English grammar - Roger Berry 2012

A8.1 Clauses
A8 Clauses and clause elements
Section A. Introduction

So far in the Introduction sections we have talked about word classes and their associated phrases. In this section we now move on to a larger unit: clauses, which are built up from phrases.

The semantic definition of clauses is that they contain one complete idea; there is something to this - but it is not easy to establish (it is also offered as a definition

for the sentence), so we need to look for more reliable, formal properties of the clause. These include the following:

□ they contain at least a subject (except with imperatives) and a verb

□ there is one, and only one, finite verb form (unless there is coordination - see A9)

□ other elements are permitted according to the patterns of the verb

There are some structures which are called clauses but which do not fulfil all three characteristics: ’non-finite clauses’ and ’verbless clauses’. These share some of the features of clauses (see A10), but here we are talking about full, or ’finite’ clauses.