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A noun clause may function as the subject of a clause, a predicate nominative, an object or an appositive. What she had realized was that love was that moment when your heart was about to burst. (Stieg Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) In this sentence the independent clause contains two noun clauses.
In other languages, like English and French, most clauses should have a subject, which should be either a noun (phrase), a pronoun, or a clause. This is also true when the clause has no element to be represented by it. This is why verbs like rain must have a subject such as it, even if nothing is actually being represented by it.
A noun such as Fred or a noun phrase such as the book cannot qualify as subject and direct object, respectively, unless they appear in an environment, e.g. a clause, where they are related to each other and/or to an action or state. In this regard, the main verb in a clause is responsible for assigning grammatical relations to the clause ...
A simple clause containing a copula is illustrated below: The book is on the table. In that sentence, the noun phrase the book is the subject, the verb is serves as the copula, and the prepositional phrase on the table is the predicative expression.
A clause typically contains a subject (a noun phrase) and a predicate (a verb phrase in the terminology used above; that is, a verb together with its objects and complements). A dependent clause also normally contains a subordinating conjunction (or in the case of relative clauses, a relative pronoun, or phrase containing one).
The earliest use of the word clause in Middle English is non-technical and similar to the current everyday meaning of phrase: "A sentence or clause, a brief statement, a short passage, a short text or quotation; in a ~, briefly, in short; (b) a written message or letter; a story; a long passage in an author's source."
A clause is a content clause if a pronoun (he, she, it, or they) could be substituted for it. Examples: I know who said that. (I know them. The dependent clause serves as the object of the main-clause verb "know".) Whoever made that assertion is wrong. (They are wrong. The dependent clause serves as the subject of the main clause.)
A clause simplex represents a single process going on through time. A clause complex represents a logical relation between two or more processes and is thus composed of two or more clause simplexes. A clause (simplex) typically contains a predication structure with a subject noun phrase and a finite verb.