Overview

Examples

As a subject:

Whether the customer will accept the changes or not does not concern me.

As objects:

I think that the specs have been changed.
No one knows when the changes will be made.

Words that introduce noun clauses

when, who, where, why, what, which, whose, how, that, if, whether

Sequence of Verbs

When forming sentences that contain noun clauses, we need to consider the time frame of both the verb in the main clause and the verb in the noun clause. In most cases, if the main verb is in the present tense, the verb in the noun clause can be in the past, present or future.

If, on the other hand, the verb in the main clause expresses a past action, the verb in the noun clause must be in a past tense or use a modal auxiliary verb, such as would, could and might.

In the case of what we call reported speech, when someone tells us about what another person is saying now or said in the past, we have to pay particular attention to the sequence of tenses.

He says…	He said…
he will do it. he can do it. he may / might do it. He does it often. He has done / did it. He is doing it. He is going to do it.	He would do it. He could do it. He might do it. He did it often. He had done it. He was doing it. He was going to do it.