CLAUSE ANALYSIS
Posted by Gomathi Venkatasubramanian on May 25, 2010
Now let us first begin with a sentence.(Sentence is a group of words which make sense.)
1) She is a beautiful girl.
In this sentence ‘beautiful’ is an adjective,
Now see this sentence.
2) She is a girl of great beauty.
In this sentence ‘of great beauty’ is an adjective phrase.(Phrase is a group of words depicting one meaning).
Let us see this sentence.
3) She is a girl who is beautiful.
In this sentence ‘who is beautiful’ is a Clause. (A Clause is a group of words with a subject and a predicate.)
Look at the 3rd sentence carefully. She is a girl can stand alone but who is beautiful cannot stand alone. It needs the support of the first part of the sentence.
Now we shall divide this sentence into 2 parts. She is a girl /who is beautiful. The second part of the sentence needs the support of the first part.
The result is;
She is a girl—Main Clause
Who is beautiful—Subordinate Clause.
Now this subordinate clause says something more about the noun ‘girl’ in the Main Clause.
A word that says something more about a noun is an Adjective and so a clause that says something more is known as an Adjective Clause.
Some more examples of sentences with this Clause;
a) The man who is fat is my grandfather.
b) Raja likes movies that are directed by Manirathnam.
c) The stone which shines the most is the diamond.
I hope you have tried to understand the concept of the Clause Analysis.
We shall see all the types of Clauses one by one.
Try to analyse the sentences given into Main Clause and Subordinate Clause.
