Subject clauses

A clause which performs within a complex sentence the same function that the subject performs within a simple sentence. Clauses of this kind are introduced either by a relative or interrogative pronoun (who, what, which) or adverb (how, why, when, where), or by the conjunction that.

What Vanessa said was very true.

It seemed utterly groutesque to him that he sould be standing there facing a charge of murder. It’s high time children were washed and dressed.

The reason for calling these clauses subject clauses would seem to be clear: if the clause is dropped, the subject is missing.

In rare cases there is a comma after a long subject clause to denote a pause: Why his widow, of all women, should have come into the country, was the great interrogation.

The subject clause preceaded by the anticipatory subject it can be treated as a kind of appositional (приложение) clause referring to the subject of the main clause, namely the pronoun it.

PREDICATIVE CLAUSES

By predicative clauses we mean the clause ajoining a link-verb and performing the part of the predicate: This was exactly what she had expected him to say. "The only comforting feature of the whole business," he said, "is that we didn't pay for our dinner."

We must also consider under the heading of predicative clauses the following type: "It's because he's weak that he needs me," she added. Here the subordinate clause in question is included within the construction it is... that and thus singled out as the rheme of the complex sentence. This clause would occupy a different position in the sentence if it were not singled out; for instance, the sentence just mentioned would run like this: He needs me because he's weak and the clause would be a clause of cause. As the sentence stands, however, the clause is treated as a predicative one.

Sometimes we can even find two or three subordinate clauses singled out by being included into the frame it is... that. Here is an example which may be called extreme: It was whether one loved at all, and how much that love cost, and what was its reception then, that mattered. It may be interesting to note that it would probably have been impossible to have these three clauses as subject clauses, with the predicate mattered, and without the it is... that construction. That the three clauses are subordinate, is shown by several facts: (1) the conjunction whether, which is a sure sign of a subordinate clause, (2) the form of the predicate verb in the second subordinate clause: cost, not did cost, as it would have been in an independent clause (how much did this love cost?); as to the third subordinate clause, its subordinate status is shown by its being co-ordinated with the other two subordinate clauses by means of the conjunction and.

Not infrequently there is both a subject clause and a predicative clause in a complex sentence. The only element outside these clauses is then the link verb. What I am positive about is that he never expected a wife who would please the family.