None of the explanations I have came across made sense to me.
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A clause is a group of words that contain both an subject (whatever thing, idea, etc that is doing something) and a verb (action) that’s related directly to the subject. (You can have 2 verbs if they convey 1 idea like “is running”, but not separate ones).
Additional adjectives, adverbs, and object (things that are being acted on, not acting themselves) can be added, but if there’s an additional verb+subject it is a new clause.
Example:
“He runs.”, “he runs quickly”, “the blue dog runs” are all sentences with 1 clause each as they have 1 subject (‘he’ or ‘the dog’) and 1 verb (‘runs’)
A sentence like “the dog that I owned runs” is a sentence made of 2 clauses. The first has the subject “the dog” and verb “runs”, while the second has the subject “I” and the verb “owned”.
A sentence like “I love her” is also 1 clause only, as it has 1 subject “I” and 1 verb “love”. “her” is a object, as it’s being acted on, and so does not have a verb it’s related to
edit: switched up object+subject as I had them wrong originally
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