7
votes
The reason being
Early examples of the expression from transcripts
The phrase "the reason being is that..." appears in Google Books search results going back to the late 1960s—initially in reports of ...
- 169k
7
votes
Accepted
'the one you said you liked best' - Analysis of a relative clause using CGEL
In comments Araucaria wrote:
There is no relative phrase as this is a 'bare' relative. The relativised element is the gap after the verb liked in the VP [liked ___ best]. Its syntactic function is ...
6
votes
Confusion with pronouns proceeding gerunds
So we took our time getting back, [him telling me how glad he was that
he'd been able to give the woman what she deserved].
The verb "telling" is non-finite so it's a subordinate clause, ...
- 13.5k
5
votes
Identifying Main and Subordinate clauses
[His family and professional life have made him uniquely able [to write
novels with a family setting [which can absorb the conflict between
past and present, tradition and novelty, good and evil, ...
- 13.5k
5
votes
Accepted
Is there such a thing as a participle phrase?
[1] Look at the girl dancing on the stage.
[2] Look at the dancing girl.
[3] They are a happily married couple.
[4] The Japanese are now a meat-eating people.
As you say, in [1] "dancing on the ...
- 13.5k
4
votes
Independent and dependent clauses classification
Tree Diagram of 'fused' relative construction, showing that both the subject and the predicative complement are NPs containing an embedded relative clause.
The pronoun "what" functions simultaneously ...
- 13.5k
3
votes
Accepted
“That these ... makes” – why “makes” and what is the role of “that”?
Let’s first distentangle that sentence:
That these skills are transferable is a noun clause and the subject of the main sentence.
makes is the verb.
them refers to these skills and is the object.
...
- 4,394
3
votes
Difference between dependent and independent clauses
Whether a clause is dependent or independent doesn't have to do with its meaning. That's where the confusion about but with even though came from. They do mean sort of the same thing.
But that fact ...
- 109k
3
votes
Accepted
What's this syntax called: "Him being the nice person he is, helped her."?
You offer two options for handling the sentence that you are interested in:
Him being the nice person that he is, helped her.
and
He, being the nice person that he is, helped her.
But there is a ...
- 169k
3
votes
Accepted
How do you distinguish between the future tense with noun clauses versus those with time clause?
I am sure that deadrat's answer is authoritative and complete, but I am going to give you a simpler approach in case you are having trouble with deadrat's. Maybe mine will be too simple -- let's see.
...
- 21.6k
3
votes
Semicolon error after 'limits'?
Semi-colons are used (among other reasons) as a replacement for the full stop (period) when the two independent clauses (phrase with a subject + predicate) are related in thought and given equal ...
- 94
3
votes
Accepted
Should there be a comma before “so” in the following sentence?
Your hunch is right: the online grammar checker is wrong. You don't need a comma here. It's helpful to remember so can mean and so or so that. When it means and so and joins two independent clauses, a ...
- 242
3
votes
Accepted
Choosing tense in a "that-clause"
I believe that the 'is swimming' is correct and the 'will be swimming' is incorrect because in the second example sentence, the will would be repetitive.
It would also be incorrect logically because ...
- 124
3
votes
Accepted
Implicit subject in a dependent clause (or is it independent?)
I [can resend it] or [paste it here on WhatsApp].
The sentence consists of a coordination of two verb phrases (bracketed) linked by "or", with "I" as subject of the whole ...
- 13.5k
2
votes
Is the word "should" superfluous in this sentence?
No, it's not superfluous. The meaning is different if you remove "should."
As @Ricky indicates in another answer, "should" is used to indicate a subjunctive mood. I think Wikipedia's description of ...
- 178
2
votes
Is this an independent or dependent clause?
First, but goes between conjuncts. The but doesn't go with either clause in this sentence;
rather, it connects the whole sentence with whatever came before it. So I will ignore it here.
Second, the ...
- 109k
2
votes
Accepted
Limitations of Subordination and Nested Clauses
Susumu Kuno has reported on this in a number of works. Here are a few references in McCawley's excellent text on the linguistic analysis of English.
- 17.5k
2
votes
Accepted
Can 'either or' begin a sentence?
Grammatical? Technically, no.
But this is not formal language. It’s unrehearsed spoken language. Spoken language is rarely free of error, unless recited from memory or a prepared text. On the ...
- 28.6k
2
votes
Can we use "this is" as a main clause? And can an independent clause start with the word "then"?
In the sentence "This is because they have already gone gone home," the main clause is indeed "This is" with an implicit complement of "true" or "correct." The "this" is being used as a substantive ...
- 1,530
2
votes
Do you put a comma after an introductory clause if it's a part of a dependent clause?
In your example, you don't actually have three clauses. Your primary sentence is "I knew that we could still work through it."
"...although he had a problem..." is the only secondary clause in the ...
- 1,879
2
votes
Accepted
Is "As a member of a rescue team" a dependent clause and does it therefore warrant a comma after it?
Yes, it's a dependent clause—and, because it's going first, there should be a comma after it.
From "Commas with Subordinate Clauses—A Reader’s Question" at The Editor's Blog, Beth Hill says ...
- 38.3k
2
votes
Accepted
How to understand the ingredient of this sentence？
Maybe my computer science background can help - I don't have any experience working with transformers but this verbiage is similar to my trade.
To me this feels like it's missing a word and wasn't ...
- 256
2
votes
Accepted
How should I connect this dependent clause after a conjunction
Let's consider the simplified sentence
[1] Almost all calculus is taught using methods that were appropriate for the era of paper and pencil but not for the computer era.
Summary
Neither a colon nor a ...
- 12.6k
2
votes
Confusion with pronouns proceeding gerunds
So we took our time getting back, John telling me how glad he was that he'd been able to give the woman what she deserved.
Substituting a noun for the pronoun here shows that this is an absolute ...
- 87.2k
2
votes
Implicit subject in a dependent clause (or is it independent?)
Grammatically it's ambiguous about what the prepositional phrase "on WhatsApp" qualifies. It could be parsed as
I can [resend it or paste it] here on WhatsApp.
or
I can [resend it] or [...
- 22.5k
2
votes
Word order in embedded clause: "had little conception of... how supine was the Security Council"
It’s fine.
He needs to keep Security Council and including the United Kingdom together:
. . . how supine was [the Security Council, including the United Kingdom.]
He could do this:
. . . how supine ...
- 19.7k
2
votes
Acceptability of concessive parenthetical if clause
A more conventional organization might be:
They might build a community that could at least make the workplace
more bearable, even if it could not change the depressing nature
of the work.
However, ...
- 11.1k
2
votes
Accepted
Dependent clause comma (Following an independent clause)
The clause after the second comma (surely . . .) is actually an independent clause. You can tell because it doesn’t start with a subordinator or function as a component of another clause. Surely they ...
- 422
1
vote
"Why is it that..." relative clause?
Why is it that you don't like me?
Well, it's not surprising that this sentence confuses you. This sentence has been done things to.
To unpack this sentence, you start from the inside, like ...
- 109k
1
vote
Difference between dependent and independent clauses
I'm happy [even though it's raining].
Independent clauses and dependent ones are not distinguished by meaning. Usually, there is some grammatical marker such as a subordinator like "that", "whether" ...
- 13.5k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible