Author Topic: Reducing adjective clauses for conciseness  (Read 9922 times)

Joe Carillo

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Reducing adjective clauses for conciseness
« on: January 26, 2018, 12:04:26 AM »
The mark of fluent English-language writers or speakers is the way they effortlessly do away with words mandated by formal grammar but that only impede the quick delivery of their ideas. Nonnative writers or speakers, on the other hand, stick to the grammar protocols tenaciously, making sure there are no grammatical gaps in their sentences that might betray their less than perfect proficiency in the language. As might be expected, however, their desire to treat syntax and semantics with mathematical precision achieves the exact opposite. It results in stiff, unidiomatic English that clearly identifies them as nonnative users trying mighty hard not to be perceived as such.

One aspect of English where grammatical exactitude clearly doesn’t pay is in the overuse of adjective clauses. Recall that adjective clauses are those extended modifiers that give us more details about nouns to put them in better perspective. Adjective clauses, we will also remember, are often introduced by the pronouns “that,” “which,” “who,” “whom,” “whose,” and “where,” which grammatically link the additional ideas to the main (and independent) clause.


To get a better idea of how the linking mechanism works, let us look closely at the following sentences: “The plane that is flying over the village right now is a Boeing 747.” “The strategy which they used to win the bidding was superb.” “The woman who was looking for me this morning is my fiancée.” “The street where she passes every night is always well-lighted.” “The caretaker to whom she entrusted her house during her absence proved untrustworthy.” “That candidate whose English is so atrociously bad might just win the election.”

Most nonnative speakers of English, not yet wise to the highly idiomatic character of the language, will naturally write or articulate the adjective-clause-bearing sentences above in exactly the way they are shown the preceding paragraph. But native speakers routinely shortcut the construction of such sentences, getting rid of words not essential to conveying their meaning.

Their usual targets are the subordinating conjunction and the passive verb form that links the subordinate clause to the main clause. This technique, when done successfully without materially changing the meaning of the sentence, is called the reduction of adjective clauses. It is a simple, forthright process that converts the adjective clauses into adjective phrases, which are structurally simpler and more concise.


See what happens to the six sentences when this reduction technique is done just right (enclosed by parentheses are the words that have been knocked off without changing the meaning of the sentence): “The plane (that is) flying over the village right now is a Boeing 757.” “The strategy (which) they used to win the bidding was superb.” “The woman (who was) looking for me this morning is my fiancée.” “The street (where) she passes every night is always well-lighted.” “The caretaker (to whom] she entrusted her house with during her absence proved untrustworthy.” “That candidate (whose English is) with the atrociously bad English might just win the election.”
   
The adjective reduction process is simplicity itself when the relative pronoun is followed by the linking verb “be” in any of its forms. To make the first four adjective-clause-bearing sentences above more compact, for instance, we simply drop the words “that is,” “which was,” “who was,” and “where” and do absolutely nothing else. But with sentences using verbs other than “be,” the reduction often calls for a minor revision of the adjective clause to retain the meaning of the sentence.

See, for instance, how nonsensical the fifth sentence above becomes when we simply drop “to whom” and leave it at that: “The caretaker she entrusted her house during her absence proved untrustworthy.” The use of the preposition “with” restores the meaning of the sentence: “The caretaker she entrusted her house with during her absence proved untrustworthy.”

Reduction is also possible when what follows the relative pronoun is an active verb. The relative pronoun can then be dropped and the verb changed to its “–ing” form. In this way, a sentence like “Her allergy is a rabid type that arises from childhood trauma” reduces to “Her allergy is a rabid type arising from childhood trauma.” The adjective clause becomes an adverb phrase. 

Not all sentences with adjective clauses can be reduced meaningfully, however. In particular, reduction fails when a sentence contains the modal auxiliary verbs “should,” “may,” “can,” or “must.” The element of probability or uncertainty provided by these words is unavoidably lost in the reduction, which of course distorts the meaning of the sentence. Consider this example: “This uniform, which should be worn at all times during regular working days, will be provided free to all personnel.” Its mandatory tone vanishes in this misguided reduction: “This uniform, worn at all times during regular working days, will be provided free to all personnel.”

Such distortions should make us think twice before attempting to reduce adjective clauses.

This essay, 335th in the series, first appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the February 18, 2004 issue of The Manila Times, © 2004 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Gerry T. Galacio

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Until late last year, I used to write the way that you recommended for achieving conciseness by, among other ways, removing “that” or “who” or “which” in relative clauses. For example, in my synopsis of the hit Korean-historical drama “Empress Ki” [ https://campusconnection.blogspot.com/2014/10/empress-ki-koreanovela-on-gma7-episodes.html ], I previously used the following sentences:

Before

1. But the band of Koryo boys she leads is actually trying to save their sisters taken as concubines to Yuan.

2. Wang Yu defeats the Turks using the Koryo slaves he inspired and trained.

3. El Temur forces Togon to seal an abdication decree naming Prince Maha as Emperor and Tanasiri as Empress Regent.

4. When the soldiers quit rather than serve him, Wang Yu takes in beggars and other men wandering aimlessly on the streets.

5. El Temur plans to assassinate Togon and SeungNyang during the Royal Hunt using the imperial guards under Yom Byungsu.  

After

1. But the band of Koryo boys that she leads is actually trying to save their sisters who have been taken as concubines to Yuan.

2. Wang Yu defeats the Turks by using the Koryo slaves whom he inspired and trained.

3. El Temur forces Togon to seal an abdication decree that names Prince Maha as Emperor and Tanasiri as Empress Regent.

4. When the soldiers quit rather than serve him, Wang Yu takes in beggars and other men who are wandering aimlessly on the streets.

5. El Temur plans to assassinate Togon and SeungNyang during the Royal Hunt by using the imperial guards under Yom Byungsu.

I have three reasons why my attitude and writing style changed:

Reason Number 1:


My attitude towards deleting “that” or “which” started changing after I read an article by William D. Lutz (author of “Doublespeak” and a Plain English consultant of the US Securities and Exchange Commission). In that article, Lutz warned against what linguists call “whiz deletion.”

Reason Number 2:

Last year, I came across the article “Improving Translatability and Readability with Syntactic Cues” by John R. Kohl, which was published in “Technical Communication” journal (Second Quarter 1999). Kohl is the author of “The Global English Style Guide: Writing Clear, Translatable Documentation for a Global Market.”

The important thing to remember about Kohl’s guidelines is that they are meant:

1. to help learners who come from ESL or EFL backgrounds, and

2. to facilitate “machine translation” (MT) and human translation of English documents.

Excerpts from Kohl’s article:

(1) Syntactic cues are elements or aspects of language that help readers correctly analyze sentence structure and/or to identify parts of speech. For example, suffixes, articles, prepositions, auxiliary verbs, and word order ....

(2) Some syntactic cues that are optional in some contexts:

that

that + the verb to be

the articles a, an, and the

to (both as a preposition and as an infinitive marker)

modal verbs such as can, should, may

auxiliary verbs such as is/are/was/were, has/have/had,has been/have been/had been, and will have been

prepositions such as by, for, with, in

correlative pairs such as either ... or, both ... and, if ... then

punctuation such as hyphens, commas, and parentheses

pronoun or noun subjects

(3) .... the historical emphasis on conciseness in technical communication leads many technical writers and editors to routinely and deliberately eliminate syntactic cues from their documents.

(4) In most cases, syntactic cues actually reduce translation costs by reducing the number of ambiguities that translators are forced to resolve.

(5) Overcoming concerns about conciseness and word counts

The syntactic cues approach contradicts the training of many editors and writers, who have been taught for years to eliminate every “unnecessary” that, to use punctuation sparingly, and, in general, to strive for brevity. In addition, management may be concerned about syntactic cues adding to the costs of translation and publication because they increase word counts.

(6) Look for past participles—verb forms that usually end in -ed, such as described, provided, and specified

a. Consider expanding them by inserting that or that plus some form of the verb to be (that is/that are/that was/that has been/etc.). However, don’t feel that you have to expand ALL past participles, and don’t expand them if doing so would make the sentence sound unnatural to native speakers or would change the emphasis in the sentence.

Rationale: Although other languages besides English permit relative clauses to be reduced to participle in this way, it is more difficult for readers to analyze sentences when this particular syntactic cue is missing—especially if other syntactic cues are missing as well. Also, sometimes a translator has to “expand” the participle into a relative clause, either because the target language does not permit reduced relative clauses or for other reasons.

b. If a past participle comes before the main verb in a sentence or clause, make a special effort either to expand the participle or to revise the sentence in some way.

Rationale: Research has shown that readers form a tentative analysis of a sentence before reaching the end of a sentence. If they encounter a word that looks like it could be the main verb of a sentence, they are likely to interpret it that way. We shouldn’t mislead them by putting a participle (reduced clause) in a position that could lead to such a misinterpretation. In addition, some MT systems may be unable to translate such sentences correctly.

3. Look for present participles (verb forms that end in -ING) such as corresponding, describing, and using.

a. If the -ING word follows a verb such as begin, start, or continue that can take an infinitive complement, then consider changing the -ING word to an infinitive.

Rationale: In English -ING words (present participles) can represent many different parts of speech and grammatical constructions. Therefor, they are inherently confusing to many non-native speakers of English. It’s best to add syntactic cues to them (to make them utterly unambiguous) or to eliminate them altogether when it is possible to do so.

b. If the -ING word follows and modifies a noun, then always either expand the -ING word into a relative clause or find some other way of eliminating it.

Rationale: It is often possible that the -ING word is modifying a previous clause rather than the preceding noun. An MT system cannot reliably determine the correct interpretation.

f. If an -ING word is acting as an adjective (occurring before a noun), then consider whether it could be mistaken for a gerund (acting as a noun), or vice-versa. If so, revise the sentence or phrase.

Koh’ls article cites numerous other guidelines on syntactic cues and provides specific examples for each guideline.

Reason Number 3:

I found out that with Android devices (smartphones or tablets) that use the Chrome browser, the browser automatically translates into English a web page that’s written in another language. For example, when I visit a web page that’s written in Bahasa Indonesia, my Chrome browser automatically translates the page into English.

And vice-versa. For example, if someone from Russia browses any of my blog posts, Chrome will automatically translate my English text into Russian.

Having found this out, I considered Kohl’s guidelines on syntactic cues and machine translation (MT). I have seen some egregiously-bad examples of translations by Google Translate, and I’ve concluded that, by following Kohl’s guidelines, my blog posts can be translated better into other languages.

But I have also followed Kohl’s foundational principle for “Global English”; if a sentence construction sounds weird or unnatural for a native-English speaker, revise the sentence.
« Last Edit: February 13, 2019, 07:38:33 AM by Gerry T. Galacio »

Joe Carillo

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Re: Reducing adjective clauses for conciseness
« Reply #2 on: February 12, 2019, 09:23:47 PM »
There really is no disputing that for nonnative English speakers still aiming for adequate mastery of English grammar and usage, it's best not even to attempt dropping the relative pronouns “that” or “who” from adjective clauses. As I said in my essay, “Not all sentences with adjective clauses can be reduced meaningfully... In particular, reduction fails when a sentence contains the modal auxiliary verbs ‘should,’ ‘may,’ ‘can,’ or ‘must.’ The element of probability or uncertainty provided by these words is unavoidably lost in the reduction, which of course distorts the meaning of the sentence.” There just are too many exceptions to reckon with.

What I strongly recommend to beginning learners of English is just to avoid the overuse of adjective clauses, which are in fact extended modifiers introduced by the relative pronouns “that,” “which,” “who,” “whom,” “whose,” and “where.” These adjective clauses can often be converted—and by “often” I mean not in all situations—into structurally simpler adjective phrases by dropping those relative pronouns and the linking verb itself. It admittedly takes lots of exposure in both spoken and written English to do this right. However, as their fluency in English blooms into mastery, it will become second nature for learners of English to confidently and effortlessly convert adjective clauses into adjective phrases for conciseness and easier articulation of their ideas.

Gerry T. Galacio

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Re: Reducing adjective clauses for conciseness
« Reply #3 on: February 13, 2019, 07:45:30 AM »
Joe, thanks for your reply.

I have a copy of “Improving Translatability and Readability with Syntactic Cues” by John R. Kohl ; I don’t remember now from where I downloaded it. But that article, I think, is part of Kohl’s book on Global English.

I can send you a copy of this article by email attachment if you want to read it. It would be nice if you can write an article about his numerous suggestions on syntactic cues.

(I also have PDF copies of some chapters of Kohl’s book. He offered these free PDFs several years ago; I don’t know if these free offers are still found on his website.)

Joe Carillo

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Re: Reducing adjective clauses for conciseness
« Reply #4 on: February 13, 2019, 10:09:26 AM »
You're welcome, Gerry! And yes, please send me John Kohl's article by e-mail. I'll see if the Forum can share it in its entirety with its members.

Gerry T. Galacio

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Materials by Kohl sent by email
« Reply #5 on: February 14, 2019, 07:35:50 AM »
I sent to  [ jcarilloforum@gmail.com ] the following materials by Kohl:

1. Global English Table of Contents

2. Global English introductory chapter

3. Syntactic cues

Nos. 1 and 2 are PDFs that Kohl offered several years ago in his website. Please check his website for conditions on the use of these sample chapters.

No. 3 is a PDF of Kohl's article that appeared in a technical writing journal. I think this article is in the index part of Kohl's book on Global English.

Note: From Google Search, there's another available PDF of Kohl's guidelines titled "The Top Ten Global English Guidelines - SAS Support" but, for one reason or another, I can't access it. 

Joe Carillo

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Re: Reducing adjective clauses for conciseness
« Reply #6 on: February 14, 2019, 10:02:34 AM »
Thanks a lot, Gerry! I'll download the materials and look them over.

Gerry T. Galacio

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Syntactic cues guidelines in PDF
« Reply #7 on: February 14, 2019, 02:51:23 PM »
With regards the guidelines on syntactic cues, you can find them all, explanations, and examples in a table at the end of the PDF (starting at page marked "160"). Title is "Appendix: A Procedure for Using Syntactic Cues."