The document discusses basic sentence patterns and the traditional classification of sentences. It defines seven basic sentence patterns using different grammatical structures. Sentences can be classified as simple, compound, complex, or compound-complex depending on whether they contain one or more independent and/or dependent clauses. Compound sentences contain two or more independent clauses joined by coordinating conjunctions. Complex sentences have one independent clause and one or more dependent clauses. Compound-complex sentences contain both independent and dependent clauses.