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If the connection is rather loose the clause may be commad off.
Should you see him, give him my regards.
In some cases, especially in the case of asyndetic connection, a subordinate clause may be separated by a
dash to mark the borderline between the clauses.
The evil simply was - he had missed his vocation: he should have been a soldier, and circumstances had
made him a priest.
Semantically the main clause generally dominates the subordinate clause, as it contains the main information
of the utterance. However, there are cases when one part is as important as the other, and even cases when the
subordinate clause is the central informative part of the sentence and the main clause is less important,
introductory, maintaining only the immediate communicative connection with the listener:
I asked him if he knew the man.
There are cases when the main clause is relegated to a link-verb only:
What he says is not what he thinks.
Complex sentences are classified according to the function of the subordinate clauses (that is, according to
their meaning and position in relation to the main clause).
Functional classification of subordinate clauses
§ 148. Subordinate clauses function as different parts of the sentence (subject, predicative, object,
apposition, attribute, adverbial modifier). Traditionally these numerous types of clauses are arranged in three
groups: nominal clauses (that is, clauses functioning as nouns in various syntactical positions), attributive
clauses, and adverbial clauses.
The complex sentence with nominal clauses
§ 149. All nominal clauses have a function approximating to that of a noun or a nominal phrase. They may
fulfil the function of a basic part of the main clause: a subject clause functions as subject of the main clause
which has no subject of its own, a predicative clause functions as predicative to the link verb within the main
clause; an object clause refers to verbs in different forms and functions, to adjectives, statives and occasionally
to nouns, and may be obligatory or optional. Another type of the nominal clause - an appositive clause, refers
to a noun either with a very general meaning or requiring additional information and is therefore essential to the
meaning of the sentence.
Owing to their essential structural and semantic role in the sentence, all nominal clauses are very closely
connected with the main clause, and if such a clause is removed, both the structure and meaning of the sentence
are changed or become ungrammatical. Because of the close relationship between the clauses the complex
sentence is pronounced as one whole, and the subordinate clause is not commad off, unless it is much extended
and contains constructions or detached parts.
Since nominal clauses function as essential structural parts of the sentence, their relations to the main clause
are confined to such purely grammatical sentential relations as subjective, predicative, objective and appositive.
The complex sentence with a subject clause
§ 150. A subject clause may be introduced by conjunctions (that, if, whether, whether... or, because, the
way) or connectives. The latter may be either conjunctive pronouns (who, whoever, what, whatever, which) or
conjunctive adverbs (where, wherever, when, whenever, how, why).
Types of subject clauses