Naming the ‘Clause’: Its Journey into Western. Terminology through Grammars

The metalinguistic aspect of the denomination of that concept that we express with a sentence is no less complex than the difficulty of its definitional assumption. Starting from an analysis of the major current metalinguistic tools of the entries expressing this concept, this contribution aims to make an overview of the intertwined path of the terms that in an alternating and partially competing way occurred through the Western grammatical tradition until arriving at the current situation among the major European languages.