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dependent and independent clause

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dependent and independent clause

by vishalpathak » Wed Nov 13, 2013 6:14 pm
Hello Experts,

Please help me understand dependent and independent clauses. I have read about dependent markers and comma+fanboys but I fail to understand the following

I read on this forum that the following 2 sentences are corrent

1. He was told he could not leave
2. He was told that he could not leave

I feel that

1. He was told
and
2. He could not leave

are both independent clauses. If this is true then aren't the above 2 sentences, run on sentences?

Regards,
Vishal
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by theCodeToGMAT » Wed Nov 13, 2013 11:11 pm
Hello Vishal,

According to me,

He was told --> Dependent Clause
He could not leave ---> Independent Clause

The reason i state "He was told" as dependent is it's incomplete.. the sentence doesn't tell us that was he told..

Another example for Dependent Clause:

"Because I waited for long, ...."

This part of sentence is incomplete until we have other part.. So, it's dependent.
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by vishalpathak » Thu Nov 14, 2013 3:03 am
theCodeToGMAT wrote:Hello Vishal,

According to me,

He was told --> Dependent Clause
He could not leave ---> Independent Clause

The reason i state "He was told" as dependent is it's incomplete.. the sentence doesn't tell us that was he told..

Another example for Dependent Clause:

"Because I waited for long, ...."

This part of sentence is incomplete until we have other part.. So, it's dependent.
Hi theCodeToGMAT,

I can understand your second example. It has a dependent marker (because) so we can classify it as dependent.

However, 'He was told' does not have such a marker. Now any dependent clause can obviously add more sense to an independent clause. So what is it that is really making this sentence a dependent clause?

Thanking you and the experts in anticipation of their kind help

Regards,
Vishal
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by vishalpathak » Thu Nov 21, 2013 11:29 am
Hello Experts,

Please help me understand this

Regards,
Vishal
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by ilyana » Thu Nov 21, 2013 1:17 pm
Hello!

He was told he could not leave.
He was told that he could not leave.

These two sentences in fact have the same structure. In the first sentence "that" is omitted but implied. So we can write these two sentences as:
He was told (that) he could not leave.

Now, "that" is what you call a "dependent marker". Never heard of this term before, but it is really a good word and helps you understand the structure of a sentence. So, you see that this subordinating conjunction "that" starts the second part of the sentence: "that he could not leave". If a clause starts with a subordinating conjunction, it is a dependent clause. Thus,
He was told --> independent clause
(that) he could not leave --> dependent clause. "That" can be omitted, but it is always implied.

The notion that one clause helps complete the meaning of the other is not going to work here, because it's easy to get confused. I'd advise you to stick to actual or implied conjunctions. If a clause starts with a subordinating conjunction, it's going to be a dependent clause.

A few words about omission of "that".
On the GMAT it's preferred to keep "that" for clarity. But there can be exceptions of this "rule": "that" is often omitted after "say" or "said" and in some other cases in order to avoid repetition "that-that" (check the problem from GMATPrep "Australian embryologists have found evidence" - there "to" substitutes "that"; and the problem from Paper test "Contrary to the scholarly wisdom of 1950's" - "that" is simply omitted).

In normal English you can decide to keep "that" or drop it. Here's a good page about conjunctions and close to the bottom of the page there's a nice article about omitting "that":
https://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/conjunctions.htm
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