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The same holds true of complex sentences featuring subordinate clauses in both subject and predicative
positions. Cf:.
How she gets there is whafs troubling me (> I am troubled). Whafs troubling me is how she gets there (
>
How is she to get there?).
The peculiar structure of this type of sentence, where two nominal clauses are connected by a short link
making up all the outer composition of the principal clause, suggests the scheme of a balance. For the sake of
convenient terminological discrimination, the sentence may be so called - a "complex balance".
The third type of clauses considered under the heading of clauses of primary nominal positions are object
clauses.
The object clause denotes an object-situation of the process expressed by the verbal constituent of the
principal clause.
The object position is a strong substantive position in the sentence. In terms of clausal relations it means
that the substantivizing force of the genuine object-clause derivation is a strongly pronounced nominal clause-
type derivation. This is revealed, in particular, by the fact that object clauses can be introduced not only non-
prepositionally, but also, if not so freely, prepositionally. Cf:.
They will accept with grace whatever he may offer. She stared at what seemed a faded photo of Uncle Jo
taken half a century before. I am simply puzzled by what you are telling me about the Carfatrs.
On the other hand, the semantic content of the object clause discriminates three types of backgrounds: first,
an immediately substantive background; second, an adverbial background; third, an un-characterized
background of general event. This differentiation depends on the functional status of the clause-connector, that
is on the sentence-part role it performs in the clause. Cf:.
We couldn't decide whom we should address. The friends couldn't decide where they should spend their
vacation.
The object clause in the first of the cited sentences is of a substantive background (We should address -
whom), whereas the object clause in the second sentence is of adverbial-local background (They should spend
their vacation - where).
The plot of the novel centred on what might be called a far-fetched, artificial situation. The conversation
centred on why that clearly formulated provision of international law had been violated.
The first object clause in the above two sentences is of substantive background, while the second one is of
an adverbial-causal background.
Object clauses of general event background are introduced by conjunctions:
Now he could prove that the many years he had spent away from home had not been in vain.
The considered background features of subordinate clauses, certainly, refer to their inner status and therefore
concern all the nominal clauses, not only object ones. But with object clauses they are of especial contrastive
prominence, which is due to immediate dependence of the object clause on the valency of the introducing
(subordinating) verb.
An extremely important set of clause-types usually included into the vast system of object clauses is formed
by clauses presenting chunks of speech and mental-activity processes. These clauses are introduced by the
verbs of speech and mental activity (Lat. "verba sendendi et declarandi"), whose contextual content they
actually expose. Cf:.
Who says the yacht hasn't been properly prepared for the voyage? She wondered why on earth she was
worrying so much, when obviously the time had come to end the Incident and put it out of mind.
The two sentences render by their subordinate clauses speech of the non-author (non-agent) plane: in the
first, actual words of some third person are cited, in the second, a stream of thought is presented which is
another form of the existence of speech (i.e. inner speech). The chunk of talk rendered by this kind of
presentation may not necessarily be actually pronounced or mentally produced by a denoted person; it may only
be suggested or imagined by the speaker; still, even in the latter case we are faced by lingually (grammatically)
the same kind of non-author speech-featuring complex construction. Cf:.
Do you mean to say that the story has a moral?
Not all the clauses introduced by the verbs in question belong to this type. In principle, these clauses are
divided into the ones exposing the content of a mental action (as shown above) and the ones describing the