English Grammar: Adjective Clauses with Prepositions

Hi. Welcome to www.engvid.com. I'm Adam. In today's video, I'm going to talk to

you about adjective clauses, but very specifically: Adjective clauses with

prepositions. Now, I know that this gives people a hard time; it's a little

bit tricky. It's not really for beginners; but, again, beginners can

also figure out how to use these. Let's start with: What are "prepositions"? So,

"prepositions" are these little directional words that are used to show

some sort of relationship between things in a sentence. Okay? For example: "of",

"in", "about" — okay? — "at", "on" — all kinds — "for", "to". We have lots and

dif-... Lots and lots of prepositions in English; all of them have very specific

functions. But what we're going to look at specifically is how they are part of

an adjective clause, or a relative clause, depending which way you want to

call it.

So, let's look at an example sentence to start. "The book, in which she discusses

her long career, is a real eye-opener." Okay. So, what I'm doing here: I have my

preposition and my relative conjunction that is showing basically an adjective

clause, and it's going to be describing "the book". Now, the reason I think that

people have a bit of a hard time with this is they don't know, first of all,

which preposition to use; and they don't understand what the relationship is when

you're putting it at the beginning of a clause. So, the easiest way to

understand this is to basically separate the sentences or the clauses into two

separate sentences. "The book is a real eye-opener." So, you still have your

independent clause. This is your independent clause; this is the actual

sentence itself. And then you take your adjective clause, and make it into

another independent sentence. Okay? "In it... in the book", so I still have the

reference to the book. "In the book, she discusses her long career." So, now, I

have the two sentences separated. Now, the key to remember is that I still need

to have "in" because I'm talking about what is in the book. Okay? That's the

main idea. I'm talking about what is in the book; not about the book in terms of

other contexts, in terms of other relationships. So, now, all I want to do

is I want to take this clause... this sentence, this independent clause, and

turn it into an adjective clause to say something about the book. So, I must

keep the preposition. If you have a preposition as part of the description,

you must keep the preposition. And what do you do? You're going to replace the

subject again — "it" in this case, or "in the book" — and you're going to put

a relative clause, "which" — "in which the book... In the book, she discusses

her long career. The book is a real eye-opener." So, it's the exact same

meaning, and I'm just putting the relative conjunction right next to the

noun it is describing. And notice I can do this with a non-defining adjective

clause; I can also do it with a defining adjective clause, and we're going to

look at that in a moment. Okay? So, that's the key. The most important thing

to remember is where to put the preposition, and which preposition

you're going to use. So, if you... if you're reading a sentence that uses a

preposition... preposition with relative clause — just try to rearrange it so you

understand why or what the function of the preposition is.

Let's look at this sentence: "The role"... Now, we're talking... when we

talk about acting or actors, they have a role; they have a particular character

that they're playing. "The role that she is most remembered for was as Princess

Leia." Okay? So, we're talking about a specific actress and she's very famous,

but she's very famous for playing Princess Leia in Star Wars. Now, what

can I recognize here? So, here's my relative clause: The role. I'm

identifying which role. Right? Which specific role she is remembered for. So,

she's remembered for, again, the role. So, now, if I want to convert this into

a prepositional relative clause, I move "for" here — "the role for". Now, one

thing you need to remember about adjective clauses with prepositions:

Because prepositions must be followed by an object... okay? After a preposition,

you're going to have an object. So, in that case, you can only use "which" or

"whom"; you can't use "that", you can't use "who". Okay? You have to use "which"

or "whom" after the preposition because these are going to be the object of the

preposition. So, I have to take out "that" and I have to put "which". "The

role for which she is most remembered" — and I take it out of there — "was as

Princess Leia" or "is as Princess Leia". Sorry. Let me check that. I have...

here, I have to match them. You don't always have to match them; I'll talk

about that a little bit separately. But that's basically what you're doing in

terms of ordering. Okay? We're gonna look at a few more examples just to make

sure you understand.

Okay, so we're gonna look at a few more examples, because a couple other points

I want to show you. Okay? "The candidate, about whom very little is

known, appears to be the dark horse of the race." The "dark horse" means the

one that nobody really expected to win. So, the surprise, but that's not the

point. "The candidate appears to be the dark horse; very little is known about

him." So, first of all, what I did... "very little is known about him"...

"about him" is... was at the end; I moved it to the beginning. Because

remember: An adjective clause is going to come right after the noun that it is

describing or identifying. So, if I put it... "very little is known about him"

in a separate sentence — no problem. If I want to put it right next to the noun,

"whom is the candidate... about the candidate very little is known". You can

use it in active; you can use it in passive. Here, we're using it in

passive, which is why there's no subject here. Okay? Very important to keep that

in mind when we look at the next example. "The top ten salespeople"...

Now, I have ten people — five of these ten people broke sales records. Okay?

So, the top ten salespeople, five of whom... Five of them; five of the

salespeople broke sales record. Here is the subject of the clause. Here, you...

this is the verb; here, "five of whom" — this is not the subject. It's very

important to remember that when you're using a preposition in the adjective

clause, it's always going to be the object pronoun — "whom", "whom", "which"

— not "that", not "who". Those are subjects — okay? — they can't be used

as... used as objects. So, this is your subject.

Another one: "She went on air to share her story." Now, another thing: Just

like we can put an adjective... a regular adjective clause in the middle

of a sentence or at the end, you can still do that with the preposition. "She

went on air to share her story; the gist of which is that this and that

happened." Okay? "The gist" means the... the basic idea; the main message is

this. So, "the gist of which"; "which" is the story. Now, if I... all I need to

do is put a period here. She went on air, like radio, TV, whatever. "She went

on air to share her story. The gist of the story is that she was saved." Okay?

And then I can just put it like that. "The gist of which". Here's your subject

— "gist", "is" — "the gist is". The gist of what? Of the story. Another thing to

point out: Here, I have "broke" — past; here, I have future. You can mix the

verb tenses as long as it makes sense; past and past, past and present, past

and future. Again, those are not really dependent, but that's going to be a

different lesson about mixing tenses in a video.

Now, I just want to go back to that other one. I forgot to mention this

before; I just want to compare to this one. "The book in which she discusses".

I just want to make sure you understand: There's always going to be a subject

because you're always going to use an object relative pronoun. Even if it's a

number, it's still the subject. That's a very important thing to remember. And

then, which preposition do you use? The same preposition that you would use if

you split the sentence into two independent clauses. The prepositions...

all prepositions have very spe-... have not "a". They have specific functions.

Okay? "Of", "for", "to" — all of them have more than one function; "in", "on",

"at "— more than one function. Make sure you're using the correct preposition.

"With", "whom", or "which". Okay? And that's basically all there is to it.

It's actually very straightforward. It just... if you understand adjective

clauses, relative clauses, then you can also understand relative clauses with

prepositions. They look tricky, but they're not tricky. Just think about

the... again, the function and the positioning, and it should be pretty

easy to understand. But, just in case, go to www.engvid.com and take the quiz —

and make sure you understand how to use this style of writing and speaking, of

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