Is a group of words that can stand alone as a sentence containing a subject and a predicate?

By Marina Pantcheva

A clause is a group of words that includes two obligatory elements:

• a subject – expresses who or what does something. To find the subject, ask who or what performs the activity.
• a predicate – the word expressing the activity. The predicate changes its form depending on the subject (I play but he plays) and depending on the tense (he plays often but he played yesterday). The predicate is always a verb; hence, the easiest way to find the predicate of the clause is to find the verb whose form changes depending on the subject and the tense.

(1)    Mary is writing a letter. [Mary is the subject, writes is the predicate]
(2)    The new theory captures the data successfully. [the new theory is the subject, captures is the predicate]

There are two types of clauses:

• independent clause – it expresses a complete thought and can stand alone.

(3) John was hired by an IT company.
(4) The majority of politicians do not accept global warming as a real threat.

• dependent clause – it does not express a complete thought but just a part of it. Dependent clauses cannot stand alone.

(5) shortly after he graduated in Computer Science [an incomplete thought]
(6) although scientists have found strong indications of a global temperature rise [an incomplete thought]

Dependent clauses are commonly introduced by special markers (called subordinate conjunctions), such as, if, whether, because, although, since, when, while, unless, even though, whenever (follow this link for a fuller list).

A sentence consists of one or more clauses. A sentence that is made up of a single clause is a simple sentence. The single clause has to be an independent clause in order for the sentence to be complete. The examples in (1)-(4) are all simple sentences consisting of just one independent clause.

A sentence can also contain more than one clause. Such a sentence is called a compound sentence. Compound sentences can consist of two or more independent clauses (connected by and, but, or, nor)

(7) John was hired by an IT company, but Mary did not find a job.
(8) We have to finish the project first, and then we can take a holiday.

A compound sentence can also combine independent clauses with dependent clauses.

(9) Shortly after John graduated in Computer Science, he was hired by an IT company.
(10) The majority of politicians do not accept global warming as a real threat, although scientists have found strong indications of a global temperature rise.

A compound sentence has to contain at least one independent clause to be complete.

Sometimes, complex phrases can be used instead of a dependent clause to encode the same information. This creates a longer simple sentence with just one subject and one verb.

(11) Shortly after his graduation in Computer Science, John was hired by an IT company.
(12) The majority of politicians do not accept global warming as a real threat despite the strong indications of a global temperature rise.

The groups of words “shortly after his graduation in Computer Science” and “despite the strong indications of a global temperature rise” are not clauses because they have no subject (the words John and scientists are missing) and no predicate (graduation is not a verb but a noun derived from a verb).

These three structures are a common part of English, and are all composed of groups of words. Clauses, phrases and sentences are very similar, but they do have different roles. Learning the difference between them will help you make a lot more sense of English grammar, and will be very useful to improve your written English.

What is a phrase?

Words can be grouped together, but without a subject or a verb. This is called a phrase.

Because a phrase has neither subject nor verb, it can’t form a ‘predicate’. This is a structure that must contain a verb, and it tells you something about what the subject is doing.

Phrases can be very short – or quite long. Two examples of phrases are:

“After dinner”

“Waiting for the rain to stop”.

Phrases can’t be used alone, but you can use them as part of a sentence, where they are used as parts of speech.

What is a clause?

Clauses are groups of words that have both subjects and predicates. Unlike phrases, a clause can sometimes act as a sentence – this type of clause is called an independent clause. This isn’t always the case, and some clauses can’t be used on their own – these are called subordinate clauses, and need to be used with an independent clause to complete their meaning.

An example of a subordinate clause is “When the man broke into the house”

An example of an independent clause is “the dog barked at him”

While the independent clause could be used by itself as a complete sentence, the subordinate clause could not. For it to be correct, it would need to be paired with another clause: “When the man broke into the house, the dog barked at him.”

What is a sentence?

A complete sentence has a subject and predicate, and can often be composed of more than one clause. As long as it has a subject and a predicate, a group of words can form a sentence, no matter how short.

E.g. “You ate fish.”

More complex sentences can combine multiple clauses or phrases to add additional information about what is described. Clauses may be combined using conjunctions – such as “and”, “but” and “or”.

E.g. “He went out to dinner but didn’t enjoy the meal.”

This example is composed of two independent clauses, “he went out to dinner” and “he didn’t enjoy the meal”, combined with a conjunction- “but”.

Your turn

While clauses, phrases and sentences might seem very similar at first, on closer look you can start to see how they function very differently. To make sure you use them correctly, it’s important to practice identifying them.

Try reading different materials, and spotting the phrases, clauses and complete sentences in a piece of text. Then try to write your own examples of them! And if you would like to learn English with people from all over the world - check out our range of language courses abroad at Eurocentres.com

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