classa term which can be used generally to mean a group of similar things. See word class for a specific linguistic use of this term |
clausea grammatical unit containing a main verb. A sentence has to contain at least one clause. There are various kinds of clauses. A main clause is one which contains a main |
clausesA clause is defined as an expression which contains (at least) a subject and a predicate, and which may contain other types of expression as well (e.g. one or more complements and/or adjuncts). In most cases, the predicate in a clause is a lexical main verb, so that there will be as many different clauses in a sentence as there are different lexical verbs. |
complement:This is a term used to denote a specific grammatical function. A complement is an expression which is directly merged with a head word, thereby projecting the head into a larger structure of essentially the same kind. In ‘close the door’, the door is the complement of the verb close; in ‘after dinner’, dinner is the complement of the preposition after; in ‘good at physics’, at physics is the complement of the adjective good; in ‘loss of face’, of face is the complement of the noun loss. As these examples illustrate, complements typically follow their heads in English. Thus, a complement has a close morphological, syntactic and semantic relation to its head. |