Posted by pakguru on May 3rd, 2016 | 0 comments | grammar, IELTS, nominal groups, nominalisation, noun phrases, post-modification, speaking, Task 1, Task 2, writing
Consequently, people lived in remote areas sometimes have limited access to learning resources.
Here the student wants to post-modify the noun ‘people‘ using a verb – ‘live‘. When post-modifying nouns using verbs, one option is to use a non-finite verb. Don’t worry you don’t need to google ‘non-finite’ – that’s just a fancy name for the following little group of verb forms:
If you’re using V3 to extend or ‘post-modify’ a noun, then you’re really using a kind of shortened relative clause:
In this case you end up with a passive construction (to be + V3), which obviously doesn’t make sense here because a thing or a person cannot ‘be lived‘.
‘Live‘ is an intransitive verb – it doesn’t take an object. But no worries, we can easily re-write the noun phrase with a relative clause and a transitive verb so that it makes sense:
Native speakers will nearly always shorten this relative clause to leave the non-finite verb only:
Finally, the noun phrase can now be incorporated into the sentence like this:
Alternatively we could stick with ‘live‘ but use __ing:
In this case we are shortening another relative clause but we don’t have to consider whether or not the verb is transitive:
When post-modifying nouns, native speakers generally use the shortened version without the relative pronoun.
To end this post, it’s worth putting non-finite verbs in context with other common methods for post-modifying nouns:
preposition phrases | relative clauses | __ing, V3, to+V1 | time expressions |
Sometimes these are interchangeable:
the number of plastic bags used by consumers in 2015 in America
the number of plastic bags used in America by consumers in 2015
And I’ll throw in a relative clause just to show off:
the number of plastic bags used by consumers in 2015 in America which are not made of biodegradable material
Notice that the __ed phrase also has a preposition phrase embedded into it:
used by consumers
used in America
And notice that time expressions are often also preposition phrases:
in 2015
on Tuesday
after I finished work
etc.
I hope all of that helps and look forward to hearing your feedback!
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