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Subordination as a concept of syntactic organization is associated closely with the distinction between coordinate and subordinate clauses. [2] One clause is subordinate to another if it depends on it. The dependent clause is called a subordinate clause and the independent clause is called the main clause (= matrix clause). Subordinate clauses ...
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 ...
A primary division for the discussion of clauses is the distinction between independent clauses and dependent clauses. [3] An independent clause can stand alone, i.e. it can constitute a complete sentence by itself. A dependent clause, by contrast, relies on an independent clause's presence to be efficiently utilizable.
Since a dependent clause cannot stand on its own as a sentence, complex sentences must also have at least one independent clause. In short, a sentence with one or more dependent clauses and at least one independent clause is a complex sentence. A sentence with two or more independent clauses plus one or more dependent clauses is called compound ...
The periodic sentence emphasizes its main idea by placing it at the end, following all the subordinate clauses and other modifiers that support the principal idea. [2] According to Merriam-Webster, the linguistic sense of the periodic sentence term was coined circa 1928, but there is evidence of its usage in a separate sense dating from 1766 ...
The earliest use of the word clause in Middle English is non-technical and similar to the current everyday meaning of phrase: "A sentence or clause, a brief statement, a short passage, a short text or quotation; in a ~, briefly, in short; (b) a written message or letter; a story; a long passage in an author's source."
A cleft sentence is a complex sentence (one having a main clause and a dependent clause) that has a meaning that could be expressed by a simple sentence. Clefts typically put a particular constituent into focus. In spoken language, this focusing is often accompanied by a special intonation. In English, a cleft sentence can be constructed as ...
Subject–auxiliary inversion can be used in certain types of subordinate clause expressing a condition: a. If the general had not ordered the advance,... b. Had the general not ordered the advance,... – Subject–auxiliary inversion of a counterfactual conditional clause. When the condition is expressed using inversion, the conjunction if is ...