English clause syntax
Clauses in English grammar / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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This article describes the syntax of clauses in the English language, chiefly in Modern English. A clause is often said to be the smallest grammatical unit that can express a complete proposition.[1] But this semantic idea of a clause leaves out much of English clause syntax. For example, clauses can be questions,[2]: 161 but questions are not propositions.[3] A syntactic description of an English clause is that it is a subject and a verb.[4] But this too fails, as a clause need not have a subject, as with the imperative,[2]: 170 and, in many theories, an English clause may be verbless.[2]: 222 The idea of what qualifies varies between theories and has changed over time.