Complement clauses and nominalization

A complement clause is a clause that functions as an argument of another word — typically subject or object of a verb, complement of an adjective, complement of a noun. English offers three main shapes: that-clauses (I believe that he is honest), to-infinitive clauses (I want him to leave), and gerund clauses (I appreciate his coming). Each is selected by specific lexical items and carries distinct discourse weight.

C2 control of complement clauses includes the extraposition strategy — moving a complement clause to the end and placing it as a dummy subject (It surprises me that he agreed rather than That he agreed surprises me) — and nominalization — converting a verbal claim into a noun phrase for register lift (The decision was made rather than Someone decided).

This lesson maps (1) the three complement shapes and what selects each, (2) extraposition and the it…that/to V pattern, (3) nominalization as a register and pragmatic device, and (4) the trade-offs between verbal and nominal style in AmE prose.

The three complement shapes

The lexical item that takes the complement constrains the shape. Believe takes that-clause. Want takes to-infinitive. Enjoy takes gerund. The selection is largely arbitrary and must be learned — though there are loose tendencies (see lesson 08 for the realis/irrealis split on remember/forget/regret).

Verbs taking that-clauses

Believe, think, know, say, claim, suggest, recommend, propose, demand, insist, hope, assume, suppose, doubt, deny, declare, argue, contend, maintain, hold, observe, note, point out, predict, suspect.

• She insists that the contract be signed by Friday. (subjunctive — see lesson 01)
• He claimed that the documents had been tampered with.
• I doubt that the bill will pass.

Verbs taking to-infinitive

Want, expect, intend, plan, hope, decide, agree, refuse, attempt, manage, fail, try, ask, beg, force, persuade, encourage, allow, permit, advise, tell, order.

• She wants to leave by noon.
• He persuaded her to reconsider.
• I expect the report to be filed by Monday.

Verbs taking gerund

Enjoy, appreciate, mind, finish, avoid, deny, suggest, recommend, consider, postpone, delay, risk, resist, regret, admit, miss, dislike.

• I enjoy reading legal opinions.
• He admitted lying to the committee.
• They postponed responding until next week.

Verbs taking multiple shapes

A subset of verbs takes multiple complement shapes with different meanings:

• Suggest: I suggest leaving early (gerund) / I suggest that we leave early (that-clause). NOT I suggest you to leave early.
• Remember/forget/regret/stop/try/mean: gerund vs infinitive — see lesson 08.
• Want/expect: I want to leave (no object) / I want him to leave (object + infinitive).

Extraposition — moving the heavy clause to the end

English dislikes long, complex subjects. When the natural subject would be a complement clause, the construction is awkward:

• That the bill passed in both chambers surprised the analysts. (heavy subject; grammatical but ungainly)

The fix is extraposition: move the clause to the end and fill the subject slot with dummy it:

• It surprised the analysts that the bill passed in both chambers. (extraposed)

The it is a dummy — semantically empty, syntactically required. The real subject is the that-clause at the end.

Extraposition with that-clauses

• It is true that he resigned. (= That he resigned is true)
• It is widely believed that the documents were destroyed.
• It seems that no one warned her.
• It became clear that the witness was lying.

Extraposition with to-infinitive

• It is impossible to fix the bug without the schematics. (= To fix the bug without the schematics is impossible)
• It would be unwise to ignore the warning.
• It is essential to act before the deadline. (essential + bare-subjunctive that-clause is the alternative — see lesson 01)

Extraposition with wh-clauses

• It doesn’t matter who started it.
• It is unclear where the funds will come from.
• It remains to be seen whether the policy will work.

Extraposition is heavily preferred in AmE

AmE writing strongly prefers extraposed that-clauses to subject that-clauses. That he agreed surprised me is grammatical but heavy; It surprised me that he agreed is the natural AmE rhythm.

Nominalization — converting verb to noun

Nominalization is the process of taking a verbal claim and packaging it as a noun phrase. The same propositional content shifts in discourse weight, register, and agency.

Examples

Why nominalize?

1. Register lift: nominal style sounds more formal and abstract.
2. Packing: a nominalization can function as the subject of further verbs (Their destruction of the bridge provoked the international response).
3. Topic continuity: introducing an event in verbal form, then referring back to it as a nominal phrase, builds cohesion: The committee voted to dismiss the chair. The dismissal triggered a wave of resignations.
4. Agent suppression: nominalization can hide the agent more thoroughly than passive (The decision — by whom?).

The cost of heavy nominalization

Nominalization can also obscure. Bureaucratic and academic prose often nominalizes everything, producing dense, abstract, agentless writing that political and literary stylists deplore:

• The implementation of policy modifications has resulted in the optimization of resource allocation.
• vs We changed the policy and now use resources better.

The verbal version is shorter, clearer, and assigns agency. The nominalized version is heavier, more abstract, and agentless. C2 writers calibrate.

Nominalization in AmE academic style

Academic AmE leans toward heavy nominalization for the sake of objectivity and impersonality:

• The administration of the questionnaire to the sample yielded the following results.
• Operationalization of the construct followed prior work in the field.

Modern style guides (Williams, Style: Toward Clarity and Grace; Pinker, The Sense of Style) push back against this, recommending verbal phrasing. AmE academic prose is becoming somewhat lighter on nominalization than it was a generation ago.

Cleft + complement clause — focus for the clause

A complement clause can be clefted (see lesson 03):

• It is that the data were collected in 2019 that worries me. (the cleft focus is the that-clause itself)
• What worries me is that the data were collected in 2019.

The it…that S V impersonal pattern

A subset of extraposition is the impersonal evaluative pattern with adjectives:

• It is true that S V.
• It is clear that S V.
• It is striking that S V.
• It is surprising that S V. (indicative only — evaluative adjectives like surprising, ironic, fortunate, curious, predictable do not trigger mandative subjunctive)
• It is significant that S V.
• It is fortunate that S V. / unfortunate / ironic / remarkable / curious / predictable.

This pattern is the workhorse of academic and editorial argument. It allows the writer to evaluate a proposition without grounding the evaluation in personal stance.

It is + ADJ + to V

• It is essential to act before the deadline.
• It is dangerous to assume good faith.
• It is impossible to overstate the importance.
• It is helpful to remember that…

Noun complement clauses

Some nouns take that-clause complements (the that-clause is the content of the noun, not a relative clause):

• The fact that he resigned was widely reported.
• The claim that vaccines cause autism has been thoroughly refuted.
• The assumption that markets are rational drove the model.
• The possibility that she was lying had not occurred to me.

These are appositive that-clauses, not relative clauses. The distinction:

Nouns taking appositive that-clauses

Fact, claim, assumption, idea, theory, view, opinion, belief, possibility, news, rumor, hope, fear, conclusion, conviction, suspicion, observation, point, argument, premise, hypothesis.

Adjective complement clauses

Many adjectives take that-clauses or to-infinitive complements:

• He is certain that she will accept. / He is certain to accept.
• I’m glad that you came. / I’m glad to be here.
• She is aware that the deadline is Friday.
• They are eager to begin.
• I am doubtful that the plan will work.

The semantic split parallels the verbal one: certain that is a claim about a proposition; certain to is a claim about a future event.

Comparison: same content, different complement shape

He resigned. This surprised me. I was surprised by his resignation. (passive with nominalization) I was surprised that he resigned. (that-clause) His resignation surprised me. (nominalization as subject) It surprised me that he resigned. (extraposition) That he resigned surprised me. (subject that-clause — heavy) What surprised me was that he resigned. (wh-cleft on the complement)

Six renderings; same propositional content; each routes through a different syntactic frame with different rhythm, focus, and register.

AmE notes

• Extraposition is the dominant AmE pattern: It is essential that… is preferred over That… is essential.
• Nominalization is heavier in academic AmE than in journalistic or literary AmE. Modern academic prose is being pushed (by Pinker, Williams, etc.) toward more verbal phrasing.
• AmE often drops that in object complements: I think (that) he’s right; I know (that) she’ll come. In writing, that is preferred for clarity; in speech, it’s dropped freely.
• Suggest/recommend + that + subjunctive bare is the AmE pattern (lesson 01): I suggest that he go.
• AmE academic prose uses the fact that more freely than BrE: The fact that the data are limited does not undermine the conclusion. BrE style guides sometimes call this redundant; AmE writers retain it.

Style note — Pinker’s “classic style”

Steven Pinker, in The Sense of Style, argues for verbal over nominal phrasing as the default. The AmE essayist’s working rule of thumb:

• Prefer active verbs over nominalized verbs (write we decided not our decision was made).
• Prefer short, frequent verbs over Latinate verbs of action (write use not utilize; show not demonstrate — except when register demands).
• Prefer concrete subjects (people, things) over abstract subjects (nominalizations).
• But: nominalization is useful for topic continuity and packing — use it deliberately, not by default.

This rule does not apply to legal, technical, or scientific writing where nominalization is the genre convention.

Common Russian-speaker mistakes

1. Heavy that-clause as subject: That he agreed was surprising (grammatical but heavy) → It was surprising that he agreed. Russian permits heavy clausal subjects; AmE prefers extraposition.
2. Wrong complement shape after specific verbs: I suggest him to come → I suggest he come (mandative) or I suggest that he come or I suggest his coming. Suggest does not take object + infinitive.
3. Calquing Russian nominal style without register awareness: writing The provision of explanations on the part of the management was insufficient sounds bureaucratic. Native AmE prefers Management didn’t explain enough. Heavy nominalization is genre-specific.
4. Omitting that in formal writing: I believe he is right is fine in speech and casual writing; in formal prose, I believe that he is right is more polished. In AmE journalistic style, both are accepted.
5. Confusing appositive that with relative that: The fact that he mentioned was alarming (relative — = the fact he mentioned, which was alarming) vs The fact that he had been dismissed was alarming (appositive — = the fact, namely his dismissal). The appositive that is not omissible.
6. Wrong subjunctive vs indicative in extraposed that-clause: It is essential that he is present → It is essential that he be present (mandative subjunctive — see lesson 01).
7. Calquing Это удивительно, что он согласился with wrong word order: This is surprising that he agreed → It is surprising that he agreed (the dummy is it, not this; the demonstrative this fails in this slot).

Summary

• Three complement shapes — that-clause, to-infinitive, gerund — selected lexically; some verbs take multiple with meaning shifts (see lesson 08).
• Extraposition (It… that S V / It… to V) moves heavy complement clauses to the end; AmE strongly prefers this pattern over subject that-clauses.
• Nominalization converts verbal claims to noun phrases for register lift, topic continuity, and packing — but at the cost of clarity and agency. Calibrate.
• Appositive that-clauses complement nouns (the fact that S V) and are distinct from relative that clauses.
• AmE academic prose uses heavy nominalization; modern style guidance pushes toward more verbal phrasing.
• The C2 writer commands multiple complement renderings of the same content and selects by rhetorical purpose.

Next lesson: Article mastery — fine — generic vs specific reference, zero article with abstract nouns, the with adjectives as nouns, idiomatic patterns.