What is the term for something that has a subject and a verb but does not have to be a complete sentence?

Clauses are large grammatical units composed of many parts of speech. At the core they generally contain a subject and a verb, as well as any number of modifiers.

Here are some examples of clauses:

When the weather improves a bit

I love pogo sticks

Have you met my friend James?

Although in principle I like the colour mauve

Each of these clauses consists of a number of parts of speech and phrases that together make up an idea. Some of the examples can be complete sentences by themselves and others cannot.

When a clause can stand by itself it is called an independent clause. When it has to be connected to another clause, it is a dependent or subordinate clause.

Independent clauses

An independent clause normally has a subject and a main verb and can function as a complete sentence. Here are a few examples:

I love online learning.

Subject: I.
Verb: love.

Tears trickled down his cheeks.

Subject: Tears.
Verb: trickled.

The cat ate the goldfish.

Subject: The cat.
Verb: ate.

While this may seem basic, the one thing that gives students trouble is when you use a coordinating conjunction to connect clauses:

Stalagmites grow up and stalactites hang down.

I couldn’t decide betwen Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw, so I bought them both.

In these cases you should not consider the coordinating conjunction as part of either clause. It just sits in between the independent clauses.

As you’ll read below, the opposite is true of subordinating conjunctions.

Dependent clauses

A dependent clause cannot be a complete sentence by itself. That is because it starts with a word that connects to a main clause. Often the word is a subordinating conjunction or a relative pronoun:

Subordinating conjunction: when, while, although, because, since, etc.

Relative pronoun: who, which, whose, whom, what, that

Dependent clauses that start with a relative pronoun are called relative clauses.

A dependent clause, then, cannot be a sentence by itself:

While I shot the sheriff

Which everyone saw

Who talked to me

Note that the relative pronoun not only connects the dependent clause, but often also acts as its subject.

Now let’s see how we can add these dependent clauses to a sentence:

As my father used to say, the apple does not fall far from the tree.

The capybara, which is native to South America, is the largest rodent in the world.

Note that in the second example the dependent clause interrupts the main clause and provides more information about a noun phrase (“The capybara”).

We all combine clauses intuitively, but recognizing how it works will help you write balanced and complex sentences.

Implied Clauses

In addition to the regular clauses discussed so far, we sometimes come across sentence elements that function like clauses but are missing a clear subject or verb. It may be helpful to think of these as hidden or implied clauses (though neither is strictly a technical term). Typically these are dependent clauses, and they come in two kinds: non-finite and verbless.

Non-Finite Clauses

Regular clauses have a finite verb as the main verb. A finite verb can be conjugated for different subjects and can show tense. For example, notice how the verb changes in form when we write “I swim,” “he was swimming,” and “they swam.”

By contrast, non-finite verbs do not change form. In our Parts of Speech section, we used the word “verbals” for non-finite verbs, and although grammarians argue about terminology, all we need to know is that they are roughly the same.

Non-finite clauses, therefore, do not contain a regular verb but include an infinitive, present participle, or past participle. In each case, there is no other verb (as in “he was swimming”) that would make the verb phrase finite.

There are four types of non-finite clauses.

1. Infinitive.

The main thing is to look confident.

Mentally we can reconstruct the non-finite clause as “he looks confident.” Even though the subject is missing and we have an infinitive (“to look”), we can recognize the similarity to a clause.

2. Bare Infinitive.

A slight variation is the bare infinitive, where the word “to” is left out:

He bade me go home right away.

3. Present Participle.

In the following sentence we can easily imagine that the opening clause could be written as “Since he tied the knot”:

Since tying the knot, John oozes confidence.

4. Past Participle.

Finally, in this non-finite clause we do have a subject (“canal”), but a past participle (“frozen”) instead of a regular verb:

With the canal frozen over, I am skating to work.

It should be pointed out that it can be difficult to decide if something is a non-finite clause or just a phrase. The two overlap significantly, so it may depend on what grammatical function you are focusing. For example, in the sentence “I love skiing” it is generally better to treat “skiing” as a gerund that forms the core of a noun phrase. That makes more sense than treating it as an entire non-finite clause.

The main take-away is that if a non-finite verb (and surrounding words) functions like a dependent clause, then you may want to classify it as such.

Verbless Clauses

Another implied clause is one where the verb is missing:

With her ex-husband in jail, Mary felt free as a bird.

Most verbless clauses are missing some form of “to be.” We could easily write “When her ex-husband was in jail,” or even “With her ex-husband being in jail.”

Conclusion

The main thing to remember is that a clause normally has a subject and a verb. It can either be a complete sentence by itself (independent clause) or needs to be attached to another clause (dependent clause). Sometimes we also have clauses that are missing some elements (like verbs) or use a non-finite verb instead of a finite one. In our quizzes we will ignore these exceptions, but it is helpful to be aware of them.

TIP Sheet
SENTENCE FRAGMENTS

A sentence is a group of words that contains three things:

• A subject (that makes sense with the verb
• A verb (that goes with the subject)
• A complete thought

A sentence fragment is a group of words that lacks one or more of these three things. While there are many ways to end up with a fragment, almost every fragment is simply a result of one of the following three problems:

• It is missing a subject
• It is missing a verb.
• It fails to complete the thought it starts.

Fragments are no big deal in conversation; spoken English is full of them. In fact, if you spoke in complete sentences for one entire day, you would probably get some strange looks. But English conventions require that you avoid writing fragments (except in very rare instances), so you must be able to identify them in your writing and fix them.

To begin to identify fragments in your writing, read a sentence aloud. Does it sound complete? If you walked up to a stranger and said it to him, would it sound like a complete thought to him? Or would he be waiting expectantly for you to finish? Even if it sounds okay to you (because you already know what you mean), look at it and identify the subject (who or what did the action) and the verb (what the subject did) to make sure they're there. (For help identifying subjects and verbs, see the TIP Sheet Parts of Sentences.) If you think a subject is missing, or the verb sounds a little strange, or the thought is left hanging, refer to the tips below.

Missing subjects
Some fragments are missing subjects. Often the subject appears nearby, perhaps in the preceding sentence; however, each sentence must have a subject of its own. The following fragment lacks a subject:

Fragment
Was running late that day.

Who was running late? The instructor? The train? The simplest (but by no means only) way to correct this fragment is to add a subject:

I was running late that day.

Phrases which include words ending in -ing often appear as fragments:

Fragment
Biking and swimming after work on Thursday.

What about biking and swimming? Who is biking and swimming? Are you proposing that we all go biking and swimming? Add both a subject and a verb to correct this (again, not the only solution):

Mitchell went biking and swimming after work on Thursday.

Another suspect in the missing subject category is a phrase like this one:

Fragment
To register for class before the deadline.

Who wants to register? Or failed to register? Or plans to register? This fragment lacks both subject and verb. ("To register" is not really a verb, but another thing entirely; see the TIP Sheet Other Phrases: Verbal, Appositive, Absolute). The simplest fix is to add a subject and verb:

Stan hopes to register for class before the deadline.

(Avoid the mistake of thinking that a command, demand, or request lacks a subject. This kind of sentence has an unstated subject, you. So the subject of "Turn in your schedule changes at the counter" is you: "[You] turn in your schedule changes at the counter.")

Missing verbs
Some fragments are fragments because they are missing a verb or an essential part of a verb. Any phrase, no matter how long, is a fragment if the verb is missing:

Fragment
The birch trees with their rattling yellow leaves.

What about the birch trees? Adding a verb makes this fragment complete:

The birch trees with their rattling yellow leaves swayed in the wind.

Some verbs require helpers in order to be complete. Words ending in -ing, for example, must include helpers such as is, are, was, were, will be, or has been to be real verbs; without these helpers, they are not verbs. (If you want to know more about verb look-alikes, see the TIP Sheet Other Phrases: Verbal, Appositive, Absolute.) The fragment below contains an incomplete verb:

Fragment
Caroline studying her sociology tonight at Moxie's downtown.

Did your ear hear the strangeness? Add helpers to make the verb complete and repair the fragment:

Caroline will be studying her sociology tonight at Moxie's downtown.

Unfinished thoughts
A very common type of fragment is the unfinished thought fragment. While other kinds of fragments require you to add something--a subject, or a verb, or both--you can often fix unfinished thought fragments simply by joining them to a preceding or following sentence. The following example, while it contains a subject and a verb, fails to complete the thought:

Fragment
Because tuition increased again this semester.

The word to blame for making this thought incomplete is because. (Contrary to rumor, it's perfectly okay to start a sentence with because; you just have to finish what you're saying--in the same sentence.) If you find a fragment of this kind, see if the sentence before or the sentence after it would complete it:

Because tuition increased again this semester, Kou got a second job as a Student Assistant.

Or

Kou must take fewer units because tuition increased again this semester.

If the preceding or following sentence does not complete the unfinished thought, add the missing information to the fragment to make it complete. There are many words that, by their mere presence, make a clause incomplete, for example, since, while, when, unless, although. For more about these words, see the TIP Sheet Independent & Dependent Clauses.

In spite of the rules of grammar, language is plastic and can be shaped a great many ways, so for any fragment problem, many solutions exist. The more you practice writing, the more you will be able to spot fragments and fix them. And the more you learn about English, the more ways you will find to make your grammatically correct sentences say exactly what you mean.