Job Discussion Forums

[7969]

in my writing classes, some of my students are confused by the myriad of clauses that they've been taught, so in order to clear it up, i'm going to give them an info lesson on the different clauses (the main ones).

so far i have:

1. independent clause
2. dependent clause
3. non-defining relative clause
4. defining relative clause
5. adjective clause
6. adverbial clause

one of my students brought up the "attributive clause" last week, but i've never heard of it. i did an online search and found that it might be similar to one of the above clauses, but in china they refer to it as the attributive clause.

at any rate, havent been able to access google recently and other search engines turn up a bunch of crap, so can anyone fill me in on what the attributive clause is, give an example or two, and perhaps a website that provides more information?

7969

[Yu]

I consulted Quirk and Greenbaums "A student's grammar of the English language" and did not find attributive clause. I found attributive and clause, but not together.
I have a book about for teaching Grammar by Azar and I will look in there.
I think I have heard of these before....

What about as in this sentence.

The man who was wearing a yellow hat found the monkey.

who was wearing the yellow hat is an attributive clause (just a guess???)

[7969]

thanks. your example seems to fit the defining relative clause (defining the man) or adjective clause (modifying the man) as well. some of these clauses perform similar or nearly similar functions, and i only became aware of the attributive clause when a student mentioned it to me. i think its a designation only used in china.

[yamahuh]

I'm amazed that none of the 'real teachers' on this board have offered their input, I guess they're too busy puffing out their chests and looking down their noses at everyone else.
Anyway here is my take on the attributive clause.

It is a subordinating adjective clause in that it cannot stand alone and it is introduced by a relative pronoun or adverb such as who, whom, whose, that, which, where, when etc. There are two types;
A DEFINING attributive / relative clause modifies the noun or pronoun that directly precedes it such as;

Tom is a large man who likes to play sports

The clause "who likes to play sports" modifies / or is attributed to the noun "man", i.e it gives more information about the noun that it modifies.

A NON-DEFINING attributive / relative clause gives further information about the noun it modifies but it is unnecessary information. Without it the sentence still makes sense such as;

The housewife, who had always wanted to be an actor, got her first role.

The clause "who had always wanted to be an actor' is a non defining attributive / relative clause that modifies 'The housewife'. Take the clause out and the sentence still makes perfect sense.

Hope this helps.

[7969]

thanks yamahuh.

i taught the restrictive and non restrictive appositive in the past two weeks. those two perform the same function as the defining and non-defining relative clauses, and so it seems, the defining and non-defining attributive clause.

as for the "real teachers" on this board...... some have more important things to do here i suppose such as bolster their claims to many hundreds of RMB per hour

[yamahuh]

Isn't that the truth?