Clauses

Independent clauses:

• These are also called main clauses. They express a complete thought and can stand alone as a sentence.

ex: Daniel loves to read.

Avery will graduate from

Spanish Fort High School

in two years.

Subordinate clauses:

• These are also called dependent clauses because they depend on the rest of the sentence to complete a thought. It contains a subject and a verb, but it does not express a complete thought and cannot stand alone as a sentence.

ex: Because Joseph is imaginative,his inventions are unusual.He creates gadgets that no one has ever thought of before.

Underline ind. clauses once and dep. clauses twice.

1. Some useful inventions have caused serious problems.

2. A good example is the automobile, which became popular in the early 1900s.

3. The automobile is now one of our most important means of transportation, but it also causes much of our air pollution.

4. Some people who worry about our environment believe in restricting the use of cars.

5. They think that people should not be able to drive cars in certain places.

6. Others want to solve the problem by creating new inventions.

7. When we have better engines and fuels, they think the problem will disappear.

8. Human beings, who are inventors by nature, will continue to create new inventions.

9. We should anticipate the effects that inventions can have.

10. If we do, perhaps future generations will not be endangered.

Adjective Clauses:

• An adjective clause is a subordinate clause used as an adjective to modify a noun or a pronoun (a.k.a.-relative clause).

Ex: Some students rely on essays that can be found on the internet.

Those students who take such

essays may not learn to write their

own essays.

Adverb Clauses:

• An adverb clause is a subordinate clause that modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb.

Ex: Emery panics whenever she takes a

test.

However, this time, the answers

came to her more easily than she

had expected.

Emery felt better after she took the test.

Identify the adj. or adv. clause

1. You can find dozens of self-scoring personality tests if you look in magazines and on the internet.

2. Such tests can be fun and even enlightening, as long as you don’t take them too seriously.

3. These personality tests have simple scoring keys, which anyone can use.

4. Magazine and internet tests are usually scientific, whereas standardized tests approach personality traits scientifically.

5. One such personality test is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, or MBTI, which Katharine C. Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers developed.

6. Your school counselor might give you this or another personality test that can help you make educational or career choices.

7. These personality tests are given so that characteristics of personality can be determined and categorized.

8. The answers are analyzed for characteristics that help to reveal your preferences.

9. Whenever you take a personality test, you are providing a self-report.

10.After all, you know yourself better than anyone else does.

Noun Clauses:

• A noun clause is a subordinate clause used as a noun.

Ex: Whatever you want to do is fine with me.Some people say that hereditydetermines personality.Another influence can be whom you select as friends.

Identify the noun clause

1. Why even very young children differ in terms of irritability, calmness, shyness, and other traits is an intriguing question for biologists, psychologists, and others.

2. Heredity must play some role in determining a child’s personality, but experts disagree about what that role is.

3. Some experts assert that specific inherited genes influence and perhaps even control many personality traits, such as a tendency to seek out new experiences (“novelty seeking”) and a tendency to worry a great deal.

4. One theory about genes’ influence on personality is that certain genes affect the actions of the brain’s natural mood-affecting chemicals, such as dopamine and serotonin.

5. That the human body contains about 100,000 genes poses a huge challenge for genetic researchers.

6. Some scientists are trying to determine which plays a more important role in shaping personality-heredity or life experiences.

7. This leads to the question of whether a child’s birth order affects his or her personality.

8. Numerous popular books and magazine articles describe how first-born children tend to be bossy, how middle children tend to be diplomatic, how youngest children tend to be fun-loving, and so on.

9. In the late 1990s, scholar Frank Sulloway offered a mass of evidence in an effort to prove that later-born children are more likely than first-born children to have rebellious personalities.

10. According to Sulloway, whoever is born first into a family identifies strongly with established authority, while later-born children are family underdogs who tend to question authority.

Sentence Structure:

• Simple Sentences-Consists of one independent clause and no subordinate clauses.

ex: Spanish Fort High School does not

have an official Fight Club.

• Compound Sentences-contains two or more independent clauses joined together. The clauses in many compound sentences are joined with coordinating conjunctions.

ex: Some people like change, but others

like stability.

• Complex sentences-contains one independent clause and one or more subordinate clauses.

ex: Although she went to Bayside, she now considers herself a Spanish Fort Toro.

• Compound-complex sentences: Contains two or more independent clauses and one or more subordinate clauses.

ex: Researchers have studied couples

who have contrasting personalities,

and the results have been interesting.

Identify each as simple, compound, complex, or compound-complex

1. Everyone has ideas about the influence of personality on relationships.

2. “Birds of a feather flock together” is an old maxim; it implies that people prefer to be with others who are similar to themselves.

3. On the other hand, another old saying asserts that “opposites attract.”

4. Both maxims are generalizations, and both probably have some truth in them.

5. Psychologist David Keirsey thinks that people whose personality types are similar in some ways and different in others tend to get along well.

6. According to Keirsey, the biggest problems in relationships occur when two people are initially attracted by the differences between their personalities but later try to change one another.

7. Of course, parents and teachers have an obligation to help foster and encourage appropriate behavior.

8. Yet, everyone is responsible for his or her own behavior, and everyone should make allowances for personality differences.

9. An important step in accepting differences is avoiding name-calling.

10. Negative labeling that makes people feel defensive can interfere with effective interaction, and it goes against another old maxim, “Live and let live.”