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Phrases and Clauses

Your language arts teacher probably put a good deal of emphasis on subjects and predicates. A subject is usually a noun, which performs the action of a verb. The predicate, in the typical classroom example, is the stuff that comes after the subject—the verb and maybe an adverb or other modifying element.

That’s useful. Kind of. If you want to know which adjective in the following sentence is the predicate adjective, the concept is invaluable.

The red car is fast.

The predicate adjective is the one in the predicate: fast. But to really start breaking down sentences and understanding how every part works, there’s a far more useful distinction: phrases and clauses.

Phrases

A phrase isn’t what you think. It means something different in grammar than it means in the vernacular. In syntactical analysis, a phrase is a unit of one or more words doing the job of noun, verb, adjective, and so on, in a sentence.

NOUN PHRASE

A noun phrase has a noun or pronoun at its head.

The cat mewled.

The subject of this sentence is the cat. Together, those two words are functioning as a single unit, a noun phrase. The cat is a noun phrase because the noun, not the article the, is the head word of the phrase. The whole phrase is doing the job of a noun, even though it may have non-noun words in it.

The orange cat mewled.

The subject of this sentence is the orange cat. That’s still a noun phrase because its head word is still the noun cat. That’s true even though this noun phrase contains an adjective: orange.

Phrases can contain phrases within them. A noun phrase can contain an adjective phrase that contains an adverb phrase. We focus on whichever label describes the function we’re analyzing.

In other words, if we were talking about the role of the adjective in The orange cat mewled, then we might talk about the adjective phrase orange. When we discuss the noun phrase the orange cat, the adjective orange is just a piece of the unit we’re focused on.

But in any phrase you want to look at, the head word is the one that defines the phrase and its job. It’s the one word in the phrase that’s most crucial to the sentence. The less essential words in the phrase, like the and orange in the orange cat, are called dependents, suggesting that they all rely on the head word of the phrase that’s most important to the sentence: in this case, cat.

Now look at this variation on our sentence: Cats mewl. Note how cats is working in an identical way to the cat in our first example. They’re doing the same job, that of a noun phrase, even though cats is just one word.

That’s what we mean when we say in grammar that phrases can be one word. It’s all about function, and a single word like cats functions as a noun phrase the same way that the three-word phrase the orange cat does.

Pronouns work the same way in a noun phrase as regular nouns do. Their syntactical function is identical—usually they’re subjects or objects.

So a noun phrase can be headed by a noun or a pronoun.

It mewled.

She mewled.

The car hit them.

VERB PHRASE

Verb phrases follow the same logic. In our example sentence, the verb phrase is one word: mewled.

The orange cat mewled.

But verb phrases, too, can be longer and more complicated. In the following examples, the verb phrase is the entire underlined portion.

The orange cat was mewling.

The orange cat was mewling loudly.

The orange cat had been mewling very loudly.

ADJECTIVE PHRASE

An adjective phrase is the unit working as an adjective. It, too, can have other phrases and words within it.

The orange cat was mewling.

The bright orange cat was mewling.

The very bright orange cat was mewling.

The cat was orange.

The cat was bright orange.

If you already have in mind the concept of an adjectival phrase, a word of warning: an adjective phrase, as we use the term here, is more specific. The term adjectival phrase can loosely describe any phrase that describes a noun, even if it has no adjective in it. For instance, the prepositional phrase with cheese can modify the noun burger. So it’s adjectival. But in syntactical analysis, when we say adjective phrases, we mean a unit of a sentence with an adjective as the head word.

Notice how an adjective phrase can be in front of the noun phrase it modifies, where it’s often called an attributive adjective, bestowing attributes on the noun phrase that follows. When the adjective phrase comes after a verb like be or seem or feel, it’s called a predicate adjective. Those verbs, by the way, are called copular or linking verbs. We’ll talk more about them in chapter 6, this page.

ADVERB PHRASE

Adverb phrases should be self-explanatory by now.

The completely orange cat mewled.

Again, note that our adverb phrase can be understood as part of our adjective phrase, completely orange, which itself is a piece of a larger noun phrase, the completely orange cat. And an adverb phrase can have other phrases within it.

The extremely badly dressed man entered.

They reacted ridiculously overdramatically.

Two things to note about our first example. One: dressed is working as an adjective. It’s a participle form of the verb dress that when used to describe a noun is categorized as a participial modifier (think: a watched pot, a painted fence, a well-loved tale) or, basically, an adjective. We’ll talk more about participial modifiers in chapter 6, this page.

Two: it’s important to remember that adverbs modify not just verbs (He runs quickly) but also other adverbs (He runs unbelievably quickly).

PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE

Prepositional phrases are the oddballs because they have a unique property: they almost always pair a preposition with an object. The object is a noun phrase.

A man of letters

The check is in the mail.

The truth about Jane

Give it to me straight, Doc.

What are you talking about?

Our last example shows that the preposition isn’t always immediately before its object. What’s important is the relationship, not the location, though sometimes moving the words around can help us see better how a noun phrase is the object of a preposition.

About what are you talking?

Summing up, then, a phrase is a single word or multiple words doing the job of a noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb, or a preposition. Phrases of one type can contain phrases of another type within them. We cluster them that way for purposes of analysis.

We’ll learn more about how phrases work in the chapters to come.

Clauses

A clause is a unit that typically has at least a subject and a verb.

Peter left.

You need at least one clause to form a complete sentence, and often more than that, especially when the verb is transitive and thus requires an object (Stu kissed Elaine; more on transitive verbs and their objects in chapter 6, this page). Sentences can, of course, have more than one clause.

Peter left and Mary was relieved.

Peter left after he ate breakfast.

When two or more clauses are connected with the coordinating conjunction and, but, or, or, less commonly, so, yet, for, or nor, they’re called coordinate clauses. They’re of equal grammatical status and could stand alone as sentences if you broke them up.

Peter left. Mary was relieved.

But when the clauses are connected with a subordinating conjunction like after, than, if, when, and many more, there’s a main clause and a subordinate, or dependent, clause. The subordinate clause can’t stand alone as a complete sentence. The main clause, or independent clause, can.

Peter left

(Independent clause.)

after he ate breakfast

(Dependent clause that, because of the subordinating conjunction after, cannot stand alone as a sentence.)

Interestingly, clauses can work as other parts of speech. Look at this example and see if you can detect the function of the clause that fell.

The tree that fell crushed his car.

Start by identifying the main clause. It’s the tree crushed, with the noun phrase tree as its subject and crushed its verb. But there’s a second clause in this sentence that’s neither a coordinate clause nor a subordinate clause: that fell is a clause because that is a pronoun in this sentence. Combine it with the verb fell, and you have a bona fide clause.

So what’s it doing there? It’s referring to something: the tree. The clause that fell is telling us more about the tree, giving it more specificity. And what do we call things that modify nouns? Adjectives. The clause, then, is functioning adjectivally. There’s a term for this: a relative clause, which is the proper name for an adjective clause.

Try another.

That I love you is all you need to know.

What’s the main clause of this sentence? It’s not I love you. We know that because this clause is subordinated by that. The clause that I love you couldn’t stand alone as a sentence with the word that where it is.

So how to find the main clause? The easiest way is to start by pinpointing the main verb. In this case it’s is.

And what’s the subject of that verb? It’s the whole clause that I love you. This is called a nominal clause, or a noun clause, because it’s a whole clause functioning as a noun phrase. Add the clause that I love you to the verb is, and you have a larger clause, shown below with subject and verb underlined separately.

That I love you is all you need to know.

The whole love-you business is the subject of the sentence. That’s a job usually performed by a noun (Math is all you need to know). So this subordinate clause is called a noun clause or nominal clause.

In chapter 13 on this page, we’ll look at all the jobs clauses can do in sentences—from nominal clauses functioning as subjects, as we saw in our last example, to verbless and nonfinite clauses adding supplemental information. For now, the important thing is to note that clauses are basic building blocks of sentences.

Simple, Compound, and Complex Sentences

The number of clauses in a sentence and the ways the clauses relate to each other tell us whether the sentence is simple, compound, or complex.

SIMPLE SENTENCES

A simple sentence has just one clause, with or without other elements like modifiers, indirect objects, and adverbials.

Tom lied.

Tom lied about the ledger.

Tom lied to Pete about the ledger with the leather cover and gold lettering.

Those are all simple sentences because they have just one clause: Tom lied. Prepositional phrases like about the ledger, to Pete, and with the leather cover don’t change that. They’re optional sentence constituents, not vital to the integrity of the main clause.

COMPOUND SENTENCES

A compound sentence has more than one clause and the clauses are of equal grammatical status. They’re linked together with a coordinating conjunction, usually and, or, or but, but sometimes also nor, yet, so, or for.

We make dinner and we do the dishes.

Either of those clauses could stand on its own. Another way of putting it: they’re both independent clauses. That’s what we mean by equal grammatical status. That makes them different from the clause relationships in complex sentences.

COMPLEX SENTENCES

When a sentence contains two or more clauses that are not of equal grammatical status, it’s called a complex sentence. The clauses are unequal when one can stand alone as a sentence but the other cannot because it’s subordinated by a subordinating conjunction like since, when, if, as, or because.

Because you washed, I’ll dry.

See how I’ll dry could form a freestanding sentence but Because you washed cannot? That’s because it’s subordinated by the word because, making it a dependent clause. Whenever you have a sentence that mixes one or more dependent (or subordinate) clause with one or more independent clause, that’s what we mean by a complex sentence.

The Five Basic Sentence Structures

For sentences with just one clause, there are five basic structures. That’s it. They are as follows:

subject + verb	Evan fell.
subject + verb + direct object	Louis watched television.
subject + verb + indirect object + direct object	Bella sent Ryan a box of chocolates.
subject + verb + subject predicative	Karen is nice.
subject + verb + direct object + object predicative	We found the taste unpleasant.

The simple subject-plus-verb sentence is pretty clear. It’s a noun phrase plus a verb phrase where the verb is intransitive (meaning it doesn’t need an object). Evan fell.

The subject-plus-verb-plus-direct-object structure is simple, too: the verb is transitive, meaning it takes an object. The object is a noun phrase that receives the action of the verb, so to speak. So in Louis watched television, the television is the thing being watched. That’s what we mean by receiving the action of the verb—being watched or painted or delivered or sold or any other form of being acted upon.

In Bella sent Ryan a box of chocolates, we’ve added what’s called an indirect object. The easiest way to understand an indirect object is that it’s a sort of repurposed prepositional phrase, with the preposition omitted, then the phrase is moved to the spot right before the direct object.

Bella sent a box of chocolates.

(Direct object.)

Bella sent a box of chocolates to Ryan.

(Direct object followed by prepositional phrase.)

Bella sent Ryan a box of chocolates.

(Indirect object drops the to and precedes the direct object.)

Many prepositional phrases that can be converted into indirect objects are to phrases, as we saw in to Ryan above. Prepositional phrases headed with for can also become indirect objects.

I’m making a friendship bracelet.

I’m making a friendship bracelet for Jen.

I’m making Jen a friendship bracelet.

Verbs that take both a direct object and an indirect object are sometimes called ditransitive verbs to distinguish them from monotransitive verbs, which take only a direct object. So in I’m making a friendship bracelet, the verb making is monotransitive. In I’m making Jen a friendship bracelet, it’s ditransitive.

Our fourth basic sentence structure takes the form subject plus verb plus subject predicative.

Karen is nice.

If you didn’t know better, you’d think this is an example of the second structure: subject, verb, direct object. But it’s not. There’s a unique class of verbs, which we’ll talk about in chapter 6, this page, that are neither transitive nor intransitive. A word that follows one of these verbs is not receiving the action of the verb the way objects receive the action of transitive verbs. Instead, these verbs refer back to the subject of the sentence. The word that follows, then, is a sort of callback to the subject.

These are called copular verbs. They’re also sometimes called linking verbs because they link what follows back to the subject. The main copular verb is be. But verbs of seeming, becoming, and the seven senses also qualify. Until we get to the verbs chapter, that’s all you need to know about copular verbs. That will suffice for understanding our fourth basic sentence structure.

The noun phrase that follows a copular verb, then, isn’t an object. It’s something called a subject predicative. The name is helpful for understanding that it’s really just something that appears in the predicate and refers back to the subject of the sentence.

Karen is nice.

(Subject + copular verb + subject predicative.)

A subject predicative can be an adjective phrase like nice or very cruel. Or it can be a noun phrase.

Karen is an engineer.

Karen is CEO.

Karen is our shortstop.

Our fifth and final basic sentence structure, subject plus verb plus direct object plus object predicative, relies on a similar concept. Something in the predicate is a sort of redux of something that came earlier. But this time, the thing that’s been added in the predicate is about the object of the verb, not the subject of the verb.

We found the taste unpleasant.

Notice what the word unpleasant is doing in this sentence. It’s referring not to the subject, it’s not we who are unpleasant, but the object: the taste. So the object predicative refers to the object the same way the subject predicative refers to the subject. The object predicative is also sometimes called an object complement. So don’t let that term throw you if you ever come across it.

Like the subject predicative, the object predicative can be an adjective or a noun.

They made John angry.

They made John manager.

As a quick exercise, compare these two sentences. See if you can pinpoint why they’re examples of two different sentence types.

They made John foreman.

They made John dinner.

In the first, the object of the verb made is John. The word foreman is modifying that object. So this first example sentence is structured subject plus verb plus object plus object predicative.

In the second example sentence, the object of the verb made is dinner. This sentence, then, is a way of saying They made dinner for John. So this example is structured subject plus verb plus indirect object plus object.

Similar as they are, these two sentences have different structures because of how the verb is working with the words that follow it.

By the way, a verb that has both an object and an object predicative is called a complex transitive verb. But hopefully you’ll never need to know that.

One-Word Imperative Sentences

Commands, known as imperatives, leave the subject implied. It’s always you. So they qualify as sentences even when they consist of just one word.

Eat. = (You) eat.

Stop. = (You) stop.

Leave. = (You) leave.

The subject is there in spirit. That’s just the rule of imperative verb forms. That’s why all these qualify as complete sentences.

Adverbials: Accessories for Your Sentences

On top of the basic structures, we often add optional items called adverbials.

They had a picnic on the beach.

Bert drove his Camaro to the desert.

He eats his meals slowly.

I’ll see you tomorrow.

Adverbials are words (usually adverbs), phrases (usually prepositional phrases), or clauses that can be removed from the sentence without harming the core structure of the sentence. For example, take to the desert out of Bert drove his Camaro to the desert, and we still have a solid, well-formed sentence with a clear subject, verb, and object: Bert drove his Camaro. That’s how we know to the desert is an adverbial.

If you don’t see yet how tomorrow in our above examples qualifies as an adverbial, that’s because we haven’t discussed adverbs yet. Spoiler alert: tomorrow is one. More on that in chapter 8, this page. For now, though, just note that optional sentence elements known as adverbials can include the kinds of adverbs you don’t traditionally think of as adverbs.

Don’t confuse adverbials with adjunct adverbs—the “manner adverbs” that modify actions. Yes, they’re optional and can be yanked right out. But they’re part of the phrases that make up the clause. They’re not the same as sentence adverbials, which are optional and distinct from the main clause.

Handsome Bert quickly drove his red Camaro to the searing desert.

In this example, handsome, red, and searing are adjectives. They’re part of the noun phrases that make up the subject, verb, and object. Quickly is an adverb, but it’s not a sentence adverbial. It’s referring directly to one word: the verb drove. It’s a modifier that can be analyzed as part of the verb phrase. So none of the modifiers in that last example is a sentence adverbial, even though one’s an adverb and all are expendable.