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Jawel Posted 8 years ago
Grammar

The main sentence's things and clauses' things

Hello everyone.

As I explained on the title, I do not know how to separate these two things from each other.

Example,

I can understand that you want to leave and I can do it by looking at your eyes.

Which one is correct?

I can understand that you want to leave by looking at your eyes.

or

I can understand that you want to leave , by looking at your eyes.


In English, can we use comma to separate "clause sentences" from the main sentence?

  

Top answer

I can understand that you want to leave by looking at your eyes . Preliminary point: in traditional grammar the underlined element is called a subordinate clause, but modern grammar takes it as a preposition phrase headed by the preposition "by" with an embedded subordinate clause as its complement. Whichever analysis is preferred, its function is that of 'adjunct of means'.

— BillJ

  • I can understand that you want to leave by looking at your eyes .
  • Preliminary point: in traditional grammar the underlined element is called a subordinate clause, but modern grammar takes it as a preposition phrase headed by the preposition "by" with an embedded subordinate clause as its complement.
  • Whichever analysis is preferred, its function is that of 'adjunct of means'.
  • The sentence as a whole is called a matrix clause.
  • There is no need to set the subordinate clause apart with a comma, though it would not be wrong to do so.
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2 Answers
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I can understand that you want to leave by looking at your eyes.

Preliminary point: in traditional grammar the underlined element is called a subordinate clause, but modern grammar takes it as a preposition phrase headed by the preposition "by" with an embedded subordinate clause as its complement. Whichever analysis is preferred, its function is that of 'adjunct of means'

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I don't understand your question. Do you mean this: "I have problems determining which words are part of the main clause, and which are part of a subordinate clause."?

JawelI can understand that you want to leave by looking at your eyes.

That is correct. You can also front the adverbial prepositional phrase. then a comma is used to set off the

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