I just took some time to look up these terms in five college grammar
texts: Thos. Murray's _The Structure of English_, Dorothy Sedley's
_Anatomy of English_, Thos. Klammer et al.'s _Analyzing English
Grammar_, Martha Kolln's _Understanding English Grammar_, and Jeffrey
Kaplan's _English Grammar: Principles and Facts_. I also checked QUIGLS
(Quirk et al.'s _Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language_). I
don't know what Huddleston and Pullum's new grammar says. 

All of these conflate the terms 'main' and 'independent' clause. So,
what I proposed in my last post is a revision of the expert definition
of these two terms. Is it a useful revision? Is it superfluous
hair-splitting? I like it because you can use the term 'main clause' to
describe the situation in the sentence in my last post, "He forgave me
after I explained that I intended no offense"--we can call 'after I
explained' a main clause without calling it an independent clause, which
it isn't. Maybe we would be better off discarding the term altogether,
and just speaking of the 'whole clause' or 'whole sentence', since
dependent clauses are parts of larger clauses.

Do people know of other books which do not conflate these terms? If most
books do, then what is the problem?

Are teachers and students capable of handling either the idea that
different people use the terms differently, or that the two terms are
used interchangeably? 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba   Associate Professor, Linguistics 
English Department, California Polytechnic State University
One Grand Avenue  • San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 
Tel. (805)-756-2184  •  Fax: (805)-756-6374 • Dept. Phone.  756-2596
• E-mail: [log in to unmask] •      Home page: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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