Noun clause and adjective clause

[Hrb.40c]

Hi
please explain a little about noun clause and adjective clause.
thank you
Hamid

[Cerberus™]

Simply put, a clause is the smallest part-of-a-sentence that has its own finite verb. If you do not know what this means, you might consider reading up on it first.

Example: "She did not know the man / who had killed her brother." "Who had killed her brother" is a clause, "killed" the finite verb. If you divide a sentence by cutting it at conjunctions, relative pronouns, and some stops, you get its clauses.

"Who" is here a relative pronoun, introducing the "who ... brother" clause. The first part of the sentence is the core of the sentence, the principle clause. Note that the splits between clauses are by no means always at the conjunction et cetera, or they might be unmarked; a conjunction might even be left out.

A subordinate clause usually has a (syntactic) function in the sentence as a whole, which is similar to saying that it has a function within the principle clause. A subordinate clause is a clause that depends on a principle clause and cannot be used independently.

"Who ... brother" is a subordinate clause and could be considered an attribute of "man". That is because, instead, you could say "the brother-killing man", which has a similar meaning. Here "brother-killing" is an adjective. That is why such a clause is called an adjective clause.

A noun clause is a clause that can be used in roughly the same way as a noun could be used. That is as a subject, object, indirect object, after a proposition, et cetera.

Example: "That she broke up with me / was not so bad after all." Instead of "That she broke up with me" (a subordinate clause) you could say "the break-up". It functions as the subject in this sentence. That is why it is called a noun clause.