Level: beginner
The relative pronouns are:
| Subject | Object | Possessive |
|---|---|---|
| who | who/whom | whose |
| which | which | whose |
| that | that | - |
We use relative pronouns to introduce relative clauses. Relative clauses tell us more about people and things:
Lord Thompson, who is 76, has just retired.
This is the house which Jack built.
Marie Curie is the woman that discovered radium.
We use:
- who and whom for people
- which for things
- that for people or things.
Two kinds of relative clause
There are two kinds of relative clause:
1. We use relative clauses to make clear which person or thing we are talking about:
Marie Curie is the woman who discovered radium.
This is the house which Jack built.
In this kind of relative clause, we can use that instead of who or which:
Marie Curie is the woman that discovered radium.
This is the house that Jack built.
We can leave out the pronoun if it is the object of the relative clause:
This is the house
thatJack built. (that is the object of built)
- Relative pronouns 1
- Relative pronouns 2
| Be careful! |
|---|
|
The relative pronoun is the subject/object of the relative clause, so we do not repeat the subject/object:
|
2. We also use relative clauses to give more information about a person, thing or situation:
Lord Thompson, who is 76, has just retired.
We had fish and chips, which I always enjoy.
I met Rebecca in town yesterday, which was a nice surprise.
With this kind of relative clause, we use commas (,) to separate it from the rest of the sentence.
| Be careful! |
|---|
|
In this kind of relative clause, we cannot use that:
and we cannot leave out the pronoun: We had fish and chips, which I always enjoy. |
- Relative pronouns 3
- Relative pronouns 4
Level: intermediate
whose and whom
We use whose as the possessive form of who:
This is George, whose brother went to school with me.
We sometimes use whom as the object of a verb or preposition:
This is George, whom you met at our house last year.
(whom is the object of met)This is George’s brother, with whom I went to school.
(whom is the object of with)
but nowadays we normally use who:
This is George, who you met at our house last year.
This is George’s brother, who I went to school with.
- Relative pronouns 5
Relative pronouns with prepositions
When who(m) or which have a preposition, the preposition can come at the beginning of the clause:
I had an uncle in Germany, from who(m) I inherited a bit of money.
We bought a chainsaw, with which we cut up all the wood.
or at the end of the clause:
I had an uncle in Germany, who(m) I inherited a bit of money from.
We bought a chainsaw, which we cut all the wood up with.
But when that has a preposition, the preposition always comes at the end:
I didn't know the uncle that I inherited the money from.
We can't find the chainsaw that we cut all the wood up with.
- Relative pronouns 6
when and where
We can use when with times and where with places to make it clear which time or place we are talking about:
England won the World Cup in 1966. It was the year when we got married.
I remember my twentieth birthday. It was the day when the tsunami happened.Do you remember the place where we caught the train?
Stratford-upon-Avon is the town where Shakespeare was born.
We can leave out when:
England won the World Cup in 1966. It was the year we got married.
I remember my twentieth birthday. It was the day the tsunami happened.
We often use quantifiers and numbers with relative pronouns:
| all of which/whom | most of which/whom | many of which/whom |
| lots of which/whom | a few of which/whom | none of which/whom |
| one of which/whom | two of which/whom | etc. |
She has three brothers, two of whom are in the army.
I read three books last week, one of which I really enjoyed.
There were some good programmes on the radio, none of which I listened to.
Comments
"Lindsey plays field hockey now, but last year she was on the soccer team". The coordinating conjunction "but" in this sentence is meant to connect two main (independent) clauses, each of which should rightfully be able to stand on its own given that they are main clauses. My question is that since second main (independent) clause "last year she was on the soccer team" uses a relative pronoun "she", which links to "Lindsey" in the first (main) independent clause, how can the second clause be considered a true (main) independent clause which can stand on its own?
And if indeed for this reason the second clause can no longer be considered as a true (main) independent clause, then doesn't this mean the use of the coordination conjunction "but" is not justified since a coordinating conjunction's role is primarily to link two (main) independent clauses?
Hello magnuslin,
The pronoun she requires a referent but that does not mean that it cannot be used in an independent clause. The referent can be in a different sentence, even a sentence which another person said, or it can be something extra-linguistic such as a picture of a person which is visible to the speakers.
More fundamentally, a sentence does not have to make sense to be grammatical. You can create perfectly grammatical sentences which make no sense at all.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello every one . I have a setence combined like this.
Dr. Smith is a good surgeon. He lives next door.
>Dr. Smith is a good surgeon who lives next door. (Is this right?)
Hello kangmingoon,
Yes, that sentence is correct.
Well done!
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
She is the best girl ... I have ever met
Why the answer is that not whom
Hello Alaa El Baddini,
Whom is the object pronoun but is disappearing from use in modern English. Nowadays it is only required when it directly follows a preposition (so we say to whom, for whom and with whom rather than
to who,for whoandwith who).In other contexts, even if whom is grammartically possible, it can sound very unnatural. This is the case in your example. Whom is not grammatically incorrect, but it is not the normal choice in modern English and sounds rather unnatural.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi,
When a relative clause is introduced with relative adverbs such as when, where and why, is the clause still considered a relative clause? or must relative clauses always be introduced by relative pronouns which refer to nouns (i.e. the relative clause introduced with a relative pronoun, serves to give more information about the noun that the relative clause modifies)?
Also, when used this way, it seems that oxford lexico dictionary describes such "when, where or why", as relative adverbs...for example use of "when" in "Tuesday is the day when we have pizza". But it seems to me that "when" here is modifying day (a noun), so why is it that some people call "when" a relative adverb, while others see "when" here as an "adjective" since it modifies a noun (i.e. day)?
Hi Tim,
Yes, the relative clause is still a relative clause. It is usually called an adverb relative clause.
You need to distinguish between the adverb (when, where, why) and the clause as a whole. The function of the adverb is to head the clause and act as a connector with the rest of the sentence. The function of the clause as a whole is adjectival, as you say. In other words, the relative adverb is part of an adjectival clause.
You can often replace the relative adverb with a preposition and a relative pronoun:
Adverbs are perhaps the broadest category of word in English and sometimes the category is controversial for this reason, being seen as a catch-all category whose members have an extraordinary range of functions. You can see some of these under these links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Adverbs_by_type
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Why are relative clauses also called adjective clauses?
Hello Tim,
Relative clauses provide information about a noun (or noun phrase) so their function in the sentence is adjectival. That is why they are sometimes called adjective clauses.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
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