Adjective Clauses and Adverb Clauses



Adjective Clauses and Adverb Clauses

Here is a brief review of adjective clauses and relative pronouns.

|[pic] |An adjective clause is used to describe a noun: |

|[pic]The car, which was red, belonged to Young-Hee. |

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|[pic] |A relative pronoun is usually used to introduce an adjective clause: |

|[pic]Young-Hee, who is a Korean student, lives in Victoria. |

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|The main relative pronouns are: |

|[pic] |Who: used for humans in subject position:: |

|[pic]Hans, who is an architect, lives in Berlin. |

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|[pic] |Whom: used for humans in object position:: |

|[pic]Marike, whom Hans knows well, is an interior decorator. |

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|[pic] |Which: used for things and animals in subject or object position:: |

|[pic]Marike has a dog which follows her everywhere. |

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|[pic] |That: used for humans, animals and things, in subject or object position (but see below):: |

|[pic]Marike is decorating a house that Hans designed. |

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|There are two main kinds of adjective clause: |

|[pic] |Non-defining clauses: give extra information about the noun, but they are not essential: |

|[pic]The desk in the corner, which is covered in books, is mine. |

|(We don't need this information in order to understand the sentence. "The desk in the corner is mine" is a good sentence on its own -- we still|

|know which desk is being referred to. Note that non-defining clauses are usually separated by commas, and that is not usually used in this kind|

|of context.) |

|[pic] |

|[pic] |Defining clauses: give essential information about the noun: |

|[pic]The package that arrived this morning is on the desk. |

|(We need this information in order to understand the sentence. Without the relative clause, we don't know which package is being referred|

|to. Note that that is often used in non-defining relative clauses, and they are not separated by commas.) |

Adverb Clauses

An adverb may be a single word such as quickly, here or yesterday, or a phrase such as the day before yesterday or to see my mother. However, adverbs can also be clauses, containing a subject and a full verb. This page will explain the basic types of adverb clauses (sometimes called "adverbial clauses") and how to recognize them.

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Adverbs, adverb phrases, and adverb clauses

Look at these sentences:

|I saw the movie yesterday. |

|I saw the movie on Friday. |

|I saw the movie before I left for Calgary. |

In the first sentence, "yesterday" is a one-word adverb, "on Friday" is an adverb phrase, and "before I left for Calgary" is an adverb clause. All of them answer the question "When?", but the adverb clause has a subject ("I") and a full verb ("left"). It is introduced by "before", so it is a dependent clause. This means that it cannot stand alone: "Before I left for Calgary" would not be a full sentence. It needs a main clause ("I saw the movie"). An adverb clause, then, is a dependent clause that does the same job as an adverb or an adverb phrase.

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Types of adverb clause

There are many types of adverb clauses. Here are some examples of the most common types:

|Type |Question answered |Example |

|Place |Where? |Wherever there are computers, there is Microsoft software. |

|Time |When? |After the fruit is harvested, it is sold at the market. |

|Cause |Why? (What caused this?) |I didn't call her because I'm shy. |

|Purpose |Why? (What was the reason for doing this?) |She took a computer course so that she could get a better job. |

|Concession |Why is this unexpected? |Although Jay has a Master's degree, he works as a store clerk. |

|Condition |Under what conditions? |If you save your money, you will be able to go to college. |

As you can see from the examples above, most adverb clauses can be recognized because they are introduced by a particular word or phrase (such as "when", "so that", etc.). These words and phrases are called subordinating conjunctions, and there are many of them, including the2e:

|Subordination conjunctions |

|after, before, until, while, because, since, as, so that, in order |

|that, if, unless, whether, though, although, even though, where |

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