The Clause!

Definition: a group of words which form a grammatical unit and which contain a subject and a finite verb (a verb which is marked to show person, number and tense e.g. walked). A clause forms a sentence, or part of a sentence, and often functions as a noun, adjective or adverb. For example: 1. I hurried home. 2. Because I was late, they went without me. Clauses are identified as independent/main (example 1) or dependent (Because I was late in example 2). The latter is also called a subordinate clause, and they are often linked to independent clauses by a subordinating conjunction like when, that, etc. or by a relative pronoun like who, whose, etc. Therefore subordinate clauses are often classified into 3 broad groups: Relative clauses Noun clauses (which function in the same way as noun phrases ie. as subjects, objects or complements of the clause) Adverbial clauses (which supply circumstantial information about time, place, manner, purpose etc. These can be finite or non-finite and are identified according to their meaning.) Kinds of sentences: A simple sentence: only contains one clause e.g. She never went to school. A multiple sentence: contains more than one clause. Can be a: Compound sentence: consists of two independent clauses linked by a conjunction e.g. I went to buy some alcohol and the shop assistant asked me for ID. Complex sentence: contains a main clause and one or more subordinate clauses e.g. I met my girlfriend after working for many months in the same office. A clause is different from a phrase. A phrase is a group of words that form a grammatical unit. A phrase does not contain a finite verb and does not have a subject-predicate structure. For example: I liked her expensive new car. George hates working in the garden. These are both examples of sentences with only one, main clause. However they have more than one phrase. Phrases are usually classified according to their central word or head, e.g. noun phrase, verb phrase. Example: Sentence: I Phrase level: S listen V in the mornings AdvP when I m jogging. AdvP--------------------3

Clause level: -----------main clause--------------

---subordinate clause (adv)

A little extra info on Simple Sentence Structure (ie.phrases) Couldnt really decide how much depth we might need to go into for the exam, and therefore how much to go into here but this is a brief summary of what we concluded in that study session oh so long ago A complement comes after the verb and completes what is said. They are usually obligatory, so if a sentence wouldnt be possible without that phrase it will probably be a complement. The most common ones are: Subject complement e.g. She is a doctor. Object complement e.g. We made her the manager. Adjective complement e.g. Im glad youve come. Prepositional complement e.g. They argued about what to do. While complements give extra information about a subject or object, adverbials complement the verb, ie. they function as adverbs. This means they give extra information about the time, manner or place, etc. It might not be obligatory. Be careful: there are both adverbial phrases (without a finite verb) and adverbial clauses (with a finite verb). When deciding on the head word in a phrase, first decide what kind of phrase it is. Then you can pick out what the head word is. If there is a preposition present, it will definitely be a prepositional phrase, even if it refers to time or place, e.g. in school. If there is a noun present it will be a noun phrase, even if that phrase refers to time, etc. e.g. last Monday. Example: Sentence: We Word class: pn Phrase level: NP Clause level: S ll aux VP V use vb the front door this time. det adj n det n ------------------NP-------------------------------O----------------Adv----

References: Thornbury (who else?!) Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, 4th ed.