Dependent Clauses – Learning Commons

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Topic 2: Dependent Clauses

The inverse of independent clauses, dependent clauses do not make sense by themselves and need to be “propped up” by an independent clause to be grammatically correct.

Dependent clause:
- A dependent clause is an incomplete sentence. It “depends” on an independent clause.
- These are incomplete sentences because they are not complete thoughts. Since it is not a complete thought, it does not make sense on its own. To make it a complete thought and a complete sentence, we need to add more to the sentence, like those parts of speech we talked about in the last section: subjects, verbs, and objects.
- It is important to remember that, if we do not change the dependent clause, it will need an independent clause to be correct.

Examples

The following two clauses are dependent:

Because I forgot to buy my textbooks.
When the textbooks arrived.

Here is what those clauses look like when they are corrected by adding an independent clause:

Because I forgot to buy my textbooks, I was not able to complete my first assignment on time.
I was finally able to start on my assignment when the textbooks arrived.

These are complete, grammatically correct sentences.

Now you are finally ready to read it: when they do not have an independent clause tied to them, dependent clauses are fragments.

Your Turn: Test Your Understanding!

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