Words, Phrases, and Clauses

A Word
is a unit of language that is composed of a letter or a series of letters or a sound or a series of sounds. This unit conveys meaning agreed on by a culture: a, an, the, book, film, honesty, country.

A Phrase is a word or a group of related words that creates a grammatical unit and performs a function in a sentence. There are numerous phrases, among them, noun phrases, prepositional phrases, infinitive phrases, gerund phrases, participial phrases, and verb phrases: the young boy, in the refrigerator, to sit on the beach, Jogging in the morning, bored and tired, have read.

A Clause is a group of related words that contains a subject and a predicate. There are three types of clauses: subordinate clauses (also called dependent), main clauses (also called independent), and infinitive clauses: When William Faulkner received the Nobel Prize, He runs each day, him to attend the party. Some grammar texts also refer to reduced clauses.

Return to English 139

A Word	is a unit of language that is composed of a letter or a series of letters or a sound or a series of sounds. This unit conveys meaning agreed on by a culture: a, an, the, book, film, honesty, country.
A Phrase	is a word or a group of related words that creates a grammatical unit and performs a function in a sentence. There are numerous phrases, among them, noun phrases, prepositional phrases, infinitive phrases, gerund phrases, participial phrases, and verb phrases: the young boy, in the refrigerator, to sit on the beach, Jogging in the morning, bored and tired, have read.
A Clause	is a group of related words that contains a subject and a predicate. There are three types of clauses: subordinate clauses (also called dependent), main clauses (also called independent), and infinitive clauses: When William Faulkner received the Nobel Prize, He runs each day, him to attend the party. Some grammar texts also refer to reduced clauses.