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In last week’s column, we discussed the three most
common ways of reducing adjective clauses to adjective phrases. We
saw 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
office” can be reduced to the adjective phrase “elected to
public office” to produce this more concise, forthright sentence:
“Many politicians elected to public office often treat their
positions as family heirlooms.”
Recall that adjective clauses,
which are also called relative clauses, can either be restrictive or
nonrestrictive. It is restrictive when it provides essential
information about the subject of the sentence, as the clause “that
has just ended” in “The year that has just ended was notable for
its severe economic turbulence.” On the other hand, it is
nonrestrictive when it provides information that isn’t essential
to the meaning of the sentence (as indicated by the commas setting
the clause off from the main clause), as the clause “which was
uninhabited a decade ago” in “The island, which was uninhabited
a decade ago, is now a world-class resort.”
Now, whether restrictive or
non-restrictive, an adjective clause can often be reduced to an
adjective phrase to make the sentence more concise. In the first
example given in the preceding paragraph, 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.”
Note that 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 case of the first sentence with
the restrictive adjective clause reduced to an adjective phrase,
putting “just ended” up front yields this fractured sentence:
“Just ended, the year was notable for its severe economic
turbulence.”
We must also beware 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 yesterday was the heaviest this year,” it’s not
possible at all to reduce the adjective clause “that fell in
torrents this morning.” To simply 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 described in last week’s column, 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.”
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.
j8carillo@yahoo.com
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