Page 269 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

SUBORDINATE CLAUSES 255
The adjective clause in this sentence largely defines the word kin, which actually may not need a specific definition and is likely to be known to most native speakers of English. Nonrestrictive clauses do not delimit the noun to one specific object or range of objects in the context because a narrow iden- tification of this specific noun is not needed (e.g., low rainfall regions, which ...)the Romans,who ..., feudal law,which ...). In this case, the adjective clause is separated by commas: It provides helpful but inessential information.
The greatest issues with the ever-popular discussions on restrictive and nonrestrictive adjective clauses, included in every grammar and composition book, is that they are extraordinarily difficult for L2 writers to identify. In an earlier example, for instance, the L2writer would have to know the meaning of the word kin and then be able to figure out that this word already has a rela- tively limited meaning in English, and therefore be able to conclude that the adjective clause has to be separated out by commas. The teaching of restric- tive and nonrestrictive adjective clauses and their punctuation may simply not be worth the time and work expended on their conceptual (and abstract) definitions and the ambiguous rules that govern their uses.
In formal academic writing, only 15% of all adjective clauses are nonrestrictive, and the information included in them is usually tan- gential and somewhat unnecessary (Biber et al., 1999).
Undoubtedly, the quality and types of prose in the formal academic writing research in English language corpora are different from that in student writing.
Nonetheless, in teaching ESL or academic L2 writing, the distinc- tion between restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses, as well as this par- ticular aspect of punctuation, may simply occupy very low priority.
In light of the lexical and conceptual complexities associated with the distinctions between restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses, a general rule of thumb may be useful for L2 writers:
Adjective clauses with that relative pronouns are never separated by commas.
Adjective Participial Phrases
Adjective participial phrases are derived by reducing an adjective clause to an adjective phrase, and the functions of participial phrases are largely the same as those of single-word adjectives and adjective clauses (i.e., to modify nouns and noun phrases; Meyer, 1991). In formal academic writing, the
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