need help analyzing this sentence

[super_duper]

"The pen is mightier than the sword"

i know that "the" is a article (adj), pen is a noun, "is" is a verb, mightier is an adverb, than is a conjunction, and sword is a noun.

i just need to figure out what are the clauses, what kind of sentence this is, and whatever else that needs to be analyzed would be helpful. is it a independant clause sentence?

thanks.:cool:

[Pete]

"The pen is mightier than the sword"

i know that "the" is a article (adj), pen is a noun, "is" is a verb, mightier is an adverb, than is a conjunction, and sword is a noun.

i just need to figure out what are the clauses, what kind of sentence this is, and whatever else that needs to be analyzed would be helpful. is it a independant clause sentence?

thanks.:cool:
Actually, mightier is an adjective, the comparitive form of mighty; here it means something like "more powerful".
The main clause of the sentence is:
Subject: The pen
Verb: is
Complement (predicate adjective): mightier

The adjective mightier is modified by an adverbial clause introduced by the conjunction than; the tricky part is that in comparisons such as this, we usually leave out some words of the clause, assuming that they will be automatically understood by the one reading or hearing the sentence. The complete adverbial clause (with the missing words supplied and underlined) would be:
- (than) the sword is mighty.
When understood words are omitted from a sentence, we call the clause with the omitted words "elliptical". Thus "the sword" is the subject of the elliptical adverbial clause.

[Pete]

Oh, I forgot to say: since the sentence has a subordinate clause and a single independent (main) clause, it is a complex sentence.