2.4 Clause and Sentence

Text is made up of words that form clauses, which combine to form sentences and then paragraphs. Clause is the basic unit of organization in a text. It is the unit that enables us to organize the wealth of our experience, both semantically and syntactically, into a manageable number of representational patterns. According to Halliday and Matthiessen (2014), a clause is at one and the same time the product of three semantic processes; it carries three lines of meaning in that it is simultaneously a representation of experience, an interactive exchange between speaker/writer and audience, and a coherent message. As such, a clause is not only a mode of action (e.g., giving and demanding goods/services and information) but also a mode of reflection (e.g., imposing order on the flux of events).

Each clause is essentially a grammatical configuration around a "process" (i.e., an event or a state of being), with its attendant participants, attributes, and circumstances. In other words, a clause consists of any combination of the following four components:

·　the process itself, which is realized through a verb (also called verbal group) of some kind (e.g., hibernate, understand, is, put forth);

·　one or more participants (e.g., people, animal, thing, abstraction, institution) involved in the process, which are typically realized through nouns (also called nominal group) (e.g., fish, four guilty verdicts, Trump) but can sometimes be elided (as in imperatives such as STOP!, which in full form spells You must stop.);

·　the attributes that are ascribed to participants and typically realized in adjectives (e.g., tall, powerful, critical); and(https://www.daowen.com)

·　one or more circumstances, typically realized in prepositional phrases or adverbs, that denote time (e.g., I studied for two hours last night.), space (e.g., I studied in the library last night.), cause (e.g., Zach mowed my yard for $20.), manner (e.g., He came up to me slowly.), matter (e.g., As for the grant application, we are not sure if it will be approved.), accompaniment (e.g., She got off the bus without her suitcase.), or role (e.g., Karen travelled to the Middle East as Bush's envoy.).

For example, the clause — The Heats defeated the Bulls in Miami yesterday. — can be parsed into its constituents, as shown below:

The Heats	defeated	the Bulls	in Miami yesterday.
Participant	Process	Participant	Circumstance
(Noun)	(Verb)	(Noun)	(Prepositional Phrase & Adverb)

A sentence is traditionally defined as a set of words that conveys a statement, a question, an exclamation, or a command. It can be one clause, as in The Heats defeated the Bulls in Miami yesterday. In this case, the sentence is called a clause simplex, or a simple sentence. A sentence can also consist of two or more clauses, as in The Heats defeated the Bulls in Miami yesterday because the referee made a terrible call that favored the Heats, and went on to win this year's NBA championship, which excited its fan base. In this case, the sentence is called a clause complex, or a complex sentence. It consists of five clauses — a primary clause (The Heats defeated the Bulls in Miami yesterday) and four secondary clauses (because the referee made a terrible call, that favored the Heats, and went on to win this year's NBA championship, which excited its fan base). The interdependency and logical-semantic relationships between the primary clause and the secondary clauses, as well as among the four secondary clauses, are discussed in a later section of this chapter.