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I am trying to understand how some noun phrases can sometimes be sentences such as:

A box filled to the brim. (NP)

A child covered in glue. (NP)

vs:

A child walked in the street. (S or NP)

A child asked to leave. (S or NP)

The first class is clearly ONLY a noun-phrase, yet the second appears to also be a S. I conjecture the NP reading as a deletion of the passive voice, which is causing the NP reading to take the form of the S in the 'walked' example:

A box [that was] filled to the brim.

A child [that was] covered in glue.

A child [that was] walked in the street.

A child [that was] asked to leave

For the VP cases, I see a different deletion:

*A box [that] filled to the brim.

*A child [that] covered in glue.

A child [that] walked in the street.

A child [that] asked to leave.

But I don't understand what it is about the verbs "fill" and "cover", vs "walked" and "asked" that disallows these first two forms, yet accepts the latter. Is my conjecture of the existence of these two types of deletion correct, and what is it that causes the (expanded) first two sentences to be incorrect?

Also of interest- are there any examples where the S reading is disallowed but the NP reading accepted?

mseddon
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    “A box that filled to the brim” is perfectly fine if you ask me. “A child that covered in glue” isn’t, but that’s because cover in any sense that’s applicable here is mandatory transitive. You can say “the box filled to the brim” (intransitive, with prepositional complement), but you can’t say “he covered in glue” without an object complement. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Sep 04 '17 at 15:07
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    'A child asked to leave' is either an NP or an independent clause. – Edwin Ashworth Sep 04 '17 at 15:48
  • @JanusBahsJacquet good catch! – mseddon Sep 05 '17 at 09:10
  • @EdwinAshworth you're totally right, I will change the terminology in the question to reflect this. Thanks! – mseddon Sep 05 '17 at 09:11
  • (And of course “mandatory transitive” in my previous comment was supposed to say “mandatorily transitive”. Bloody phones and their auto-correct.) – Janus Bahs Jacquet Sep 05 '17 at 09:21
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    Largely duplicative: passive vs active or omission of 'which is'?. All these are examples of whiz-deletion, except that 'A child asked to leave' may also be an independent clause and 'A child walked in the street.' almost certainly is (though 'A dog walked in the street.' might be an NP). – Edwin Ashworth Sep 05 '17 at 10:12
  • In fact, possible duplicate of passive Vs active or omission of 'which is'. Whiz-deletion has certainly been comprehensively covered on ELU. 'A child walked down the street' is possible as an NP only if 'A child who/that was walked down the street' is available; this doesn't sound natural. – Edwin Ashworth Sep 05 '17 at 10:14
  • Since 'unexpect' isn't a word, "He did something totally unexpected by modern standards." as a whiz-deletion from "He did something which is/was totally unexpected by modern standards." [Zhuang] shows that there needs to be no passive precursor. Just a valid precursor, passive or otherwise. – Edwin Ashworth Sep 05 '17 at 10:49

2 Answers2

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These examples:

A box, filled to the brim....

A child, covered in glue....

are examples of adjective clauses because the entire clause described the preceding noun. Adjective clauses are usually set off with a comma. The verb construct ("that was," or "that had been," etc. depending on tense) can be dropped if the tense can be adequately deduced from the context of the sentence. For example:

I remember a box, filled to the brim with cereal.

I remember a box that was filled to the brim with cereal.

Your next two examples:

A child, [who] walked in the street....

A child, [who] asked to leave....

have different meanings in different contexts. Remaining specifically with the context of your first example, they are poorly constructed adverb clauses. While English speakers will colloquially drop the pronoun, I don't believe it should not be dropped in written narrative English.

Whether or not you can drop the pronoun depends on how the sentence is being used. For example,

A child who asked to leave would exemplify good manners.

cannot be reduced to...

A child, asked to leave, would exemplify good manners.

because it changes the voice of the sentence and, therefore, the context of the use of the adverb clause. In the first example, above, it is the child who is asking. In the second, it is someone else who is asking the child. As such the second example doesn't make sense because it no longer contains the reason why the child is thought to exemplify good manners. A complete example would be:

A child, asked to leave, would exemplify good manners if she left quietly.

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JBH
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Does my conjecture that this is a deletion that hides the passive voice hold water?

Yes. For these examples, you should distinguish between active and passive voices.

Once you start omitting words from sentences, the distinction becomes less clear. But nonetheless, the distinction is still relevant to observe.

The first two are passive voice:

A box [that was] filled to the brim.
A child [that was] covered in glue.

The second two are active voice:

A child [that] walked in the street.
A child [that] asked to leave.

The other examples that you listed do not make grammatical sense.

But I don't understand what it is about the verbs "fill" and "cover", vs "walked" and "asked" that disallows these first two forms, yet accepts the latter.

Notice that when I make the passive examples active, the same rule starts to apply:

A child [that] filled boxes to the brim.
A child [that] covered his brother in glue.

Note: I would use "who" over "that" but that's out of scope for the current answer.

The rule isn't related to the verbs themselves, it's only related to the active/passive voice that is being used.

Flater
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  • A box [that was] filled to the brim is not a passive usage in these examples. Compare 'a box that was yellow / already damaged when we bought it'. The difference is shown clearly with the disambiguation of 'The window was broken': 'The window was broken by the golf ball' [passive] / 'The window was broken, and the rain had got in' [participial adjective]. – Edwin Ashworth Sep 05 '17 at 10:03
  • @EdwinAshworth: Your second example only fits your explanation because of the surrounding context (the second part of the sentence). Compare your example with: "The window was broken, and the jewels were taken" (this implies the act of breaking the window, rather than describing its state). Without context, the past tense passive voice can be ambiguous with past tense adjectival usage, e.g. "I was covered in glue" could mean that you were being covered in glue, or that you already were covered in glue. The same is true of "The box was filled to the brim", it's ambiguous. – Flater Sep 05 '17 at 10:18
  • 'A child covered in glue' would be taken by 99+% of reasonable Anglophones as using the descriptive sense (see, for example, JBH's answer). But you claim it has to be a passive usage. / This has all been covered on ELU before. – Edwin Ashworth Sep 05 '17 at 10:21
  • @EdwinAshworth: The OP is clearly using example phrases to distill a generalized approach. Your argument rests on the context of the specific example, but the OP is not asking about the exact meaning of this particular phrase. The OP explicitly focuses on the difference between ".. [that] .." and ".. [that was] .." and how four seemingly similar example sentences have different answers as to whether "... [that] ..." or "... [that was] ..." is correct. Especially take note of the last part of my answer where I converted the passive voice to active voice to confirm the distinction. – Flater Sep 05 '17 at 10:27
  • @EdwinAshworth: Your argument can be correct, but it is simply not the topic of discussion. Even if you consider "a box covered in glue" a participal adjective and "a box that was covered in glue" passive voice, that does not answer the OP's question about why this doesn't always apply, e.g. "a child asked a question". If you want to argue that "actually, it's not an omission of words, it's a different grammatical structure", feel free to write your own answer instead of trying to make my answer carry your message. – Flater Sep 05 '17 at 10:32
  • I'm not arguing about the fact of whiz-deletion, merely the claim that a passive construction (precursor) is involved in this example. I'd agree that most undeleted forms are passive or indeterminate. – Edwin Ashworth Sep 05 '17 at 10:52
  • I'd say @Flater is answering my specific query here, but the Whiz-Deletion question is a fantastic resource that adds important clarity to the discussion - specifically what the first class of deletion is, so thank you Edwin. I'd argue it's not quite a duplicate, but valuable additional information and should be at least be marked as a 'related' question. – mseddon Sep 06 '17 at 10:45