Is it a 'clause'?

Question

'Clause' from OALD online:a group of words that includes a subject and a verb, and forms a sentence or part of a sentenceBut in Practical English Usage 3th edition, 411 participles (4): clauses, I read:Participles can combine with other words into participle clauses.There's a woman crying her eyes out over there.A participle clause can have its own subject. This happens most often in a rather formal style.Nobody having any more to say, the meeting was closed.-----The 'clause' crying her eyes out, seems not to have any subject or verb. The 'clause' Nobody having any more to say, seems to have the only subject and not have a verb. In my opinion, having any more to say and crying her eyes out are both participle phrases. They function as an adjective.Are Nobody having any more to say and crying her eyes out clauses? or what does 'clause' really mean?Thanks.

Rover_KE · Accepted Answer

Answered https://www.usingenglish.com/forum/threads/250246-Is-it-a-clausehttps://www.usingenglish.com/forum/threads/250246-Is-it-a-clause.

BillJ · Answer

The grammatical term "clause" is best defined as a sequence of words combining to form a subject-predicate structure. The subject may be overt or covert and the verb phrase (the predicate) that heads the clause may be finite or non-finite.

A prototypical clause consists of a noun phrase (e.g. "Ed") and a finite verb phrase (e.g. "loves Kim") to yield the clause Ed loves Kim.

Looking at your examples:

There's a woman crying her eyes out over there.

Here, the underlined expression is a subordinate clause modifying the noun "woman". The clause is non-finite and like most non-finite clauses it has no subject. The head of the clause is the verb "crying" and although it is subjectless, we understand the subject to be "woman". So it has a covert subject and a verb phrase as predicate, and hence qualifies as a clause.

Nobody having any more to say, the meeting was closed.

Again, the underlined expression is a non-finite subordinate clause, but this time it has an overt subject, "nobody". And it has a verb phrase headed by "having" as predicate, so it qualifies as a clause. Clauses like this one are called 'absolute constructions' since they are not dependent on any element in the main clause.

Is it a 'clause'?

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