The compound sentence is made by joining two simple sentences. The two simple sentences already make sense by themselves. However, we choose to join them because they are related to each other in some way.
Here’s an example:
The Kaieteur Falls may be Guyana’s largest and most powerful waterfalls, but the Kumu Falls offers a more interactive experience.
Let’s take a look at the two simple sentence which make up this compound sentence.
- The Kaieteur Falls may be Guyana’s largest and most powerful waterfalls.
- The Kumu Falls offers a more interactive experience.
We use a “coordinate conjunction” to join two simple sentence into one compound sentence.
The prefix “co” means equal. Therefore, a coordinate conjunction joins two clauses of equal strength or importance.
A clause is a subject/verb combination. All sentences must have at least once clause. A simple sentence is made up of only “one clause.” Therefore, a simple sentence is a one-clause sentence.
When two simple sentences are “uprooted and joined” into one compound sentence, each simple sentence becomes an independent clause within that compound sentence.
An independent clause does not depend on any other clause in the sentence to complete its meaning. In the same way that we joined the two simple sentences together to form a compound sentence, we can extract them again and use them as two simple sentences.
Simple sentence = one independent clause.
Compound sentence = two independent clauses.
Remember that coordinate conjunctions such as “and, but, or” join two independent clauses (or simple sentences) to form the compound sentence.
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