Intermediate English Grammar for ESL Learners - Robin Torres-Gouzerh 2016

Independent clauses
22 Clauses

A group of words that has a subject and a verb is called a clause. A clause may or may not be a complete sentence. There are two kinds of clauses: independent clauses and dependent clauses.

Independent clauses

An independent clause, or main clause, is a complete sentence. It contains the main subject and verb of the sentence.

Alex goes to work.

The children are doing their homework.

It turned quite cold.

In addition to the subject and verb of a clause, other elements may be added to the beginning, middle, or end of the clause to provide more information. These elements can be adverbs, prepositional phrases, or even other clauses.