Simple MAIN clauses

A clause that can stand alone to make a complete sentence.

In addition to “simple” sentence structure, we will include imperative sentences (commands) as a independent main clause.

In webanno, you will annotate the clause in the following manner:

Coordinated clauses – More than one MAIN clauses

Coordinated clauses are independent/main clauses that are connected via coordinating conjunctions (e.g., and, but, or).

You can also consider colon : and semi-colon : as an implicit coordination of two MAIN clauses.

Independent clause	Coordinated conjunction	Independent clause
Marianne lives in California,	but	Diane lives in Michigan or Vermont.
He went to the party,	and	I stayed home.
I went to the store	but	they were closed
I went to the store	;	they were closed

In webanno, you will annotate the clause in the following manner:

Coordinated verb phrases – treated as a single MAIN clause

When the scope of the coordination is verb phrases—that is, not explicit subject is introducted in the second or later coordinated elements, we will still treat them in a single MAIN clause. For example: The following is one main clause with one T-unit

• [[I went to see the movie and got home late yesterday]MAIN]T-UNIT.

But the following should be two main clauses, because the second element have an explicit subject:

• [[I went to see the movie]MAIN]T-UNIT [[and I got home late yesterday]MAIN]T-UNIT

Similarly, the following examples are cases of single MAIN clause:

• He keeps trying, but not succeeding.

=> there is no explicit subject for “succeeding” and keeps is also a common verb for both trying and suceeding.

In the following example the verb ‘left’ and ‘went’ are treated within a same clause because the second verb does not have explicit subject.

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