Connecting Clauses, or: Sharon's Notes, Conjunctiony Things, pt 1

I am preparing for a German exam.  You have been warned.

Okay, kids, we all know what a clause is, right?  Good.  Moving on.

Now, a clause can be a whole sentence and a sentence can be a single clause, but we tend to like smooshing multiple clauses together in our sentences.  Why, the sentence I have just written contains no less than three clauses.

When we stitch clauses together, we do it with the aid of conjunctions and punctuation.

That's what conjunctions are for - stitching clauses together.  And we all know why we shouldn't start a sentence with a conjunction, don't we?  But I digress.

There are two primary types of clauses:  main clauses (Hauptsatz) and subordinate clauses (Nebensatz).  Main clauses can float off on their own and form sentences all by themselves, but subordinate clauses (which supply further information to the main clause) need to attach themselves to a main clause to make a complete sentence - one can't just say "because there were rabbits".

You can combine these two types of clauses in a number of ways:

1.  You can attach a main clause and a subordinate clause using a conjunction like da or weil (because), obwohl (although), sodass/so...dass (in order to)... and, well, a whole bunch of others:  als, als ob, bevor, bis, damit, dass, nachdem, ob, obgleich, ohne dass, ohne...zu, sobald seit/seitdem, solange, um...zu, während, wenn and wie.

You'll notice these all have that same range of meaning - this information is giving more detail or context to another piece of information.  You can usually drop anything that follows one of these words and the sentence would still make sense, but if you dropped the other part of the sentence you'd be left with, well, rabbits of uncertain relevance.

When you combine clauses like this, the conjugated verb in the subordinate clause gets sent to the end of the clause (no doubt for some misdemeanour):

"Tom hat nicht geschlafen, weil Hasen dort waren."

2.  You can attach two main clauses using a conjunction like denn (because) and all the standard clause-joining conjunctions like und, aber, oder, sondern (etc).

In this case, because you have two complete clauses that can both go off and form their own sentences, the verb sits in the "normal" position for a main clause in both clauses:

"Tom hat nicht geschlafen, denn Hasen waren dort."

But wait, I hear you ask.  Why doesn't denn turn the clause into a subordinate clause, seeing as it means the same thing as da and weil?

Well, I have no idea.  I'm guessing it has something to do with the relative merits of the second clause (does it only exist to provide more information for the first clause, or is it more important than that?) and whether it would make perfect sense if the two clauses were, in fact, separated into two sentences placed side by side:  "Tom hat nicht geschlafen.  Hasen waren dort."

Either that, or it's magic.

Dunno.

3.  You can join two main clauses using a conjunction like like totzdem (however) or deshalb, darum and deswegen (various shades of "therefore").

In this case, the verb in the second clause hangs around directly after the conjunction:

"Hasen waren dort, deshalb hat Tom nicht geschlafen."

In this case, I think the entire first clause (plus conjunction) is taking up the role of the "first element" in the second clause.  And, as we all know, when another part of the sentence slips into the first position, the verb stays in the second position and just shoves the subject of the sentence to one side.

And, before I leave this topic and go home for the night, let's not forget the role of the comma.  It's there to separate out the two clauses.  It totally does this for all subordinate clauses, and it mostly does this for two main clauses when there are words like denn, deshalb and aber involved - but it doesn't necessarily do it for main clauses joined by und or oder.