Lecture 3

Lecture 3: Where in the World is the Subject of That Adjective Clause?

Welcome back! At this point we’re going to change our focus just a little bit. So far we’ve been finding the subject and verb of a sentence (i.e. independent clause) and making sure that they agree in number (i.e. singular vs. plural). Now, however, we’re going to turn our attention to adjective clauses, which are actually dependent clauses, but I’m sure you already knew that. Adjective clauses are frequently used to give definitions, so we’ll be looking at a lot of technical definitions in this part of our unit. These definitions have all been adapted from the online dictionary Dictionary.com.

OK, before we go any further we need to remember that a clause is any “subject + verb” structure, and in English we have independent clauses and dependent clauses. Let’s return to an example from our Warm-Up section to see what we mean by that.

Example A: The Internet, which is a system, is not the same thing as the World Wide Web, which is a service, but many people mistakenly use the terms interchangeably.

This is quite a complicated sentence with one independent clause and three (yes, three!) dependent clauses. Let’s dissect it so that we can clearly see all these clauses. Then we’ll locate all their subjects and verbs and see how they agree in number. Remember: the subjects are highlighted in orange, and the verbs are highlighted in purple.

Clause	Type of Clause	Subject & Verb
The Internet is not the same thing as the World Wide Web	Independent clause (i.e. main sentence)	Subject = INTERNET (singular) Verb = IS (singular)
which is a system	Dependent clause (adjective clause)	Subject = WHICH Verb = IS (singular)
which is a service	Dependent clause (adjective clause)	Subject = WHICH Verb = IS (singular)
but many people mistakenly use the terms interchangeably	Dependent clause	Subject = PEOPLE (plural) Verb = USE (plural)

Notice that each clause (independent or dependent) has its own subject and its own verb. Notice also that each verb agrees in number with its subject. For example, in the independent clause the subject (INTERNET) is singular, and the verb (IS) is also singular. In the dependent clause that starts with the word BUT, the subject is PEOPLE, which I’m sure you recognize as plural. That’s why we have the plural verb USE.

But what about those adjective clauses? Those are a little less clear, aren’t they. The subject of each one is the word WHICH. How do we know if WHICH is plural or singular? Hopefully, you have some experience studying adjective clauses, but let’s do a quick review just in case. Like adjectives, adjective clauses modify or give more information about nouns. Unlike adjectives, which usually come before the noun they modify, adjective clauses come after the noun they modify. Let’s look again at our example and focus more on the adjective clauses, which are now highlighted in hot pink:

Internet

Example A: The Internet, which is a system, is not the same thing as the World Wide Web, which is a service, but many people mistakenly use the terms interchangeably.

Do you know which noun each adjective clause modifies? Hopefully, you realize that the first adjective clause (“which is a system”) modifies the noun INTERNET, and the second adjective clause (“which is a service”) modifies the noun WORLD WIDE WEB. The Internet is a system, and the World Wide Web is a service, right? Of course, it’s important to recognize which nouns these adjective clauses are describing so that you can understand the sentence. However, it’s also important to recognize the noun-adjective clause relationship because these nouns may play a role in the determining the subject-verb agreement for the adjective clause. To understand this better we’re going to look at another example:

Example B: An intranet is a private computer network that is accessible only by authorized users. Many companies establish intranets that only their employees are able to access.

Again our adjective clauses have been highlighted in hot pink. Let’s analyze each of these sentences and their respective adjective clauses:

Clause	Type of Clause	Subject & Verb
An intranet is a private computer network	Independent clause (i.e. main sentence)	Subject: INTRANET (singular) Verb: IS (singular)
that is accessible only by authorized users	Dependent clause (adjective clause)	Subject: THAT Verb: IS (singular)

The adjective clause in this sentence is sort of like the other adjective clauses that we’ve looked at so far because the subject is the word THAT, and this word tells us nothing about number. It’s neither singular nor plural, so how do we know that we need to use a singular verb (IS) with it? We’ll get back to this question in just a minute. Before we do, however, let’s look at the other sentence in our example:

Clause	Type of Clause	Subject & Verb
Many companies establish intranets	Independent clause (i.e. main sentence)	Subject: COMPANIES (plural) Verb: ESTABLISH (plural)
that only their employees are able to access	Dependent clause (adjective clause)	Subject: EMPLOYEES (plural) Verb: ARE (plural)

The adjective clause in this sentence is a little different because its subject (EMPLOYEES) shows clear number. EMPLOYEES is obviously a plural noun, so we know that we need to use a plural verb with it. ARE is a plural verb, so we know that the subject and verb of this adjective clause agree in number. We’re not going to pay too much attention to adjective clauses like this because making sure their subjects and verbs agree is relatively easy. The hard ones are the ones that have a word like WHO, WHICH or THAT as the subject. These words (which are called relative pronouns, by the way) do not show number, so when they function as the subject of an adjective clause, how do we know if the verb should be singular or plural? To find the answer this question, let’s return to Example A:

Example A: The Internet, which is a system, is not the same thing as the World Wide Web, which is a service, but many people mistakenly use the terms interchangeably.

As we said before, the first adjective clause in this sentence modifies the noun INTERNET, while the second adjective clause modifies the noun WORLD WIDE WEB. This is important because these words actually influence the subject-verb agreement for the adjective clauses that follow them. For example, in the first adjective clause, “which is a system,” the word WHICH refers to INTERNET. WHICH tells us nothing about number, so we look to the noun that it refers to in order to decide if the verb needs to be singular or plural. Since INTERNET is singular, we need a singular verb, and we have that, right? IS is a singular verb. The same thing is happening with the second adjective clause, “which is a service.” WHICH in this adjective clause refers to WORLD WIDE WEB. WORLD WIDE WEB is a singular noun, so we need a singular verb. Does this make sense? I hope so. Just in case, though, let’s look again at another familiar example:

Example B: An intranet is a private computer network that is accessible only by authorized users. Many companies establish intranets that only their employees are able to access.

Remember these sentences? We decided that determining the subject-verb agreement in the adjective clause of the second sentence was easy because the subject is EMPLOYEES, which is clearly a plural noun. However, determining subject-verb agreement in the adjective clause of the first sentence is not so easily done because the subject is THAT, and THAT, like WHICH, tells us nothing about number. Here again it is important to understand which noun this adjective clause is modifying so that we can see if the adjective clause requires a singular or plural verb. So, that’s the big question: which noun is this adjective clause modifying? Hopefully, you determined that “that is accessible only by authorized users” refers to NETWORK. Is NETWORK singular or plural? Clearly it is singular, so that means we need a singular verb, and that’s exactly what we have. IS is a singular verb. Shall we look at one more example of this before doing some practice?

Example C: Chat rooms are places on the Internet that (allows / allow) users to have online conversations in real time.

This time I haven’t given you the answer. We’ll look at the sentence together and slowly determine which verb is correct in the adjective clause. The subject of the adjective clause is THAT, so what kind of verb do we need? Should we use ALLOW or ALLOWS? To answer this question we need to determine which noun this adjective clause is modifying. Read the sentence and see if you can figure that out. What allow(s) users to have online conversations in real time?

Hopefully, you realize that the noun our adjective clause is modifying is PLACES. CHAT ROOMS is too far away from the adjective clause to be the modified noun, and THE INTERNET doesn’t make sense. THE INTERNET doesn’t allow users to have online conversations; certain places on the Internet (called chat rooms) do. So the noun we’re interested in is PLACES.

Next question: is PLACES singular or plural? That should be an easier question to answer. PLACES is plural, so what does that mean for the verb of our adjective clause? It means it should be plural, right? Which one is plural: ALLOW or ALLOWS? Of course, ALLOW is a plural verb, so here’s the correct form of our sentence:

Example C: Chat rooms are places on the Internet that allow users to have online conversations in real time.

OK, this may be a lot of information for you, particularly if you’ve never formally studied adjective clauses before. If you still feel a little uncomfortable with this information, you probably want to go back and study the lecture again before going on to do some practice. For those of you who are up for it, though, let’s put your brain to work on an exercise.

Are you ready to practice? Great! On the next screen, you will decide if the verbs in the adjective clauses are correct or incorrect.