The first thing you need to do is clean your room

Question

Can someone help me break this sentence down for better understanding?

The first thing you need to do is clean your room.

First off, "The First thing", in the sentence above is acting like an adjective for the pronoun "you"? If so, can someone please provide me more internet reference to this pattern of "noun + pronoun"?

Answer 1

First, break the sentence in three: A is B.

• A: "The first thing you need to do" is a compound subject -- it acts as a noun.
• ("is", is the verb).
• B: "clean your room" is a compound object.

Now you can break A: "The first thing (which) you need to do"

• A1: "The first thing"
• A2: (which) -- relative pronoun
• A3: "You need to do"

And you can break B.

etc.

Answer 2

The first thing which you need to do, is (to) clean your room.

• The first thing is (to) clean your room. Pr.Clause
• Which you need to do. Sub. Adj.Clause. modifying thing.

Together it's a complex sentence. Noun can't qualify pronoun attributively. It can at best have its renaming predictively.

Answer 3

The subject is "The first thing". You know it's grammatically a compound noun because it takes a definite article. It's followed by a restrictive phrase "you need to do". (There's an omitted relative pronoun that.) Taken together, you can call that complete phrase a phrasal subject (although there might be a better term). This is followed by the predicate: "is clean your room". It's a fairly standard sentence construction.