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A clause is a content clause if a pronoun (he, she, it, or they) could be substituted for it. Examples: I know who said that. (I know them. The dependent clause serves as the object of the main-clause verb "know".) Whoever made that assertion is wrong. (They are wrong. The dependent clause serves as the subject of the main clause.)
A relative clause is a dependent clause that modifies a noun or noun phrase in the independent clause. In other words, the relative clause functions similar to an adjective. Let him who has been deceived complain. (Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote) You, who have never known your family, see them standing around you.
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."
These clauses are joined together using conjunctions, punctuation, or both. A complex sentence consists of one independent clause and at least one dependent clause. A compound–complex sentence (or complex–compound sentence) consists of multiple independent clauses, at least one of which has at least one dependent clause.
A clause typically contains a subject (a noun phrase) and a predicate (a verb phrase in the terminology used above; that is, a verb together with its objects and complements). A dependent clause also normally contains a subordinating conjunction (or in the case of relative clauses, a relative pronoun, or phrase containing one).
The following is a partial list of linguistic example sentences ... Demonstrations of words which have multiple meanings dependent on ... Reduced relative clauses.
An adverbial clause is a dependent clause that functions as an adverb. [1] That is, the entire clause modifies a separate element within a sentence or the sentence itself. As with all clauses, it contains a subject and predicate, though the subject as well as the (predicate) verb are omitted and implied if the clause is reduced to an adverbial phrase as discussed below.
A dependent clause, by contrast, relies on an independent clause's presence to be efficiently utilizable. A second significant distinction concerns the difference between finite and non-finite clauses. A finite clause contains a structurally central finite verb, whereas the structurally central word of a non-finite clause is often a non-finite ...