Basic Grammar Step by Step Second Edition
Mary W. Ng
Chapter 52
More on Sentences
A sentence is a word or group of words that expresses a complete thought. A simple sentence has two parts: the subject and the predicate.
The subject is the who or what we talk about in a sentence. The predicate is the part of the sentence without the subject.
| Subject | Predicate |
|---|---|
| We | played tennis. |
| The train | arrived early. |
52.1 Main and Dependent Clauses
A clause is a group of words that contains both a subject and a predicate and is part of a sentence. A sentence may have two or more clauses. For simplicity, we will only look at two-clause sentences.
| Clause | Clause |
|---|---|
| We were eating dinner | when the telephone rang. |
| I love the cookies | that your mother made. |
There are two kinds of clauses: main and dependent. A main clause expresses a complete thought and can stand alone as a sentence.
| Main Clause |
|---|
| We were eating dinner. |
| I love the cookies. |
A dependent clause does not express a complete thought and cannot stand alone. It depends on the main clause to complete its meaning.
| Dependent Clause |
|---|
| when the telephone rang |
| that your mother made |
Exercise Identify the clauses in these sentences.
| Example: | She called me before she went to work. |
| Answer: | She called me (main clause), before she went to work (dependent clause) |
- The house where we used to live is torn down.
- We went out after we had finished our breakfast.
249