Adjective and relative clause

Adjective clauses are dependent clauses used to modify nouns or pronouns. An adjective clause usually immediately follows the noun or pronoun it modifies (see Misplaced Modifiers). A common type of adjective clause is the relative clause. As with other modifiers, punctuation with adjective clauses is determined by whether the clauses are restrictive or nonrestrictive.

A dependent clause used as an adjective within a sentence. Also known as an adjectival clause or a relative clause. An adjective clause usually begins with a relative pronoun (which, that, who, whom, whose), a relative adverb (where, when, why), or a zero relative.
A relative clause is always used to join together two sentences that share one of their arguments. For example, the sentence "The man that I saw yesterday went home" is equivalent to the following two sentences: "The man went home. I saw the man yesterday." In this case, "the man" occurs as argument to both sentences. Note that there is no requirement that the shared argument fulfills the same role in both of the joined sentences; indeed, in this example, "the man" is subject of the first, but direct object of the second.

Examples :

The happy man walking across the street.

Happy is an adjective modifying the noun man.

It is telling us which man.

(Remember that Which one? is one of the adjective questions.)

Which man? The happy man.

Now, look at this sentence :

The man who looks happy walking across the street.

This time, a whole clause is modifying the noun man.

The clause is still telling us which man.

Which man? The man who looks happy.

This clause is an adjective clause. It is a group of words with a subject and a verb, and it is acting as one part of speech - an adjective.

Here are examples using these relative pronouns :

·         The person who made the barack needs your help to clean it. (modifying person)

·         The girl whom you teach is my nephew. (modifying girl)

·         People whose dogs shed need to vacuum often. (modifying people)

·         This is the house that randall built. (modifying house)

·         The book which I had not read fell on my head. (modifying book)

Here are several examples of sentences with the adjective clauses underlined :

·         Pizza, which most people love, is not very healthy.

·         The people whose names are on the list will go to camp.

·         Grandpa remembers the old days when there was no television. 

·         Fruit that is grown organically is expensive.

·         Students who are intelligent get good grades.

·         Eco-friendly cars that run on electricity save gas.

·         I know someone whose father served in World War II.

Article Containing Adjective Clauses :

Global Warming & Climate Change

Global warming has become perhaps the most complicated issue facing world leaders. Warnings from the scientific community are becoming louder, as an increasing body of science points to rising dangers from the ongoing buildup of human-related greenhouse gases — produced mainly by the burning of fossil fuels and forests.

Global emissions of carbon dioxide jumped by the largest amount on record in 2010, upending the notion that the brief decline during the recession might persist through the recovery. Emissions rose 5.9 percent in 2010, according to the Global Carbon Project, an international collaboration of scientists. The increase solidified a trend of ever-rising emissions that scientists fear will make it difficult, if not impossible, to forestall severe climate change in coming decades.

However, the technological, economic and political issues that have to be resolved before a concerted worldwide effort to reduce emissions can begin have gotten no simpler, particularly in the face of a global economic slowdown.

For almost two decades, the United Nations has sponsored annual global talks, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, an international treaty signed by 194 countries to cooperatively discuss global climate change and its impact. The conferences operate on the principle of consensus, meaning that any of the participating nations can hold up an agreement.

The conflicts and controversies discussed are monotonously familiar: the differing obligations of industrialized and developing nations, the question of who will pay to help poor nations adapt, the urgency of protecting tropical forests and the need to rapidly develop and deploy clean energy technology.

But the meetings have often ended in disillusionment, with incremental political progress but little real impact on the climate. The negotiating process itself has come under fire from some quarters, including the poorest nations who believe their needs are being neglected in the fight among the major economic powers. Criticism has also come from a small but vocal band of climate-change skeptics, many of them members of the United States Congress, who doubt the existence of human influence on the climate and ridicule international efforts to deal with it.

Exercises :

1.      I talked to the women. She was sitting next to me. (Who)

I talked to the women who was sitting next to me.

2.      I have a class. It begins at 8.00 AM. (Which)

I have a class which begins at 8.00 AM.

3.      The man called the police. His car was Stolen. (Whose)

The man called the police whose car was stolen.

4.      The building is very old. He lives there. (Where)

The building is very old where he lives.

5.      The woman was Ms. Silvy. I saw her. (Whom)

The woman whom I saw was Ms. Silvy.

http://www.enotes.com/topic/Relative_clause

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.html

http://examples.yourdictionary.com/example-adjective-clauses.html