A. Adjective Clauses
Examples
- The happy woman danced across the street.
- Happy is an adjective modifying the noun woman.
- It is telling us which woman.
- The woman who looks happy danced across the street.
- This time, a whole clause is modifying the noun woman.
- The clause is still telling us which woman.
1. Adjective Clause Using Subject Pronouns: Who, Which, That
Without adjective clause / relative clause | Using adjective clause / relative clause |
---|---|
I will introduce you to a friend. He runs a successful business. | I will introduce you to a friend who runs a successful business. I will introduce you to a friend that runs a successful business. |
The book is about religion. It has raised controversy. | The book which has raised controversy is about religion. The book that has raised controversy is about religion. |
2. Adjective Clause Using Object Pronouns: Who(m), Which, That
Without adjective clause / relative clause | Using adjective clause / relative clause |
---|---|
I will introduce you to a friend. You have never met him before. | I will introduce you to a friend (who(m)) you have never met before. I will introduce you to a friend (that) you have never met before. |
The book is about religion. I bought it in Gramedia bookstore last week. | The book (which) I bought in Gramedia bookstore last week is about religion. The book (that) I bought in Gramedia bookstore last week is about religion. |
The song was very popular in 1990's. I am listening to it. | The song to which I am listening was very popular in 1990's. The song (which) I am listening to was very popular in 1990's. The song (that) I am listening to was very popular in 1990's. |
3. Adjective Clause Using Whose
Without adjective clause / relative clause | Using adjective clause / relative clause |
---|---|
I will introduce you to a friend. His interest is learning English. | I will introduce you to a friend whose interest is learning English. |
The old lady has a painting. Its value is inestimable. | The old lady has a painting whose value is inestimable. |
4. Adjective Clause Using Where
Without adjective clause / relative clause | Using adjective clause / relative clause |
---|---|
I will take you to the restaurant. I usually have lunch there (at the restaurant). | I will take you to the restaurant where I usually have lunch. I will take you to the restaurant at which I usually have lunch. I will take you to the restaurant (which) I usually have lunch at. |
The old lady has sold the house. She has lived there (in the house) for more than twenty years. | The old lady has sold the house where she has lived for more than twenty years. The old lady has sold the house in which she has lived for more than twenty years. The old lady has sold the house (which) she has lived in for more than twenty years. |
B. Relative Pronouns Introduce Them
- The person who made the mess needs to clean it. (modifying person)
- The girl whom you teach is my sister. (modifying girl)
- People whose cats shed need to vacuum often. (modifying people)
- This is the house that Jack built. (modifying house)
- The book which I had not read fell on my head. (modifying book)
C. No Relative Pronoun?
- The instrument that I love is the piano.
- The instrument I love is the piano.
- The instrument (that) I love is the piano.
Relative Adverbs
- This is the park where we played.
- Tuesday is the day when we have pizza for dinner.
- Our teacher told us the reason why we study grammar.
Observations:
Examples:
- "He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead."(Albert Einstein)
- "Creatures whose mainspring is curiosity enjoy the accumulating of facts far more than the pausing at times to reflect on those facts."(Clarence Day)
- "Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh."(W. H. Auden)
- "Short, fat, and of a quiet disposition, he appeared to spend a lot of money on really bad clothes, which hung about his squat frame like skin on a shrunken toad."(John le Carré, Call for the Dead, 1961)
- "Love, which was once believed to contain the Answer, we now know to be nothing more than an inherited behavior pattern."(James Thurber)
- "The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."(Martin Luther King, Jr.)
- "The IRS spends God knows how much of your tax money on these toll-free information hot lines staffed by IRS employees, whose idea of a dynamite tax tip is that you should print neatly."(Dave Barry)
- "On I trudged, past the carefully roped-off breeding grounds of terns, which chirruped a warning overhead."(Will Self, "A Real Cliff Hanger," 2008)
- "The man that invented the cuckoo clock is no more."(Mark Twain)
- "Afterwards, in the dusty little corners where London's secret servants drink together, there was argument about where the Dolphin case history should really begin."(John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy, 1977)
- "The man who first abused his fellows with swear words, instead of bashing their brains out with a club, should be counted among those who laid the foundations of civilization."(John Cohen, 1965) Sumber : http://grammar.about.com/od/ab/g/adjclterm.htm
- "It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages."(Henry Ford)
- "Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equal."(Charles Darwin)
- "Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal."(Martin Luther King, Jr.)
- "I like to keep a bottle of stimulant handy in case I see a snake, which I also keep handy."(W.C. Fields)
- "The essence of childhood, of course, is play, which my friends and I did endlessly on streets / that we reluctantly shared with traffic."(Bill Cosby)
- "Titmice, which had hidden in the leafy shade of mountains all summer, perched on the gutter."(Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, 1974)
- "Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it."(George Orwell)
- "I did not learn everything I need to know in kindergarten."(Bart Simpson, The Simpsons)
- "There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come."(Victor Hugo)
- "She had given Laura a ten-dollar tip, far and away the biggest that she'd ever received--and Laura had split it the next day with Billy, who almost never got tipped because people knew he was simple and had no real concept of money."(Antoinette Stockenberg, A Month at the Shore. St. Martin's, 2003)
Observations:
- "Unlike prepositional phrases, restrictive relative clauses . . . always modify noun phrases. However, a relative clause doesn't always immediately follow the noun phrase that it modifies. For example, if two relative clauses are joined by a coordinating conjunction (and, or, or but), then the second one doesn't immediately follow the noun phrase that it modifies:
This article describes features that facilitate collaboration but that are not intended to increase security.
(John R. Kohl, The Global English Style Guide: Writing Clear, Translatable Documentation for a Global Market. SAS Institute, 2008) - "Relative clauses are so called because they are related by their form to an antecedent. They contain within their structure an anaphoric element whose interpretation is determined by the antecedent. This anaphoric element may be overt or covert. In the overt case the relative clause is marked by the presence of one of the relative words who, whom, whose, which, etc., as or within the initial constituent: clauses of this type we call whrelatives. In non-wh relatives the anaphoric element is covert, a gap; this class is then subdivided into that relatives and bare relatives depending on the presence or absence of that."(Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey Pullum, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002)