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I will very grateful if you can help me understand the following issue:

As I understand, the next two sentences are interchangeable and have the same meaning:

1) Acts that are done by humans are not necessarily moral.
2) Acts done by humans are not necessarily moral.

The first option is a standard way of using the passive form of the verb. However, I don't understand why the second option is correct, If "done" this case as passive form of the verb or even if it can be treated as an adjective, I am expecting to see some tense of the "be" verb before.

There are many other similar examples, especially when using verbs like: "shown, suggested, presented, defined and etc." with a reference to a previous sentence of our article/text.

Thank you in advance.

John Lawler
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Yuri Feigin
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1 Answers1

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The second version is certainly grammatical. When the relative pronoun and be are omitted in this way, the result tends to sound more formal, so the construction is perhaps better suited to writing than to speech.

Barrie England
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  • Thank you very much for the answer. Can you please clarify whether it is allowed to omit the relative pronoun and "be" both in the present and the past tenses? (i.e. when be=is/are and when be=was/were)? – Yuri Feigin Dec 01 '13 at 16:12
  • @Yuri Feigin: Can you please look up the answer that has already been given on this site. – Edwin Ashworth Dec 01 '13 at 16:19
  • You mean this one? – John Lawler Dec 01 '13 at 16:26
  • Alright, I've looked at the answer and it is all clear now. However, the 3rd form verb in this case can not be treated as and adjective, as it was mentioned in the second answer. Am I correct? Thank You. – Yuri Feigin Dec 01 '13 at 16:33