Graded readers

[Khamala]

I'm starting to read english books with "graded readers". I also finished a grammar book (around B1-B2), but I can't understand some complicated structures in graded readers (even in low level like A2, B1)
e.g:

Level A2:
One of them, sun-burned and hot, dressed in a shirt and jeans, kneels down on the dusty ground to take some photographs of the girl before he leaves. In the pocket of his shirt is a protein bar, soft from the sun, uneaten, untouched, forgotten.

Level B2:
In a corner there was a rusty tap, with a pile of unwashed bowls under it; uneaten rice and vegetables, swollen and going bad, floating on a pool of dark, oily water.

OMG! How can learners understand these sentences without an explanation? I think they are reduced relative clauses, but I can't imagine the whole sentences before reducing

 

[jutfrank]

Are you saying you don't understand what these sentences mean? I suspect you do.

 

[Tarheel]

Food that is uneaten is, of course, food that hasn't been eaten. (That is so glaringly obvious that most of the time nobody would bother to say that.)

 

[Khamala]

Are you saying you don't understand what these sentences mean? I suspect you do.

I only understand word by word. I don't know why they write like that (reduce like that). Grammar books are quite easy compared to fiction (even graded books). While trying to read books, newspaper, magazine, I encounter lots of stuff like this. Grammar can't help me

 

[Khamala]

Food that is uneaten is, of course, food that hasn't been eaten. (That is so glaringly obvious that most of the time nobody would bother to say that.)

Just don't know the way they write short sentences from the long ones. If I don't actually understand them, I can't write sentences like that in the future

 

[emsr2d2]

Why don't you try to make the sentences longer yourself so you can show us how you think they should be written in order to be understandable?

 

[Khamala]

One of them, who is sun-burned and hot and gets dressed in a shirt and jeans, kneels down on the dusty ground to take some photographs of the girl before he leaves. In the pocket of his shirt is a protein bar, which is soft from the sun, uneaten, untouched, forgotten.

In a corner there was a rusty tap, with a pile of unwashed bowls under it; uneaten rice and vegetables, swollen and going bad, floating on a pool of dark, oily water.
-> I'm confused about "semicolon" before "uneaten", it's weird. I can't rewrite it.

Can you explain to me why fiction does not follow standard rules? I mean the way authors use "comma or and". They can join 3 sentences with 2 commas (where's the conj). They can use "and" like: A and B and C and D. I often experienced such things. Is this spoken English?

 

[jutfrank]

One of them, [who is] sun-burned and hot and gets [who is] dressed in a shirt and jeans

The bold participle phrases are descriptive. The writer is helping you imagine.

kneels down on the dusty ground to take some photographs of the girl before he leaves.

The bold phrase here is a phrasal verb. It's the main verb of the sentence.

In the pocket of his shirt is a protein bar, [which is] soft from the sun, [and which is] uneaten, [and which is] untouched, [and which is] forgotten.

Do you think the sentence sounds better with or without the bracketed words?

In a corner there was a rusty tap, with a pile of unwashed bowls under it; uneaten rice and vegetables

Well done for noticing that this is different from the cases above. Here, the semicolon is a way to tell you what was in the unwashed bowls. The word uneaten is an adjective, describing the the food.

Can you explain to me why fiction does not follow standard rules? I mean the way authors use "comma or and". They can join 3 sentences with 2 commas (where's the conj). They can use "and" like: A and B and C and D. I often experienced such things. Is this spoken English?

This is written English. Literary fiction has a certain style that differs from spoken English. If you keep reading, you'll become used to it and learn to appreciate it.

 

[Khamala]

Well done for noticing that this is different from the cases above. Here, the semicolon is a way to tell you what was in the unwashed bowls. The word uneaten is an adjective, describing the the food.

So, we put [which] before or after semicolon? I think we can't use [which is] because it doesn't make sense.
My friend gave this sentence to me:
In a corner there was a rusty tap, with a pile of unwashed bowls under it which contain uneaten rice and vegetables, is swollen and goes bad, and floats on a pool of dark, oily water.
I think it's wrong.

 

[jutfrank]

In a corner there was a rusty tap, with a pile of unwashed bowls under it; [there were] uneaten rice and vegetables, [which were] swollen [and which were] going bad, [and which were] floating on a pool of dark, oily water.

 

[Tarheel]

The word "uneaten" might be useful in certain contexts, but as a descriptor it is, generally speaking, useless. (Food that has been eaten wouldn't be called food but something else.)