Abstract

Abstract:
An English sentence is normally composed either of a single independent clause, or two
or more independent clauses, or one independent plus one or more dependent clauses, in which case they are known as simple, compound and complex sentences respectively. In the complex sentence the clauses may be related to one another by subordination or coordination.
This paper is particularly focusing on the complex sentences that contain a subordination relation, i.e., sentences in which a main clause is related to one or more subordinate clauses. Different grammarians have given different names to these two types of clauses that appear in complex constructions. In addition to the terms 'main' and 'subordinate', some grammarians refer to them as 'independent' and 'dependent' clauses or as 'high' and 'low' clauses respectively. These various names are given to imply that one of them ( the main clause ) can stand alone by itself, whereas the other( the subordinate clause ) cannot stand alone by itself, i.e., it is always embedded as part of the main clause ( the matrix clause ).
What this paper is principally aiming to achieve is to investigate certain situations in which a user of any language, probably due to the sort of the attitude he wants to convey or due to certain situational or textual ellipsis, uses a subordinate clause alone, which is in essence part of the main clause in the deep structure, without annexing it to a main clause, i.e., without embedding it into a main clause, and yet deals with it as if it were an independent clause, as when, in speaking, he utters the sentence independently, and, in writing, he starts the clause with a capital letter and ends it with a period; and these are originally punctuation markers of a complete independent sentence.
To demonstrate this linguistic case, the paper is divided into four sections. Section two deals with complex sentence constructions with reference to coordination and subordination relations. Section three dwells on ellipsis and structural condensation that is pertinent to the case in question. Section four, eventually, exhibits dependent clauses without a main clause via those situations in language that allow for such unembedded clauses to occur alone in both speaking and writing. The paper ends with a conclusion and a list of the references utilized.