Answer:
SAMPLE SENTENCE:
After the Berlin Wall fell, Leonard Bernstein conducted a celebratory concert at the Berlin Schauspielhaus.
I waited for him, but he didnt come.
I like Biology, but my brother likes Physics because he wants to become an engineer.
Phrases and clauses are the major units of sentence construction. Both are multi-word strings, but the nature of the words determines if that string is a phrase or a clause. A phrase is a group of words that work together but do not contain both a subject and a verb. By contrast, a clause includes both a subject and a verb—a noun or noun phrase and the action it is performing.
Clauses themselves fall into two types—independent (main) and dependent (subordinate): Independent (main) clauses express a complete thought; they can stand on their own as sentences. To be complete, a sentence must contain at least one independent clause; a sentence without at least one independent clause is an incomplete sentence, also known as a sentence fragment. Dependent (subordinate) clauses are incomplete thoughts; they need—depend on—an independent clause to form a complete thought and therefore a complete sentence. The defining feature of dependent clauses is their subordinating conjunctions, also known as “dependent marker words,” which are the words that lend dependent clauses their sense of incompleteness. There are numerous subordinating conjunctions, including “whereas,” “although,” “because,” “after,” and many others; you might recognize them as words often used to transition between thoughts. A list of subordinating conjunctions can be found in the links.
Finally, be aware that the boundaries between clauses are punctuated differently depending on what kinds of clauses a sentence contains and how the clauses are positioned in the sentence; for more information, see the pages on introductory commas, FANBOYS commas, and semicolons and colons.
