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This website provide this following info:

Some action verbs reduce to the present participle (ing form) especially when the present tense is used.

  1. Remove the relative pronoun
  2. Change the verb to the present participle form
  3. Place the present participle phrase after the modified noun

Examples:

  • The man who lives near my home walks to work every day. → Reduced: The man living near my home walks to work every day.
  • The girl who attends my school lives at the end of the street. → Reduced: The girl attending my school lives at the end of the street.

So, my question is "how the above formula being applied to non-action verbs like feel & think?"

Ex, Can "The girl who feels no pain is my sister" be reduced to "The girl feeling no pain is my sister"?

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  • You learned well! "The girl who feels no pain is my sister" be reduced to "The girl feeling no pain is my sister"? An adjective clause like, "who feels no pain", like any other clause, modifies a word in the sentence: girl. And so does the present participle phrase "feeling no pain" modifies (in your sentence of course) modifies: girl. The "girl" is the subject in your sentences. The verb is is I'll break it up: The girl | who feels no pain (or, feeling no pain) | is | my | sister. The clause was taken, reduced, and combined into a new sentence as a phrase. [con't}
    – Arch Denton
    Commented Sep 12, 2016 at 14:05
  • Learn a whole lot more about sentence combining here: [read pages 464-475] and you'll learn how to take your ideas and put them into what you want: a longer sentence or a shorter sentence. || images.pcmac.org/SiSFiles/Schools/AL/HooverCity/SpainParkHigh/…
    – Arch Denton
    Commented Sep 12, 2016 at 14:06

1 Answer 1

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You use a relative pronoun to identify somebody of something:

The girl who looks sad is my sister.

The person that you are speaking to can look around and see that there is a girl who looks sad: he then knows, from what you said, that the girl is your sister.

It doesn't work well with "feel" and doesn't work at all with "think" because neither you nor the person that you are speaking to can tell what the girl is feeling or thinking.

This is true both of the relative pronoun form and of the reduced participle form.

Additions following edits to the question:

The girl who feels no pain is my sister

This sentence might arise if somebody talks about a girl that suffers from congenital insensitivity to pain. You could then point out that the girl that they are describing is your sister. The sentence works because your sister's medical condition is a general truth, which can be expressed using present simple the girl feels no pain. Somebody could have been told about it some time ago, and it's still true, even though they cannot directly observe what she is feeling right now.

The girl feeling no pain is my sister - your sentence
The girl [that is] feeling no pain is my sister - equivalent

This sentence doesn't work because the use of the active participle describes something that is happening right now (present continuous). We are back in the situation where you and the person that you are speaking to cannot know what the girl is feeling right now.

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  • I modified my question: The girl who feels no pain is my sister
    – Tom
    Commented Sep 9, 2016 at 11:56
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    Well, it does work and it is understandable if the girl is currently feeling pain. Say it's right after a girls' soccer game. One girl is in pain. She's the girl feeling pain. And if she's your sister you can say the sentence that the OP asks about.
    – Alan Carmack
    Commented Sep 10, 2016 at 1:29
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    Also, one can predict, project or pretend to know what another person is thinking and so The girl thinking I'm an idiot is my sister is idiomatic, meaning thinking right now.
    – Alan Carmack
    Commented Sep 10, 2016 at 1:32
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    @Cardinal I would not call it an idiom (which is something most people use). It's a saying that can be used to mean that, but it is used in this way only by some people.
    – Alan Carmack
    Commented Sep 12, 2016 at 13:27
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    For instance @Cardinal the use of "feeling no pain" in the popular country western song "Luckenbach, Texas" has never struck me as meaning "being drunk," but song lyrics are open to interpretation. Genius dot com does not mark that line for being an idiom for being drunk.
    – Alan Carmack
    Commented Sep 12, 2016 at 13:34

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