prophet organization."
  (George Carlin)

Also Known As: clausal sentence