Other Definitions
relative clause (dict)
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Relative ClauseA relative clause is a subordinate clause that modifies a noun. For example, the noun phrase "the man who wasn't there" contains the noun "man", which is modified by the relative clause "who wasn't there". In many languages relative clauses are introduced by a special class of pronouns, called relative pronouns. In the previous example, "who" is a relative pronoun. Function A relative pronoun is used to link two sentences into a single sentence with two clauses. To this extent, it is similar in function to a subordinating conjunction. Unlike a conjunction, however, a relative pronoun stands in place of a noun. Compare: - This is a house. Jack built this house.
- This is the house that Jack built.
The combined sentence consists of two clauses, a main clause (This is the house) and a relative clause (that Jack built). The linking word that is a relative pronoun, and is usually either the subject or the object of the relative clause, though other syntactical arrangements are also possible. The relative pronoun introduces the relative clause, which modifies a noun in the main clause, in this case house. Further examples: - Jack is the boy who kissed Jenny.
The relative pronoun who is the subject of the verb kissed inside the relative clause. - Jack is the boy who(m) Jenny kissed.
The relative pronoun who(m) is the direct object of the verb kissed inside the relative clause. - Jack is the boy whose friend Jenny kissed.
The relative pronoun whose is a possessive determiner of friend. The phrase whose friend is the direct object of the verb kissed inside the relative clause. - Jack built the house in which I now live.
The relative pronoun which is the argument (object) of the preposition in. The prepositional phrase in which is an argument of the verb live inside the relative clause. Note that a relative clause may fall in the middle of the main clause: - The house 'that Jack built' stands at the end of our street.
Not all languages have relative pronouns. Those that do tend to use words which originally had other functions; for example, the English which is also an interrogative word. There appears to be no language in the world with a distinct word used only as a relative pronoun. This suggests that relative pronouns are a fairly late development in the history of language. Relative clauses in English The relative pronouns in English include who, whom, whose, which, and that. (Note: Not all modern syntacticians agree that that is a relative pronoun.) What is a compound relative, including both the antecedent and the relative, and is equivalent to that which; for example, "I did what he desired" means the same as, "I did that which he desired." In some contexts, there may be a choice between two or more of these forms. The choice of relative pronoun may carry additional meaning or draw a number of distinctions. Human or nonhuman In their choice of relative pronoun, English-speakers will often distinguish between an antecedent that is a human - who(m) - and an antecedent that is a nonhuman - which. In this regard, English is unique among the Germanic languages; this distinction may be due to French influence, and is clearly related to the distinction between the interrogative words who(m) and which. Note that whose, while sometimes reserved for human antecedents, is commonly found also with nonnuman ones; and that that, while traditionally reserved for nonhuman antecedents, is also often found with human ones. Grammatical case In the Germanic languages, the case of a relative pronoun is generally marked in its form. In English, this survives only in who, which has a possessive case form whose and an objective case form whom. But the form whom is in decline and is now often restricted to formal use. Since which and that have no possessive forms, whose is now also used for the possessive form of these, and periphrasis is sometimes employed: - There is an old house in our street whose roof Jack fixed.
- There is an old house in our street, the roof of which Jack fixed.
Restrictive or nonrestrictive Relative clauses are said to be divided in two groups depending on whether they are integral to the main statement of the sentence or are providing "extra" information, as an afterthought, so to speak. English grammars vary widely in the terminology for this phenomenon. The clauses with the more integral semantics may be called restrictive clauses, necessary clauses, or defining clauses. Compare: - Jack built the house that stands on the corner of our street.
The relative clause defines the antecedent; it tells us which house is meant. - Jack built a big house, which stood for many years.
The main clause could stand by itself, as the relative clause is not needed to tell us what it means. The relative clause adds further information. The reason this distinction causes such difficulties for foreign learners is that it is reflected in English prosody and punctuation. A nonrestrictive relative clause is preceded by a comma, whereas a restrictive clause normally is not. Native speakers usually place the comma correctly without much explicit instruction. This is because the comma represents a break in the intonation pattern, which the native speaker is clearly aware of. Compare the following sentence, which has two quite different meanings, and correspondingly two clearly distinguished intonation patterns, depending on whether the commas are inserted: - The builder(,) who erects very fine houses(,) will make a large profit.
With the commas, and with three short intonation curves, the sentence refers to a specific builder and tells us firstly about his houses, then about his profits. Without the commas, with a single intonation curve, the sentence tells us that any builder who builds such houses will make profits. A further complexity is that according to traditional prescriptive grammars, restrictive clauses use that (assuming the antecedent is a nonhuman), while nonrestrictive clauses use which; except that that cannot be used after a preposition, and is replaced by which in that case. This rule is considered standard in technical writing. In common usage, however, which often replaces any nonhuman use of that. Contact clauses English stands alone among the Germanic languages in giving us the option of omitting the relative pronoun in a restrictive relative clause if it is not the subject of the main verb of the relative clause. - Jack built the house that I was born in.
- Jack built the house Ø I was born in.
It is alternatively analyzed as the use of a zero. This kind of relative clause may be called a contact clause. Use with preposition Traditionally, following the pattern of Germanic, a preposition in a relative clause appears together with the relative pronoun. In this case it must be either whom or which; never that, and since this is now formal usage, it would be unusual to use who. - Jack is the boy with whom Jenny fell in love.
- Jack built the house in which I grew up.
An innovation of English among the Germanic languages, however, is the option of leaving the preposition where it would be if the clause were an independent clause. Though John Dryden raised in 1672 the possibility that this preposition-stranding should not be considered correct (from a prescriptive standpoint), it was already in widespread use by that time, and is now the preferred usage of most English speakers, especially in colloquial situations. Therefore, although a traditional grammarian might insist upon the sentence, "Jack is the boy with whom Jenny fell in love," any of the following might be heard instead: - Jack is the boy whom Jenny fell in love with.
- Jack is the boy who Jenny fell in love with.
- Jack is the boy that Jenny fell in love with.
- Jack is the boy Jenny fell in love with.
Summary The most common distribution of the forms is therefore as follows (though variations may be heard). | rowspan=2 | | colspan=2 | Restrictive | colspan=2 | Nonrestrictive | | Human | Nonhuman | Human | Nonhuman | | Subject | who, that | which, that | who | which | | Object | who, whom, that, Ø | which, that, Ø | who, whom | which | | After preposition | whom | which | whom | which | | Possessive | whose, of whom | whose, of which | whose, of whom | whose, of which | Relative clauses in German Despite their highly inflected forms, German relative pronouns are less complicated than English. There are two varieties. The more common one is based on the definite article der, die, das, but with distinctive forms in the genitive (dessen, deren) and in the dative plural (denen). Historically this is related to English that. The second, which is more literary and used for emphasis, is the relative use of welcher, welche, welches, comparable with English which. As in most Germanic languages, including Old English, both of these inflect according to gender, case and number. They take their gender and number from the noun they modify, but the case from their function in their own clause. - Das Haus, in dem ich wohne, ist sehr alt.
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- The house in which I live is very old.
The relative pronoun dem is neuter singular to agree with Haus, but dative because it follows a preposition in its own clause. On the same basis, it would be possible to substitute the pronoun welchem. However, German uses the uninflecting was ('what') as a relative pronoun when the antecedent is alles, etwas or nichts ('everything', 'something', 'nothing'.). - Alles, was Jack macht, ist erfolgreich.
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- Everything that Jack does is successful.
In German, all sentence-internal relative pronouns are preceded by commas. Relative clauses in French The system of relative pronouns in French is as complicated as, and similar in many ways to, the system in English. When the pronoun is to act as the direct object of the relative clause, que is generally used, although lequel, which is inflected for grammatical gender and number, is sometimes used in order to give more precision. For example, any of the following is correct and would translate to "I talked to his/her father and mother, whom I already knew": - J'ai parl avec son pre et sa mre, 'laquelle' (f. sing.) je connaissais dj.
- J'ai parl avec son pre et sa mre, 'lesquels' (m. pl.) je connaissais dj.
- J'ai parl avec son pre et sa mre, 'que' je connaissais dj.
However, in the first sentence, "whom I already knew" refers only to the mother; in the second, it refers to both parents; and in the third, as in the English sentence, it could refer either only to the mother, or to both parents. When the pronoun is to act as the subject of the relative clause, qui is generally used, though as before, lequel may be used instead for greater precision. (This is less common than lequel's use with direct objects, however, since verbs in French often reflect their subjects' grammatical number.) When the pronoun is to act in a possessive sense, where the preposition de (of/from) would normally be used, the pronoun dont ("whose") is used, but does not act as a determiner for the noun "possessed": - J'ai parl avec une femme 'dont' je travaille avec le fils. ("I spoke with a woman whose son I work with." - lit., "I spoke with a woman dont I work with the son.")
In modern French, this construction is also used even in non-possessive cases where the pronoun is to act as the object of de; hence, dont can mean "of/from which/who(m)" in modern French: - C'est un homme 'dont je pense mal.'' ("That's a man of whom''' I think ill.")
When the pronoun is to act as the object of a preposition (other than when dont is used), lequel is generally used, though recently it has become common to use qui if the antecedent is a human. The preposition always appears before the pronoun, and the prepositions de and (at/to) contract with lequel to form duquel and auquel, or with lesquel(le)s to form desquel(le)s and auxquel(le)s. Relative clauses in Hebrew In Hebrew, there are but two relative pronouns: the word asher, and the prefix she-, which is affixed to the first word of the relative clause. The two are interchangeable in this use; she- is much more common in modern Hebrew, but asher is the form found in the Bible, and is hence often used in formal, archaic, or poetic writing. These forms are used regardless of whether the antecedent is a human, of the grammatical case of she-, and of whether the clause is restrictive. Further, because Hebrew does not generally use its word for is, she- is used to distinguish adjective phrases used in epithet from adjective phrases used in attribution: - Ha-kise l'-yad-kha. ("The chair is next to you." - lit., "The chair is to your hand.")
- Ha-kise 'she-l'-yad-kha shavur. ("The chair next to you is broken." - lit.'', "The chair that''' is to your hand is broken.")
(This use of she- does not occur with simple adjectives, as Hebrew has a different way of making that distinction. For example, Ha-kise adom means "The chair is red," while Ha-kise ha-adom shavur means "The red chair is broken" - literally, "The chair the red is broken.") Except with the simple adjective-phrase clauses described above, relative clauses in Hebrew are always set off with commas: - Ha-kise, 'she-ata yoshev alav, shavur.'' ("The chair that you are sitting on is broken," or "The chair, which''' you are sitting on, is broken.")
This is perhaps due to influence from other languages, such as German (described above). One major difference between relative clauses in Hebrew and those in (for example) English is that in Hebrew, what might be called the "regular" pronoun is not always suppressed in the relative clause. To reuse the prior example: - Ha-kise, 'she-ata yoshev alav, shavur. (lit.'', "The chair, that/which you are sitting on it''', is broken.")
Indeed, this pronoun is only suppressed when it is the subject or direct object of the relative clause; and even in these cases, the pronoun is sometimes left in for emphasis or other reasons. Relative clauses in Spanish See Spanish_grammar#Relative_pronouns. References - Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum (2002). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-43146-8.
- A.J.Thomson & A.V.Martinet (4th edition 1986). A Practical English Grammar. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-431342-5. 72-85. (For the basic "rules" of the English relative pronoun in a presentation suitable for foreign learners.)
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