What Are Phrases and Clauses in English? Know Their Differences

What Are Phrases and Clauses in English? Know Their Differences

Is your English assignment going widdershins? Are you wabbit of this writing task? Can’t you stop being a lollygag and start with your assignment? Do you always end up turning into a bloviate while writing your assignment? Is all this bumfuzzling you? No, we aren’t flibbertigibbet!

This is how funny and crazy English can be at times. No wonder students get confused with such strange words. But don’t you worry; Global Assignment Help is here to assist you.

But, before we begin, here are the meanings of the words used above that left you awestruck and dubious:

• Winddershins - Moving in the wrong direction
• Wabbit- Exhausted
• Lollygag- Wasting time or sitting idle
• Bloviate - Including unnecessary words with no meaning
• Bumfuzzling - Confuse
• Flibbertigibbet- Talkative

Now, getting back to the English business, as you can see, this is a vast language covering numerous confusing topics. Out of them all, in this blog, we shall look into one of the most common topics: “Phrases and Clauses.” So, let’s get started...

What are the phrases and clauses?

English is a language that is used to communicate by over 1 billion people across the globe. While communicating, we use sentences to convey our thoughts on any topic. Now, these sentences are made up of phrases and clauses that make a group of words meaningful to read, understand, and interpret by the users.

Clauses are the words that include the combination of subject and verb. On the other hand, phrases are a group of words that do not include any subject or verb.

Suppose there is a sentence:

“John smiled.”

Here, the subject is ‘John,’ the verb is ‘smiled,’ and the sentence is complete with proper meaning. So, this is a clause.

Similarly, in another sentence:

“In pink dress.”

This sentence here does not include any subject and verb. Also, it doesn’t have any meaning in itself; so, this is a phrase.

Now, look into this sentence:

“Lisa is shopping at the mall.”

The part of the sentence that includes subject and verb that is: ‘Lisa is shopping’ is the clause here and the rest: ‘at the mall’ is the phrase.

What are the types of phrases and clauses?

Since you now know what phrases and clauses are, let’s take an insight into their types.

Types of Phrases

There are mainly 6 types of phrases, as listed below:

1. Noun phrase

The phrases that are centered around nouns and work as a subject, object, or complement are known as noun phrases.

Example: Reading a newspaper daily is a good habit.

2. Adjective phrase

The phrases that include an adjective in the sentence and work as a single adjective are known as adjective phrases.

Example: Jessica has an interesting life.

3. Adverbial phrase

Adverbial phrases modify any verb or adjective in the sentence, and themselves work as an adverb in it.

Example: She works very slowly.

4.Prepositional phrase

The phrases that always begin with a preposition and connect nouns are known as prepositional phrases.

Example: In spite of putting in lots of effort, students get failed in their assignments.

5. Conjunctional phrase

These are the phrases that work as a conjunction in the sentences, and thus, are known as conjunctional phrases.

Example: As soon as you complete the assignment writing, do not proofread it.

6. Interjunctional phrase

The interjunctions that have more than one word in a sentence are known as Interjunctional phrases.

Example: Oh, no! I failed in my assignment.

These are the 6 types of phrases, along with their examples. Now, let’s take a look at the types of clauses. There are mainly two different types in them.

Types of Clauses

1. Dependent clauses

The clauses that cannot function on their own are known as subordinate or dependent clauses. They help independent clauses in completing the sentences, as they cannot complete the sentence by themselves.

Example: I know the girl who helped you the other day.

2. Independent clauses

The clauses that are complete in themselves and give the meaning of a complete sentence are known as independent clauses.

Example: I want to buy a new dress, but I don’t have enough money.

These are the two main types of clauses that are used in English grammar. Now, let’s understand the differences between these two.

What is the difference between clauses and phrases?

Here are the top 5 points through which one can differentiate between clauses and phrases in a sentence:

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