 Clause (grammar)

A clause is a grammatical unit organized around a predicate and its associated subject, which may be expressed or understood. A written sentence can contain one such unit or combine several. Identifying clauses is a structural analysis rather than a matter of counting punctuation marks.^[ref]

In the original example The bird landed because the wind dropped, the bird and landed form one subject-predicate pairing, while the wind and dropped form another. The latter is introduced as a subordinate clause giving a reason; the first supplies the main assertion. Both occur within a single written sentence.

Separating the units supports explicit accounts of syntax and interpretation. The labels should still follow the language and construction being analyzed: an omitted subject is not automatically evidence that no clause is present. A proposed analysis must state which elements are expressed and which relationships it treats as implicit.