2. Remember that when the relative pronoun is the object of a defining relative clause, we can omit (leave out) who, which or that.

• The children (who) I taught all became geniuses. - direct object

• This is the hotel (which) I was telling you about. - object of the preposition about

• They're going to have to sell the house (that) they bought only a year ago. - direct object

A bit of grammar jargon - These structures are sometimes known as having a zero relative pronoun, and the resulting clause is occasionally called a contact clause

Although these are certainly relative clauses which have been reduced (shorthened), they are not what we normally refer to in EFL as reduced relative clauses, which involve one very basic principle:

As well as the relative pronoun being left out, the verb of the relative clause, including any auxiliary, is replaced by an -ing or -ed (etc) participle.

Practice 3

Exercise 3 - Rewrite the sentences, where possible replacing the underlined relative clauses with their shortest possible forms. Enter them into the boxes, as in the example.

• Use a reduced relative clause where possible

• If you can omit the participle altogether, do so. (1 question)

• If you can't use a reduced relative clause but can omit the relative pronoun, do so.

• If you can do none of these, enter the original clause (1 question).

0.	The people who are crossing the street are trying to get a better view.
	The people crossing the street are trying to get a better view.
1.	The woman who is talking to your mother is my aunt.
2.	The man who is standing by the window is my uncle.
3.	All those who do not need to buy tickets please go straight in.
4.	The first vineyard which I ever saw was in Germany.
5.	Wikipedia, which was launched in 2001, is one of the great internet successes.
6.	Animals which share the savannah include wildebeest and gazelles.
7.	All the candidates who were selected were given a second interview.
8.	All those who passed the test were given a second interview.
9.	LOL, which stands for Laughing Out Loud, is now in the OED.
10.	The bouquet was made from flowers which were grown locally.
11.	This the man who I was talking to you about.
12.	The man who won yesterday's lottery lives next door.

And what about non-defining relative clauses?

We sometimes also use reduced non-defining relative clauses. In fact there were two in that last exercise, Questions 5 and 9.

• Peter, (who was) concentrating on his work, didn't hear the doorbell.

• The young woman, (who was) living abroad at that time, didn't see her family very often.

• The book, (which was) first published in 1970, has sold over a million copies.

• Martha, (who was) brought up in the inner city, had never seen a cow before.

But very often we use an adverbial participle clause instead.

• Concentrating on his work, Peter didn't hear the doorbell.

• Living abroad at that time, the young woman didn't see her family very often.

• First published in 1970, the book has sold over a million copies.

• Brought up in the inner city, Martha had never seen a cow before.

Reduced Relative clauses and the Internet

I've found several problems with the way Reduced Relative clauses are treated on the Internet.

1. Only continuous active tenses? - Several websites suggest that we can only reduce relative clauses if they are in the continuous active, or in the passive. But as we have seen, we can also make reduced relative clauses from simple tenses and sometimes even from perfect tenses.

• The athlete who has won the most races is chosen as the Victor Ludorum. The athlete winning the most races is chosen as the Victor Ludorum.

2. There is/are ? - One video on YouTube suggests that the following constructions are reduced relative clauses:

• Are there dogs walking around outside

• Is there a car parked next to mine

Because we might (according to the teacher) say:

• Are there dogs which are walking around outside?

• Is there a car which is parked next to mine?

But the problem is that we simply wouldn't. These are not natural sentences, and it is highly unlikely that a native speaker would ever utter them.

The there is/are construction is often followed by a participle clause, as are verbs of perception, like see and hear, but this has nothing to do with Relative clauses. There is somebody having a party upstairs.

• There are some boys playing in the street.

• I saw a young boy throwing a stone at the window.

• I could hear my sister singing in the bath.

A native speaker simply wouldn't use a relative pronoun in these sentences, so if it isn't a relative clause in the first place, we can hardly make it a reduced relative clause.

Wikipedia and the Garden Path effect

You can pretty well forget the Wikipedia entry on reduced relative clauses as being of any practical help in using them, but it does talk about an interesting but pretty rare phenomenon known as the garden path effect.

Firstly, Wikipedia's definition of reduced relative clause is different from that used in EFL, giving as its main example:

Relative clause	The man who/that I saw was big.
reduced relative clause	The man I saw was big.

In EFL, we understand this to be simply dropping the relative pronoun when it refers to the object of the following verb. This is not what we think of as a reduced relative clause, for reasons I talked about above.

The rest of the article does talk about the use of participles in reduced relative clauses, but is all about the 'garden path effect', where their use can occasionally cause ambiguities. Just for fun we'll have a quick look at this, but it's very unlikely you will ever have any problems of this nature.

Why garden path effect? - There is an idiom in English:

To lead someone up the garden path - to deceive somebody, to make them believe something which is not true

Wikipedia gives two examples of the garden path effect. How do you think these two sentences might continue?

• The horse raced past the barn ...

• The florist sent the flowers ...

We would probably expect raced and sent to be normal verbs in the Past Simple, with the sentences continuing something like:

• The horse raced past the barn and ran into a nearby field.

• The florist sent the flowers to the address the customer had given her.

But raced and sent could also be past participles being used in reduced relative clauses with passive meaning, and with the sentences continuing in a different way:

• The horse (which was) raced past the barn fell and its rider came off.

• The florist (who was) sent the flowers was very happy to get them.

Part of the ambiguity is in the use here of the verb race, which could have two possible meanings:

• To run very fast

• To ride or drive something, for example a horse or car, very fast

And of course we'd normally expect a florist to send flowers rather than receive them.