Similar to a noun, a nominal clause, part of a nominal sentence, names a person, place, thing or idea. The nominal clause in a sentence may function as the subject, indirect object, subjective complement, retained object, appositive, object of preposition or the direct object.
Use a nominal sentence when you want to say something about an object, animal or person via a noun. For instance, to speak about where a dog is located, you can write "The dog is on the log." You provide information about the subject (the dog) by using a noun (the log) to communicate to a reader or listener the location of the dog.
A nominal sentence can consist of a subject and a noun predicate without a linking verb. For example, no linking verb exists in the grammatically correct sentence "Very interesting, those books." Another nominal sentence without a linking verb, or conjugated verb, may read "Quite unpredictable, my family."
The most common conjugated verb used in a nominal sentence is the verb form "to be," which conjugates to "is," "be," "been" and so on. The predicate giving a direction or more information on the subject follows the noun and conjugated verb. For example, "The cat is on the map," or "The pool table is in the basement."