There are a lot of ways that you can communicate and one of it is writing. When you write, you make use of sentences, these sentences would develop into paragraphs, and eventually, you will generate full-length writings that you can let others read in order to get your message delivered. But before you reach that stage where you develop longer writings, you will start working with a smaller group of words first which are called clause. You may also see clause examples.
Clauses have two types, namely, main or independent clause and subordinate or dependent clause. The subordinate or dependent clause also have types: adverbial, relative or adjectival, and noun clause. Each of these types would consist of at least one subject and one verb. For this article, we will be discussing one type of a subordinate clause and that is the noun clause. You may also see subordinate clause examples.
A noun clause is a type of dependent clause that acts as the noun with a purpose to name a person, place, thing, or idea. There are instances wherein we would like to name something but a lone word would not suffice, and that is when we need a noun clause, which is composed of a group of words, in order to name something. You may also be interested in an example of a dependent clause.
A noun clause usually begins with the following words: how, that, what, whatever, when, where, whether, which, whichever, who, whoever, whom, whomever, and why.
A noun clause can act as subjects, objects (direct objects and indirect objects), predicate nominatives, complements, or objects of a preposition.
The other types of subordinate or dependent clauses are adjectives and adverbs. When these types of clauses are removed, we will still be left with a complete and understandable independent clause along with a subject and a verb. You may also want to know more about adjective clause examples.
However, this is not the case for most noun clause because a noun clause is essential for most sentences that once it will be removed, the sentence and the message you want to convey will no longer be understood. You may also like adverb clause examples.
Take a look at these examples:
Now, let us remove the noun clause and see what will become of it:
For each example above, the noun clause acts as the subject, the direct object, and the object of a preposition that forms and complete the key part of the independent clause. Without the noun clause, the independent clause will not make sense at all and will not be able to express a complete thought.
One distinct indicator of a noun clause is that it would always begin with certain words and that is the following words that we also make use of when we formulate questions:
Aside from that, we can also begin writing noun clauses with pronouns:
However, it does not mean that once we can find such words in a sentence, it would automatically mean that there is also a noun clause in the sentence. Make sure that when you will try to identify the noun clause in a sentence, look how the group of words function in that sentence and from that you can judge whether it is indeed a noun clause or some other type of clause or not. You may also be interested in more clause examples.
Know more about the noun clause by knowing its functions:
When you see a noun clause at the very beginning of a sentence, its function is the subject or the verb that comes right after it. Here are some examples, and take note of the underlined clause:
A noun clause that acts as an object of a sentence or verb would come right after the verb or when it is the recipient of the action the subject initiates.
A noun clause will act as the complement of the subject when it is found right after an intensive verb, that we also refer to as a linking verb. Keep in mind that the complement refers to the subject or when it is the same as the subject.
A noun clause will act as the complement of the object particularly when it would follow the direct object. You may also like subordinate clause examples.
We hope that you have gained more insights on writing a noun clause. Should you want to learn more about clauses, you may want to browse through our website.