The Clause

The Clause

The clause's is what originally started as a simple sentence but because it has to be added to another simple sentence or  several other simple sentences drops the name clause and picks the name clause.

Let's see this in action:

• I'm here.
• I'm tired.

Here we have two simple sentences. However, we could marry these sentences to give us:

• I'm here and tired.

The two simple sentences have something in common. They've the same subject "I" and the same verb "'ve/have". What we've done is to substitute the subject and verb of one of the sentences for the other and introduce a conjoining element "and". This gives us the new sentence:

• I'm here and tired.

This sentence makes two statements instead of the single statement that the first two make. The statements are now called clauses.

In looking at the clause, the Oxford Advanced Learners' Dictionary (2006) calls the clause: "a group of words that includes a subject and a verb, forming a sentence or part of a sentence". In the same vein, it sees the sentence as: "a set of words expressing a statement, a question or a command. Sentences usually contain a subject and a verb (the same that's said of the clause - my own view, though)... This collaborates what was said earlier that a clause's a simple sentence.

There're two types of clause: the main/pricipal or independence and the subordinate or dependence. The main clause is the gist of the sentence while the dependent clause functions according to the part of speech it functions as. The subordinate clause could be noun, adverb and adjective clause.

An independent clause, along with having a subject and predicate, expresses a complete thought and can stand alone as a sentence. On the contrary, a subordinate or dependent clause does not express a complete thought and therefore is not a sentence. ... A subordinate clause has a subject and predicate but, unlike an independent clause, cannot stand by itself. It depends on something else to express a complete thought, which is why it is also called a dependent clause. Some subordinate clauses are introduced by relative pronouns (who, whom, that, which, what, whose) and some by subordinating conjunctions (although, because, if, unless, when, etc.). Subordinate clauses function in sentences as adjectives, nouns, and adverbs. http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/Types-of-Clauses.topicArticleId-29011,articleId-28968.html).