[6]: 350 A technical meaning is evident from at least 1865, when Walter Scott Dalgleish describe a clause as "a term of a sentence containing a predicate within itself; as... a man who is wise.
Paul Postal and Noam Chomsky argued that every verb phrase had a subject, even if none was expressed, (though Joan Bresnan and Michael Brame disagreed).
This results in declarative (making a statement), interrogative (asking a question), exclamative (exclaiming), and imperative (giving an order) clauses, each with its distinctive syntactic features.
[11]: 203 The typical form of such clauses consist of two constituents, a subject and a head verb phrase (VP) in that order,[2]: 63 with the subject corresponding to the predicand and the head VP corresponding to the predicate.
[2]: 26 For example, the it-cleft construction has it as a dummy subject, followed by a head VP containing a form of the verb be + a complement corresponding to the predicand + a relative clause whose head corresponds to the predicate.
A tag is appended to a statement and includes only an auxiliary verb and a pronoun: you did it, didn't you?
Semantically, they contain an anaphoric relation to an element in a larger clause, typically to a noun.
This clause has a gap in the VP headed by built, where an object would usually appear.
Comparative clauses function chiefly as the complement in prepositional phrases headed by than or as (e.g., She is taller than I am.
Syntactically the bare types are generally identical to the independent declarative clauses.
In both types, but unlike independent interrogative clauses, the subject always precedes all verbs.
For example, the independent open interrogative who did you meet becomes the underlined text in I wonder who you met.
Supplements, too can be verbless clauses, as in Many people came, some of them children or Break over, they returned to work.
A clause typically consists of a subject and head VP, along with any adjuncts (modifiers or supplements).
The internal structure of the VP allows a wide range of complements – most notably one or two objects – along with any adjuncts.
English is an SVO language, that is, in simple declarative sentences the order of the main components is SUBJECT + HEAD-VP where the basic VP consists of HEAD-VERB + OBJECT.
A clause may also have fronted constituents, such as question words or auxiliary verbs appearing before the subject.
These complements often modify the meaning of the verb in an unpredictable way, and a verb-particle combination such as give up can be considered a single lexical item.
The position of such particles in the clause is subject to different rules from other adverbs; for details see Phrasal verb.
English is not a "pro-drop" (specifically, null-subject) language – that is, unlike some languages, English requires that the subject of a clause always be expressed explicitly, even if it can be deduced from the form of the verb and the context, and even if it has no meaningful referent, as in the sentence It is raining, where the subject it is a dummy pronoun.
This is exemplified in the following tree diagram, which shows a fronted NP who co-indexed to a gap lower down in the clause.
It also shows that auxiliary verb did in front of the subject NP you, instead of the usual subject–verb order.
Fronting of various elements can also occur for reasons of focus; occasionally even an object or other verbal complement can be fronted rather than appear in its usual position after the verb, as in I met Tom yesterday, but Jane I haven't seen for ages.
This can produce preposition stranding (as can wh-fronting): I like the song you were listening to; Which chair did you sit on?
Certain clauses display ellipsis, where some component is omitted, usually by way of avoidance of repetition.
Independent clauses generally have no functional relationship to larger syntactic units.
The most typical dependent clause function is complement in a verb phrase (VP).
Similarly, like licenses that declarative content clauses, exclamatives, to infinitivals and present participials: I like that it looks good; I like what a great look that is; I like to think so; I like being here.
again, these adjectives tend to be semantically related to thoughts and feelings (e.g., happy, excited, disappointed, etc.).
The most common function of relative clauses is modifier in a noun phrase, as in the house that Jack built.