Definition and Examples of a Coordinate Clause

Definition and Examples of a Coordinate Clause In English grammar, a coordinate clause is a  clause (i.e., a word group containing a subject and predicate) that is introduced by one of the coordinating conjunctionsmost commonly and or but. A compound sentence is made up of one or more coordinate clauses joined to the main clause. The rhetorical term for a coordinate construction is parataxis. Examples It was apple-blossom time, and the days were getting warmer. (E.B. White,  Charlottes Web. Harper, 1952)I wasnt a fan of most vegetables, but I didnt mind peas. (Gene Simmons,  Kiss, and Make-Up. Crown, 2001)They ate the dessert, and neither one mentioned the fact that it was slightly burned. (Ernest Hemingway, Christmas in Paris.  The Toronto Star Weekly, December 1923) Combining Clauses The basic unit in syntax is the clause. Many utterances consist of a single clause, but there are also rules for combining clauses into larger units. The simplest way is by using a  coordinating conjunction, and, but, so and or. These may seem rather insignificant items but they represent a vast step forward from anything we can imagine in even the most sophisticated form of animal communication, and they are probably more complex than many people realize. (Ronald Macaulay,  The Social Art: Language and Its Uses, 2nd ed. Oxford University Press, 2006) Disconnected Coordinate Clauses in Conversation In English conversation speakers often begin their utterances with and (also with so or but) without linking these connectives to immediately preceding linguistic material, but rather to more distant topics or even to their own as yet unarticulated (and unrecoverable) perspectives. In (29) the topic of the episode in which this utterance occurs concerns one of the participants consistently getting sick when he travels in Mexico. In this example, the speakers and is making reference to the whole discourse, not to a specific preceding utterance. (29) and you both eat the same things? (D12-4)   (Joanne Scheibman,  Point of View and Grammar: Structural Patterns of Subjectivity in American English Conversation. John Benjamins, 2002)