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A clause is a content clause if a pronoun (he, she, it, or they) could be substituted for it. Examples: I know who said that. (I know them. The dependent clause serves as the object of the main-clause verb "know".) Whoever made that assertion is wrong. (They are wrong. The dependent clause serves as the subject of the main clause.)
These clauses within clauses are said to be dependent. For example, the sentence I know the woman who says she saw your son drinking beer! contains the following dependent clauses: a non-finite clause (drinking beer) within a content clause (she saw your son drinking beer) within a relative clause (who says she saw your son drinking beer ...
In grammar, a dependent statement is a statement converted into a noun clause, normally, in English, by the addition of that at the beginning, and made dependent on another clause (e.g. as subject or object). For example, the statement I had saved his brother appears as object of the verb knew in the following quotation:
In example 3, I enjoyed the apple pie is an independent clause, and that you bought for me is a dependent clause; the sentence is thus complex. In sentence 4, The dog lived in the garden and the cat lived inside the house are both independent clauses; who was smarter is a dependent clause.
A dependent clause, by contrast, relies on an independent clause's presence to be efficiently utilizable. A second significant distinction concerns the difference between finite and non-finite clauses. A finite clause contains a structurally central finite verb, whereas the structurally central word of a non-finite clause is often a non-finite ...
A clause typically contains a subject (a noun phrase) and a predicate (a verb phrase in the terminology used above; that is, a verb together with its objects and complements). A dependent clause also normally contains a subordinating conjunction (or in the case of relative clauses, a relative pronoun, or phrase containing one).
the form of the verb used is formally nominalised and cannot occur in an independent clause; the clause-final conjunction or suffix attached to the verb is a marker of case and is also used in nouns to indicate certain functions. In this sense, the subordinate clauses of these languages have much in common with postpositional phrases.
As a dependent clause, a non-finite clause plays some kind of grammatical role within a larger clause that contains it. What this role can be, and what the consequent meaning is, depends on the type of non-finite verb involved, the constructions allowed by the grammar of the language in question, and the meanings of those constructions in that language.