Now try analysing this slightly more complex sentence:
Because she was annoyed with him, when
John turned up at tea time Mary told him that he could make his own tea.
Our Answer
The main Predicator in this sentence is 'told', which has 'Mary' as
its subject. There are three other clauses (cf. the three Predicators
'was', 'turned up' and 'could make' and their associated SPOCA structures.
So the overall structure of the sentence is:
A (= Adv clause)
Because she was annoyed with him,
A (= Adv clause)
when John turned up at tea time
S
Mary
P
told
O
him
O (= Noun clause)
that he could make his own tea.
The two nested Adverbial clauses should be clear enough after Task
E (ii). We can substitute two phrasal (PP) Adverbials (e.g. 'because
of her annoyance' and 'at tea time') for them without changing the overall
structure of the sentence.
We can use the same kind of substitution test on the clause 'that he
could make his own tea'. We can substitute a Noun Phrase like 'her trenchant
view' for it. Prototypically, Objects are NPs, of course, and as this
clause is a substitute for an NP, we call it a Noun clause.
