© 2019 Steve Campsall
© 2019 Steve Campsall
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grammar - sentence analysis |
Let's look again at the sentence we've been working with:
The drunken young man slipped awkwardly into a ditch although he seemed unhurt.
An analysis of shows that it consists of two clauses, themselves built from several phrases. The two clauses are:
[The drunken young man slipped awkwardly into a ditch] [although he seemed unhurt].
Neither of these smaller groups is a sentence in its own right, although the first word group could stand alone as it is a main clause. Yet both groups contain a subject and verb chain combination.
This means neither are phrases: being built around verb phrases, they must be clauses.
In this sentence the first word group is the main clause, The drunken young man slipped awkwardly into a ditch...
The part of a sentence that tells about its main subject - and what this subject either is, is being or doing - is called the main clause. But what about the second clause in this sentence?
...although he seemed unhurt.
This clause could not stand alone as a sentence because of the word 'although'. Its function, therefore, is not to be a main clause or sentence but to 'help out' its main clause.
NEED MORE HELP WITH PHRASES AND CLAUSES?
