Help Me Parse This Sentence

[Paige]

I'm having my DS pick out sentences from the literature he reads to parse (we do MCT style) instead of going through a regular grammar book. I am fairly confident in my skills but this means we don't have an answer key. He picked a sentence today that I am not completely sure about. It is from Bridge to Terabithia.

 

"Well, I do not believe God ****s little girls."

 

We have:

subject- I

Verb- do believe

D.O.- "God ****s little girls."

 

I'm not sure what kind of phrase it is. Is it a gerund? Am I totally off? I told him that I thought it was a gerund since it wasn't an infinitive or participial phrase, but maybe I'm missing something. DS is now suspicious of my ability to be his answer key. :tongue_smilie: DS had no phrase identified and little girls as the DO and God as the IO. I told him that couldn't work because of the verb between them.

 

I forgot about the auto-censors...I think you can probably figure out the bleeped word. It's a verb.

Edited October 31, 2012 by Paige

[zoo_keeper]

Well (interjection)

I (pronoun, subject of 1st clause)

do (verb, 1st clause)

not (adverb)

believe (verb, 1st clause)

that (implied, conjunction)

God (noun, subject of 2nd clause)

****s (verb, 2nd clause)

little (adjective)

girls (noun, direct object)

Edited October 31, 2012 by zoo_keeper
forgot the word "subject"

[Guest sboyelynn]

My understanding is that a gerund is a form of verb which uses the "ing" ending. Such as the word "understanding" in the previous sentence.

 

I concur with the previous writer, and like the way she delineates the clauses to define the two sections of the sentence.

[Paige]

Well (interjection)

I (pronoun, subject of 1st clause)

do (verb, 1st clause)

not (adverb)

believe (verb, 1st clause)

that (implied, conjunction)

God (noun, subject of 2nd clause)

****s (verb, 2nd clause)

little (adjective)

girls (noun, direct object)

 

Thanks! My first thought was that the sentence needed a "that" to make another clause, but I talked myself out of it. We changed the sentence to "I believe that." (w/that functioning as a pronoun) Since I could replace the whole idea with the pronoun, I thought it could be a phrase. I didn't know of any type of phrase that it could be, but I knew it couldn't be infinitive or participial. I knew gerunds have -ing endings, but couldn't think of anything else that acted as a noun.