The basic building blocks of sentences are, of course, words, which can be combined into discrete groupings or phrases.

Words and phrases are further combined to create clauses, groups of at least two words that both name a topic and make some point about that topic; every clause can be divided into a subject and a predicate. The subject identifies the topic or theme of the sentence—what is being discussed—while the predicate says something about the subject and is the focus of information in the clause.