All English Sentences can be reduced to five Kernel Sentences.
He would meet a girl; they would be separated through a misunderstanding; and then they would be reunited after a period of time, but not before he had engaged in a lusty fist fight with his rival in view of the girl.
That same English Instructor also suggested that all English sentences could be reduced to five Kernel Sentences which hold the basic word order of the language.
The rudiments of these Kernel sentences can be heard during Brown's first three Stages of language development.
These five Kernel Sentences bring out some interesting aspects of English so lets examine them briefly. They are as follows:
- 1. N + Vi (e.g., "I cry.")
The verb here is intransitive, so the action simply ends after the verb.