Adjective Clauses
(aka relative clauses)
Part 1: with subject pronouns
What do you know?
 What is an adjective?
 What is a clause?
Put them together:
 FORM: An adjective clause is a group of words
containing a subject and verb – it’s a special kind of
clause.
 FUNCTION: This group of words modifies (describes) a
noun or a sentence.
 It usually follows the noun that it modifies.
 The adjective clause might identify the noun, or it might
give extra information.
Examples:
 The Joy Luck Club is a book that is about 4 groups of
mothers and daughters.
 Amy Tan, who wrote the book, is a Chinese-American
woman.
 Tan, whose parents were Chinese immigrants, is a
famous American writer.
 The Joy Luck Club is also the name of a movie which is
based on the book.
A closer look:
 The adjective clause follows the same order as the
sentence: subject + verb
 The subject in the adjective clause must be one of these
words. These are some of the relative pronouns:
 Who
 Which
That
Whose (+noun)
Relative pronouns
 When the noun being modified is a person, you can use
“who” or “that.” (Avoid using “which.”)
 Examples:
 The man who was my husband brought me and our two
babies there. (p. 3)
 Informal:
 The man that was my husband brought me and our two
babies there.
More Relative Pronouns
 When the noun being modified is a place or a thing, you
can use “which” or “that.” (Do not use “who.”)
 The river which ran through my family’s small farm
flooded our fields. (p. 20)
 The river that ran through my family’s small farm
flooded our fields.
 Joy Luck was an idea my mother remembered from the
days of her first marriage in a town that was called
Kweilin.
… and more
Relative Pronouns
 When then noun being modified shows possession or a
relationship, use “whose.”
 But now I see this is also for the benefit of Auntie Anmei, whose own son was arrested two years ago for
selling stolen stereos. (p. 11)
 Who was arrested?
 What was his relationship to Auntie An-mei?
 Tricky! Notice that after “whose” you must include the noun
that was “possessed” and then you use the verb.
Possession, continued
 He was a large, unsmiling man, whose restless eyes
followed me around the house. (p. 15)
 What was the “possession”?
 Who “possessed” them?
Tricky things!
 Use only a relative pronoun in an adjective clause. Don’t
use a relative pronoun plus a subject pronoun.
 YES: The only father I knew was a big painting that
hung in the hall. (p.15)
 NO: The only father I knew was a big painting that it
hung in the hall.
More tricky things!
 Relative pronouns don’t change based on gender (male
female) or number (singular or plural).
 Auntie Lindo and my mother were best friends and
sworn enemies, who spent a lifetime comparing their
children. (p.11)
 They see daughters who grow impatient when their
mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when
they explain things in broken English. (p.13)
Even more tricky things!
 The verb in the adjective clause should agree with the
noun it modifies.
 But I often heard stories of a ghost who tried to take
children away, especially little girls who were disobedient.
(p.14)
EXCEPTION: in a clause with “whose,” the verb agrees
with the subject of the clause (the noun being possessed).
 I came to think of Tyan-yu as a god, someone whose
opinions were worth much more than my own life.(p.21)
Commas
 Did you notice some clauses have commas and some
don’t?
 When do you use the commas?
 Restrictive/identifying/necessary clauses – no commas
 Nonrestrictive/non-identifying/ “extra information”
clauses – use commas
Identifying/Necessary
 If a clause gives information that identifies the noun –
that is necessary to understand the information in the
sentence – don’t use commas.
 Amy Tan is the author who wrote The Joy Luck Club.
 What is the purpose of this sentence?
 What is the independent clause?
 Does the independent clause give us all the necessary
information?
Non-identifying/“Extra”
 Amy Tan, who wrote The Joy Luck Club, was born in
California.
 What is the purpose of this sentence?
 What is the independent clause?
 Does the independent clause give us all the necessary
information?
A tricky thing…
 Don’t use “that” in nonidentifying (extra information) adjective
clauses. Use “who” for people and use “which” for places and
things.
 YES: Amy Tan, who wrote the Joy Luck Club, was born in
California.
 NO: Amy Tan, that wrote The Joy Luck Club, was born in
California.
 YES: The Joy Luck Club, which is about four mothers and their
daughters, is a book and a movie.
 NO: The Joy Luck Club, that is about four mothers and their
daughters, is a book and movie.
One more tricky thing
 Sentences with adjective clauses can have very different meanings
depending on their punctuation.
 The writer, whose mother is Chinese, comes from California.
 (We are only talking about one writer, and she comes from California. The
fact that her mother is Chinese is “extra” information and not important.)
 The writer whose mother is Chinese comes from California.
 (There are other writers, too. One has a mother who is Japanese, another has
a mother who is Arabic, and another has a mother who is Vietnamese. There
are no commas because we need to know which writer is being discussed.)
Coming soon:
 Adjective clauses with other kinds of pronouns .