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
Hello!
I've been thinking about this sentence a lot: "Lily and her dogs, ... go out for a walk everyday, haven't had time to do that recently.
It's supposed to be a "that" to be filled in the blank if it was a defining relative clause. However, it's a non-defining one thus a "that" cannot be used here.
So please help me with this. Thank you so much!
Hi hoando124,
I would use who here, as Lily is a person. :)
Jonathan
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello!
How can we differenciate on which from whose?
Thanks!
Hello Isa,
'whose' always includes the idea of possession, and usually the possessor is a person, animal or organisation (which is composed of people).
'which', on the other hand, refers to an object or idea, but doesn't include the idea of possession or a person that possesses something.
Does that help? If you have a specific sentence you would like to ask us about, please feel free to do that.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello,
thanks for the content!
I don't know whether this has been stated before: I just wanted to let you know that Lagos isn't the capital of Nigeria (task 3).
Hello Imho,
Thanks very much for telling us about this mistake! I've just fixed it, though it may take a few hours for the change to appear on the site.
Best wishes,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Peter M.
Thank you very much for clarifying that for me!
Hello,
I am doing activities using relative pronouns and linking expressions. There is an exercise that I have to tick the ones that are correct and replace the relative pronoun in those that are wrong.
"It was not until I was seventeen that I started writing down all what happened to me every day."
I know that "what happened" is wrong and I should replace it with "that happened" but I´m not sure why, it just sounds right to me.
I mean why can´t it be replaced with "which" as we use that relative pronoun for things also.
Please help.
Hello ClaireUB78,
'What' is not used in relative clauses in English. You can use the relative pronouns who (whom), which and that.
After 'all' we use that rather than who or which in modern English. The use of who or which is not ungrammatical but it sounds archaic to the modern ear.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Someone told me that there is no such thing as a noun clause. Is that true?
What I had forgotten was that I had a test today
Is “what I had forgotten” a noun phrase or a noun clause in the sentence above
Someone told me it was a noun phrase
but I don’t believe that because it’s said everywhere on the internet that a noun phrase does not have a subject and verb pairing
Please help me understand this
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