In this video I'd like to discuss three different functions that dependent
clauses can have in a sentence. Now we know that most of
the time a dependent clause has a subject and a verb
and it's attached to an independent clause.
It cannot stand by itself as a sentence, but it has to be attached to the rest of
the sentence. So that's all good and well, but we might still like to know a little
bit more in terms of what the dependent clause is contributing to the sentence,
how is it functioning, and that's what this video is about. The
first type of function is adjectival.
We know that an adjective modifies a noun usually,
and in this case the dependent clause is also going to modify
a noun in the main clause. Before we get there, let's just take this apart a
little bit. So we have "I took a maglev train." That's
our independent clause. And then the second part, "which runs on
magnets," is our dependent clause. If we want to be
more specific, we can say that the dependent clause is a relative
clause. It's relative clause. And
that's because it starts with "which" here, which relates more
information. We've covered this in a separate
video. Okay, if we want to zoom in further then,
we can say that "runs" is the verb, and "which," while it
refers back, is also the subject of this new clause.
This last little bit, "on magnets," is a prepositional phrase.
Now, all of this last part, "which runs on magnets" --
it's modifying "train." So if we say, "what kind of train?" then we answer "the
kind which runs on magnets." Then you can see that the dependent
clause is acting like an adjective would. The second
function is adverbial. Adverbs are obviously very tricky because they can
do so many different things, but very often they modify the verb. And
that's what we'll have a look at here. If we look at the sentence, it reads,
"While she took a nap, "I studied for my math exam."
The second part is the independent clause. It can stand it by itself as a
sentence. And the first part is the dependent
clause. We have a subordinating conjunction here
("while"), which connects our dependent clause
to the later part of the sentence. We also have a verb:
"she." A subject, sorry! We have a verb: "took." And in this case we
have a direct object. Took what? A nap. Okay,
now let's think then about how this dependent clause relates to what comes
later, and if we look at the verb here in the
main clause ("studied") and we say, "studied when?"
then we say, "well, while she took a nap." So
the dependent clause is telling something about when the studying takes
place. In that sense it modifies the verb,
and it's acting like an adverb. One more here, and this one is
probably the trickiest. A dependent clause can also function like a noun.
In this case we have, "I will have what you are having."
This is all kind of run together, so it's a bit hard to see,
but the first part of this ... actually we'll just underline the whole
thing ... together this forms a clause. It's a bit hard to know how to
separate it, but we have a subject in "I,"
we have a verb in "will have," so that's the verb here,
and then if we say, "we'll have what?" then
all of this last part is [like] the direct object.
You could think of something else. You can think of like "I will have a
banana," let's say. "I will have a banana."
You can see that that would function as a direct object,
but if we zoom in we can see that this thing that looks kind of like
a direct object in how it's functioning is also a clause in its own right,
because it has its own verb ("are having"), it has its own subject in "you,"
and so we can see that this is actually kind of zooming in and providing
more information in the form of a clause. And we can sum up then by saying that
what you are having is kind of like a clause by itself and
it's functioning like a noun, because a direct object is a noun or a
noun phrase. So it's a bit like "banana": "I will have a
banana" or "I will have what you are having."
And this is kind of rare to see. Well, it's actually not entirely rare, but it's
surprising perhaps to see that a dependent clause can function a little
bit like a noun. And that's it for the three
different functions of dependent clauses.