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If you want something in your life you’ve never had, you’ll have to do something you’ve never done.

  • Dependent clause

    • You — subject
    • want — main verb
    • something — direct object, assertive pronoun
    • in — preposition
    • your — possessive pronoun
    • life — noun, direct object
  • Relative clause

    • that (elided) — relative pronoun
    • you — noun
    • have never (adverb) had — present perfective
  • Independent clause

    • you — subject
    • will have — main verb
    • to do — infinitive
    • something — direct object, assertive pronoun
  • Relative clause

    • that (elided) — relative pronoun
    • you — noun
    • have never (adverb) done — present perfective
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  • Looks reasonable to me, but I'm no expert on the naming of parts, and there are too many here for me to check out each one. Is there anything in particular you're unsure about? Nov 21, 2012 at 23:32

1 Answer 1

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Your analysis looks correct. Here are some more points you can include:

If you want something in your life you’ve never had - conditional sentence
If - conjunction

You can also include the tenses on your main verbs like you did in your relative clauses:

want - simple present
will - auxiliary verb expressing futurity
have - simple present

Assertive pronouns also fall under a bigger umbrella of indefinite pronouns: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indefinite_pronoun

The whole sentence is a "complex sentence".

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    Just to be clear, English has no future tense, but has several ways of expressing the future, of which will + plain form of the verb is just one. Nov 22, 2012 at 15:52
  • I invite you to consider whether "have to do" should be parsed as [have (auxiliary) + to do (marked infinitive)] or [have to (phrasal modal) + do (unmarked infinitive)]. Nov 22, 2012 at 17:10

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