"content clause" meaning in All languages combined

See content clause on Wiktionary

Noun [English]

Forms: content clauses [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} content clause (plural content clauses)
  1. (grammar) A dependent clause that functions similar to a noun phrase and expresses the content of a thought, statement, question or sentiment. Synonyms: nominal clause, noun clause Hypernyms: subordinate clause, dependent clause, embedded clause, clause Coordinate_terms: adverbial clause, relative clause
    Sense id: en-content_clause-en-noun-O5DQv5lJ Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries, Grammar Topics: grammar, human-sciences, linguistics, sciences

Inflected forms

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          "ref": "2024, Geoffrey K. Pullum, The Truth About English Grammar, Polity Press, →ISBN, page 91:",
          "text": "The bracketed parts [of the examples given] are like main clauses in some ways, but not in every way: that vaccines work would not be allowed as a main clause; nor would I ever saw it. I’ll call them content clauses from now on, because they express full sentence-like content of their own. […] Traditional grammars tend to call content clauses “noun clauses” because of a feeling that content clauses can serve as subjects and objects of verbs, just like nouns (by which they mean NPs [noun phrases]). It’s not a good parallel (verbs like Think and Inquire take content-clause complements but not NP complements), and I won’t be using the term “noun clause” in this book.",
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-07-16 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-07-06 using wiktextract (e62056b and e7887d5). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

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