We saw in last week’s column that generally, adjective clauses that use the relative pronouns “who,” “which,” and “that” can be reduced by dropping the relative pronoun and the form of the verb “be” used in the adjective clause. For example, in the sentence “Many politicians
who are elected to public office often treat their positions as family heirlooms,” the adjective clause “who are elected to public office” can be reduced to the adjective phrase “elected to public office” to produce this more concise sentence: “Many politicians
elected to public office often treat their positions as family heirlooms.”
Recall that adjective clauses or relative clauses can either be restrictive or nonrestrictive. It’s
restrictive when it provides essential information about the subject of the sentence, as the clause “that has just ended” does in “The year
that has just ended was notable for its severe economic turbulence.” But it’s
nonrestrictive when it provides information that isn’t essential to the meaning of the sentence (the clause is set off by commas from the main clause), as “which was uninhabited a decade ago” isn’t in “The island,
which was uninhabited a decade ago, is now a world-class resort.”
IMAGE CREDIT: WWW.DIFFERENCEBETWEEN.COMNow, whether restrictive or nonrestrictive, an adjective clause can often be reduced to an adjective phrase to make the sentence more concise. In the first example above, for instance, the restrictive adjective clause “that has just ended” can be reduced to the adjective phrase “just ended” to yield this sentence: “The year
just ended was notable for its severe economic turbulence.” Similarly, in the second example, the nonrestrictive adjective clause “which was uninhabited a decade ago” can be reduced to the adjective phrase “uninhabited a decade ago” to yield this sentence: “The island,
uninhabited a decade ago, is now a world-class resort.”
When a nonrestrictive adjective clause modifying the subject of a sentence is reduced to an adjective phrase, as in the example above, the adjective phrase can alternatively be placed in front of the subject of the sentence: “
Uninhabited a decade ago, the island is now a world-class resort.” This can’t be done in the case of reduced restrictive adjective clauses. In fact, in the first sentence in which the restrictive adjective clause was reduced to an adjective phrase, putting “just ended” up front fractures the sentence: “
Just ended, the year was notable for its severe economic turbulence.”
Beware, too, that it isn’t always possible to reduce an adjective clause to an adjective phrase. For example, in the sentence “The rain
that fell in torrents this morning was the heaviest this year,” there’s no way at all to reduce the adjective clause “that fell in torrents this morning.” To drop the relative pronoun “that” from the adjective clause produces this fractured sentence “The rain
fell in torrents yesterday was the heaviest this year”; on the other hand, following the first reduction procedure this column described last week, to drop “that” and convert “fell” to the progressive-form “falling” to reduce the adjective clause to the adjective phrase “falling in torrents this morning” yields this semantically dubious, time-skewed sentence, “The rain
falling in torrents yesterday was the heaviest this year.”
For an even better feel of the limits of adjective clause reduction, try doing it for this sentence: “Customers who have missed the show are disappointed.” (Were you able to do it?)
Indeed, we need to play it by ear when faced with the choice of reducing an adjective clause to an adjective phrase. If the reduction makes the sentence sound better without altering its sense, go right ahead. But if the reduction doesn’t sound right or changes the meaning of the sentence, simply leave the adjective clause the way it is, relative pronoun and all.
(Next:
Never strand a direct object at the end of the main clause) October 11, 2018
This essay, 1,112th of the series, appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the Campus Press section of the October 27, 2018 issue (print edition only) of The Manila Times
, © 2018 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
