3. Relative Clause
Relative clauses are a special class
of dependent clause (also called "subordinate
clause") that serve to modify a noun. In English,
as in most other Indo-European languages,
relative clauses are often introduced by
a relative pronoun one of the wh- words "who",
"whom", "whose", "what", or "which", or by that.
Reduced relative clauses, on the other hand,
have no relative pronoun introducing them. The
example below contrasts an English non-
reduced relative clause and reduced relative
clause.
4. Relative Clause
Relative clause: The man who/that I saw was big.
Subject of Predicate of
Relative clause
main clause main clause
Reduced relative
The man I saw was big.
clause:
Subject of Reduced relative Predicate of
main clause clause main clause
5. Reduced Relative Clause
A reduced relative clause is a relative
clause that is not marked by an
overt complementizer (such as that).
Reduced relative clauses often give rise to
ambiguity or garden path effects, and have
been a common topic
of psycholinguistic study, especially in the
field of sentence processing.
7. Reduced Relative Clause
• Reader can interpret it in two different ways:
as a main verb, or the first verb of a reduced
relative clause.
"the florist sent the flowers to the elderly
widow“(in which "sent" is the main verb)
"the florist "the florist [who was] sent the flowers was
sent..." very pleased" (in which "sent" is the beginning
of a reduced relative clause)
effect whereby a reader begins a sentence
garden path effect with one interpretation, and later is forced to
backtrack and re-analyze the sentence's
structure
8. Reduced Relative Passive Clause
John kicked the ball
the ball was kicked
reduced object relative passive
clause
(so called because the noun being modified is the
direct object of the relative clause, and the relative
clause is in passive voice)
The horse raced past the barn fell.
9. Reduced Relative Clause
• While reduced relative clauses are not the
only structures that create garden path
sentences in English (other forms of garden
path sentences include those caused by lexical
ambiguity, or words that can have more than
one meaning), they are the "classic" example
of garden path sentences.
