0805852212.pdf

174 CHAPTER 5

came from an automaker’s report on faulty hood latches in a certain line of cars.
The driver’s forward vision was obstructed bythe hood(subject agent deleted)
of his car, which unlatched at 60 miles an hour and wrapped itself around the
windshield. The report writers could not include the subject agent without as-
signing responsibility and potential liability to the company, which they
avoided for obvious reasons. Using the passive, with agent deleted, allowed
them to describe the circumstances of the accident without attaching blame,
which was left to a court to determine.
Industry and government are the primary but not the sole sources of such
evasiveness. Passives appear spontaneously in the speech and writing of people
who strive, for one reason or another, to be circumspect. The usage question re-
garding passive constructions, consequently, revolves around situation.

APPLYING KEY IDEAS

Directions: Examine a paper you’ve written for another class and see whether
you can find any passive constructions. If you find some, determine whether
they are appropriate to that context, given the previous discussion. If they are
not appropriate, rewrite them in active form.

Relative Clause Formation

Relative clauses generally function as modifiers that supply information about
nouns. In addition, they generally allow us to avoid repeating a noun. Consider
the following sentences:

11. The message,which Macarena had left near the flowers,baffled Fred.


12. The walletthat held Macarena’s moneywas in the trunk.


13. The womanwhom I lovehas red hair.

Each of these sentences contains an independent clause and a relative
clause. Each relative clause is introduced by a relative pronoun. The respective
clauses are shown here:

11a. the message baffled Fred/whichMacarena had left near the flowers

12a. the wallet was in the trunk/thatheld Macarena’s money

13a. the woman has red hair/whomI love

Being able to identify the underlying clauses in a sentence that has a relative
clause is an important part of understanding the grammar. On this account, if