Structure of a clause

This article is part of the grammar course. You may choose to follow it in a structured way, or read each item separately. Word classes noun verb adjective adverb article preposition conjunction pronoun interjection Units of language syllable word phrase clause sentence Structure of a clause Subject Verb Complement Adverbial view template

The most central unit of grammar is the clause. This is hard to define, but it is essentially a group of words that contains a verb and expresses an idea, more or less completely. Clauses make up sentences; sentences can contain one clause (a simple sentence) or several.

Nearly every clause contains a Verb, and most contain a Subject. The principal elements of a clause are:

• the Verb. This is the essential part of a Clause. It can be useful, in analysing grammar, to distinguish between verb (with a small 'v'), which is a word class, and Verb (with a capital), which is a function performed in a sentence. A Verb can be a single verb, or a multi-word verb phrase.

• the Subject (the 'performer' of the action of the Verb), which is the most commonly found element after the verb;

• the Complement, which may be either a copular or adjectival Complement (these are the only functions traditionally called Complements); or an Object, either Direct or Indirect. There may be more than one Object, or Complement, in a Clause; and

• the Adverbial. This is the vaguest function to define. Adverbials may modify (that is, tell us more about the action of) a Verb. Most commonly, they tell us how, where, when or why something was done - e.g. she did it quickly (adverb, answering the question 'how?'), or yesterday ('when?'); at home (adverbial phrase, answering 'where'); because it seemed like a good idea (adverbial Clause, 'why?').

For those who like oddities, there is a small group of units known as 'verbless Clauses', which are clauses without verbs, whose analysis belongs to a more advanced study of grammar than this.