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I came upon a sentence which I can't understand.

News soon get around that he had resigned.

As you can see, the noun clause (that he had resigned) is placed at the end of the sentence.

I guess the noun clause describes the noun "News".

I can't figure out why the noun and the noun clause are divided.

Is it possible?

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    That's News soon got around... Would it help you to note that your example sentence could start with a definite article? 1: The news soon got around that he had resigned. Which can then be trivially re-sequenced to 2: The news that he had resigned soon got around. Where arguably could be seen as just two consecutive noun phrases both referring to the same thing, similar to The gossip John told everyone about it. Does that help?
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Sep 29, 2021 at 12:03
  • @FumbleFingers the sentence is from Oxford dictionary. there isn't a definite article. anyway thanks but I don't get it still.
    – bak1936
    Commented Sep 29, 2021 at 12:09
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    That-clause as a noun clause
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Sep 29, 2021 at 12:25
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    ...and if you're happy to understand John Smith, the town gossip, told everyone the news as starting with two noun phrases in apposition, I thought that would help you see how it's working with a "that- clause".
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Sep 29, 2021 at 16:43
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    Note that my argument here turns on accepting that both [the] news and that he had resigned are two noun phrases that effectively both refer to the same thing. But although it's "syntactically valid" to use either of them in isolation as the subject of the sentence, it's not very idiomatic to use the "that- clause" on it's own like that here. So That he had resigned soon got around is very unlikely compared to The news soon got around (which latter obviously requires more context telling us what specific news travelled fast).
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Sep 29, 2021 at 16:52

2 Answers 2

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This is an example of Extraposition: the basic sentence is

News that he had resigned soon got around.

So "that he had resigned" is a complement of "news".

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When the subject part of the sentence gets longer, the subject can be divided. You can refer to the 'end-weight principle'.

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