ABSTRACT
The important difference between the abstract notion of clause and real clause is that the people abstract clause is a generalisation of the autonomous grammatical behaviour of the constituent parts which signal clause structure, while real clause is a clause which is committed to precise signals of its grammatical status. The notion of lexical choice means the selecting of items from the open-ended vocabularies of nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs as head as well as their pre- and postmodifying structures. The speaker or writer has to select from a larger store of choice and has to confine his or her lexical choice to a reasonably short clause of some kind. The relation between unspecific and specific is best understood by considering unspecific and specific in turn. Unspecific clause by definition is inadequate information which although understood in the abstract requires to be further specified by a specific clause.
