The commas represent the pauses you would normally use when speaking that same sentence. I do wonder, however, whether ending the sentence with "was" is correct.
I think the "was" is correct because, although Mary laughed is in the simple past tense, the sentence as a whole implies a story in which the overall tense is past continuous.
It's "simple" because it consists of only one clause. One subject "Mary" and one predicate "laughed". The other phrases modify "Mary" and "laughed", but they do not constitute separate clauses.
This post was edited by Benedict Arnold at March 11, 2020 11:45 AM MDT
Honestly? No! Grammar definitely isn't my strong point! We were never taught it.. content and creativity were considered more important when I was at school.
A "simple" sentence contains a single subject and a predicate. In the sentence you reference, it said that an individual performed a specific action, i.e., Mary laughed=(Noun plus verb).
When---On her way home;---Why: because she was thinking (a gerund not a verb) about John;---additional information about why: marveling (another gerund---not a verb) at how strange it all was.
So, a simple sentence---subject and predicate---with lots of modifying clauses that provide additional information about what was happening while she was walking.
A simple sentence sentence can be complex---and frequently is. But it is a defined classification which is not necessarily an intuitive one.
Re watching is an excellent idea. Simple sentence is more of a concept than a definition. Replaying will allow the you to replace the concept of "simple" that we all have as to how the word is more commonly used in daily conversation.
I get it. "Simple" is grammarian jargon in the context of sentence construction. A simple sentence contains only one independent clause, i.e., it contains a subject and a verb and can stand alone as a complete thought. So even if the sentence is ornamented with adjectival and adverbial phrases, it remains simple due to the action of its primary verb. The test would be which words can be removed and still have the sentence make sense. Thank you. :)
P.S. I'm curious. If you don't mind, Jackson, what is your profession? And what is your educational background? What journey led you to be so much more conversant with grammar than most of the population?
This post was edited by inky at March 11, 2020 8:45 PM MDT
I've had to put the fear of some deity into minds of some cavemen this week and I wanted to take a break from that formal style I use in such cases.
Like accusing various officers of attempting to perpetrate a fraud on the membership by failing to follow RONR (Robert's Rules of Order,Newly Revised) in establishing a bookkeeping entry that attempts to capitalize an expense.
So I kinda went folksy (informal and unpretentious) in my comment.
Italics are used for large works, names of vehicles, and movie and television show titles. Quotation marks are reserved for sections of works, like the titles of chapters, magazine articles, poems, and short stories.
I'm not sure---the title of the book is Robert's Rules of Order, Newly Revised; "RONR" is how it's referred to by many parliamentarians--trying to acknowledge all that without specifically explaining my choice of italics vs quotes is a crap shoot---and probably only important to you and me.
SpunkySenior 