Read the following sentence:

The dog ran up when I whistled.

The sentence given above has two parts – the dog ran up and when I whistled. Each part has a subject and a predicate of its own and each makes complete sense. Such groups of words are called clauses.

Definition

A clause is a group of words which has a subject and predicate of its own. A
clause makes complete sense by itself and forms part of a larger sentence.

Kinds of clauses

There are three kinds of clauses – the noun clause, the adjective clause and the adverb clause. As their names suggest a noun clause does the work of a noun; an adjective clause does the work of an adjective and an adverb clause does the work of an adverb.

Related posts:

1. What are Phrases and Clauses?
2. Simple and Compound sentences
3. Complex and Compound-complex sentence