How to make simple and complex sentences in English

[Music] hello and welcome to kangaroo English my name is Christian and today is Monday the best day of the week now normally in these videos i answer various questions but today i'm going to focus on just one question because i think that this one single question actually tells us a lot about english grammar and the difference between complex and simple sentences and also about how languages work in general about meaning and constructions so let's read the question the sentence down below is taken from the Cambridge dictionary it is given as an example of the word analogy even though I can get what the sentence says completely I could not give meaning to the structure of the sentence after the comma especially because of this structure that a useful analogy is of the mind I know that Chris will point out the reason of why it's hard to understand such a grammatical structure so let's start by reading this example sentence from the dictionary he was explaining that the mind has no form and is invisible and that a useful analogy is of the mind being like the sky now depending on what level of English you have depending on you know the strength of your grandma this sentence might seem kind of easy or it might seem very complicated and intimidating but I'm actually going to show you that the sentence isn't really that scary it's just using a really important part of English grammar called lips and ellipsis is designed to eliminate repetition because that constant repetition is what makes people who are learning languages at the beginning it can make their sentences kind of really boring where they're repeating the same thing a lot which is perfectly normal but by using some simple techniques we can kind of eliminate that repetition right so let me give you an example so let's have a look at the first part of the sentence he was explaining that the mind has no form and is invisible right so let's have a look at this little joining word here and this and is like like kind of glue you know which is gluing together these these two parts of the sentence this part and this part now what is the end actually doing well it's gluing this this is invisible it's gluing this onto all of this first part of the sentence right so we don't need to repeat it that's what the rule of ellipsis is if we have two parallel structures that are identical we can eliminate that second copy of the parallel structure we can eliminate any of that repetitive stuff that's identical so maybe if you're a beginner you would make this sentence right you would say he was explaining that the mind has no form full-stop then you make a new sentence he was explaining that the mind is invisible . next sentence repeating right but what we can do is we can eliminate the repetition by using our and okay by using our and to eliminate that parallel structure he was explaining that the mind has no form and is invisible and we are doing the same thing with the second part here and that so have a look right have a look this and that is eliminating the repetition of all of this right it's eliminating the repetition of he was explaining that the mind has no form and is invisible and that so by using this we don't need to repeat that he was explaining and we don't need to repeat the mind okay so now let's look at the second part of the sentence a useful analogy a useful analogy is of the mind being like the sky now do you notice anything kind of weird or strange about this sentence just have a look and have a think if there's anything kind of unusual about any part of this being why is this a gerund is it because it's the continuous or the progressive tense mmm no because we're missing our auxiliary verb so it's not that must be something else now maybe you're thinking if you're a very good student maybe you're thinking that the reason that this is a gerund is because we have here a preposition of and the rule in English is that if you have a preposition any verbs after the preposition must be in the gerund so for example after all phrasal verbs which all contain prepositions Eddie verbs after phrasal verbs must be in the gerund so maybe that's the answer not really because this off is not actually necessary it's because analogy and of they co-locate they sound natural together but it's not actually necessary we could say a useful analogy is the mind being like the sky so it's something else do you know what it is it's because this is now no longer a verb this is actually a noun and how do we know that because in this position we are expecting a noun just like in the first part of the sentence look the mind has no form let's just break that out the mind has no form we have the same thing look a useful analogy is of being there like being like the sky subject-verb-object noun form so actually all of this the mind being like the sky all of this second part of the sentence is the object of this verb is and we could actually substitute this this whole part of the sentence we could stop stitute this for any now I could say that a useful analogy is of pizza a useful analogy is of happiness so any noun we could put in this position but here we're not just putting a now we're putting a whole noun phrase and that's one of the kind of weird parts of English grammar is that if we take a verb and we add in on the end being swimming jumping now it's not a verb anymore it looks like a verb it smells like a verb but it's not a verb it's a noun and that brings me to the kind of final part of the very cool thing that this the DES sentence tells us about okay it tells us that the structure gives the meaning we can't just look at this word and analyze it is that a noun is that a verb well I don't know I don't know until I look at all of it together that's why it's really important to see language as constructions and the constructions give meaning for example I can substitute these real English words for words that I invented look a useful analogy is of the blitzes tamping like knobs now you don't know what these three words mean I just invented these three words blitzes and tamping in knobs but because of this construction you know what they should mean you have an idea of their function of their action of the way that I'm using comparisons and the way that this one must be a noun for something concrete the structure we have to analyze it as a whole structure okay now let's move on to the final part let's reconstruct this sentence okay now remember that I told you that in English when we have parallel structures we can eliminate any copies any repetitions to make our sentences more concise to make communication faster and with less complexity okay so actually this original sentence we can eliminate more things we're not finished look at this he was explaining that the mind has no form and is invisible and that look at this parallel structure that means that we don't need the bat he was explaining that the mind has no form and is invisible and a useful analogy is of the mind being like the sky again you can see here this parallel structure so we don't need that either he was explaining that the mind has no form and is invisible and a useful analogy is of being like the sky so now we have eliminated every single point of repetition in this sentence and we have this really concise really beautiful and really simple kind of sentence which tells a story right it tells that you ant you know a beginner of language that you understand that you know the repetition is kind of boring for the listener you understand that making these complex sentences isn't really that complex the best way to learn to make these longer complex sentences with clauses is to just make lots of long complex sentence with clauses and also to make a lot of mistakes because mistakes are learning so if you want to get better at it you should you should do it a lot I hope that this helped to explain what ellipsis is some interesting things about English grammar and the meanings the deep meanings inside constructions I'm Christian this is kangaroo English see what [Music]

Channel: Canguro English

Views: 50,568

Keywords: canguro english, kangaroo english, canguru english, learning english, learn english, english teacher, english grammar, grammar, linguistics, complex sentences, sentence types, complex sentences in english, sentence structure, complex sentences in english grammar, complex sentences independent and dependent clauses, sentence types and structures, sentence types in english grammar, sentence types in english, types of sentences in english, simple sentences, ellipsis

Id: UXjISdbQR_M

Length: 13min 44sec (824 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 29 2020