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Sentence Complexity and EmbeddingAdjective Clauses
Activity 16.5: Understanding Relative Pronouns 3 Exercise A – Read each sentence and put an asterisk in front of the sentences that are ungrammatical and put an X in front of the sentences that you would not be likely to say or write. ______ 1. Yesterday I saw a man who was picking his nose. ______ 4. Yesterday I saw a house which was painted turquoise. ______ 7. Yesterday I saw a woman whom I knew. ______ 11. Yesterday I called a man whom I worked for. ______ 15. Yesterday I called a man for whom I worked. ______ 19. Yesterday a player made derogatory statements which he was suspended for. ______ 25. Insolence is a behavior which I won’t put up with. Exercise B – Now study and describe the differences between the sentences you marked and the ones you didn’t mark The grammatical sentences show that NSEs sometimes use that in relative clause instead of a relative pronoun. They also sometimes delete the relative pronoun altogether. Deletion can only happen when the relative pronoun is an object in its own clause, never when it is the subject. If we attempt to delete a subject relative pronoun, we get an ungrammatical sentence or we change the meaning of the sentence. The ungrammatical sentences with an asterisk show that NSEs don't use the word that with fronted prepositions in an adjective clause. They also show that NSEs don't delete the relative pronoun when a preposition is fronted.
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TESL 654
