Sentence, Clause, Phrase - Introduction to Clauses

A clause is a group of words containing a subject and a predicate. There are broadly two types of clauses:

Those that can stand alone and make their meaning clear, and

Those that cannot stand alone and make complete sense

The first category of clauses is called Independent, while the second is known as Dependent.

[Remember: Every independent clause is a sentence by itself.]

For example:

Anjali was watching television while her brother was sleeping.

This sentence can be broken into two clauses as follows:

Anjali was watching television. (CLAUSE 1) (Here, ‘Anjali’ is the subject and ‘is watching television’ is the predicate.) While her brother was sleeping (CLAUSE 2) (Here, ‘her brother’ is the subject and ‘is sleeping’ is the predicate.)

Clause 1 makes its meaning clear when it stands alone—someone named Anjali was watching television.

However, clause 2 is not able to do so. The presence of ‘while’ prevents it from making complete sense. It is dependent on clause 1 for its meaning.