What is the subordinate clause of the following sentence? is it a noun, adjective, or adverb clause?: The guy who ran through the doors is running late to his appointment.

2 Answers
Jan 14, 2018

There is no subordinate clause.

Explanation:

If we were to label every word in the sentence as a part of speech, we would find that the sentence is just one big clause. Why? Well, the trick here is the hidden adjective phrase, which is "who ran", and the also hidden Prepositional phrase, "through the doors". Those are just modifiers, so let's put them in parenthesis. The guy (who ran through the doors) is running late to his appointment.

Alright, "to his appointment" is another Prep. phrase, and "late" is a PN (predicate nominative). Let's see the sentence with not many modifiers. The guy is running. That's a simple and independent clause.

I hope this helped you!

The subordinate clause is, "who ran through the doors".
That is a relative clause introduced by the relative pronoun "who".

Explanation:

A subordinate clause is a group of words with a subject and a verb but is not a complete thought that can stand on it's own.

A relative clause relates information about its antecedent (the noun or pronoun that a pronoun is replacing).

The pronoun "who" is taking the place of the noun "guy" and relating information about him. Specifically, the guy "who ran through the doors".