Teacher Discussion Forums

Hi,

This is my first post, and I really hope someone can help me on this.
I’m teaching a high advanced course, and a lesson on reducing relative clauses.

The course book I use only covers subject relative clauses, and states that “a clause that contains the passive voice or the progressive form can be reduced to a phrase by omitting the relative pronoun and be verb in the clause”

Example:

The tires that were used on early automobiles were very crude

The tires used on early automobiles were very crude


The team that is working on the zero-emissions car is made up of young engineers from all over the world.

The team working on the zero-emissions car is made up of young engineers from all over the world.

So far so good, but I decided to look further and look for similar examples using object relative clauses. I’m not sure the terms I use are correct, but here are some examples:

This affects people who were born after 1950

This affects people born after 1950


I counted the number of students who were waiting for the shop to open.

I counted the number of students waiting for the shop to open.


I believe the above are correct, but here’s my problem, if I say:


I met somebody who was robbed.

I met somebody robbed. ???

I rang my sister who is living in the States

I rang my sister living in the States. ???

Would someone know why? Is there a rule? I've asked around, checked grammar books and the web with no success.

Thanks for your help.

It's to do with our unwillingness to process ambiguity. The moment the "on" after "Tyres used" is processed then we recognise that the "used" is adjectival. Not that the processing takes place word-by-word.

It's easier to take on board the "run" of "I don't like seeing dogs run" as the the present and not the parciple.

The classic example of this is "The horse raced past the barn fell".

Any sentence wih a bit of a "double take" in it is suspect.

So your penultimate sentence is a bit hard to deal with mentally. As far as your last sentence is concerned, I don't personally have such a problem with it .

Another explanation I seem to remember is that these things work best when it is possible to reduce them still further by moving only the ing/ed in front of the noun:

"I counted the number of waiting students"

"The working team"

"Born people" *

This doesn't work with "used tyres" or "I rang my living sister" without a change of meaning so I'm not sure about this at all. Maybe I misunderstood the rule of thumb in question.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence

I like "the player kicked the ball kicked the ball"

Thanks for your help Juan, this is great.

S.