English Grammar Drills

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 modified 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 first year here.
We interviewed the parents whose children participated in the study.
Did you find 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.
The students whom I was talking about earlier are all in their first year here.
They are all in their first year here.