The Predicative Clause

2.4.2. The Predicative / Subject Complement Clause

On the simple sentence level, this type of clauses have as correspondents the Subject Complements (Cs) of the so-called Compound Nominal Predicates

The most common copulas, besides be, are: appear, feel, lie, look, remain, seem, smell, sound, taste, become, come, get, go, grow, fall, run, turn, etc. (Quirk, op. cit., p. 821)

The Predicative / Cs can be: NP, AdjP, PrepP or AdvP. With Predicative Clauses the type of embedding most frequently used is the so-called intensive complementation which may be: nominal, adjectival, and adverbial.

Intensive complementation applies to sentences where there is a co-reference relation between the Subject and the Subject Complement / Predicative. A special kind of such sentences are the so-called equative sentences (showing equality / with the equal sign between the Subject and the Cs). These can be 'that' clauses or dependent interrogative clauses, relative clauses after abstract Subjects such as: fact, idea, statement, claim, reason, problem, point, question, etc.

e.g. The reason was 1/ that I couldn't come. 2/

The problem is 1/ whether you are coming or not. 2/ (S2 = dependent interrogative clause)

The important question is (the question ) 1/ how to do it. 2/ (S2 = IRC, a less typical way of embedding)