Noun clause or complement?

Question

e.g. It is doubtful whether she’ll come to the meeting.Which one is correct?(1) whether she’ll come to the meeting is a noun clause and a subject.(2) whether she’ll come to the meeting is a complement to doubtful.(3) bothThanks in advance.

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

Here is how my teachers explained it:Tom: It is doubtful. Mona: What is doubtful?Tom: Oh, sorry. I was referring to whether she will come.*****"Whether she  will come" is a noun clause.It is in apposition with "it."It (whether she will come) is doubtful.In other words: Whether she will come + is + doubtful. HAVE A NICE DAY!

BillJ · Answer

jasnkide.g. It is doubtful whether she’ll come to the meeting. Which one is correct? (1) whether she’ll come to the meeting is a noun clause and a subject. (2) whether she’ll come to the meeting is a complement to doubtful. (3) both. Thanks in advance.

Both. It is a clause with a subject ("she"), functioning as a complement to the adjective "doubtful". Subordinate clauses like this are called 'closed interrogative content clauses'. They express questions but do not themselves ask them. This type of construction can usually be glossed with the formula 'the answer to the question', so you get:

"The answer to the question 'will she come to the meeting?' is doubtful"'.

They are called 'closed' interrogatives because they only have two possible answers: "Yes" or "No". They are easy to spot because they are introduced by one of the interrogative subordinators 'whether' and 'if', followed by basic subject-predicate order.

BillJ

Jasnkid · Answer

Thanks for your feedback.

Noun clause or complement?

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