When a group of words forms a sentence, which means, they have a subject and a predicate, we call it a clause. It will necessarily have a subject and a verb. For example, He told me to read this story. In this sentence, He told me is the subject, and to read the story is the predicate.

What are the types of clauses?

There are two main types of clauses, Principal/Main, Subordinate/Dependent and Co-ordinate. 1. Principle/Main- I d o not know what he is doing. The group of words I do not know convey meaning and share some information. They may or may not stand alone, meaning, may or may not require the support of another sentence. Such sentences are main clauses. 2. Subordinate/ Dependent- When a group of words put together do not make any sense and are dependent on another part of the sentence to attain meaning are dependent clauses. For example, Maria said that she would definitely come . The words in italics here present an incomplete meaning until joined with the words Maria said. 3. Co-ordinate- These sentences make use of co-ordinating conjunctions to join two clauses. They do not require dependence on another sennce and make complete sense. For example, Joy helped me but Tonny cheated me. In this sentence, the word but is the co-ordinating conjunction joining two sentences that stand on their own.

Clauses Definition, Types & Examples- Elementary Grammar

Understanding the English language without knowing what clauses are is difficult. They are what make or break a sentence. Therefore, we simply cannot put an end to our Elementary Grammar series lessons without studying this concept. In the previous lesson, we took a look at the concept of phrases. Like we mentioned in that lesson […]