Simple/Compound sentence, Relative clause

John and Jim went to the mall.
Is this sentence simple or compound? I thought that it combines two clauses -John went to the mall. Jim went to the mall. And hence it is compound. But I was told that it is a simple sentence.

John is poor but happy.
Again, is this sentence simple or compound?

Are there any rules to distinguish between simple and compound sentence?

Also, can you please tell me (if possible with example) what is the diference between relative clause and adjective clause?

Thanks.

[Casiopea]

Here's a trick. There is one main verb per simplex sentence:

Ex: John and Jim went to the mall. <simplex>
Ex: John is poor but (he is) happy. <not simplex>

Originally Posted by Uregistered

what is the diference between relative clause and adjective clause?

A relative clause can be an adjectival clause. What examples are you dealing with?

All the best.

[suteja]

Thanks.

By that logic, is the following sentence compound? As it contains two verbs?
"Birds sing and fly."

Also, in my earlier example, if I write the sentence as
"John went to the mall and Jim went to the Mall." then does it make the sentence compound (as I now have two verbs)?

About the adjective/Relative clause, I read somewhere that both terms mean the same. Somewhere else, I read that relative clause is a special case of adjective clause. Hence, I got (and am) confused. Could you throw some light on this?

[Casiopea]

Look at it this way. Ellipsis (...) is common:

[1] Birds sing and (birds) fly. <compound>
[2] John went to the mall and Jim went to the Mall. <compound>

Originally Posted by suteja

Somewhere else, I read that relative clause is a special case of adjective clause. Hence, I got (and am) confused. Could you throw some light on this?

A relative clause (or an RC for short) is headed--or begins with--a relative pronoun, and those pronouns are referential. They refer to a noun in the sentence, and it's always the closest noun to them. The RC itself modifies a noun, just like other adjectives:

Ex: This is the book that I bought. (Form: RC; Function: adjectival clause modifying book)

The RC that I bought describes the noun book. Test it:

Q: What kind of book?
A: The book that I bought.

RCs function as adjectives and they are a special kind of adjective because they house a subject, a verb, an object, and way more material than any other kind of adjective does.

Does that help?

[aous02]

Now i got really perplexed.
Once a teacher told me that whenever coordinating 2 simple sentences (with "and") we get a compound sentence.
He said also that whenever coordinating two verbs it's stii a simple sentence.
*In class we dealt with this sentence as a simple one.
Eg: The soldiers packed up their gear and moved on down the road.
What do ou think?

[Super Sonic]

Hmm I thought any sentence that is connected to another with a conjunction like "and" or "but" was considered a "compound sentence".

[Casiopea]

Originally Posted by aous02

*In class we dealt with this sentence as a simple one.
Eg: The soldiers packed up their gear and moved on down the road.
What do ou think?

I agree with Super Sonic. It's a compound sentence: simple sentence + simple sentence = compound sentence.

The soldiers packed up their gear <simple> and (they) moved on down the road <simple>.


Does that help?
________________
Correction
I am, not i got

[aous02]

I'm sorry Casiopea, but:
"The soldiers packed up their gear and moved on down the road." is a simple not a compound sentence.

This is a simple sentence. It is easy to see, however, why someone might think that this is a compound sentence, since it contains the co-ordinating conjunction "and"; however, the conjunction actually joins two predicates -- "packed up their gear" and "moved on down the road" -- within a single clause. The clue that you are dealing with a compound predicate rather than a compound subject is the fact that there is only one subject, "I."

U're a teacher, I guess