Põhilausega

Põhilausega is a term used in Estonian linguistics to describe a sentence that is built around a main clause (põhilause) and may include subordinate clauses or other elements that attach to it. The phrase is formed from põhilause and the comitative suffix -ga, functioning as a label for the construction rather than a separate syntactic category. In grammar descriptions and language teaching, põhilausega helps distinguish sentences whose central meaning is carried by the main clause from those in which subordinate clauses or non-finite phrases carry more of the information.

In practice, many Estonian sentences feature a main clause that expresses the core proposition, with subordinate clauses providing time, reason, condition, or other circumstances. For example: "Ma lähen koju, kui töö on tehtud." Here the main clause is "Ma lähen koju," and "kui töö on tehtud" is a subordinate clause. Another example is a simple main-clause sentence such as "Ta luges raamatut." Such sentences can still participate in more complex structures when joined with additional clauses or phrases.

The term is primarily used in descriptive grammars and corpus annotation and is less of a formal grammatical category than a descriptive label. It is a useful concept in studies of sentence structure, syntax teaching, and the analysis of how subordinate content integrates with a central proposition. See also põhilause, alause.