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
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
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
course. If you like the video, give us a like; and if you really like it, please
subscribe to my channel. And I'll come back for more grammar, vocab, other