Adjective phrase

ADJECTIVE PHRASES

K. Hanson

Adjective clauses can be reduced to adjective phrases under certain grammatical conditions.  In the examples below, you will see a noun modified by an adjective clause and then an example of the same noun modified by the shorter adjective phrase.  The red dots indicate that the main clause is incomplete as you are focusing only on clause-to-phrase reduction in these examples.  For such reductions to occur, the relative pronoun must be a subject pronoun in all cases.

Grammatical Condition	Clause	Phrase
Verb in adjective clause is an active verb	People who live in large cities...	people living in large cities...
Verb in adjective clause is progressive	Students who are studying at urban campuses...	Students studying at urban campuses...
Verb in adjective clause is passive	Children who are born with congenital heart disease...	Children born with congenital heart disease... (the preferred style)
Adj. clause has the verb be + adjective + infinitive complement	Children who are most likely to recover from serious illness...	Children most likely to recover from serious illness...
Adj. clause has another name for the modified noun (an appositive)	Dr. Francisco Ramirez, who is chief pediatric surgeon at Children's Hospital,...	Dr. Francisco Ramirez, chief pediatric surgeon at Children's Hospital,... the appositive phrase is preferred style and is non-restrictive.