English Grammar Drills

102 Noun Phrases
10. She showed us how she wanted us to do it.
11. You will never guess what the problem was.
12. We had to settle for whatever they would pay us.
13. The new CEO is whomever the board appoints.
14. The secretary will record whatever is said at the meetings.
15. What you see is what you get.
Up to this point, we have looked only at how wh- clauses are used as nouns inside the main
sentence. As we have seen, wh- clauses can play all four noun roles (subject, object of verb, object
of preposition, and predicate nominative) inside the larger (main) sentence.
Now we will examine in some detail the internal structure of wh- clauses. That is, we will see
how wh- noun clauses are constructed. Wh- clauses, as opposed to the much simpler that clauses,
require some complicated internal rearrangements of sentence parts.
All wh- clauses are formed according to the following two rules:
1. Replace a noun or adverb with the appropriate wh- word. We replace nouns with who,
whom, whose noun, what, which, whoever, whomever, whatever, and whichever. We replace
adverbs of time with when and whenever; adverbs of place with where and wherever; adverbs of
cause with why; and adverbs of manner with how.
Here is an example applied to a wh- word that plays the role of object of a verb. In this example,
the wh- word what plays the role of the object of the verb said. As usual, the entire noun phrase is
underlined.
I know he said what.
2. Move that wh- word to the first position inside the noun clause. Moving what out of its
original position leaves behind an empty space or gap (marked with the symbol ∅) where the
original object was:
I know what he said ∅.