[Grammar] Exercises for clauses, phrases and sentences

[danghuynh88]

Hello teachers !!!

I am summing up my grammatical knowledge to figure out what I am missing and I have a little confused between clauses, phrase and sentence. I have read lots of references on internet about clauses, phrase and sentence so I don't think I need you to explain to me again but I do need help to find more exercises about this grammatical section. I don't find them a lot out there. Do you have or know any site that has lot of exercises about this ??

Thanks a lot

 

[tzfujimino]

Hello, danghuynh88.
I'm not really sure what kinds of exercises you've been looking for, but I've found one:
https://www.noslangues-ourlanguages.gc.ca/quiz/index-eng.html

I hope it helps.

 

[TheParser]

NOT A TEACHER

Hello, Danghuynh:

This forum has had many discussions about the difference between a clause and a phrase. There have been some very sincere differences of opinion. Of course, I will keep my opinion to myself.

I am replying ONLY because I once found some information that fascinated me. Since it comes from a reputable scholar, I think that I am allowed to share it with you.

The book is entitled Grammar / A Student's Guide (1994) by James R. Hurford, University of Edinburgh, pages 28 -29.

1. "Greta wanted to be left alone."

a. I think that everyone agrees that #1 is a (main) CLAUSE. It has a subject ("Greta") and a finite verb ("wanted").

2. Now here is where some teachers may disagree with the good professor.

a. He claims that "to be left alone" is a subordinate clause. He claims that the verb of a subordinate clause can be finite or an infinitive or a gerund or a participle. He also classifies "to be left alone" as a clause because it DOES have a subject, which is "Greta" understood.

(NOTE: I think that some books claim that a sentence such as "Greta wanted to be left alone" is short for "Greta wanted [for Greta] to be left alone.")

b. As I warned you, some teachers refuse to use the term "clause" to refer to "to be left alone."

3. Here is another example from Professor Hurford:

"When I die, please bury me where my mother is buried."

a. If you accept the professor's analysis, can you identify the clauses?

His opinion: The main clause is: the whole sentence; one subordinate clause is: "When I die"; another subordinate clause is: "where my mother is buried."

 

[danghuynh88]

Hello, danghuynh88.
I'm not really sure what kinds of exercises you've been looking for, but I've found one:
https://www.noslangues-ourlanguages.gc.ca/quiz/index-eng.html

I hope it helps.

Thank you, it does, a lot more than I expected.

 

[danghuynh88]

Hi Parse, I guess this is quite a bit controversial. In my opinion, I don't see anything else but an independent clause. I don't think my current knowledge is good enough to judge it. But I can see it is really interesting. Probably there is no exact answer for that one right ?

I have no idea about the second one, it is confusing me.

 

[PaulMatthews]

Hi Parse, I guess this is quite a bit controversial. In my opinion, I don't see anything else but an independent clause. I don't think my current knowledge is good enough to judge it. But I can see it is really interesting. Probably there is no exact answer for that one right ?

I have no idea about the second one, it is confusing me.

Greta wanted [to be left alone].

Here you have a sentence with the obvious verb "wanted". But if you look carefully, you'll see two more verbs: the infinitive "be" and the past participle "left". The presence of these verbs is a sure sign that there is another clause located inside the sentence. "To be left alone" is a subordinate dependent clause located (embedded) within the main clause; it’s a dependent clause since it cannot stand alone as a sentence;rather, it relies on the larger clause that contains it for its existence. The subordinate clause doesn't have a subject where you'd expect to find one, right in front of the verb, but that's because the verb phrase is non-finite (not tensed), and most non-finite clauses are subjectless. But it does have an 'understood' subject "Greta", since being left alone was something that "Greta" wanted. It couldn't be anyone else, could it? So that's how we analyse that sentence.

[WhenI die], please bury me [where my mother is buried].

In this example, the 'main' part of the sentence is the sequence "please bury me where my mother is buried" with the principal verb "bury". But instead of just saying something like "Please bury me in the local cemetery", the writer has chosen to convey the preferred location of their burial in the form of a subordinate (dependent) clause rather than in the simpler preposition phrase "in the local cemetery". Again, thepresence of the verbs "is buried" is the clue here since they signal that there is another clause present inside the larger one.

Notice also that the verb phrase "is buried" has a subject "my mother", whereas “bury” has no subject, though it’s understood as some arbitrary person. So we have two verb phrases, "bury" and "is buried", the latter being the head of the subordinate (dependent)clause "where my mother is buried".

Finally, at the start of the sentence is the further subordinate clause"when I die", with its own verb "die", and subject "I". A clause like this is not integrated into the main part of sentence, but is a separate unit of information set off with a comma and a slight pause in speech, but it's still part of the overall message.