These three structure are common part of English grammar. Whatever we say that is made of phrase, clause and sentence. These three structures have different roles and functions. Learning the difference between them will help you to improve both in written and spoken forms. Check out clause, phrase and sentence differences in the article below.
Clause, Phrase and Sentence Differences
Sentence
A sentence is the basic grammatical unit. It contains a group of words and expresses a complete thought.
The two basic parts of a sentence are the subject and predicate.
Subject: The subject of the sentence is the person, place or thing whom we talk about or is performing the action of the sentence.
Predicate: The predicate says something about the subject. It consist of the ‘verb’ and the complement which comes after the verb and with subject of the sentence unlike the clause always gives complete sense, this is called sentence. Consider the example below:
- I will meet him in the office.
(Subject of the sentence ‘I’ and ‘will meet him in the office’ is predicate or subject complement).
Clause
A clause is a group of related words containing a subject and a predicate.
What is the Difference Between Sentence and Clause?
The clause may stand as a simple sentence or may join another clause to make a sentence. As like sentence a clause also contains subject and predicate, if it gives complete sense we can call it a sentence but if it does not give complete sense on that time that is called clause.
Remember a sentence always can be a clause but a clause always can not be a sentence. Consider the example below:
- I will meet him in the office.
(Subject of the clause ‘I’ and ‘will meet him in the office’ is predicate or subject complement and with the subject gives complete sense and we can call it sentence as well as clause). - The teacher asked a question, but no one answered.
(In this sentence we have two clauses: ‘the teacher asked a question’ which contains subject and predicate and gives sense alone. ‘but no one answered’ is the second clause containing subject and predicate but doesn’t give sense alone and must be joint to 1st clause to give complete sense.
Phrase
A phrase is a group of related words (within a sentence) without both subject and verb.
- I will meet him in the office.
A phrase has neither subject nor verb, and can’t be used alone, it should be used within a sentence. And a phrase functions as a noun, verb, adverb, adjective or preposition in a sentence.
- He is laughing at the joker.
- You must come on time.
Note the difference between sentence, clause and phrase in the example below:
- He is the teacher, that i told you about last week.
Sentence = He is the teacher, that i told you about last week.
Clause = He is the teacher/ I told you about last week.
Phrase = The teacher / about last week.
2 comments
Can you help me with grammar, please? I have difficulties with clauses and phrases I don’t know whether it is a phrase or a clause in the sentence.
Please read the article carefully and concentrate on differences. Again you have any question, we would be happy to help you.