Dependent clause

Last updated

A dependent clause, also known as a subordinate clause, subclause or embedded clause, is a certain type of clause that juxtaposes an independent clause within a complex sentence. For instance, in the sentence "I know Bette is a dolphin", the clause "Bette is a dolphin" occurs as the complement of the verb "know" rather than as a freestanding sentence. Subtypes of dependent clauses include content clauses, relative clauses, adverbial clauses, and clauses that complement an independent clause in the subjunctive mood.

Contents

Content clause

A content clause, also known as a "noun clause", provides content implied or commented upon by its main clause. It can be a subject, predicate nominative, direct object, appositive, indirect object, or object of the preposition. Some of the English words that introduce content clauses are that, who (and formal whom), whoever (and formal whomever), whether, why, what, how, when, and where. Notice that some of these words also introduce relative and adverbial clauses. A clause is a content clause if a pronoun (he, she, it, or they) could be substituted for it.

Examples:

In English, in some instances the subordinator that can be omitted.

Example 1:

Example 2:

Relative (adjectival) clause

In Indo-European languages, a relative clause, also called an adjectival clause or an adjective clause, meets three requirements:

  1. Like all dependent clauses, it contains a verb (and also a subject unless it is a non-finite dependent clause). However, in a pro-drop language the subject may be a zero pronoun: the pronoun may not be explicitly included because its identity is conveyed by a verbal inflection.
  2. It begins with a relative adverb [when, where, how, or why in English] or a relative pronoun [who, whom, whose, that, what or which in English]. However, the English relative pronoun (other than what) may be omitted and only implied if it plays the role of the object of the verb or object of a preposition in a restrictive clause; for example, He is the boy I saw is equivalent to He is the boy whom I saw, and I saw the boy you are talking about is equivalent to the more formal I saw the boy about whom you are talking.
  3. The relative clause functions as an adjective, answering questions such as "what kind?", "how many?" or "which one?"

The adjective clause in English will follow one of these patterns:

This is the ball that I was bouncing.
This is the ball I was bouncing.
That is the house where I grew up.
That is the house where I met her.
That is the person who hiccuped.
That is the person who saw me.
That is the person who(m) I was talking about.
That is the person who(m) I was telling you about.
That is the person about whom I was talking.
That is the person about whom I was telling you.
That is the dog whose big brown eyes pleaded for another cookie.
That is the dog whose big brown eyes begged me for another cookie.
That is the person whose car I saw.

For a discussion of adjective clauses in languages other than English, see Relative clause#Examples.

Punctuation

English punctuation

The punctuation of an adjective clause depends on whether it is essential (restrictive) or nonessential (nonrestrictive) and uses commas accordingly. Essential clauses are not set off with commas; nonessential clauses are. An adjective clause is essential if the information it contains is necessary to the meaning of the sentence:

  • The vegetables that people often leave uneaten are usually the most nutritious.

The word "vegetables" is non-specific. Accordingly, for the reader to know which are being mentioned, one must have the information provided in the adjective clause (in italics). Because it restricts the meaning of "vegetable", the adjective clause is called a restrictive clause. It is essential to the meaning of the main clause and uses no commas (and so does not experience a pause when spoken).

However, if the additional information does not help to identify more narrowly the identity of the noun antecedent but rather simply provides further information about it, the adjective clause is nonrestrictive and so requires commas (or a spoken pause) to separate it from the rest of the sentence:

  • Broccoli, which people often leave uneaten, is very nutritious.

Depending on context, a particular noun could be modified by either a restrictive or nonrestrictive adjective clause. For example, while "broccoli" is modified nonrestrictively in the preceding sentence, it is modified restrictively in the following.

  • The broccoli which (or that) people leave uneaten is often nutritious.

Adverbial clause

"He saw Mary when he was in New York" and "They studied hard because they had a test" both contain adverbial clauses (in italics). Adverbial clauses express when, why, where, opposition, and conditions, and, as with all dependent clauses, they cannot stand alone. For example, When he was in New York is not a complete sentence; it needs to be completed by an independent clause, as in:

or equivalently

Sentence structure

A complex sentence contains an independent clause and at least one dependent clause. A sentence with two or more independent clauses plus (one or more) dependent clauses is referred to as a compound-complex sentence . (Every clause contains a subject and predicate.) Here are some English examples:

My sister cried because she scraped her knee. (complex sentence)

When they told me(that) I won the contest, I cried, but I didn't faint. (compound-complex sentence)

This sentence contains two dependent clauses: "When they told me", and "(that) I won the contest", the latter which serves as the object of the verb "told". The connecting word "that", if not explicitly included, is understood to implicitly precede "I won" and in either case functions as a subordinating conjunction. This sentence also includes two independent clauses, "I cried" and "I didn't faint", connected by the coordinating conjunction "but". The first dependent clause, together with its object (the second dependent clause), adverbially modifies the verbs of both main clauses.

Non-finite dependent clauses

Dependent clauses may be headed by an infinitive, gerund, or other non-finite verb form, which in linguistics is called deranked. For instance:

In these cases, the subject of the dependent clause may take a non-nominative form. An example is:

See also

Related Research Articles

Esperanto is the most widely used constructed language intended for international communication; it was designed with highly regular grammatical rules, and as such is considered an easy language to learn.

English grammar is the set of structural rules of the English language. This includes the structure of words, phrases, clauses, sentences, and whole texts.

In language, a clause is a constituent that comprises a semantic predicand and a semantic predicate. A typical clause consists of a subject and a syntactic predicate, the latter typically a verb phrase composed of a verb with any objects and other modifiers. However, the subject is sometimes unvoiced if it is retrievable from context, especially in null-subject language but also in other languages, including English instances of the imperative mood.

A relative clause is a clause that modifies a noun or noun phrase and uses some grammatical device to indicate that one of the arguments in the relative clause refers to the noun or noun phrase. For example, in the sentence I met a man who wasn't too sure of himself, the subordinate clause who wasn't too sure of himself is a relative clause since it modifies the noun man and uses the pronoun who to indicate that the same "man" is referred to in the subordinate clause.

Mbula is an Austronesian language spoken by around 2,500 people on Umboi Island and Sakar Island in the Morobe Province of Papua New Guinea. Its basic word order is subject–verb–object; it has a nominative–accusative case-marking strategy.

Standard Romanian shares largely the same grammar and most of the vocabulary and phonological processes with the other three surviving varieties of Eastern Romance, namely Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tunica language</span> Extinct language isolate of the Mississippi Valley

The Tunica or Luhchi Yoroni language is a language isolate that was spoken in the Central and Lower Mississippi Valley in the United States by Native American Tunica peoples. There are no native speakers of the Tunica language, but as of 2017, there are 32 second language speakers.

Relative clauses in the English language are formed principally by means of relative words. The basic relative pronouns are who, which, and that; who also has the derived forms whom and whose. Various grammatical rules and style guides determine which relative pronouns may be suitable in various situations, especially for formal settings. In some cases the relative pronoun may be omitted and merely implied.

Traditional grammar is a framework for the description of the structure of a language. The roots of traditional grammar are in the work of classical Greek and Latin philologists. The formal study of grammar based on these models became popular during the Renaissance.

The grammar of Modern Greek, as spoken in present-day Greece and Cyprus, is essentially that of Demotic Greek, but it has also assimilated certain elements of Katharevousa, the archaic, learned variety of Greek imitating Classical Greek forms, which used to be the official language of Greece through much of the 19th and 20th centuries. Modern Greek grammar has preserved many features of Ancient Greek, but has also undergone changes in a similar direction as many other modern Indo-European languages, from more synthetic to more analytic structures.

German sentence structure is the structure in which the German language adheres to. German is an OV (Object-Verb) language. Additionally, German, like all Germanic languages except English, uses V2 word order, though only in independent clauses. In dependent clauses, the finite verb is placed last.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">English pronouns</span> Category of words in English that prototypically "stand in" for other noun phrases

The English pronouns form a relatively small category of words in Modern English whose primary semantic function is that of a pro-form for a noun phrase. Traditional grammars consider them to be a distinct part of speech, while most modern grammars see them as a subcategory of noun, contrasting with common and proper nouns. Still others see them as a subcategory of determiner. In this article, they are treated as a subtype of the noun category.

An attributive verb is a verb that modifies a noun in the manner of an attributive adjective, rather than express an independent idea as a predicate.

Zero-marking in English is the indication of a particular grammatical function by the absence of any morpheme. The most common types of zero-marking in English involve zero articles, zero relative pronouns, and zero subordinating conjunctions. Examples are I like cats in which the absence of the definite article, the, signals cats to be an indefinite reference, whose specific identity is not known to the listener; that's the cat I saw in which the relative clause (that) I saw omits the implied relative pronoun, that, which would otherwise be the object of the clause's verb; and I wish you were here. in which the dependent clause, (that) you were here, omits the subordinating conjunction, that.

Modern Hebrew grammar is partly analytic, expressing such forms as dative, ablative, and accusative using prepositional particles rather than morphological cases.

´Bëlï, or Jur Beli, is a Central Sudanic language spoken by the Beli and Sopi people of South Sudan. The Beli people are mainly found in South Sudan, a region southeast of Rumbek. The language is considered as endangered, and it is mostly spoken by the older generation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">English clause syntax</span> Clauses in English grammar

This article describes the syntax of clauses in the English language, chiefly in Modern English. A clause is often said to be the smallest grammatical unit that can express a complete proposition. But this semantic idea of a clause leaves out much of English clause syntax. For example, clauses can be questions, but questions are not propositions. A syntactic description of an English clause is that it is a subject and a verb. But this too fails, as a clause need not have a subject, as with the imperative, and, in many theories, an English clause may be verbless. The idea of what qualifies varies between theories and has changed over time.

LFN has an analytic grammar and resembles the grammars of languages such as the Haitian Creole, Papiamento, and Afrikaans. On the other hand, it uses a vocabulary drawn from several modern romance languages – Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, French, and Italian.

In linguistics, a relativizer is a type of conjunction that introduces a relative clause. For example, in English, the conjunction that may be considered a relativizer in a sentence such as "I have one that you can use." Relativizers do not appear, at least overtly, in all languages; even in languages that do have overt or pronounced relativizers, they do not necessarily appear all of the time. For these reasons it has been suggested that in some cases, a "zero relativizer" may be present, meaning that a relativizer is implied in the grammar but is not actually realized in speech or writing. For example, the word that can be omitted in the above English example, producing "I have one you can use", using a zero relativizer.

In grammar, sentence and clause structure, commonly known as sentence composition, is the classification of sentences based on the number and kind of clauses in their syntactic structure. Such division is an element of traditional grammar.

References