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Building Sentences and Clauses

Clause

• Clause

Understanding clauses will help you to break down and understand complicated sentences in Japanese.

Table of Contents

• The Basics
  • Simple Sentences
  • Essential Clause Elements
    • Predicate
  • Nonessential Clause Elements
    • Object
    • Subject
    • Topic
    • Adverbials
    • Sentence Final Particles
  • Sentence Order
• Beyond the Basics
  • Complex Sentences
  • Linked Clauses
    • Conjunctive Particles
    • Conjugation
  • Embedded Clauses
    • Quotation
    • Noun Modification
  • です and ます in Clauses
    • です and ます in Linked Clauses
    • です and ます For Quoting Someone

The Basics

We all know what a sentence is, but have you ever heard of a clause? We're talking about grammar here, not Santa Claus or your cat's claws. Being able to recognize clauses in Japanese sentences will make it much easier to parse complicated sentences, and help you to develop a deeper understanding of Japanese grammar.

Simple Sentences

We'll start things out by looking at simple sentences. A simple sentence is a sentence with only one clause. In this case, the clause and the sentence are the same thing! Yay for simplicity!

Before we jump into the grammatical nuts and bolts of clauses, let's look at it from a somewhat simplified point of view. In general, we could say that the purpose of a sentence is to state a "thing" that we want to talk about, and then to give some information about that "thing."

In English, both the "thing" and the information about that thing are required for a clause to be complete. In a sentence like "It's hot outside today," "it" doesn't really refer to anything, but it has to be there to make the sentence grammatically correct. To put it another way, English requires that every clause have a subject. That is, the subject is an essential clause element in English. Of course, the second part of the sentence, or the "info about the subject" is also required in English.

Essential Clause Elements

Now let's turn the focus back to Japanese. As you may know, the subject is often dropped in Japanese. This means that, when the thing we want to talk about is known from context, we don't have to mention it at all.

In the examples above, the thing being discussed is placed in (parentheses) to show that it is optional. You can include the "thing" you're talking about if it's not clear from the context of the conversation, but it's not required in the same way that English requires a subject. The only essential clause element in Japanese is that second part of the clause — the info about the thing you're talking about.

Predicate