🎓Outline of the chapter

What you will find on this page. Click to navigate directly to these sections:

• What complementizers are and how they enable complexity in human sentences
• Where subordinate clauses fall in the spectrum of dependency
• Examples of subordinate clauses from written language
• Examples of subordinate clauses from oral language
• How subordination works in English – animations
• Three types of subordinate clause in human languages
  • Noun (a.k.a. complement) clauses (when a subordinate clause is the object of a verb)
  • Adverb (a.k.a. subordinate) clauses (when a subordinate clause modifies a verb+object combo)
  • Relative clauses (when a subordinate clause modifies a noun)

  Also in this chapter:

  🦉 Should form or function be the “star”?

  What are complementizers?

  “Worst Day Ever” by Chanie Gorkin

  Today was the absolute worst day ever
  And don’t try to convince me that
  There’s something good in every day
  Because, when you take a closer look,
  This world is a pretty evil place.
  Even if
  Some goodness does shine through once in a while
  Satisfaction and happiness don’t last.
  And it’s not true that
  It’s all in the mind and heart
  Because
  True happiness can be attained
  Only if one’s surroundings are good
  It’s not true that good exists
  I’m sure you can agree that
  The reality
  Creates
  My attitude
  It’s all beyond my control
  And you’ll never in a million years hear me say
  Today was a very good day

  Read this poem from the top to the bottom; you’ll find it pretty depressing. 🙁

  Read this poem from the bottom to the top, and you will find it to be inspiring. 🙂

  This works because many of the lines end or begin with a special group of words like “although“, “that“, “(even/only) if” and “because.” These words–called complementizers--have the power of taking one whole sentence (or independent clauses ) and inserting that sentence as a subordinate clause inside another sentence. Complementizers allow you to use that inserted sentence to give more information (to modify) just one element of the larger sentence it is stuck inside of.

  If you read the poem from top to bottom, these words force the reader to connect each sentence to the one below it in the poem. If you read it from bottom to top, these words force the reader to connect each sentence to the one above it in the poem. Depending which sentences get linked together, the meanings conveyed change greatly!

  If you read it from top-to-bottom, you get:

  Don’t try to convince me [[that]…

  …there’s something good in every day].
  

  In this example, the entire sentence “there’s something good in every day” becomes the direct object of the verb “convince”. That whole sentence is giving more information about the verb “convince” . The complementizer “that” is what creates this connection.

  If you read the same sentence from bottom-to-top, you get:

  Don’t try to convince me [[that]…

  …today was the absolute worst day ever].

  Here, the entire sentence “today was the worst day ever” is now the direct object of the verb “convince”, modifying “convince” by informing the reader what I might be convinced of. The complementizer “that” is again what creates this connection.

  Reading another sentence from bottom-to-top you get:

  [[when] you take a closer look],…

  …there ‘s something good in every day.

  The entire sentence “you take a closer look” is now an adverb -like element, giving more information about the verb phrase of there being “something good in every day.” The complementizer “when” is what creates this connection. Although in this last example the complementizer is at the beginning of the sentence and not in the middle as in examples 1 and 2, we could rearrange sentence 3 to also get the perfectly-good sentence “There’s something good in every day when you take a closer look.”

  I can put this poem into a table which will help you see even more clearly the role of complementizers in the text, and how they are used to “connect” otherwise independent clauses (clauses which contain a subject and a predicate) together. The complementizers, which allow one independent clause to modify a single element of another independent clause, are in bold.

  The conjunction “and”, which simply loosely connects two independent clauses together loosely, instead of using one clause to modify a single element in another clause has been deleted. You can see that unlike deleting the complementizers, deleting the conjunction “and” has no effect on the overall meaning:

  First, the negative version 🙁

  [Today was the absolute worst day ever.]
  [Don’t try to convince me	[that
  there’s something good in every day]
  [[because,
  [when	you take a closer look,]
  this world is a pretty evil place]]]
  [even if	[some goodness does shine through once in a while.]]]
  [Satisfaction and happiness don’t last.]
  [It’s not true	[that
  it’s all in the mind and heart]
  [because
  [true happiness can be attained
  [only if	one’s surroundings are good.]]]]
  [It’s not true	[that
  good exists.]]
  [I’m sure you can agree	[that
  The reality … creates … my attitude.]]
  [It’s all beyond my control.]
  [You’ll never in a million years hear me say	[(that)
  today was a very good day.]]

  Now the positive version! 🙂

  [Today was a very good day]	and
  [you’ll never in a million years hear me say	[(that)
  [it’s all beyond my control.]]
  [My attitude … creates … the reality.]
  [I’m sure you can agree	[that
  [it’s not true	[that
  good exists
  [only if	one’s surroundings are good.]]]]]
  [True happiness can be attained	[because
  it’s all in the mind and heart.]]
  [It’s not true	[that
  satisfaction and happiness don’t last.]]
  [[Some goodness does shine through once in a while
  [even if	this world is a pretty evil place]
  [because
  [when	you take a closer look]
  there’s something good in every day]]].
  [Don’t try to convince me	[that
  Today was the absolute worst day ever]].

  You can imagine that in some of these sentences, the sentence tree is going to get pretty complicated! We are sticking a sentence inside a sentence inside a sentence through several layers of iteration. Let’s look at just this complicated sentence in the “sad” version of the poem:

  [Don’t try to convince me	[that
  there’s something good in every day]
  [[[because,
  [when	you take a closer look],
  this world is a pretty evil place]]
  [even if	[some goodness does shine through once in a while]]]].

  The sentence tree for the above sentence (Starting with “Don’t…” and ending with “…while”) is very complicated here! You can see that there are four complementizers: “that”, “because,” “when” and “even if”! Since each complementizer joins two sentences together, that means that there are going to be in fact 5 “mini-sentences” (elements containing a subject and predicate) within this one giant sentence. There will always be one more “sentence” than there are complementizers to join them.

  

  This very complex tree shows us one of the most important things about complementizers.

  Complementizers allow for the creation of an infinite amount of human sentences, even with a limited vocabulary, because a speaker or writer can keep embedding and embedding and embedding. Let’s build up the above sentence step-by-step, starting with the innermost/lowermost sentence, and building upwards. The final, topmost, sentence is always called the “main clause”; the others are called embedded clauses once they are inside another larger sentence.

  Step 1 (Sentence E above): Some good does shine through once in a while.

  Using “some good does shine… while” to describe some mitigating conditions for “is a pretty evil place” gives us:
  

  Step 2 (adding Sentence C above): This world is a pretty evil place even if some good does shine through once in a while.

  Using “you take a closer to look” to describe the necessary preconditions for “some good does shine…while” gives us:
  

  Step 3a (adding Sentence D above): This world is a pretty evil place, even if some good does shine through once in a while, when you take a closer look.

  Moving the clause “you take a closer to look” to the beginning of the sentence to put it in focus gives us:
  

  Step 3b (moving Sentence D to the front of the sentence): When you take a closer look, this world is a pretty evil place, even if some good does shine through once in a while.

  Making the whole fact of “when you take….once in a while” the reason that “there is something good in every day” gives us:

  Step 4 (adding Sentence B above): There is something good in every day, because , when you take a closer look, this world is a pretty evil place even if some good does shine through once in a while.

  Making the whole idea of “there is something good….once in a while” the direct object of the verb “convince”

  Step 5 (finally, adding Sentence A above): Don’t try to convince me that there is something good in every day, because, when you take a closer look, this world is a pretty evil place even if some good does shine through once in a while.

  … and so on. I could keep on adding more of these clauses which begin with a complementizer over and over again. Unlike the highly-dependent clauses which we saw in the previous chapter, these complementizers can be recycled nearly infinitely.

  They ate ice cream

  She hoped that they ate ice cream

  He thought that she hoped that they ate ice cream

  We wondered whether he thought that she hoped that they ate ice cream

  You asked me if we wondered whether he thought that she hoped that they ate ice cream

  

  In this chapter we will learn about these amazing elements of language – elements which allow us to use a whole sentence to modify some other element, elements which allow human sentences to become amazing long and complex yet still meaningful.

  The spectrum of dependency

  Clauses can be sorted along a spectrum from the most dependent clauses to the most independent clauses. An independent clause is a clause that can stand just as it is, followed by a period, and be a perfectly well-formed sentence.

  “The cats gave me the creeps.”

  A dependent clause is a clause that cannot stand just as it is, followed by a period, and be a perfectly well-formed sentence. Sometimes it because these don’t have an overt subject. Sometimes it is because they have MORE than a subject and a predicate – they contain an extra complementizer. For example:

  *”Since the cats meow.”

  *”Because the cats gave me the creeps.”

  These aren’t independent clauses because, when I add the complementizer “since” or “because” to those formerly-independent sentences, these need to be placed within inside a larger sentence. They can’t be a sentence all on their own.

  Since the cats meow, they must be hungry.

  Because the cats gave me the creeps, I avoided them.

  Based on the description just given, can you identify which of the following sentences are truly independent clauses?

  The following table lays out several examples of multi-claused sentences. Each of these examples contain the main clause at the beginning, and each have some kind of dependent clause at the end.

  Main clause	Complementizer (if present)	The rest of the dependent clause
  He locked the door	after	he came in.
  Erica came in	(0 subject=Erica) having locked the door.
  There he goes	(0 subject=he) annoying everyone again.
  Erica doesn't know	if	she'll get a second chance.
  It amazed Erica	that	everyone was still there
  She didn't know	whether	(0 subject=she) to go outside.
  He didn't like	(0 subject=he) giving his mom a speech.
  He didn't like	(0 subject=she!) her giving his mom a speech
  She got convinced	(0 subject=she) to make her speech short.
  Erica saw a bird	which	(0 subject=bird-seeing) gave her great joy

  VERY DEPENDENT clauses

  These very dependent clauses all have in common that there is no overt subject. The clause consists of a verb and its objects or modifiers, but the subject of the verb in these clauses must be inferred. The three types are small clauses (bare infinitives), (true) infinitive clauses, and gerund clauses.

  Small clauses a.k.a. Bare form infinitives: These smallest-of-all clauses are required by some verbs.

  One question to ask of clauses is whether the verb within a clause is anchored in time — the event they report is an actual event occurring in the past, present, or a nearly-guaranteed future. True infinitives in English are un-anchored in time. The event they report remains a hypothetical event, being discussed in the abstract. “Infinite” here means something like “timeless.” English usually uses “to” to mark that a verb is infinitive, or timeless.

  Small clauses are anchored in time; the events they report actually happened, are happening, or will be happening. This is why the infinitive marker “to” is not used before the verbs in these very dependent clauses. So if the infinitive is not used, why is one of the names for these small clauses confusingly “bare form infinitives”?

  Small look like infinitives in that there is no “-s” ending on the “he/she/it” forms: Regular sentences: I make coffee; you make coffee; she/he make s coffee Small clauses: He saw me make coffee; I saw you make coffee; I saw her/him make coffee

  Small clauses also have no overt subject in the dependent clause, which is similar to infinitives. The doer of the verb in the small clause must be one of the nouns in the main clause.

  “I saw her < make coffee>” (seeing+making = past)

  c.f. “ She made coffee”

  “Everyday, I see her < make coffee>” (seeing+making = present)

  c.f. “ She makes coffee”

  “I’ll watch her < teach English>” (watching+teaching = future)

  Which verbs take small clauses? Two groups are sensory verbs (watch, hear, see, feel, notice, observe) and some causative verbs (make, let, have, bid)

  Sensory verbs: I watched , heard , saw < her go>, felt < her go>, noticed

  • Contrast these with a verb that does take “to” infinitive: I imagined her to go. There is a “to” because with “imagined” this is no longer a real event, and therefore unanchored in time. The “sensing” happens inside my mind, not out in the real world.

  Causative verbs: I made < her go>, let < her go>, had < her go>, bade

  • Contrast these with the larger set of causative verbs that do take “to” infinitive: “I willed/persuaded/asked/forced/sent/assigned/allowed/required/begged her to go.” The bare infinitive causative verbs are a small but special set a very deep history in Germanic languages, and thus behave a little bit differently.
  “To” infinitives:

  These proper infinitives are used for clauses that are truly un-anchored in time. They have no “-s” ending in the “he/she/it” form, they have no subject of their own, and they take the infinitive marker “to,” which demonstrates their infiniteness – their timelessness, un-anchored in time.

  “I taught her < to make coffee yesterday >”

  What was yesterday? “teaching” or “making”? It was the “teaching” that was yesterday. The “making” itself may or may not have happened. And it could happen at any point in the future, but doesn’t have to ever happen. As we saw in the previous chapter, infinitives leave an event un-anchored in time, able to happen or not happen at any point.

  A whole set of verbs that express not-yet-real ideas take these “to” infinitives:

  “I [longed/ begged/ needed/ decided/ tried/ refused/ planned/ agreed/ chose/ volunteered/ opted/ intended/ expected/ attempted/ resolved] .”

  Notice that the infinitive clause “to go outside” happens immediately after the verbs.

  Notice also that in all of these verbs, the act of “go outside” did not actually happen – it remains a plan or a desire at the time this sentence is uttered. We might find out once we get more context that the speaker did eventually “go outside” but cannot know at the time of these sentences are uttered whether it actually happened or whether it actually will happen.

  As noted above, most causative verbs take these “to” infinitives. The subject of the causative verb and the subject of the verb being caused are the same.

  I longed to go outside = I did the longing, I would be the one going outside.

  She agreed to cook = She did the agreeing, she would be the one cooking.

  Here are some other examples of infinitive clauses where the subject of the causative verb is DIFFERENT from the subject of the caused/infinitive verb. Weirdly, the subject of the caused/infinitive verb is in OBJECT form.

  “She [ expected/ persuaded/ asked/ forced/ sent/ assigned/ allowed/ required/ begged] the cat .” = She did the expecting, the cat did the coming

  “She [expected/ persuaded/ asked/ forced/ sent/ assigned/ allowed/ required/ begged] me .” = She did the expecting, I did the coming

  “She [expected/ persuaded/ asked/ forced/ sent/ assigned/ allowed/ required/ begged] us .” = She did the expecting, we did the coming

  An interesting case study about how the history of English can create some confusing grammatical facts:

  I wrote above that these infinitive clauses are not anchored in time. You cannot tell whether the action actually did happen or actually is happening. Yet look at the verb “forced” in “She forced the cat to come inside.”

  You might think to yourself: “Wait! Isn’t ‘She forced the cat to come inside ‘” definitely anchored in time? The cat seems like it definitely did come inside in that case, if she forced it to come inside.”

  Indeed, for most English speakers, the causative verb “forced” seems to require that the act of “coming inside” actually did happen, unlike “begged” in “She begged the cat to come inside,” where we don’t know yet whether the cat actually did come in.

  Does the second sentence in the box below sound strange to you?

  🙂 She begged the cat to come inside but it wouldn’t come.

  ?? She forced the cat to come inside but it wouldn’t come.

  If that second sentence seems acceptable to you, you can see why “forced” might take an infinitive clause – the act of “coming inside” did not actually happen — somehow the cat got away at the last moment. But if the second sounds strange to you, if any act of “forcing the cat” requires that the cat actually did come inside, there no longer seems a logical reason for the verb “force” to take an infinitive clause after it. Alas, the reasons why some verbs like “force” take an infinitive clause and others do not comes from the history of the language, even if no present logic holds. In these cases, learners need to memorize, when they learn the new verb “(to) force”, that this verb requires an infinitive clause after it. This is the danger of teaching vocabulary through simple flash cards, without including information about the grammar patterns of a new word.

  In the following sentences, we see more examples of the confusing fact that some verbs with similar meanings use different grammatical patterns, because the words came into English from different historical paths:

  1a. She forced the cat to come inside

  1b. She made the cat come inside

  2a. She begged the cat to come inside

  2b. She bade the cat come inside

  3a. She allowed the cat to come inside

  3b. She let the cat come inside

  This is just one of many examples of English having two different patterns, which both play a similar function (here there are two different patterns for causatives) despite using different grammar rules, because English kept both patterns from its two main parent languages – Norman French and Anglo-Saxon. Learners do not need to know the history of the language of course, but it is sometimes reassuring that there is a valid historical reason why English keeps two patterns which seemingly contradict each other.

  Gerund clauses:

  In a gerund clause, another type of very dependent clause, the verb is a little more anchored in time. The verb in the clause contains the ending “-ing” which signifies an ongoing or progressive action. In these gerund clauses however, the clause seems to act almost like a noun – a gerund clause can seem to be the subject of a verb, or the object of a verb.

  “It got me in trouble.” “What did?” “ ”

  I love ing a book> . = “Reading a book” seems like a noun, in that it can be replaced with “it” and acts as the object of the verb “got”

  “Reading the book” seems like a noun, in that it can be replaced with the pronoun “it” and acts as the subject of the verb “got” or as the object of the verb “love.” Yet “reading” is definitely a verb, in that it takes an object and has an implied subject. “Reading” also acts like a verb in that it takes the ending “-ing” which only attaches to verbs.

  Gerund clauses can sound slightly more anchored in time, a.k.a. slightly less hypothetical, than infinitive clauses. Since gerund and infinitive clauses can sometimes appear in the exact same environments, we can try a test. Do you feel like there is any slight difference between the twinned forms in the following box? For many English speakers there is no difference, while others report that the gerund clauses refers more to a real action, whereas the infinitive clauses refer to a more hypothetical one.

  infinitive: I love . = more hypothetical?

  gerund: I love . = less hypothetical?

  infinitive: I remembered . = the remembering happened before any hypothetical act of reading

  gerund: I remembered . = the remembering happened after an act of reading which happened

  So far the subject of the verb in the main clause and the subject of the verb in the gerund clause were the same. If we want a different subject for the verb in the gerund clause, we need to use a possessive!

  I remembered . = I both remembered and I read = 0

  I remembered their reading the book>. = I remembered, but they read = their

  They remembered my reading the book>. = They remembered, but I read = my

  A LITTLE LESS DEPENDENT clauses

  Participial clauses: In these clauses, unlike the infinitive clauses above, there is aspect/voice marking on the verb in the clause. This means that the verb takes an ending, either “-ing” or “-ed”, which shows that the verb indicates an actual action that took place.

  Some verbs in participial clauses use the “-ing” ending used in progressive aspect. These are sometimes called “active” or “present” participial clauses.

  How are these participial clauses different from the gerund clauses described in the prior section? Both use the ending “-ing” so it can be tricky to differentiate sometimes between the two. The difference is that the gerund clauses acts like a noun, as the subject or object of a verb, whereas the participial clause acts more like an adverb, describing a verb and any of its noun objects.

  Some verbs in participial clauses use the “-ed” ending used in passive voice. These are sometimes called “passive” or “past” participial clauses:

  “She makes coffee. (She is) buoyed by the prospect of her co-workers’ admiration> ”

  Here the subject “she” is being modified by the clause. “She” is the one that was being buoyed.

  “She makes coffee. (That coffee was) picked from the mountains of Nicaragua by free-trade farmers> ”

  Here the object “coffee” is being modified by the clauses. “Coffee” is the thing that was being picked.

  In some dialects of English, there is a type of small clause, consisting of only one word, which is actually a type of passive participial.

  “That coffee needs ( to be) made”

  “The clothes need ( to be) washed”

  In these sentences, “made” and “washed” are a super reduced passive participial clause.

  NOT-VERY-DEPENDENT clauses

  Subordinate clauses: These clauses are not truly independent clauses, but they are much more independent than the infinitive, gerund, and participial clauses discussed above. One major difference is that there is full tense marking on the verbs within all three types of the following not-so-dependent clauses (the verbs inside them will look like past tense verbs if they happen in the past, and will take the 3rd person singular -s if they happen in the present).

  This unit will do a deeper dive into the nature and learning-challenges of these three sub-types, but here is a brief introduction to the three types of subordinate clauses, sorted according to what element each clause modifies:

  1) Complement clause/a.k.a. ”noun” clause – The subordinate clause is used as the subject or object of a verb
  • I like < that he went outside >. = clause is object of the verb “like”
  • I don’t know < whether it will rain > = clause is object of the verb “know”
  • < That he went outside > surprised me. = clause is the subject of the verb “surprise”
  2) Subordinate clause/a.k.a. ”adverb” clause

  –The subordinate clause gives more information about the nature of a verb’s action or description (the combination of the verb plus its direct object). It is used, in other words, as an adverbial, answering the question “when”, “why”, “how” or other optional information.

  • I ate ice cream < when he went outside >. = clause modifies “ate ice cream”, explaining when
  • She was likely ill < since she was coughing >. = clause modifies “was likely ill”, explaining why
  • < Although he had hesitations >, he went ahead. = clause modifies “went ahead”, explaining how

  3) Relative clause/a.k.a. ”adjective” clause

  –The subordinate clause gives more information about a noun. Although textbooks will sometimes call these “adjective clauses”, “determiner clause” is a better term, since these clauses usually tell us which set of the noun is being talked about, rather then telling us what characteristics of the noun. Remember, answering the question “Which one/set of” is the job of a determiner, whereas answering the question “What kind of” is the job of an adjective. In the following examples, the subordinate clause explains which noun or set of nouns is being commented on.

  • She made the film < that won the awards > = clause describes which film
  • The women < who made the film > are here today = clause describes which women
  • The question < which bothered me > remains unanswered. = clause describes which question

  Examples in written English

  It is hard to find any English text over a few sentences in length that doesn’t contain a subordinate clause. Complementizers are so useful, that English writers cannot go very long without needing to use one whole sentence to modify an element in another sentence. Here is an excerpt from the beginning of Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart.” You will see that in almost any actual English text you quickly run into subordinate clauses. The 4th and 5th sentences each contain one subordinate clause, and the long sixth sentence contains three subordinate clauses packed inside each other

  Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His fame rested on solid personal achievements. As a young man of eighteen he had brought honor to his village by throwing Amalinze the Cat. Amalinze was the great wrestler < who for seven years was unbeaten >, from Umuofia to Mbaino. He was called the Cat < because his back would never touch the earth >. It was this man < that Okonkwo threw in a fight which the old men agreed was one of the fiercest since the founder of their town engaged a spirit of the wild for seven days and seven nights > > > .

  Examples in oral English

  Because people tend to not speak in as complex of sentences (in fact often conversations are made up more of fragments of sentences than of complete sentences) you won’t find as many complementizers in spoken English. One thing to note is that in oral English, the complementizer “that” is often left out if it comes after the main clause.

  Written: I think that he knows that I am coming. –> “I think ( that ) he knows ( that ) I’m coming

  When the “that” clause is the subject of the verb in the main clause, or connects with an “it” though, dropping the “that” would make the sentence harder to figure out , and so the “that” is

  That I arrived early surprised him. –> “That I arrived early surprised him”

  “That I arrived early” is the subject of “surprised,” so it can appear before “surprised” but you need to keep the complementizer “that” then.

  It surprised him that I arrived early –> “It surprised him that I arrived early”

  Since “that I arrived early” is the subject of “surprised,” you can replace the “that”-clause with the subject pronoun “it”, and leave the “that”-clause at the end of the sentence, where “that”-clauses are normally found.

  Corpora of spoken and written language can help you identify patterns more appropriate for teaching written English and those more appropriate for spoken English.

  If you compare which complementizers are most frequent in spoken English and written English, using https://www.english-corpora.org, you’ll see that the “that” is far and away the most common one, with “if”, “as”, “because”, “when” “than” “so” in the top group, no matter the region or medium of English:

  The spoken subset of the Corpus of Contemporary American English contains unscripted speech, often from talk shows.	The corpus of American Soap Operas contains texts of what script writers THINK natural spoken English sounds like. However, the patterns are slightly different from true spoken English	The Global Web-Based English is of written texts, from all over the world, not just American English.

  There are a few subtle differences between spoken and written English. “Now” as a complementizer (“I am happier now I have a dog”) is more common in spoken English. “Unless” is not as common in natural, unscripted speech (“I’ll come to the party unless I get out of work late”). “While” is more common in written English than in spoken.

  In some dialects of spoken English, “what” is used as an alternative to that or which and can refer to both things and people. This variation is more common in British English. E.g. “Did you see the bloke what just walked by?”

  How subordination works in a tree diagram: Three types of subordination

  Subordinate clauses, in all human languages, can fall into three main types. The types differ primarily in terms of what part of the sentence is modified or further explained by the subordinate clause.

  Some subordinate clauses act like the subject or the object of a verb. These are called “noun clauses” or “complement clauses” because it usually the job of a noun phrase to be the subject or object of a verb. These subordinate clauses (a CP in syntax) can fit wherever a noun phrase (an NP in syntax) usually goes in a sentence tree. The complementizers used in this type are “that”, “if”, “whether” and any of the Wh-question words (“how” “why” “when” “what” “where” “which”).

  Let’s look at some syntax trees with noun clauses, compared to the tree for a very simple sentence.

  That food tastes good.

  

  The dog knows [ that that food tastes good]_SubClause .

  

  Notice that the CP “That food tastes good” is a sister to the verb “knows,” occurring where the object of the verb “knows” would normally go.
  

  [Whether that food taste good]_SubClause seems debatable.

  

  Notice that the CP “whether that food tastes good” appears where the subject of a sentence would, in that subject NP position right at the top of the sentence
  

  Some subordinate clauses help determine which exact set of nouns, or which exact noun out of a previously established group, is the one being referred to. These subordinate clauses (a CP in syntax) can fit wherever a determiner (a D in syntax) usually goes in a sentence tree. These are usually called “relative clauses” because they are used to relate a noun inside that clause to a different noun in the larger sentence that clause appears inside. Sometimes these are called “adjective clauses” because they modify a noun. However, relative clauses modify a noun by answering the question “which one(s)?” – the job of a determiner – and not by answering the question “which kind of?” – which is the true job of an adjective.

  That food tastes like chicken.

  

  That food [which costs so much]_SubClause tastes like chicken.

  

  Notice that the CP here is a sister to the Noun “food.” “That food” acts both as the subject of the main clause “That food tastes like chicken” and as the subject of the subordinate clause “That food costs so much.”

  Because “That food” is the subject of both the main and subordinate clauses, the CP here is often called a subject-subject relative clause.

  We don’t say in English “That food which it costs so much tastes like chicken”, where “it” is the subject pronoun of the subordinate, relative, clause. Instead we just leave that spot where “it” would go empty, and English users understand “which” to be doing the same thing as the “it” would if “it” were present.

  That food tastes like the chicken [( which ) we had in China]_SubClause.

  

  Notice that the CP here is a sister to the Noun “chicken.” “The chicken” acts both as a prepositional object in the main clause “That food tastes like chicken” and as the direct object of the subordinate clause “We had the chicken in China.”

  Because “The chicken” is the prepositional object of the main clause, and the direct object in the subordinate clauses, the CP here is often called a prep-object/direct-object relative clause. These terms refer to the positions of the noun phrase which is shared between the two clauses – where that noun phrase appears in each clause.
  

  We don’t say in English “That food tastes like the chicken which we had it in China”, where “it” is the subject pronoun of the subordinate, relative, clause. Instead we just leave that spot where “it” would go empty, and English users understand “which” to be doing the same thing as the “it” would if “it” were present.

  Let’s now look at the third type of not very dependent, or subordinate clause. This is the true subordinate clause, and is sometimes called an adverb clause, or adverbial clause, because it behaves in an adverb-like way. These clauses usually give more information about the conditions under which a verb happened – when it happened, why it happened, how it happened. This information is sort of adverb-y information, so you will see them called adverb or adverbial clauses in addition to their more technical name, the subordinate clause.

  Let’s consider a simple verb phrase where the verb has both an object, and an adverb.

  

  There are two phrases that could be swapped out with a subordinate clause. Above in this page, we already discussed complement clauses or noun clauses, where the clause is the object of a verb. With the subordinate or adverb clauses however, the clause modifies the verb together with its object.

  

  The sentence on the left contains a clause as an object or complement, and then an adverb. The following could be verb phrases that would fit into that structure:

  “guessed that she had gone home shrewdly” – “shrewdly” describes how she guessed about the homegoing

  “wondered when we would marry constantly” – “constantly” describes the frequency of the wondering about the marriage

  The sentence on the right contains a clause in the adverb position. This clause modifies the verb and its object, or the verb and its adjective complement. The following could be verb phrases that would fit into that structure:

  “tasted good because it was spicy ” “ate dinner after we went to the play ” That food surprised me.

  

  Here we have a simple declarative sentence, with “me” being the subject of “surprised”. There is no adverb inside the VP “surprised me”, although we could add one if we wished (“surely surprised me”, “surprised me completely”, etc.)

  That food surprised me because it was vegan.

  

  Here, where an adverb might go, we have inserted the subordinate clause “because it was vegan.” This clause explains WHY the act of “surprised me” happened. Because is the complementizer here, and is of a group more generally called subordinating conjunctions (before, after, while, whereas, because, therefore, since, as, etc..).

  Because it was vegan, that food surprised me.

  

  Often, when these “adverb” or “true subordinate clauses” are used, they are moved up to the beginning of the sentence. They appear in a focus position above the subject of the main sentence. The clause “because it was vegan” is still interpreted as modifying the idea of “surprised me”, even though it has been moved up to the focus position, above the subject of the main sentence.

  Learn more about Noun clauses, a.k.a. complement clauses

  (see chapter from The Teacher’s Grammar of English)

  Learn more about Adverb clauses, a.k.a. true subordinate clauses

  (see chapter from The Teacher’s Grammar of English)

  Some frequent collocations

  According to the Corpus of Global Web-Based English, the following are the most frequently-occuring subordinating conjunctions – with over 1 million examples in the corpus:

  AS (17.2 million)

  WHEN (3.27 million)

  THAN (2.49 million)

  BECAUSE (2.08 million)

  WHILE (1.32 million)

  SO (1.13 million)

  WHERE (1.0 million)

  The following are other frequently-occurring subordinators:

  Since, though, after, until, before, although, unless, once, like, whilst*, for**, whereas, provided.

  *”Whilst” is more frequent in British English (GB in the following chart), as compared to India (IN), the United States (US) or even Ireland (IE):

  

  **”For” not as a preposition, but as a complementizer to introduce a whole sentence often sounds very academic or old-fashioned:

  “ The only people I don’t include are Law Phds, for [we know several friends who were highly successful after graduation]. ”

  “ These color qualia are not pure qualia for [they are phenomenally intentional] ”

  Learn more about Relative clauses

  Some frequent collocations

  The relative pronoun “which” is used nearly always for restrictive relative clauses. Stylistically, it can be alternate with “that” for non-restrictive relative clauses. Using “which” instead of “that” in those cases gives a feel of formal, journalistic, or academic writing. Here are the top 5 hits in the GloWBE corpus for “which” when a noun is being described with a relative clause containing a form of “be.” If you are logged into the BYU corpus, clicking on the link will give you search results. No surprise that “thing” ends up being a very common noun!

  1	THINGS WHICH ARE	2773
  2	SYSTEM WHICH IS	1501
  3	THING WHICH IS	1011
  4	COUNTRY WHICH IS	964
  5	INFORMATION WHICH IS	837

  … with a relative clause containing “have”…

  1	COUNTRIES WHICH HAVE	768
  2	COUNTRY WHICH HAS	745
  3	SYSTEM WHICH HAS	458
  4	THINGS WHICH HAVE	448
  5	COMPANY WHICH HAS	438

  … and a relative clause containing a lexical verb.

  1	WORD WHICH MEANS	227
  2	SYSTEM WHICH ALLOWS	215
  3	THINGS WHICH MAKE	190
  4	ISSUES WHICH NEED	143
  5	EVENTS WHICH LED	127

  If instead of “which” we choose the relative pronoun “that”, we also find that “thing(s)” is the most frequent noun described by a relative clause. Since the word “thing” is by nature vague and unspecific, it is usually followed up with a relative clause to provide more specific information than the vague word “thing” can provide. This is actually a helpful insight for learners – they can use relative clauses to circumlocute, to talk around, a word they are missing.

  I need a thing that makes the rain stay off me. = umbrella

  That is a thing that can open a can. = can opener

  1	THINGS THAT ARE	15810
  2	PEOPLE THAT ARE	6296
  3	WAY THAT IS	5157
  4	THING THAT IS	4791
  5	INFORMATION THAT IS	4317
  6	THINGS THAT HAVE	4111
  7	ONES THAT ARE	4098
  8	PEOPLE THAT HAVE	4013
  9	THINGS THAT CAN	3915

  1	THINGS THAT MAKE	3611
  2	THING THAT MAKES	1825
  3	WAY THAT MAKES	1535
  4	THINGS THAT HAPPENED	1360
  5	THINGS THAT HAPPEN	1301
  6	THINGS THAT NEED	1212
  7	THINGS THAT MATTER	1176
  8	THING THAT HAPPENED	1142
  9	ISSUES THAT AFFECT	1071
  10	THING THAT COMES	1045

  What if it is a person being described? Prescriptively, people should always take the relative pronoun “who.” However you can see above that there are still 6,296 examples of “ people that are ” instead of “people who are.” In fact “that” is fairly common in less formal speech as a universal relative pronoun – taking over situations where “which” and “who” should technically be used.

  Here are the 10 most common animate nouns, nouns which refer to living beings, which require the relative pronoun “who.” You can see that “whom” is used far less often than “who” is. There a couple reasons for that.

  1	PEOPLE WHO	382735	1	PEOPLE WHOM	782
  2	PERSON WHO	84341	2	MAN WHOM	574
  3	MAN WHO	76640	3	WOMAN WHOM	307
  4	WOMEN WHO	45653	4	PERSON WHOM	231
  5	MEN WHO	31868	5	MEN WHOM	165
  6	WOMAN WHO	31024	6	WOMEN WHOM	130
  7	GUY WHO	25745	7	CHILDREN WHOM	120
  8	ONES WHO	24980	8	FRIEND WHOM	110
  9	STUDENTS WHO	24822	9	FRIENDS WHOM	95
  10	CHILDREN WHO	22314	10	GOD WHOM	95

  If we drill down into “people who”, which is far and away the most common animate noun with the animate relative pronoun, we see that the following verbs are the most common inside the relative clause:

  1	PEOPLE WHO WANT
  2	PEOPLE WHO LIVE
  3	PEOPLE WHO THINK
  4	PEOPLE WHO WORK
  5	PEOPLE WHO KNOW
  6	PEOPLE WHO USE
  7	PEOPLE WHO MAKE
  8	PEOPLE WHO NEED
  9	PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE
  10	PEOPLE WHO GET

  “People who” could be practiced as a chunk by asking students to complete frames containing the above phrases: “My city needs more people who want _____” or “I like people who think ______”

  Learner issues

  Depending on their proficiency level, learners will have different issues with relative clauses.

  Novice

  At the novice level, learners will not be creating sentences with relative clauses from scratch. They will perhaps use some very frequent multi-word expressions and sentence frames which technically include a relative clause, but they will treat these as a stock phrase into which they can insert an idea. Some examples might be:

  “ I think I (insert action or claim)” –> I think I have pencil.

  “ I don’t know what (insert action or claim)” –> I don’t know what we do today.

  “ I know it (insert action or claim)” –> I know it rain today. I know it he is coming when.

  The grammar is unlikely to be totally correct, but by using these set phrases which are built off of a relative clause, learners can begin contextualizing or framing some basic claims about themselves or the situations they face.

  Intermediate

  At the intermediate level, learners are creating new kinds of sentences with ever-increasing complexity. It turns out that an NP in any role in one sentence (whether a subject NP, a direct object NP, indirect object NP, a prepositional object NP, or possessor NP) can be relativized with an NP in any of these roles in another sentence.

  Subject	Possessor	Dir Obj	Prep Obj
  My mom loves children	I loved my mom’s generosity	I love my mom very much	I worked with my mom in a pre-school
  The children didn’t need it anymore	The children’s ball was old	I know her children	I was annoyed by the children
  The ball was a little beat up	The ball’s seams were loose	I restored the ball	I loved playing with the ball
  The school was low on money	The school’s kids were poor	The children loved the school	I went to the school

  You can basically pick any two sentences out of a row in this chart, and then relativize them based on the element they share. This makes the system quite complex.

  I love my mom (Object) very much + I worked with my mom (Prep Object) in a pre-school. = “I love my mom, with whom I worked in a pre-school, very much” OR “I worked with my mom, who(m) I love very much, in a pre-school.”

  The school was low on money + I went to the school = “I went to the school that was low on money” OR “The school that I went to was low on money.”

  • The store I worked in’s name was Target.
  • I forgot the guy I went to school with’s name.

  2. Deleting restrictive relative pronouns.

  Only if a clause is restrictive, can you delete the relative pronoun. Non-restrictive relative clauses do not allow the deletion of the relative pronouns.

  However, if the relativized element is the subject of the relative clause, you can delete it:

  • The tree that grew in the front yard was beautiful, not the one in the backyard!
  • The tree that I planted from an acorn was beautiful.
  • The tree that my kids gave the name “Fred” to.
  • The man who sat next to me was smoking, not the other man!
  • The man who I sat next to was smoking.
  • The man who I lent my umbrella to was smoking.

  Advanced

  At the advanced level, learners will be consolidating all the different combinations of relative pronouns described in the table above, in the intermediate section. They will be faced with some more stylistic choices in English grammar. Here are two examples of stylistic choices and relative clauses:

  Some English resources and English speakers will insist on their being a clear distinction between the use of “that” and “which” as a relative pronoun.

  You have to decide; are you going to teach this restrictive/non-restrictive relative clause distinction? The problem is that almost all oral discourse, and much written discourse in English, no longer makes this distinction.

  • The tree, which happened to be my favorite, was beautiful. non-restrictive – set off with commas
    
  • The tree that grew in the front yard was beautiful (not the one in the backyard)! restrictive – not set off with commas
    

  “That/which” vs. “who” depends on whether relativized element is animate or inanimate.

  • The man, who happened to be next to me, was smoking. –> non-restrictive
  • The man who sat next to me was smoking, not the other man! –>restrictive

  2. Are you going to make them learn pied piping with prepositional objects?

  Pied piping is a funny name for the English grammar pattern where prepositions, instead of sitting at the end of the sentence, appear together with the relative pronoun. “Pied piping” comes from the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, where all of the kids were drawn by a piper who played music. Here the preposition is being drawn by the relative pronoun, and they appear together.

  You can probably tell by the usage of the “whom” form, that this is associated mostly with very formal, almost exclusively written English. Many editors do prefer this pied piping structure as opposed to the version where the preposition is “stranded” at the end of the sentence. This preference has a long history in English, dating back to attempts in the 18th century to make English grammar behave more like Latin grammar. These days, the pied-piped version can help an English user sound more academic or formal. Would you teach this alternation?

  The functional uses of adverb a.k.a. subordinate clauses

  The subordinate clause, whether a noun clause or an adverb clause, can perform a wide range of functions in the sentence. Another way to think of that is that the subordinate clause can answer a wide range of questions that could be asked of the element which the subordinate clause is modifying. When approached from this functional perspective, you will notice that many of the subordinators below are made of more than one word, but they act as a single complementizer, a single grammatical element. Just a few examples of some of those functions are listed in the table below:

  as

  as soon as

  before

  once

  since

  until

  whenever
  → She called him after she had finished her dinner.
  → After she had finished her dinner, she called him.

  while → While she was finishing dinner, she called him.

  Lest – (less common – usually contain the bare infinitive)
  → Leave now, lest you be captured by the Sith Lords.

  For fear that
  → For fear that he would look ridiculous, he took off the headdress.

  Because

  In as much as

  Seeing as/that – Since you have explained the steps, I don’tneed to read the Users’ Guide.

  With the result that…

  In order that…

  → Although Virgil did the homework, he failed the test.

  Whereas,

  While

  → While Jessie neither did the homework nor came to class, he passed
  the exam.

  Reflection Questions and Professional Vocabulary

  • Can you think of some complementizers in other languages you know?
  • What are the pros and cons of calling complementizers as used in subordinate clauses “subordinating conjunctions”? Does this create confusion with the “true” or “coordinating conjunctions” even though they behave quite differently?

  Vocabulary for grammar teaching professionals

  • Adjective clause
  • Adverb clause
  • Relative clause
  • Dependent clause
  • Complementizer
  • (Non-)restrictive relative clause
  • (In-)animate relative pronoun
  • Subordinating conjunction
  • Coordinating conjunction

  A clause which contains a subject and a predicate, and could stand as its own sentence.

  A word (or in some languages a suffix) which allows you to take a full clause, containing a subject and predicate, and use that clause to modify a word in another sentence.

  a noun phrase which is comes immediately after a verb, and shows the noun that the action is being done to, or the noun that is being described by that verb

  an adverb's main job is to describe a verb together with any of that verb's objects. It usually explains how or why that verb got done (slowly, hopefully). Adverbs can also describe prepositions (right above), adjectives (very cold), other adverbs (quite slowly), or even entire sentences (hopefully she will come).

  Verbs which require a second verb. The subject of the causative verb causes or makes either another person or themselves do that second verb. I.e. "The dog caused the cat to hiss." "cause" is the causative verb and "hiss" is the necessary second verb.