3. Relative clauses

RELATIVE CLAUSES

1.      Introduction

When you mention someone or something in a sentence, you often want to give further information about them. One way to do this is to use a relative clause.

You put a relative clause immediately after the noun which refers to the person, thing, or group you are talking about. Examples:

            The man who came into the room was small and slender.

            Opposite is St. Paul’s Church, where you can hear some lovely music.

Relative clauses have a similar function to adjectives, and they are sometimes called adjectival clauses.

Nominal relative clauses, which have a similar function to noun groups, are explained later on.

2.      Relative pronouns

Many relative clauses begin with a relative pronoun. The relative pronoun usually acts as the subject or object of the verb in the relative clause. Examples:

            He is the only person who might be able to help.

            Most of the mothers have a job, which they take both for the money and the company.

Relative pronouns do not have masculine, feminine, or plural forms. The same pronoun can be used to refer to a man, a woman, or a group of people. Examples:

            She didn’t recognize the man who had spoken.

            I met a girl who knew Mrs Townsend.

            There are many people who find this intolerable.

Some relative clauses do not have a relative pronoun. Example:

            Nearly all the people I used to know have gone.

3.      Relative pronouns chart

Variations may be encountered in the spoken and informal English, but the most common distribution of the relative pronouns is as follows:

4.      Kinds of relative clause

There are two kinds of relative clause: defining and non-defining relative clauses.

Defining relative clauses explain which person or thing you are talking about. For example, if you say “I met the woman”, it might not be clear who you mean, so you might say, “I met the woman who lives next door”. In this sentence, “who lives next door” is a defining relative clause.

Shortly after the shooting, the man who had done it was arrested.

Mooresville is the town that John Dillinger came from.

Non-defining relative clauses give further information which is not needed to identify the person, thing, or group you are talking about. For example, if you say “I saw Madonna”, it is clear who you mean. But you might want to add more information about Madonna, so you might say, for example, “I saw Madonna, who was staying at the hotel opposite”. In this sentence, “who was staying at the hotel opposite” is a non-defining relative clause. Non-defining relative clauses are used mainly in writing rather than speech.

5.      Punctuation

A non-defining relative clause usually has a comma in front of it and a comma after it, unless it is at the end of a sentence, in which case you just put a full stop.  Example:

Sir Denis, who is 78, has left his collection to the nation.

6.      Human or non-human antecedents

Who and its derivatives are generally restricted to human antecedents, while which and what and their derivatives refer in most cases to things, including animals.

The relative pronoun that is used with both human and non-human antecedents.

The possessive form whose is necessarily used with non-human as well as human antecedents because no possessive forms exist for which or that. Otherwise, to avoid using whose with non-human antecedents, a periphrastic structure would be required. Example:  "...the car the engine of which blew up", or "...the car of which the engine blew up" instead of "...the car whose engine blew up..".

7.      Zero relative pronoun

English, unlike other West Germanic languages, has a zero relative pronoun (denoted below as Ø)—that is, the relative pronoun is implied and not explicitly written or spoken. This measure is only used in defining relative clauses as an alternative to that, which or who, whom, etc. in clauses such as:

Jack built the house that I was born in;

Jack built the house Ø I was born in;

He is the person who I saw; ... the person whom I saw;

He is the person Ø I saw.

The zero relative pronoun cannot be the subject of the verb in the relative clause; that is, that or who, etc., cannot be omitted if they function as a subject. For example:

Jack built the house that sits on the hill

She is the one who encouraged me

Neither the zero pronoun nor that can be used in non-defining relative clauses (that is, yes: "Jack, who builds houses, built the house she lives in", but never: "Jack, that builds houses, built … "), nor in any relative clause with a fronted preposition (yes: "Jack built the house in which we live", but never: "Jack built the house in that we live"). But either can be used when the preposition is at the end of the sentence, ("Jack built the house that we live in," or "Jack built the house we live in.")

8.      Relative pronoun as the object of a preposition

A relative pronoun often appears as the object of a preposition. For formal writing or speech any relative pronoun serving as an object must be one that 'takes' the objective case, for example, whom, whose, or which, but usually not who and never that—both who and that usually take the subjective case. For example:

Jack is the boy with whom Jenny fell in love (formal);

Jack built the house in which I was raised (formal).

Adapted from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_relative_clauses

Adapted from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_%28pronoun%29#Usage_of_whom

Adapted from: English Grammar, Ed. COBUILD Collins, 1998