Restrictive and Nonrestrictive Adjective Clauses

Lesson 3 Restrictive and Nonrestrictive Adjective Clauses

 

 Essential Question

 

How can different kinds of adjective clauses help you distinguish the details you want to include in a sentence from what you need to include?


Grammar in the World

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What Do I Know?

Use the interactive below to see how much you already know about restrictive and nonrestrictive adjective clauses:

Building Blocks

Grammar is a complex system and structure of language. Mizzou Academy Grammar Lab spotlights one skill (or block) at a time, but it’s often helpful to see how a skill works together with other, related blocks to build the language structure as a whole. You may find the following resource topics helpful as context for this lesson:

 

Learn About Restrictive and Nonrestrictive Adjective Clauses

Whether you’re writing a story, essay, argument, or report, there are two key choices that you have to make every step of the way:  

  1. where to include details, descriptions, or supporting specifics
  2. how to control your sentences so that they’re neither dull and monotonous, nor overburdened and difficult to follow 

One of the best tools you have in your writing arsenal to address these choices is the adjective clause. 

Let’s review: 

    • A clause is a group of words that contains its own subject and verb.
    • A dependent clause is a group of words that has both a subject and a verb, but it cannot stand alone as a complete sentence.
    • An adjective clause is a dependent clause that functions in a sentence like a single adjective, by describing or giving extra information about a noun or pronoun. 

 

Remember: Adjectives answer the questions which one? how many? or what kind? about a noun or pronoun. Adjective clauses do the same. 

Relative Pronouns

When you’re creating an adjective clause, use relative pronouns to connect the clause back to the noun or pronoun it modifies. 

The relative pronoun then becomes the subject of the dependent clause.

that

Learning about adjective clauses will help me with my writing assignment that is due Friday.

which

The essay, which has to demonstrate persuasive argument, is about one of my favorite topics. 

who/whom/whose

My English teacher, whose style can best be described as “tough love,” challenges us to be both great thinkers and great writers.

 

Restrictive vs. Nonrestrictive 

There are two different types of adjective clauses that you can use to modify any noun or pronoun in a sentence: restrictive and nonrestrictive. 

Here’s the difference: 

A restrictive clause is necessary information. The sentence doesn’t make sense without it, so in that way, it “restricts” the noun or pronoun it modifies by basically chaining itself to it. A restrictive clause makes itself necessary by defining the noun or pronoun it modifies, or by identifying an essential feature that the noun or pronoun needs in order to make sense in the sentence. 

      • The football player that calls the plays in the huddle should be a team captain.

For this sentence to make sense, we need to know which football player should be a team captain.

 

For the following sentence to make sense, we need to know what kind of person is the one you want to keep close during an emergency.

      • The person you want next to you during an emergency is the one who completed Red Cross first aid training.   

A nonrestrictive clause is supplemental information. It’s helpful to know and adds some descriptive detail, but the sentence would still make logical sense if you took it out. 

      • The wide receiver, whose position might be anywhere on the field, has to memorize every possible passing route. 

The adjective clause tells us some helpful details about the position of wide receiver, but the noun already defines itself. If you take the adjective clause out of the sentence, it still makes logical sense. 

      • The wide receiver has to memorize every possible passing route.
      • The Scout training camp, which focuses on survival skills, can teach you how to build a fire and capture food. 

The adjective clause tells us some interesting specifics about the camp, but the sentence could stand alone without it.

      • The Scout training camp can teach you how to build a fire and capture food.

 

Syntax Cues for Restrictive Adjective Clauses

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No commas

The rule: If an adjective clause is restrictive, it will not be set apart from the rest of the sentence by commas. It’s connected without breaks to the noun or pronoun it defines. 

Teens who respect rules abide by curfew. 

A dog that bites should not run free in a dog park.

Begins with that 

The *usual rule: There are some exceptions, but most often, restrictive adjective clauses begin with either who/whom/whose or that (instead of which).

My favorite coffee mug is the one that has coffee in it.

I only need coffee on days that end in “y.”

 

Syntax Cues for Nonrestrictive Adjective Clauses

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framed by commas

The rule: If an adjective clause is nonrestrictive, it is separated from the rest of the sentence by a comma before and/or after the clause. (Think of the commas like hooks that could lift the whole clause right out of the sentence.)

The last day of the school year, which happens to fall on my birthday, is cause for celebration! 

My best friend, who shares my birthday, has planned the party of the century!

Begins with which 

The *usual rule: There are some exceptions, but most often, nonrestrictive adjective clauses begin with either who/whom/whose or which (instead of that).

Any change to the school calendar which already has some extra days built in for weather closures would hugely depress me. 

But all that matters in the end is that we get to celebrate our achievements, which are many. 

 

Do I Get It?

Read carefully the following base sentence and the modifying information that follows it. 

The family adopted a dog. 

    • The family lives down the street.
    • The family has never had pets before. 
    • The family moved in last year.
    • The dog is a rescue from a local shelter.
    • The shelter is funded by private donations.
    • The dog is a pit bull.
    • Pit bull is a breed of dog that often makes people nervous. 
    • The dog’s name is Ginger. 
    • Ginger is super friendly. 
    • Ginger seems happy to have a home.