Density functional Born-Oppenheimer molecular dynamics (BONM) is applied to study the evolution of geometry and Si-29 NMR chemical shifts of Si(OH)(4), which is the smallest zeolite precursor. Inclusion of water-precursor and water-water interactions is needed to obtain the NMR chemical shift in close agreement with experiment. The solvent influences the structural (SiOH angles) and electronic (polarization) parameters of the monomer. A linear correlation between the angles and the NMR chemical shifts is found. It is shown that the experimental NMR shift is indeed a sampling over a wide range of monomer conformations which varies over 50 ppm on the microscopic scale.