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11 Subordinate Clauses
11.1 Subordination
Subordination, in grammar, means embedding a clause somewhere within another clause, as in She thought [you were angry] back then, or If [they go out of business] we’re in trouble. The bracketed clauses function as dependents within a higher, more inclusive construction, and are called subordinate clauses. The next higher (i.e., larger) clause in the structure – the one immediately containing the subordinate clause – is called its matrix clause. This shouldn’t be confused with a main clause: a matrix clause may or may not be the main clause of the whole sentence (just as your immediate boss in a company may or may not be the chief executive). A matrix clause may itself be a subordinate clause, as in Tim says [Sue thought [you were angry]], where Sue thought you were angry is the matrix clause within which you were angry is embedded. Subordinate clauses often differ in their internal structure from main clauses. Some typical differences are illustrated in [1], where the subordinate clauses are underlined (and in all the [b] cases the matrix clause happens to be the main clause): [1] MAIN CLAUSE SUBORDINATE CLAUSE i a. She is the best candidate. b. I agree that she is the best candidate. ii a. He was looking at a photo. b. This is the photo he was looking at. iii a. I gave him my name. b. I made the mistake of giving him my name.
- The underlined clause in [ib], a dependent in clause structure, is marked as subordinate by its introductory word that, which is a subordinator.
- The underlined clause in [iib], a dependent in NP structure, is marked as subor- dinate by having a missing NP, the understood object of the at PP.
- The underlined clause in [iiib], a dependent in PP structure, is marked as subor- dinate by having no subject (though a subject is understood) and having its verb in gerund-participle form.
The differences are greater in infinitival and participial clauses than in tensed or subjunctive ones. In this chapter and the next two, we focus on clauses such as those in [ib] and [iib]. We turn to tenseless ones like [iiib] in Chapter 14.
11.1.1 Content Clause as the Default Subordinate Clause
There are three major subclasses of tensed subordinate clause, illustrated in [2]:
[2] i RELATIVE CLAUSE They weren’t among the people who had been invited. ii COMPARATIVE CLAUSE More people came than had been invited. iii CONTENT CLAUSE I didn’t think that those people had been invited.
- The relative clause underlined in [i] has as its subject a relative pronoun^ who, which has the preceding noun people as its antecedent.
- The comparative clause underlined in [ii] has no subject at all (though the sentence is understood as if it had said something distinctly more complex, like The number of people who came was more than the number of people who had been invited).
- Content clauses don’t have special properties of this kind. They differ less radic- ally from main clauses, and indeed are often structurally identical with main clauses. We can regard them as the default kind of subordinate clause. Relative and comparative clauses differ from them in certain distinctive ways described in Chapter 12 and Chapter 13.
The content clause in [iii] is introduced by the subordinator that, but the rest of the clause does not differ from that of the main clause These people had been invited. And the subordinator is in fact optional here: I don’t think these people had been invited is also grammatical. Content clauses function predominantly as complements within the larger con-
struction: the one cited here, for example, is a complement in the VP headed by think.
11.2 Clause Type in Content Clauses
The system of clause type described for main clauses in Chapter 10 applies also to content clauses, except that imperatives are normally restricted to main clauses. In [3] we illustrate main and content clauses of the other four types:
[3] MAIN CLAUSE CONTENT CLAUSE i DECLARATIVE Yoko is in Paris. He says that Yoko is in Paris. ii CLOSED INTERROGATIVE Did he do it? I wonder whether he did it. iii OPEN INTERROGATIVE What do you want? Tell me what you want. iv EXCLAMATIVE What a bargain it is! Tell her what a bargain it is.
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- In [i], the content clause is^ subject^ of the matrix clause. It is an^ external comple- ment licensed by surprise (see §4.1).
- In [ii], we see a kind of construction that is much more frequent than [i], but synonymous with it: the subordinate clause is extraposed. That is, it is placed after the VP in the matrix clause (didn’t surprise us), with the dummy pronoun it as a placeholder in the subject position (see §16.3.1).
- In [iii], the content clauses are^ internal complements, licensed by the preceding verb (internal because they’re located within the VP, as opposed to the subject, which is external to the VP). In [a] the content clause is the sole complement of
realize; in [b] it’s the second internal complement of inform; and in [c] it’s the
complement of be in its specifying sense.
- In [iv], the content clause is a complement in the NP headed by^ fact, and in [v] it is
a complement in the AdjP headed by glad.
- Finally, in [vi], the content clause is complement in the PP headed by^ provided. As noted above, most prepositions disallow that; provided (historically derived from the past participle of a verb) is one of the few that allow it.
In traditional grammar the clauses that function as complements are called ‘noun clauses’, a hopelessly misleading term. Content clauses aren’t anything like nouns. That should be completely clear from the examples in [5]: nouns and NPs don’t function as extraposed subjects, or as complements in an NP or an AdjP. Some verbs take an NP object or a content clause as alternatives, but others only take content
clauses. For example, realize licenses a content clause in [5iiia] and an NP in I realize
the significance of what you’re doing (where the NP is a direct object); yet complain
takes a content clause (They complained that there was no hot water) but doesn’t allow an NP (*They complained the lack of hot water). We don’t make any functional distinction between content clauses that could be replaced by an NP and those that can’t be.
11.3.3 The Mandative Construction
One type of declarative content clause that cannot be a main clause is the manda- tive (this term is based on the element -mand- that you see in demand, command,
mandate, and mandatory). The verb demand and the adjective mandatory are both
lexemes which license mandative complements, as in They demand that the decision be reversed (where the underlined clause is an internal complement of the verb) and It is mandatory that he comply with the law (where the underlined clause is the extraposed subject of the matrix clause). The meaning of mandatives includes a component similar to that expressed by the modal auxiliary must (see §3.7.1 on deontic modality). The sentences in [6], which are all similar in meaning to They must be told immediately, illustrate three subtypes of mandative content clauses:
11.3 Declarative Content Clauses 265
[6] i SUBJUNCTIVE MANDATIVE^ It is essential that they be told immediately. ii Should^ MANDATIVE^ It is essential that they should be told immediately. iii TENSED MANDATIVE It is essential that they are told immediately.
- Variant [i] involves the^ subjunctive^ use of the^ plain form^ of the verb^ be. When the
subject is 3rd person singular and/or the verb is be this construction is clearly
distinct from non-mandative content clauses (that they be told vs that they are told). The ability to occur with such a complement provides a test to determine which lexemes license a mandative complement.
- In [ii], we have a special use of the modal preterite form^ should^ (one that is more common in BrE than in AmE).
- The tensed variant in [iii] has a non-modal tensed verb^ –^ in [iii], the verb is^ be^ in the present tense. Nothing in the form of the content clause itself distinguishes the mandative clause from an ordinary non-mandative declarative, such as the underlined subordinate clause in I hope that they are told immediately. The latter is clearly non-mandative, since hope – unlike essential – does not license a subjunctive complement. (Again, this variant of the mandative construction is more common in BrE than in AmE.)
With verbs other than be, and with subjects other than 3rd person singulars, the
subjunctive and the tensed mandative have exactly the same form: It is essential that we tell them immediately. Here tell could be a plain form, the content clause therefore being the subjunctive kind of mandative, or it could be a plain present tense form, with the content clause being the tensed kind of mandative. There is of course no difference in meaning.
Potential Ambiguity
Content clause complements licensed by verbs like demand, adjectives like essen-
tial, mandatory, or vital, and so on, are always mandative. But there are some
lexemes such as the verb insist and the adjective important that license both
mandative and non-mandative complements, which permits ambiguities that bring out the difference in meaning between the two constructions. These two examples contrast sharply: [7] i We insisted that she take it seriously. [not ambiguous: subjunctive mandative] ii We insisted that she took it seriously. [either non-mandative or tensed mandative]
- Example [i] has a 3rd person singular subject, so^ take^ must be a plain form^ –^ not a present tense form (that would have to be takes). It follows that the subordinate clause must be subjunctive, and hence unambiguously mandative. The matrix clause carries the deontic meaning “We required her to take the matter seriously”.
- By contrast, example [ii], containing the preterite form took, is ambiguous for many speakers. The content clause can be understood as either a tensed
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come next. In subordinate clauses, on the other hand, although the interrogative phrase is initial, there is normally no subject–auxiliary inversion: [10] MAIN SUBORDINATE i a. Which candidate spoke first? b. I can’t say which candidate spoke first. ii a. Why did she resign? b. It’s obvious why she resigned. Contrasts of this sort are the norm and are found in most Standard English speech and writing. However, in speech, and in casual writing like emails, subject-auxiliary inversion is often found in content clauses. We find People are asking can they change their shifts (instead of People are asking whether they can change their shifts); Ask him would he mind waiting (instead of Ask him if he would mind waiting); It’s a question of how do you control space (instead of It’s a question of how you control space); It’s about who do you trust (instead of It’s about who you trust); and so on. It’s not clear whether we should regard these as fully standard, but they’re real examples we observed, and they sound natural to many Standard English speakers. They represent usage variation, not accidental mistakes, and they may indicate an incipient syntactic change. (By the way, you may remember that in §5.8.2, we quoted Lewis Carroll using it to refer to a baby: The baby grunted again, and Alice looked very anxiously into its face to see what was the matter with it. That sentence has an auxiliary before the subject in a content clause: to see what was the matter with it. So the variation goes back at least to 1865!)
11.4.3 Interrogatives as Complement
Like declaratives, interrogative content clauses – both open and closed – usually function as complements, as illustrated in [11]: [11] i SUBJECT What caused the delay remains unclear. ii EXTRAPOSED SUBJECT It remains unclear what caused the delay. iii INTERNAL COMPLEMENT OF VERB a. I’ve discovered where they keep the key. b. I asked them what progress they had made. c. The only issue is whether he was lying. iv COMPLEMENT OF NOUN The question whether it’s legal was ignored. v COMPLEMENT OF ADJECTIVE I’m not sure what we can do about it. vi COMPLEMENT OF PREPOSITION That depends on how much time we have. The range of functions is almost like that illustrated for declaratives in [5]. One difference from declaratives, however, is that prepositions are often optional; for example, we could add of after question in [iv], and we could omit on in [vi]. There is only partial overlap between the items that license declaratives and those that license interrogatives.
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-^ Know^ accepts both declaratives and interrogatives:^ I know it is genuine;^ We know what you did. -^ Insist^ accepts only declaratives:^ I insist that it is genuine; *We insist what you did. -^ Inquire^ accepts only interrogatives: *I inquired that it was genuine;^ We inquired what you did.
Very few prepositions license declaratives, but there are plenty that accept inter- rogatives (like on in [vi]).
11.4.4 Interrogatives as Adjunct
There is one construction where subordinate interrogative clauses appear as supple- ments – i.e., as adjuncts rather than complements:
[12] i CLOSED^ He’ll complain, whether we meet during the week or at the weekend. ii OPEN He’ll mess things up, whatever you ask him to do.
- It follows from [i] that he’ll complain if we meet during the week, but he’ll also complain if we meet at the weekend, and these two conditions exhaust the options, so it really doesn’t matter what the answer is to the question of whether we meet during the week or not: we know he’ll whine about it.
- Similarly, in [ii], if you ask him to peel the potatoes he’ll mess it up, if you ask him to set the table he’ll do it wrong, and so on indefinitely – for every possible X, if you ask him to do X, he’ll mess things up; so he is guaranteed to mess things up, no matter what you ask of him.
We call this the exhaustive conditional construction. It uses an interrogative clause to express a set of conditions that exhaustively cover the possibilities. For a fuller discussion, see §8.8.
11.5 Exclamative Content Clauses
It is possible for an exclamative clause to be subordinated as a content clause, but since they differ from interrogatives in not having subject–auxiliary inversion in main clauses, for the most part (setting aside some variation between speakers on this point) there is no internal difference between subordinate and main clause exclamatives:
[13] MAIN SUBORDINATE i a. How lucky you are! b. I told them how lucky you are. ii a. What a mess it was! b. I remember what a mess it was.
We can argue by elimination that the complement clauses here are exclamatives: their initial wh phrases show that they are not declarative, and they cannot be
11.5 Exclamative Content Clauses 269
viii a. Can we rely on them? b. I’m not certain […]. ix a. It was a serious mistake. b. […] is now indisputable. x a. Do you have any idea how much it cost? b. I’m not sure […]. xi a. Can we finish before the year is out? b. […], we don’t know yet. xii a. Is it going to be carried out or not? b. […] is not yet known. xiii a. You need to calm someone down. b. Keep herbal remedies handy in the event […]. xiv a. Both men died, and Lazarus was carried away to heaven. b. It came about […]. xv a. People think it’s all just a matter of opinion and preference. b. The problem becomes […]. xvi a. The vast majority of programmers have been boneheads for forty years. b. ‘Lisp is an excellent choice’ is a more believable statement than […]. xvii a. It wasn’t just manufacturing. b. Then the reality sank in […]. xviii a. They must not be displaced by rising rents and a bad economy. b. He was particularly concerned […]. xix a. For Dante, the entrance into hell marks the beginning of hope. b. It is also true […]. xx a. She summarized a 400-page report in 48 hours. b. Some people have been concerned […].
- For each of the lexemes in the list on the next page, say whether or not it can license the following types of content clause complement: (a) mandative; (b) other declarative; (c) closed interrogative; (d) open interrogative; (e) excla- mative. (Note that closed interrogatives sometimes occur more readily in non- affirmative than in affirmative contexts: before giving a ‘no’ answer for (c), therefore, test with a negative matrix clause as well as a positive one.) Give an example to support each ‘yes’ answer.
Exercises on Chapter 11 271
i advise
ii ask
iii convince
iv doubt [verb]
v forget
vi idea
vii inquire
viii learn
ix realize
x sense [verb]
- Here is another selection of complement-taking lexemes; the instructions are the same as for the previous exercise, except that, for the two adjectives, the issue is whether they license the various kinds of content clause as a subject (or as an extraposed subject).
i amazing
ii belief
iii decision
iv feel
v grasp [verb]
vi important
vii know
viii question [noun]
ix require
x wonder [verb]
- For each of the underlined content clauses below say whether it is (a) an open interrogative; or (b) an exclamative; or (c) ambiguous between open interrogative and exclamative. If your answer is (a) or (b), explain what grammatical factors make the clause unambiguous. If your answer is (c), comment on the difference in meaning. i She didn’t know how valuable it was. ii I’d forgotten what a difficult route it was. iii He asked how old I was. iv That depends on how much we have to pay. v You won’t believe who they’re planning to appoint.
- Which of the following prepositions license a declarative content clause as complement? For each one that does, give an example and say whether or not the subordinator that is permitted in the content clause. i above ii as iii because
272 Subordinate Clauses
countries, and it’s never been about the movement required to get here. “Immigration” has always been a byword for the problem of people who are racialised as undesirable, whether they were born here or not. The hypocrisy is embedded in the history. I often wonder how it was that the arrival of the SS Windrush in 1948, carrying fewer than 500 West Indians specifically invited to come and work in the UK, was and remains such a symbol of profound soul searching for the national identity. That event stands in stark contrast to the more than 200,000 eastern Europeans and 100,000 Irish immigrants who came to Britain during the same period. The former is regarded as a turning point in the fabric of the nation’s identity, the latter is barely remembered at all. But this illogicality in our narratives around immigration is not confined to the past. I have spent most of my life living in leafy southwest London, an area often described as “quintessentially English”, helped by the presence of rowing on the Thames at Putney and Hammersmith, lawn tennis at Wimbledon, botanical gardens at Kew and Henry VIII’s old hunting grounds in the deer-populated Richmond Park. These areas are still perceived as unchanged by mass immigration.
- [Supplementary exercise] When it comes to subordinate clauses, does it make sense to talk about what kind of speech act they are used to perform? Explain your reasoning.
- [Supplementary exercise] Many grammars use the term ‘noun clause’ for what we call ‘content clauses’. The idea is supposed to be that they have the same function as NPs. Answer the following questions about that idea: i What functions are performed by both content clauses and NPs, either in general or as complements of specific words? ii What functions are performed by content clauses but not NPs? iii What functions are performed by NPs but not content clauses? iv In what ways apart from functions do NPs and content clauses differ?
- [Supplementary exercise] Many grammars talk about interrogative content clauses as ‘embedded questions’. Why might this term be misleading? Present examples as necessary to support what you say.
- [Supplementary exercise] Which type of the five major types of content clause is most complex? Justify your position.
- Replace the underlined clause with a constituent from a different category where possible. Change the meaning as little as possible. Example: I expect that it will change. I expect a change/something different. i I agree that it is cheating to use applications to do bird watching. ii They made a serious mistake in trying to enter South Ossetia with force. iii I’ve used lard a lot and I think that it depends on the type of crust you want. iv Tracy says that many children who grow up in expatriate families get the travel bug.
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v I also wonder whether I’m more into high proof whiskey than you are. vi We tucked him into bed and told him what a winner he is. vii George met the elf again and told him what had happened. viii That it’s in this condition suggests something about Mitchell’s perfectionist nature. ix I wrote the article before we started dating. x It didn’t surprise me that it was 5:56.
- [Supplementary exercise] Is it possible to construct a content clause subject that triggers plural agreement?
Exercises on Chapter 11 275
