Question

What is the subordinate clause of the following sentence? is it a noun, adjective, or adverb clause?: Whenever I feel sad, I lose my appetite.

Answer 1

Please see below:

Explanation:

A subordinate clause (also called "depending clause") depends on the rest of the sentence to make sense. It cannot stand by itself as its own sentence. So try saying both parts of the sentence to see which one is a fragment (not a whole sentence). That will be the subordinate clause:

• Whenever I feel sad.
  `rarr` not a proper sentence, so this is a subordinate clause.

• I lose my appetite.
  `rarr` this is a proper sentence, so this is an independent clause.

So the first part of the sentence is subordinate:

`color(green)"Whenever I feel sad,"` `"I lose my appetite"`.
`uarr`subordinate clause

But is the subordinate clause a noun, adjective, or adverb clause?

It is an adverb clause because it is answering the question "when".

`rarr` When do I lose my appetite?
`rarr` `color(green)"Whenever I feel sad"` (this is the exact clause, so we know it's an adverb clause!)

Adverbs answer the question when, so it is being used as an adverb clause.

Some common words that introduce an adverb clause are:

• after, although, as, as if, before, because, if, since, so that, than, though, unless, until, when, where, and while