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 Finding Clauses
Practice Exercise # 2

Directions:  [Work through the text one sentence at a time.]
1. First place parentheses ( ) around every prepositional phrase.
2. Underline every subject once, every finite verb twice, and label complements (PA, PN, IO or DO). [Reminder: A predicate adjective describes the subject; a predicate noun "equals" the subject; an indirect object is someone or thing "to" or "for" whom (or what) the action of the verb is performed. Any other complement has to be a direct object.]
 

The text is:
      One student's prayer: "Now I lay me down to rest, And hope to pass tomorrow's test. If I should die before I wake, that's one less test I have to take."
Note: In creating these pages, I cannot create a double underline. I will therefore underline both subjects and finite verbs once, but subjects will be in green; finite verbs in blue.

Sentence #1

     Work your way through the text one sentence at a time. The first sentence is:
      One student's prayer: "Now Ilayme (DO) down to rest, And hope to pass (DO of "hope") tomorrow's test.
Review Prepositional Phrases Review S/V/C patterns.

       I wouldn't be surprised, and I wouldn't count it as an error, if you simply put a vertical line at the end of this sentence. It appears to have, after all, only one S/V/C pattern (with two finite verbs). You may, however, be wondering about how "One student's prayer" fits into this sentence. Our psycholinguistic model, after all, suggests that the brain will treat the first free noun it finds as the subject of a clause (unless the noun refers to time). Although you are not required to remember this, I'll explain. 
     Some punctuation marks actually have meanings. The colon (which appears after "prayer") means "equals," and thus, in this sentence, replaces "was" -- "One student's prayer was "Now I lay me . . . ." In effect, this gives us two S/V/C patterns in this sentence. 
      One student's prayerwas "Now Ilayme (DO) down to rest, And hope to pass (DO of "hope") tomorrow's test.
As usual, we should begin with the last pattern (". . . I lay me . . ."). Because this pattern includes two finite verbs, and because "test" clearly goes with "hope to pass," the last word in this clause is "test."
     To find the first word in this clause, we need to look at the word before the subject "I." Does "Now" meaningfully go with "I lay me," or does it go with "prayer was"? It obviously goes with the "I lay me," so it too is part of this clause. On the other hand, the next word back, "was," is clearly part of a different pattern.  We have thus identified a clause that begins with "Now" and ends with "text."
     Is it a main clause, or is it subordinate? To answer that, we need to look at how the clause fits into the sentence. Clearly this clause answers the question "The prayer was what?" It is, in other words, the complement of the preceding "was." Because only subordinate clauses can have functions within a sentence, the clause therefore has to be subordinate.
     What type of complement is it? Note that the clause does not describe the subject ("prayer"). Rather, it "equals" part of the prayer. Thus the clause does not function as a predicate adjective; rather, it functions as a predicate noun.
      One student's prayerwas[PN of "prayer was" "Now Ilayme (DO) down to rest, And hope to pass (DO of "hope") tomorrow's test.]
     Now  we are down to one unanalyzed pattern ("prayer was ....") which has to function as the S/V/C pattern of the main clause. All we have left to do is to put a vertical line at the end of the sentence. 
     Note again that the the entire sentence is the main clause. Since a clause is an S/V/C pattern and all the words that chunk to it, in this sentence the "Now I lay me" clause is part of the main clause because it is the complement of "was," and "One" and "student's" obviously chunk to "prayer."
      One student's prayerwas[PN of "prayer was" "Now Ilayme (DO) down to rest, And hope to pass (DO of "hope") tomorrow's test.] /

Sentence #2

The second sentence is:
If Ishould die before Iwake, that's one less test (PN)Ihave to take."
Review Prepositional Phrases Review S/V/C patterns.

      Again we begin at the end with the last S/V/C pattern, the last word of which is obviously "take." In looking for the first word in this clause, we need to look at the word just before the subject, "I." That word is "test," but we have already labeled "test" as a predicate noun in a different pattern. The last clause, therefore, begins with "I" and ends with "take."
     Is it a subordinate clause or a main clause? Some people like to imagine that there is a "that" before the "I" ("test that I have to take")  This "that" would function as a subordinate conjunction. (It would also function as the complement of "have to take." See the "Review S/V/C patterns.") Even without imagining the "that," however, we can tell that this clause is subordinate because it modifies, or chunks to, the preceding "test."
If Ishould die before Iwake, that's one less test (PN)[Adjective to "test"Ihave to take.]"
Finished with the "I have to take" clause, we move backward to the "that's ... test" pattern. Because a clause is a subject / finite verb / complement pattern and all the words that chunk to it, and because we have just finished explaining that the "I have to take" clause chunks to "test," the last word in the "that's ... test" pattern has to be "take."
     Now we run into a bit of a problem. What is the first word in the "that's ... test" clause? You may have forgotten, but there are two "rules" for identifying clauses. One is to begin at the end and work backwards. We have been using that rule a lot. The other "rule" is to look for subordinate conjunctions. We need to keep an eye open for subordinate conjunctions.
     If we look at the word before "that's," we find "wake," which is part of another pattern, "I wake." In front of the "I wake," we find the subordinate conjunction "before." It means that "before I wake" is a subordinate clause. What does the "before I wake" clause chunk to?
     As always, concentrate on what the sentence means. The "before I wake" clearly chunks to the "should die."
If Ishould die [Adverb to "should die" before Iwake], that's one less test (PN)[Adjective to "test"Ihave to take.]"
And, if we look at the "I should die" pattern, we find that it also begins with a subordinate conjunction, in this case "if." Thus we have a clause that begins with "If" and ends with "wake." In that this clause presents the conditions under which there would be one less test to take, the clause is adverbial to the "is" (in "that's).
[Adverb to the "is" in "that's" If Ishould die [Adverb to "should die" before Iwake]], that's one less test (PN)[Adjective to "test"Ihave to take.]"
We can now return to the question of where the "that's ... test" clause begins. Once again, since a clause is an S/V/C pattern and all the words that chunk to it, and since the "if" clause chunks to the "is" in "that's," the first word in the  "that's ... test" clause is the "If." We now have every word in this sentence chunked to the "that's one less test" pattern, and that pattern, of course, is the core of the main clause. We have nothing left to do other than to put a vertical line at the end of the sentence.
[Adverb to the "is" in "that's" If Ishould die [Adverb to "should die" before Iwake]], that's one less test (PN)[Adjective to "test"Ihave to take.]" /