Microsoft Word Theoretical Course of English Grammar

Nino Kirvalidze
76
Functional-semantic types of subordinate clauses 
Subordinate clauses may function as subject, subject complement (i.e. predicative clause), 
object, relative (i.e. attributes clauses) and adverbial clauses of the complex sentence. On the 
basis of their potential functions, grammarians (Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, Tallerman and 
others) distinguish four major categories of subordinate clauses: nominal, relative (i.e. attribu-
tive), adverbial and comparative.
Survey of the nominal subordinate clauses 
Like noun phrases, nominal clauses may function as subject, subject complement (predica-
tive), object and its complements (i.e. indirect and prepositional objects). But the occurrence of 
nominal clauses is more limited than that of noun phrases, because semantically the clauses are 
normally abstract; i.e. they refer to such abstractions as events, facts, and ideas. 
Complex sentences with subject subordinate clauses. There are two types of complex sen-
tences with subject clauses in English:
1.
The subject subordinate clause precedes the main clause which is incomplete, 
the clause functioning as the subject of the complex sentence:
That Chris liked Lee so much
didn’t surprise me. 
That we need a larger computer
is obvious.
Whether she likes the present
is not clear to me.
2.
The subject clause follows the main clause which begins with anticipatory 
it
: 
It
was evident 
that he did not understand anything
. 
It
is a miracle 
how he managed to escape the danger
.
In modern English, due to the fixed word order, the subject cannot follow the 
predicate unless some formal element is used to fill in the place of the subject. 
Therefore, 
it
and the subject clause are correlated to form a compound subject of 

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Theoretical Course of English Grammar 
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