How to tell the difference between a sentence, a clause, and a phrase

A sentence must have a subject (expressed or not), a verb, and a complete thought (or "predicate") supplied by a variety of constructions. The boy strikes. The boy strikes the rock. The boy strikes with a sharp word. Puer pulsat. Puer saxum pulsat. Puer pulsat cum acro verbo.

A clause contains a subject and a verb, but can or cannot contain a complete thought. Clauses that can stand on their own two feet as sentences are called either "independent" or "main"; clauses that lack a complete thought are termed either "dependent" or "subordinate". A phrase is a collection of words without a subject/verb or complete thought. prepositional phrases infinitive phrases participial phrases gerund phrases appositive phrases "over the river," "through the woods," to grandmother's house..." "To respect criticism is a sign of maturity." "Biting my nails, I waited anxiously..." "I saw the running of the bulls" "My father, the doctor, gave me drugs.

Phrase, Clause, Sentence

Although no one out there in the real world will ever ask you to pick out the subjects and verbs in sentences, and no one will ask you if a pronoun agrees with its antecedent, you need to understand these and other grammatical things so that your professors and you can discuss your writing, what youre doing well and areas on which you need to focus. In school, we concentrate on standard formal English. That means that we follow the conventions set forth by the Modern Language Association (MLA), the collection of scholars, the they who make all rules governing the English language. We may speak in our various dialects and use our colloquialisms in conversations, but we must write formally. Things acceptable in informal oral communications are taboo in formal written communications. Well start with phrases, clauses, and sentences. How do we differentiate these three items?

A phrase is a group of related words. A clause is a group of related words that contains both a subject and verb. We have two primary types of clauses. o An independent clause expresses a complete thought, so it can stand by itself.

o A dependent clause, also known as a subordinate clause, expresses only part of a thought, so it cannot stand alone. A sentence is an independent clause that may or may not be combined with other clauses to convey a complete, and sometimes complex, thought. You must be able to recognize phrases, sentences, and clauses so that you can tell whether you have written complete sentences and so that you can punctuate your sentences correctly. To determine whether a group of words is a phrase or a clause, you must be able to find the subject and predicate. (Predicate is another term for a verb.) The subject is the part of a sentence that tells who or what the sentence is about. To find the subject, ask who or what is doing something. The predicate is the part of a sentence that asserts something about the subject. It expresses action or state of being. To find the predicate, ask what the subject is doing. HOT TIP: Because verbs change form to show time (tense), you can locate verbs easily by forcing a change in a sentence. If you use a word like yesterday, today, or tomorrow at the start of a sentence whose verb youre trying to identify, the only word that changes will be the verb. Examples: Mary writes letters to her grandparents. Yesterday, Mary wrote letters to her grandparents. Tomorrow, Mary will write letters to her grandparents. Since writes is the only word that changes, writes is the verb. Once you find the verb, you can easily find the subject by asking who or what does the action of the verb. Example: Who writes? Mary writes, so Mary is the subject of the sentence.

HOT TIP: The subject of a sentence will NEVER be in a prepositional phrase. This is important to know because subjects and verbs must agree in number (singular/plural). Sometimes the object of a preposition comes between a subject and verb, making the subject a little more difficult to find and causing agreement errors. In the example sentences, we also have a direct object and an indirect object.

A direct object is something or someone that directly receives the action of the verb.

Example: What does Mary write? She writes letters, so letters is the direct object. An indirect object is someone for whom or to whom the action is done. To whom does Mary write the letters? She writes to her

Example:

grandparents, so grandparents is the indirect object. Many other elements occur in sentences. Our language would be pretty boring if we had only subjects and verbs, direct objects and indirect objects in our sentences. We couldnt say all that we want to say without other parts of speech. Well, what are those other parts of speech? You will find them listed in a PowerPoint presentation on Parts of Speech. While were discussing sentences, you should know that there are four types of sentences: simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex. The number of independent and dependent clauses determines the type of sentence. A simple sentence contains one independent clause. Example: Mary went to the store. A compound sentence contains two independent clauses that usually are joined in one of two ways: o A comma and coordinating conjunction (and, but, or, nor, for, so, yet) Example: Mary went to the store, and she bought some bread. o A semicolon Example: Mary went to the store; she bought some bread.

HOT TIP: Omitting the comma makes this a run-on sentence. Because this is the number one error in student writing, you should pay close attention to this rule. Notice that there is a subject and verb on both sides of the conjunction and semicolon. A complex sentence contains one independent clause and one or more dependent clauses. Example: Mary went to the store because she needed bread. A compound-complex sentence contains two or more independent clauses and at least one dependent clause. Example: Mary went to the store, and she bought some bread that she needed.