today, we are going to deal with sentences, clauses and phrases with examples:
These three structures are a common part of English, and are all composed of groups of words. Clauses, phrases and sentences are very similar, but they do have different roles.
Learning the difference between them will help you make a lot more sense of English grammar, and will be very useful to improve your written English.
What is a phrase?
Words can be grouped together, but without a subject or a verb. This is called a phrase. لا تتضمن شبه الجملة فاعلا وفعلا
Because a phrase has neither subject nor verb, it can’t form a ‘predicate’. This is a structure that must contain a verb, and it tells you something about what the subject is doing. شبه الجملة تحتاج إلى فعل وفاعل
Phrases can be very short – or quite long. Two examples of phrases are:
“After war” بعد الحرب
“Waiting for the Ministers to come”.في انتظار قدوم الوزراء
Phrases can’t be used alone, but you can use them as part of a sentence, where they are used as parts of speech.
What is a clause?
Clauses are groups of words that have both subjects and predicates. Unlike phrases, a clause can sometimes act as a sentence – this type of clause is called an independent clause. This isn’t always the case, and some clauses can’t be used on their own – these are called subordinate clauses, and need to be used with an independent clause to complete their meaning.
An example of a subordinate clause is “When the war broke out”
An example of an independent clause is “many victims fell”
في حالة استخدام عبارة واحدة (مستقلة أو تابعة) ينقص المعنى ولا يكتمل incomplete meaning بخلاف الجملة sentence كما سنبينه في العنصر القادم.
What is a sentence?
A complete sentence has a subject and predicate, and can often be composed of more than one clause. As long as it has a subject and a predicate, a group of words can form a sentence, no matter how short.
E.g. “the politicians discussed the issue of high prices in the parliament”