Clause
A clause is a group of words including a subject and a predicate. The subject is the person or thing performing the action of the verb in the predicate, while the predicate is that verb plus, optionally, additional information such as the object of the verb or an adjective describing the subject.
Birds fly.The above examples are all independent clauses, because they are stand-alone sentences. A sentence can have more than one independent clause – shown here in italics.
He looks happy.
We love pancakes!
I might be crazy.
Birds fly and fish swim.A clause that depends on another clause to complete its meaning is called a dependent clause or subordinate clause. Dependent clauses cannot stand alone; their meaning is dependent upon an accompanying independent clause. In these examples, the dependent clauses are in italics. As you can see, if you remove the non-italicized words, the sentence is incomplete.
He looks happy but you seem sad.
I don’t know how birds fly.In English, unlike French and Spanish, the conjunction "that" is optional, which can make it more difficult to recognize dependent clauses.
Tell me if he looks happy.
We’re going to IHOP because we love pancakes!
He thinks (that) I might be crazy.
Phrase
A phrase is any group of words that form a unit of meaning within a sentence. There are different types of phrases depending on what part of speech the most important word – called the headword – belongs to.
Noun phrases include a noun plus a determiner and/or an adjective:
the housePrepositional phrases consist of a preposition plus the object of that preposition.
any big store
green trees
some yellow cars
inside the storeAdjectival phrases are made up of an adjective plus an adverb and/or a prepositional phrase.
at home
behind closed doors
on top of a mountain
slightly dizzy
perfectly normal
covered in dust
very happy about it
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