48 Noun Phrases
3. The senator from California expressed her concern about the problem.
4. A reporter in China broke the story about the peace talks.
5. The door in the dining room really needs a new coat of paint.
6. They had a big victory despite all the odds.
7. A new painting by the English painter Turner has just been discovered.
8. I had no illusions about my chances.
9. The witness to the crime refused to testify.
10. We couldn’t understand his motive for lying.
11. The rim of the cup was chipped.
12. It was no time for indecision.
13. The waiting period in the clinic is nearly an hour.
14. It seemed like we visited every old church in the city.
15. The period just after sunset is the most dangerous time to drive.
It is not very diffi cult to recognize prepositional phrases. It is more diffi cult to fi gure out
whether they are adjectival (noun modifi ers) or adverbial (modifi ers of verbs and other adverbs).
Adjectival and adverbial prepositional phrases look exactly alike. For example, compare the
prepositional phrase with friends in the following sentences:
We had a nice dinner last night with friends.
A nice dinner with friends is always a great pleasure.
In the fi rst sentence, with friends is adverbial, but in the second sentence, with friends is adjectival,
modifying the noun dinner. The only way to reliably identify adjectival prepositional phrases is
by testing the prepositional phrase by third-person pronoun substitution. When a prepositional
phrase (along with the noun) can be replaced by a third-person pronoun, that phrase must be a
noun modifi er. Likewise, when a prepositional phrase cannot be replaced by a third-person pro-
noun, that prepositional phrase is adverbial. Here is the third-person pronoun replacement test
applied to the two example sentences given above:
it
We had a nice dinner last night with friends.
It
A nice dinner with friends is always a great pleasure.

50 Noun Phrases
Adjective (relative) clauses
Adjective clauses (also known as relative clauses) have their own internal subject-verb agreement
structure (like independent clauses), but unlike independent clauses, adjectives clauses can never
stand alone as independent sentences. Adjective clauses are thus a type of dependent clause.
Adjective clauses are always attached to the nouns that they modify. Here are some examples with
the noun being modifi ed underlined and the adjective clause in italics:
The book that I need is not in the library.
I answered all of the questions that I could.
The editorial, which had appeared in the Times, was the talk of the town.
The man who introduced the speaker is the vice-president of the society.
Alice Johnson, who is the head of personnel, will be at the interview.
The students whom I was talking about earlier are all in their fi rst year here.
We interviewed the parents whose children participated in the study.
Did you fi nd a place where we can park overnight?
We need to pick a time when we can all meet.
We can always identify adjective clauses by the third-person pronoun replacement test.
Adjective clauses are the only type of dependent clause that will be inside the boundaries of the
third-person pronoun substitution. Here is the third-person pronoun test applied to all of the
above examples of adjective clauses:
The book that I need is not in the library.
It is not in the library.
I answered all of the questions that I could.
I answered all of them.
The editorial, which had appeared in the Times, was the talk of the town.
It was the talk of the town.
The man who introduced the speaker is the vice-president of the society.
He is the vice-president of the society.
Alice Johnson, who is the head of personnel, will be at the interview.
She will be at the interview.

16. Some fans whose enthusiasm knew no limits climbed up on stage.
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52 Noun Phrases
17. Berlin, which had been a divided city, is now open to everyone.
18. Our friends went to a museum where there was free admission on Mondays.
19. That was the moment when I knew we were in big trouble.
20. The yogurt, which had been in our refrigerator for months, had to be thrown out.
The internal structure of adjective clauses
Virtually all languages have adjective clauses. The internal structure of adjective clauses in Eng-
lish, however, is unusually complicated. All adjective clauses must begin with a special pronoun
called a relative pronoun. (The term relative pronoun refers to the fact that these pronouns are
used only in forming relative clauses.) The choice of which relative pronoun to use is governed by
two factors: (1) the role of the relative pronoun inside its own adjective clause (i.e., whether the
relative pronoun is a subject, object, possessive, adverb of space, or adverb of time), and (2) the
nature of the noun that the adjective clause modifi es. This noun is known as the antecedent of
the relative pronoun. We will examine both of these factors in more detail.
Role of the relative pronoun inside its own clause. We choose between who, whom, and whose
depending on the role the relative pronoun plays. If the relative pronoun plays the role of subject,
we must use who. If the relative pronoun plays the role of object, we must use whom. (The m in
whom is historically the same object marker as in him and them.) If the relative pronoun is posses-
sive, we must use whose. In the following examples the relative pronoun is in italics and the entire
adjective clause is underlined.
Relative pronoun plays the role of subject
He is a person who will always do the right thing.
In this sentence, who is the subject of the verb do.
Please give your dues to Ms. Walker, who is the treasurer of the organization.
Here who is the subject of the verb is.
The musicians who played for us today are all from local schools.
In this sentence, who is the subject of the verb played.
Relative pronoun plays the role of object

9. All the employees (the employees) were hoping for a raise will be disappointed.
10. The new secretary (the secretary’s) name I can never remember left a message.
11. The drivers (the drivers) the company had hired were all new to the area.
12. We went back to the waiter (the waiter) had waited on us earlier.
13. I looked up the lawyer (the lawyer) you recommended.
14. I looked up the lawyer (the lawyer) wrote the contract.
15. I looked up the lawyer (the lawyer’s) presentation we all liked.
The nature of the noun that the relative clause modifi es. The relative pronoun always immedi-
ately follows the noun that relative pronoun refers to. This noun is called the antecedent of the
relative pronoun. For example, look at the following sentence:
We need to talk about the courses that you are going to take next term.
The antecedent of the relative pronoun that is the noun courses. Even when the relative pronoun
is a possessive, the possessive must refer to the possessive form of the antecedent noun. For
example, in the following sentence
The organization whose offices you visited was written up in a magazine.
Whose refers to the possessive form of the antecedent noun organization, that is, you visited the
organization’s offi ces.
The nature of the antecedent also exerts control over which relative pronoun we use.
• If the antecedent is human, we must use who, whom, or whose as the relative pronoun.
(The choice among who, whom, and whose is governed by the role of the relative pronoun inside
the adjective clause.)
• If the antecedent is not human, we must use that or which as the relative pronoun. (We
will discuss the distinction between that and which in great detail later in this chapter. For now,
we will use that in all of our examples because the distinction between that and which is irrel-
evant to our discussion of how relative clauses are formed.)
• If the antecedent is a noun that refers to space (a spatial noun), we use where as the rela-
tive pronoun.
• If the antecedent is a noun that refers to time (a temporal noun), we use when as the rela-
tive pronoun. (We can also use that.)
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