Clausal and non-clausal material
We have already seen how units of a lower rank than an independent clause such as nominal and adjectival groups, as well as incomplete clauses, appear in plays, stories and advertisements between a capital letter and a full stop, functioning independently as responses in dialogues. Such is the case with the italicized expressions in the following examples:
The large size is unavailable. Which is a pity.
(freestanding subordinate clause)
A: We’ve got the deal B. Fantastic!
(adjective-headed exclamation)
You deaf or what? (verbless clause)
A. Have you seen the satellites, B. Oh those, no, no
erm, you know, our satellite places? (non-clausal) [KBB]
The following small text uses full stops and a dash to reflect tone units, which need not always coincide with clauses or sentences. Here, lines 2, 3 and 4 could be combined to form one grammatical sentence. As it stands, punctuation is used to reinforce the presentation of each unit as if it were independent, as would be done equally clearly if the text were read aloud.
With Fax the possibilities are endless.
It can send a document anywhere in the States within minutes.
Including drawings, diagrams – even musical notes.
Exactly as it’s written.
Fax. Worth making a song and dance about.
To summarize, if we take the complex sentence as the highest grammatical unit, we can say that structurally, a sentence is composed of clauses. However, both in conversation and in written texts that simulate the spoken mode, as well as in news headlines, slogans, banners and public notices such as Vacancies or For Hire, we can find units that are non-clausal among others that are clausal. In written texts orthographic units may be single words or what are known as text fragments, such as Ashamed of your mobile? Non-clausal material has two defining features: internally, it cannot be analyzed in terms of clause structure; nor can it be analyzed as part of an adjacent clause.
