Independent clause: can stand alone
You get off at the top just before the beach
Dependent clause: structurally dependent on another clause
While it was cooling, they went into the woods for sweet honey
Structural Relationships between clauses
Linking: semicolon (;), conjunction (and, or)
Binding:
Conjunction: although, if, because, ...
Wh-word: who, which, ...
Word order: Had it been left to me, I would ...
(*) Meaning
Linking is relationship of equality
Binding is relationship of subordinate to another
Binding is greater freedom than linking. So, speakers may select binding to freely reorder the sentence as the last clause in complex sentence has the most important information
Logical Relationships between clauses
Elaboration
Linking with or without markers: that is, actually, for example
I was surrounding by birds - they were tuis
Binding with finite or non-finite dependent clause
They also learn how to use a variety of software, which enables them to perform a wider range of tasks.
Extension
Linking:
They have not learned to read, nor do they have the expectation ...