Intransitive Clauses

The intransitive pattern consists of a subject and a verb. We represent it like this: (SV).

	Subject	Verb
intransitive (SV)	The moon	rose.

Note the following points:

• The subject always comes first.
• The verb always follows the subject.

Study the following examples of the intransitive pattern:

Subject	Verb
I	laughed.
The book	fell.
The horse	galloped.
The bird	sang.
The crowd	protested.
Sally	coughed.
The girl	vanished.
My dog	ran.

Instructions for the Quiz

Identify the underlined portion of the sentence. Is it the subject or the verb?

Example:

1. The crowd protested.
	subject
	verb

 

In this example, the answer is B.

• "The crowd" is the subject of the sentence.
• "protested" is the verb (it's the thing that the crowd was doing).

Quiz