Question

What is the subordinate clause of the following sentence? is it a noun, adjective, or adverb clause?: Someone had not shut the gate completely, so the cat ran out.

Answer 1

So the cat ran out is the subordinate/dependent clause

Explanation:

Dependent/subordinate clauses always begin with a subordinating conjunction such as that. They are not complete thoughts and cannot be used as individual sentences.

There are two clauses in the sentence above: someone had not shut the gate completely and so the cat ran out. The one that cannot be a sentence by itself is the subordinate clause.

Someone had not shut the gate completely.

So the cat ran out (not a sentence)

Adjective clauses modify the noun. Adverb clauses modify the verb (shut). Noun clauses are like nouns (ex. what Sarah did).