Syntax governs how words are arranged to form meaningful sentences. Errors in subject-verb agreement, sentence type identification and clause analysis are heavily tested in objective exams. Mastering this section also improves descriptive…
Spotting Errors questions in SSC and Banking exams routinely test subject-verb agreement (collective nouns, 'either/or', 'one of'). Para Jumbles and Reading Comprehension reward students who can quickly identify clauses and sentence types.
The verb must agree with its subject in number and person.
By function, sentences are classified into Assertive, Interrogative, Imperative and Exclamatory.
By structure, sentences are Simple (one independent clause), Compound (two independent clauses), Complex (one independent + one or more dependent), or Compound-Complex (two or more independent + at least one dependent).
A phrase is a group of related words without a subject-verb pair; a clause is a group of words with its own subject and verb.