Redefining the Concepts of Dependent and Independent Clauses According to a Functional Approach

The subject and object complement clauses, according to review literature on these two concepts, always are considered as dependent clauses and the verbs which are accompanied with these two clauses are introduced as main verbs. In this study, the concepts of dependent and independent complement clauses according to a semantic approach, in particular within the framework of the experiential metafunction in Systemic Functional Grammar, are redefined. With this view and based on the propositional content of the message, the clauses known as the dependent clauses actually contain the original content of the message in the sentence and the clauses known as the independent clauses define only the event structure of the verb of the sentence. The independent clauses which are responsible for representing the concept of mood can also appear in the form of an adverb, prepositional phrase and modal verbs instead of clausal format. Thus, the so-called dependent clauses, based on the propositional content of massage are the main part of the sentences and their verbs are dependent on the so-called independent clauses just because of the grammatical features. Instead, the so-called independent clauses are semantically dependent on the other clause in the sentence. In this research the yes/no question test was used to determine the main clause in compound sentences.