Sentence Complexity and Embedding

Adjective Clauses

Activity 16.10: What’s the Difference?

Exercise A – Study these sentences and explain what the difference between the pairs is.

1. Several employees who were unhappy with their salaries picketed corporate headquarters.
2. Several employees unhappy with their salaries picketed corporate headquarters.

3. A town which is oblivious to its own growth will soon not have enough schools.
4. A town oblivious to its own growth will soon not have enough schools.

5. Senator Vinnick, who was picking his nose, was listening to the President’s speech.
6. Senator Vinnick, picking his nose, was listening to the President’s speech.

7. My sister who is in Chaska is a doctor.
8. My sister in Chaska is a doctor.

9. My sister who lives in Chaska is a doctor.
10. My sister living in Chaska is a doctor.

11. The people who received the warning escaped.
12. The people receiving the warning escaped.

Answers

Finally, the last point to make about restrictive and nonrestrictive relative clauses is there are two more alternative forms that we can use, and we can use them for both types of clauses. These forms are two types of reduced forms, and they help us make our sentences shorter.

The first form can be used whenever a subject relative pronoun and BE are present in the relative clause. The BE verb can function as either an auxiliary or a main verb. To perform this reduction, we simply delete the subject pronoun and the BE verb, leaving the remainder of the relative clause intact. This is what happens in sentences 2, 4, 6, and 8 in Activity 16.10.

The second form can be used when a subject relative pronoun is used. In this approach to reduction, the subject pronoun is deleted and the verb of the relative clause is converted to a participle form; an active verb is converted to a present participle. This is what happens in sentences 10 and 12 in Activity 16.10.

What we now know:

Adjective clauses are subordinate clauses that perform the function of modifying nouns. They connect to their main clauses via a relative pronoun.

There are three subtypes of relative clauses:

1. Restrictive relative clauses
2. Nonrestrictive relative clauses
3. Reduced relative clauses

a. Deleted relative pronoun: object pronouns in restrictive clauses only
b. Whiz deletion
c. Conversion to participial phrase.

Adjective Clauses Page 7