Grammar review

To become a good writer you should have some basic ability to analyze grammar. Here I provide a bare-bones course in what you need to know. I'll focus on clauses and verbs, because these are the core structures and words on which everything else hangs. （Skip this section if grammar gives you uncontrollable panic attacks. Just make sure you have a reviser who can recognize an independent clause, and who knows how to turn the passive voice into the active voice.）

　　Clauses are the key syntactical structure of English sentences. When you're looking over a string of words, you should be able to decide whether it's one of two things: a clause or a phrase. A phrase is any string of words that doesn't meet the definition of a clause. Defining a clause is more complex. A clause consists of two parts: a noun acting as a subject, and a finite, conjugated verb attached to that subject. A finite verb is one that has a specific tense （infinitives such as to read are so called because they have no finite or limited sense of time （past tense, present tense, future tense）; they are in a real sense infinite）. The other requirement for a verb in a clause is that it be conjugated. A conjugated verb fits the person and number of the subject. Girl walks has a finite, conjugated verb, and thus is a clause. Girl walking does not, and is thus a phrase （girl is walking, or girl was walking, are clauses: so verbs can be compounds, made of a participle and an auxiliary or helping verb）.

　　Some examples （the phrases and clauses on each line are not matched in any particular way）:

PHRASES
CLAUSES


in order to get home
she sat


knowing the facts of the matter
the student is reading


to listen to music
the office has been closed


seemingly an example of role conflict
the situation may deteriorate


a cloud lazily drifting across the sky
which drifted across the sky


a kid running down the street
that he knew


her standing there
although he works hard

　　Some phrases might seem to resemble clauses, as in the last three examples in the left column above. They have action （drifting, running, standing） and a person or thing doing the action （cloud, kid, her）, right? But the action is not expressed as a conjugated finite verb. These three things—drifting, running, standing—are all parts of verbs, or participles. To have a whole verb you'd need to add an auxiliary: the cloud was drifting, a kid is running, she was standing.

　　What about the clauses? Note that only some of them sound like （and are） complete sentences. An independent clause is a clause that, without any changes, could stand as a complete sentence—see the first four examples above. A dependent clause, by contrast, cannot stand as a complete sentence because it begins with a subordinating conjunction, relative adjective, or relative pronoun—see the last three examples.