What is a noun modifying clause?

This is actually a question that came up when I was studying Japanese. Unfortunately my grasp of the technical language of syntax is very limited, and I never fully comprehended the idea of a noun modifying clause. The phrase given in my Japanese study guide to demonstrate the difference is (without)

I took a photograph.

and with

This is a photograph taken by me.

Can someone break this example down for me, and perhaps provide a few other examples like this for simple and complex situations (if this even makes sense) to help me understand this construct?

It is also possible that the guide has been poorly translated and there is a different name for this. If so, what is it?

Revision

It seems that the question is not entirely clear to some, so although I have my answer I want to add some more information to (hopefully) raise the quality of the question. None of the text above this was edited.

The block quoted text is an example lifted exactly from a study guide, not from notes taken in a class, and not translated from Japanese. It appears to have been designed to show a reader who does not know what a "noun modifying clause" is is and how to apply it in English, before doing it in Japanese.

To clarify, the first block quote is a sentence without a "noun modifying clause" and the second is a sentence with one.

Answer

The term you probably want in this case is Relative Clause. There are other kinds of adjective clauses (i.e, noun-modifying clauses), but relatives are by far the most common and the most complex. In particular, relative clauses, like many subordinate clauses, are subject to a variety of deletion rules that make them shorter, or even shorter still.

Probably the most important is the rule that has applied in the second sentence.

This is a photograph taken by Bill.

(taken by me has stylistic problems; let's use an example without side issues.) This is in fact reduced from a sentence showing the bells and whistles that relatives deck themselves out in.

This is a photograph which was taken by Bill.

or, alternatively,

This is a photograph that was taken by Bill.

The rule called Whiz-Deletion by linguists (from the fact that it deletes a Wh-word plus a form of be, quite often is; a monosyllabic variant of "Wh-is deletion"), when applied to a relative clause, creates a bare verb phrase without a tensed verb, but with whatever is left after the deletion. Any phrase of more than one word simply goes after the noun it modifies.

Interestingly, there is a codicil to Whiz-Deletion that applies when there is only one adjective left after deletion. The adjective has to be moved in front of the noun; it can't appear after it the way phrases can; conversely, phrases can't appear in front of the noun, but must follow it.

• Bill is a man who is happy to see you.


• Bill is a man happy to see you.


• *Bill is a happy to see you man.

but

• Bill is a man who is happy.


• *Bill is a man happy.


• Bill is a happy man.

It has long been suspected that all attributive adjectives, including the ones that precede nouns, are the result of reduction of relative clauses.