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Sunday, June 24, 2018

Noun Clauses and its examples

Noun-clauses-examples

What is a noun clause and how to identify a noun clause in a sentence can be pretty demanding at times?  I’m going to discuss noun clauses with some of its examples.

Firstly, a clause has always a subject and a verb. A noun clause always acts as a noun, whatever a noun can do, a noun clause can also do. We know that a noun can be used as 
  • Subject 
  • Direct Object
  • Indirect Object 
  • Objects of Preposition
  •  Object Complement 
  • Predicate Noun  
  • Appositive.
So a noun clause can perform all these functions of a noun, they are just a bit longer. They usually begin with one of the following subordinate conjunctions: How, that, what, whatever, when, where, which, whichever, who, whom, whomever, whose, and why.

Some of these words appear in adjective and adverb clauses as well. To differentiate between the noun clauses from others, we have just to look how the clause functions in a sentence. 
Let’s look at some examples of noun clauses.
Whoever visits our shop becomes our customer
I said above that noun clause begins with one of those given subordinate conjunction, remember? In the sentence, our trigger word is “Whoever” (the subject of the sentence), it gives us a clue that our noun clause starts from this word. Let’s look for the whole noun clause now. After the subject, we have the verb “visits” and our whole noun clause is “Whoever visits our shop”.  As this clause is at the beginning of the sentence, so there is a strong chance that it works as a subject of the sentence. To verify this, we can use substitution principle here. As I said, a noun clause can work as a noun; therefore, if I substitute a noun here, then our noun must be functioning as a subject. Let’s see.

I substitute a simple noun, say Amir, then our sentence becomes:
Amir becomes our customer.
The substitution word tells us how the noun clause functioning in the sentence. It is clear that it is functioning as a subject.

Let’s look at another example of noun clauses
I believed that the thief would be in jail.
First, we have to look for our trigger word, which is “that” in the sentence. Now probably everything that follows our trigger word is the rest of the clause but let’s first look at the subject and verb.
The subject and verb are “thief” and “would be” followed by the prepositional phrase “in the jail”. Therefore, our whole noun clause is “that the thief would be in jail”.

How is it functioning in the sentence?
The subject and verb of the overall sentence are “I” and “believed”. The verb, being transitive, must be followed by the direct object.
I believed what? I believed the thief would be in jail. If I substitute the noun phrase with a simple noun, say Naina, then our sentence becomes “ I believed Naina” which clearly makes sense. Therefore, our noun phrase is acting as a direct object.

Let's take another example of a noun clause.
The principal gave the prices to whomever stood first in the class.
Our noun class is “whomever stood first in the class”. But how is it functioning in a sentence? 
The noun class follows the preposition “to” and we know that prepositions cannot exist by themselves, they need objects. Therefore, our noun clause is functioning as the object of the preposition to.

Now let’s look at a complicated example of a noun clause
What I did not know was that terrorists had no religion.
Now there are two words that are introducing noun clauses: what and that. Here our first clause is “what I did not know” and the second one is “that terrorists had no religion”. Both of the clauses are connected by the linking verb “was”.

Let’s substitute two different nouns to test how both of the clauses are functioning in the sentence. Suppose I replace the first clause with a noun, say Ali, and the second clause with a noun, say a doctor, then our sentence becomes
Ali was a doctor.
Our first class is acting as a subject and the second is functioning as the predicate nominative. Noun clauses can be long but you should have no problem finding them if you know how nouns function in a sentence.

16 comments:

  1. Interesting post and plenty of good examples. My daughter was learning about nouns recently at school. I think this is probably a bit too advanced for her though.

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  2. This reminds me of our classes in English Language during our A-Levels, we were always learning about linguistics like clauses and types of verbs. It was a topic that I found quite interesting especially when I compare it to other languages and their use of clauses.

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  3. Great informative post! So many people don't know how to modify their nouns and should reference this post! -Tonya Tardiff

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  4. This is a great post with good examples. I think I can use it for my little princess, since this is the period of learning nouns etc. Thank you for sharing

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  5. This is such a great educational resource! I love how you've have explained it in an easy to follow way.

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  6. Such a great grammar lesson! This is important to me as a blog writer. I always try to write to the best of my ability.

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  7. Your post has a lot of great examples and simple enough to understand. Being writers it is so important for our grammar to be on point.

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  8. My daughters are learning these lessons in their homeschool curriculum. This year we used the institute for writing excellence and the lessons helped me grasp grammar better as well.

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  9. Hmm so I have to read more from your blog...perfect grammar is a must need when you are blogging.

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  10. Hmm so I have to read more from your blog...perfect grammar is a must need when you are blogging.

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  11. A ZJUNE 26, 2018 AT 11:52 PM
    This is a great post with good examples. I think my girl would like this!Informative post!

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  12. Wow, this is really helpful post, especially for those who are doing english subject. Me too, still get confused with these. For now as long as the person understands me. wahahaha

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  13. A very interesting read about something I knew nothing about. Always great to learn new things.

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  14. This is a really informative article indeed. I learned a lot of new things from this post! thanks for sharing.

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