How correct is the word "identified" in the sentence below? Does the word "identified" need "that were" before to be a complete dependent sentence? What are the grammar rules at use in similar sentence structures?
They take any faults identified in themselves and put them onto others
In English it is common to omit determiners in certain contexts.
For example:
Your example is just as correct with, or without "that were".
They take any faults [identified in themselves] and put them onto others.
It's fine, and it doesn't need "that were" to be grammatical or meaningful.
The bracketed element is a past-participial clause modifying "faults".
Participial clauses functioning as modifiers in noun phrase structure are semantically similar to relative clauses: compare any faults [that were identified in themselves].
Past-participial modifiers are bare passives, as evident from the admissibility of a by phrase: faults [identified in themselves by others].
But they are not classified as some kind of relative clause, since there is no possibility of them containing a relative phrase: faults which identified in themselves is grammatical but it has a different meaning.
