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Is it a certain type of wh- clause that ends in a verb?

  • I know how tall he is.
  • This shows what a disaster it was.

That has this order of Pred-S-Cop?

Edwin Ashworth
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Brooh
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  • Does this answer your question? "I'm not sure what the right way is" – livresque Feb 02 '22 at 02:06
  • I think it's a bit different? Or, at least, in that embedded question linked to there's wh- word, subject, verb. But here there a wh- word, predicate, subject, copular? I'm likely being dumb. But the confusion is real. – Brooh Feb 02 '22 at 02:34
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    If the Wh-word that's moved to the front of a question refers to whatever comes after the verb (like its object), then that leaves the verb at the end of the question. The verb can be a copula, or it can be a regular verb. It's still a wh-clause and it can end in all sorts of things, depending on what the questioned constituent leaves behind stranded, like prepositions. – John Lawler Feb 02 '22 at 03:18
  • For sentences such as, "I know how tall he is" and "He went despite how cold it was" I see the wh- word has been moved to the front of the question along with what came after the verb. Because you can ask, "He is how tall?" and "It was how cold?" But one can't ask, "It was what a disaster?" Isn't that a bit . . . different? – Brooh Feb 02 '22 at 15:10
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    Exclamation/exclamatory clause. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00437956.2005.11432550 – Brooh Feb 02 '22 at 19:33

2 Answers2

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"I know how tall he is." "This shows what a disaster it was."

In these sentences the clauses "...how tall he is", and "...what a disaster it was" are subordinate noun clauses. The noun clauses can act the functions of a noun. Here they are the direct objects of the verbs 'know' and 'shows' respectively.

Subordinate clauses are dependent clauses and they are attached to a main clause by relative pronouns or subordinate conjunctions such as 'who, that, which, how, whatever, whoever, etc.

To know more about the Noun Clauses, please read here: grammarly.com

mahmud k pukayoor
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These sentences contain a subordinate interrogative clause and a subordinate exclamative clause, respectively. Neither construction undergoes subject-auxiliary inversion, but the wh-word (or rather the interrogative/exclamative phrase enclosing it) gets moved to the start of the clause.

alphabet
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