Main and subordinate clauses

The dog is barking. My ears hurt. The dog is loud. -Surely it’s not that loud. -Lingo’s sentences are quite short and simple. Let’s look at one of them. The dog is barking.

This is a sentence. Written sentences are indicated by starting with a capital letter and ending with a full stop, exclamation mark, or question mark. A sentence doesn’t need anything else for us to get what it means. Grammatically, it’s complete. A sentence can be short...

or long. The dog barks so very loudly that Lingo’s ears hurt and Lingo must cover them, but the squirrel doesn’t flinch. Long sentences usually consist of smaller parts, that hang together grammatically and could almost work as sentences on their own. These parts are called clauses. There is only one clause in this sentence: the dog is barking But in the longer sentence there are..

four. Almost always, a clause needs at least two elements. Clause elements The first clause element describes what is happening, or what the clause is about. The second clause element describes who, or what is doing the thing. This part of this clause describes what is happening: Is barking And this part describes who is doing it.

The dog Together they make up the clause: The dog is barking Clauses too can be short or long. The nice, fluffy dog is really barking very loudly. Now, both clause elements are longer, but they still describe the same thing: what is happening and who is doing it. There are two types of clause. The dog is barking.

Is a clause that can stand on its own. A main clause. A main clause could function as a complete sentence in itself. And also, a larger sentence can contain more than one main clause. The dog is barking and Lingo's ears hurt The dog is very loud, but the squirrel is sleeping.

And look here. These small words: and, but are words that link different main clauses together. Conjunctions. If we take them out, we get two independent clauses. The dog is barking.

Lingo's ears hurt. The dog is very loud. The squirrel is sleeping. A main clause can thus always become a sentence in its own right. So, now we know what a main clause is.

But there are other types of clause... Here is a new sentence with two clauses. The dog barks so much that Lingo’s ears hurt. Let’s separate them. But...this doesn’t work on its own, does it?

so much that Lingo's ears hurt What is hurting Lingo’s ears? Without the first half of the sentence, we don’t know. So this clause can’t be a main clause. It’s a subordinate clause. A subordinate clause is part of a main clause, and must be placed inside the main clause for us to understand the whole sentence.

Let’s look at some more subordinate clauses because it is sleeping. What is sleeping? What’s the because about? We don’t know. But if we put the subordinate clause into a main clause...

we understand the sentence. The squirrel doesn't seem to be afraid, because it is sleeping. What’s happening now? even though the dog is barking. This is another subordinate clause!

Where should it go? A subordinate clause can actually be inside another subordinate clause. Like this. The squirrel doesn't seem to be afraid, because it is sleeping even though the dog is barking. Subordinate clauses can also be at the beginning of the main clause.

Even though the dog is barking so loudly, the squirrel is sleeping. If you join clauses together, you get a better flow. Right, Lingo? Lingo? -I can’t hear, because the dog is barking.