De minister-president kondigde aan dat hij niet zou aftreden. | The prime minister announced that he would not resign.
As mentioned in the introduction, a subclause always constitutes a sentence-element, like PLACE, TIME, or MANNER. In the above example, the subclause serves as a [direct object](#/lesson/WordOrder.17).
A subordinate clause begins with a subordinating conjunction, e.g. 'because', 'since', or 'while'. But the subclause itself contains the same kind of sentence-elements. It is a small sentence inside a bigger sentence.
The word order of the subclause is slightly different from that of the main clause.
In a subclause, _all_ verbs are grouped at the end.
" _All_ verbs" includes the finite verb (the conjugated verb). This means that the inseparable [finite formation](#/lesson/WordOrder.04) -which is inseparable in a main clause- is separated.
main clause | conj | subject | [DIROB](#/lesson/WordOrder.16) | [verbs](#/lesson/WordOrder.57)
Ze verwachten | dat | de film | een groot succes | zal worden.
They expect (that) the film will become a great success.
We find the subject at the beginning (just like the finite formation) but we move the finite verb to the end, where it joins the [other verbs](#/lesson/WordOrder.24). Instead of the 'other verbs' (other than the finite verb), we can now simply say 'all verbs'.
You may wonder if there is a specific order in which the verbs in 'all verbs' should appear. We will deal with this in a few pages. First, let us compare the subordinate clause with the main clause. This way, you can easily see the (small) difference in sentence structure.