noun clause名词性从句.doc

noun (nominal) clauseDEFINITIONInEnglish grammar, anoun clauseis adependent clausethat functions as anoun(that is, as asubject,object, orcomplement) within asentence. Also known as anominal clause.Two common types of noun clause in English arethat-clauses andwh-clauses: that-clause: I believethat everything happens for a reason. wh-clause: How do I knowwhat I think, until I seewhat I say?See Examples and Observations below.Also see: Practice in Building Sentences With Noun Phrases and Noun Clauses AnticipatoryItandDummyIt Complement Clause Extraposition Gerund Infinitive Noun Phrase PutativeShould That-Clause What-ClauseEXAMPLES AND OBSERVATIONS When Mrs. Frederick C. Littles second son arrived, everybody noticedthat he was not much bigger than a mouse.(E.B. White,Stuart Little, 1945) What I like doing most of all in the evenings, these days,is sitting in a gormless stupor in front of the television, eating chocolate.(Jeremy Clarkson,The World According to Clarkson. Penguin Books, 2005) A university iswhat a college becomeswhen the faculty loses interest in students.(John Ciardi,Saturday Review, 1966) I knowthat there are things that never have been funny, and never will be. And I knowthat ridicule may be a shield, but it is not a weapon.(Dorothy Parker) I believethat there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.(Henry David Thoreau, Walking) The thought of stars contributed to the power of his feeling.What moved himwas a sense of those worlds around us, our knowledge however imperfect of their nature, our sense of their possessing some grain of our past and of our lives to come.(John Cheever,Oh What a Paradise It Seems. Random House, 1982) Whoever was the person behind Stonehengewas one dickens of a motivator, Ill tell you that.(Bill Bryson,Notes From a Small Island. Doubleday, 1995) How we remember, what we remember, andwhy we rememberform the most personal map of our individuality.(Christina Baldwin) How people knew when they were being trailedhe found himself unable to imagine.(Edmund Crispin Robert Bruce Montgomery,Holy Disorders, 1945) This is the story ofwhat a Womans patience can endure, and ofwhat a Mans resolution can achieve.(Wilkie Collins,The Woman in White, 1859) I knew exactlyhow clouds drifted on a July afternoon, what rain tasted like, how ladybugs preened and caterpillars rippled, what it felt like to sit inside a bush.”(Bill Bryson,The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. Broadway Books, 2006) That dogs, low-comedy confederates of small children and ragged bachelors, should have turned into an emblem of having made it to the middle classlike the hibachi, like golf clubs and a second carseems at the very least incongruous.(Edward Hoagland, Dogs, and the Tug of Life) Nominal Clauses as Direct Objects- All sentences, then, areclauses,but not all clauses are sentences. In the following sentences, for example, thedirect objectslot contains a clause rather than anoun phrase. These are examples ofnominal clauses(sometimes called noun clauses): I knowthat the students studied their assignment. I wonderwhat is making Tracy so unhappy.These nominal clauses are examples ofdependent clausesin contrast toindependent clauses, those clauses that function as complete sentences.(Martha Kolln and Robert Funk,Understanding English Grammar, 5th ed., Allyn and Bacon, 1998)- A Colorado study foundthat the average homeless person cost the state forty-three thousand dollars a year, while housing that person would cost just seventeen thousand dollars.(James Surowiecki, Home Free?The New Yorker, September 22, 2014) Noun-Clause StartersWe use various words to startnoun clauses. . . .These words include the wordthat, which in its role as a noun clause starter is not arelative pronoun, for it serves no grammatical role in the clause; it just starts the clause. For example: The committee statedthatit would follow the agents policy. Here the noun clause serves the noun role ofdirect objectof thetransitive verbstated. But a careful look at the clause reveals that the wordthatdoes not serve any role within the clause, other than simply to get it going.Other noun clause starters do serve grammatical roles within the clause. For example: We knowwhocaused all the trouble. Here the noun clause starter is the relative pronounwho. Notice that inside the noun clausewhoserves as the grammaticalsubjectof the verbcaused.Additional words serve as noun clause starters. Arelative adverbcan get one going:Howhe won the election mystified the pundits. So can a relative pronoun acting as anadjective: We knowwhichcareer she will pursue. In these two sentences,howis anadverbmodifying the verbwon, andwhichis a relative-pronoun-adjective modifyi