Phrases And Clauses: How Much Do You Know?

Phrases and clauses are both components of sentences, but they serve different purposes. Phrases act as parts of speech, such as nouns, verbs, or adjectives, and they do not express a complete thought on their own. On the other hand, clauses are groups of words that contain a subject and a verb and can express a complete thought. They can function as complete sentences or as part of a larger sentence. Therefore, the given answer correctly explains that phrases simply act as parts of speech, while clauses are parts of whole thoughts.

An independent clause is a group of words that can stand alone as a complete sentence. "Trapezoids disgust me" is the only option that forms a complete thought and expresses a complete idea, making it an independent clause. The other options are dependent clauses or sentence fragments that cannot function as standalone sentences.

"Will snow" and "Has been running" are verb phrases because they consist of a main verb (snow and running) and an auxiliary verb (will and has been) that help to express tense and aspect. In both cases, the auxiliary verb modifies the main verb to indicate future tense (will) and present perfect continuous tense (has been).

The correct answer is "It's wheels clattering rhythmically over the rails" and "Slowly turning". These phrases are absolute phrases because they modify the entire sentence and are not directly connected to any specific word in the sentence. "It's wheels clattering rhythmically over the rails" describes the action of the wheels, and "Slowly turning" describes the action of something turning. Both phrases provide additional information about the main clause of the sentence.

The given answer is correct because it correctly identifies the clauses in the given options. "If I study hard" is a clause because it contains a subject ("I") and a verb ("study"). "Pizza is delicious" is also a clause because it contains a subject ("Pizza") and a verb ("is"). "Which covers the entire book" is a clause because it contains a subject ("Which") and a verb ("covers").