Final answer:
The sentence has two verb phrases: 'may have seen' and 'were wearing'. Subjects can be individual nouns or entire phrases, affecting the verb agreement in a sentence. Compound subjects joined by 'and' take a plural verb.
Step-by-step explanation:
To identify the verb phrases in the sentence 'You may have seen them when they were wearing clown makeup or costumes such as gorilla suits.' we need to look for the main verbs and any helping (auxiliary) verbs that accompany them. The first verb phrase is 'may have seen', which includes the modal auxiliary 'may', the helper 'have', and the main verb 'seen'. The second verb phrase is 'were wearing', which includes the verb 'were' (past tense of 'be') and the present participle 'wearing'.
As for the review questions regarding subjects and verbs, here is the breakdown:
- In the sentence, 'We went to the bowling alley on Friday.', 'We' is the subject, 'went' is an intransitive verb, and 'to the bowling alley on Friday' functions as an optional adverbial.
- For 'Mr. Billingsworth laughed at the antics of the class clown.', 'Mr. Billingsworth' is the subject, 'laughed' is an intransitive verb, and 'at the antics of the class clown' is the adverbial.
- 'The ambassadors from Albania arrived' has 'The ambassadors from Albania' as the subject and 'arrived' as the intransitive verb, with no additional adverbial.
Focusing on subject/verb agreement, it is important to identify the correct subject to use the appropriate verb form. For example, 'Her watch and wallet were stolen from the locker at the train station.' Here, 'Her watch and wallet' form a compound subject, taking a plural verb 'were stolen'.
In terms of sentence structure, a subject can be a phrase, a sentence with a subject phrase will always take a singular verb. For example:
- To attend a party without pants is quite foolish. (subject phrase 'To attend a party without pants' takes the singular verb 'is')
- Running a marathon is his idea of a vacation. (subject phrase 'Running a marathon' takes the singular verb 'is')