we looked at the simple sentence Paul plays football, and
we analysed it in terms of the following sentence elements:
subject (S) verb (V) and direct object (DO):
S V DO
Paul plays football.
We also looked briefly at the following sentence:
When the plane landed, the ground crew removed the cargo.
We can analyse this sentence in the same way, in terms of the following
sentence elements: adjunct (A), subject (S), verb (V) and
direct object (DO):
A S V DO
When the plane the ground crew removed the cargo.
landed
However, unlike the simple sentence, this sentence can be analysed further.This is because the adjunct (A) when the plane landed is itself a ‘sentencelike’
construction. It has its own subject, the plane, and its own verb,
landed. So it displays the sentence pattern S+V. It also has an important additional element: it is introduced by the subordinating
conjunction when.
The presence of the subordinating conjunction indicates that when the plane landed is not an independent sentence. It is certainly ‘sentence-like’,
since it displays the sentence pattern S+V, but it cannot stand alone. For this reason, we say that when the plane landed is a subordinate clause,not a sentence.
A subordinate clause such as when the plane landed is a dependent clause– it is part of a larger structure, usually a sentence. In contrast, the ground crew removed the cargo can stand alone – it is not subordinate to any higher structure.
