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! |
|---|
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The relative pronoun is the subject/object of the relative clause, so we do not repeat the subject/object:
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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.
Hi Sokhom,
1. what I see and where she lives are both free relative clauses and noun clauses. (A couple of notes: the information on this page above is all about bound relative clauses, not free ones; and different grammar traditions use different terms.)
2. No, it should be one of these options:
As a relative pronoun, where already includes the meaning of 'in', in relation to the noun. You can think of it as substitutable with 'in which' (i.e. The town in which I live / The town which I live in).
I hope that helps.
Jonathan
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi Sokhom,
The two sentences are equivalent in meaning. But they are structurally different.
I think your analysis is right for the second example. But in example 1, is a mystery can't be an independent clause (because it's not a complete sentence if it stands alone). So, I understand the whole of example 1 as a single independent clause.
Only example 1 has a fused relative clause. 'Fused' means that the relative clause functions as a noun (in contrast, in example 2, it functions as an adjective describing the noun place).
Best wishes also to you!
Jonathan
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi Sokhom,
For 1, I think the example sentence may be wrong?
For 2, 'where she lives' is a relative clause - it's a free relative clause. It is also a noun clause.
For clarification, here are the two types of relative clause:
I should point out that we don't actually use the terms 'free'/'bound' here on this website. (As I mentioned in my first message, there are different terms belonging to different analytical traditions.) It might be better to follow up with some resources which do use those terms and may go into more depth than we can here - for example, you might find this page useful. I hope it helps :)
Jonathan
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi Ahmed Imam,
This is a slightly odd situation because 'beer' is used an uncount noun, but the point seems to be that there are different kinds of beer. When distinguishing between different brands or types of beer, we often use it as a count noun (e.g. 'There are lots of different beers but none that I like').
1 is not correct: you could say 'much of what I like' or 'much of the kind I like' or 'much of the ones I like', but not 'much of which I like'. 2 is OK I suppose, but as I explained earlier, I'd probably use the count noun form here.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Ahmed Imam,
I'd say 'that' instead of 'which', but I'm not sure I'd say that 'which' is wrong.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Maahir,
If you use 'of', then actually you have to use both 'that' and 'which'! In other words, with 'of', the correct sentence is 'Much of that which he said ...' In this case, 'that' is not a relative pronoun but a pronoun, and 'which' is the relative pronoun.
It might be easier to think of the sentence with a noun instead of the pronoun 'that', for example 'Many of the stories which he told ...'
In the case of 'Much that (or 'Much which') he said ...', both 'that' and 'which' are relative pronouns.
Hope that makes sense.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Ahmed Imam,
Although both are grammatically possible, I think that is the natural choice here. We tend not to use who or which in constructions such as this, where the noun is omitted (the best thing).
That said, I think the majority of speakers would omit the relative pronoun altogether: This is the best he can do for you.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Ahmed Imam,
That sentence is a little odd. I'd suggest changing the beginning to 'The fact that the rate ...'. That would make it grammatically correct, but the logic appears circular to me.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi hoando124,
I would use who here, as Lily is a person. :)
Jonathan
The LearnEnglish Team
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 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 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
Hello Roses,
The modal verb 'may' is followed by an infinitive without 'to', but there are different forms of the infinitive. Here, you have a continuous infinitive formed with be + verb-ing.
There are many infinitive forms. For example:
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Roses,
'All that was left' is the subject of the sentence. In terms of structure it contains a relative clause and is similar to this:
In this sentence 'The man' is a noun phrase and 'who worked at the bank' is a relative clause describing the noun phrase.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Roses,
No, you can't use 'all' in that way. It can only be part of a larger subject: all I could see was... / all we had was... / all we need is... etc.
We don't limit the number of questions a person asks on the site, but we try to provide answers to as many users as we can, so we usually only answer one question from any particular user on any particular day. In other words, if you ask multiple questions then you might have to wait a little longer for your answer.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Roses,
Relative clauses are one kind of subordinate clause; there are other kinds.
In your example 'all' is a pronoun and 'that was left' is a relative clause describing it; 'all that was left' is a noun phrase functioning as the subject of the sentence.
'...was a triangular piece of metal' is a verb phrase consisting of a verb with its complement.
The term 'finite verb' is used to describe those verb forms which has a subject and can be used to form an independent clause. In other words, finite verbs are verb forms other than the infinitive, participles and gerunds.
'Main verb' is a descriptive term used to contrast with auxiliary verbs.
I hope those answers clarify it for you. Please note that this is a site focused on language learning and use rather than linguistic analysis. Where analysing the language in this way helps with language learning we're happy to do it, but we try to avoid an overly technical focus on terminology and sentence analysis for the most part.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Shortie Dork,
Both are grammatically possible.
The relative pronoun is the object of the verb 'met', so it is possible to use whom. However, use of whom is disappearing in modern English other than when it directly follows a preposition (to whom, for whom etc), so who is the more common option.
You can read more about this topic on this page;
https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/english-grammar-reference/relative-pronouns-and-relative-clauses
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Shoaib50,
Both sentences are grammatically correct. It's a little unusual, though, to use the word 'this' (in 2). I would recommend something like 'The man kept a bag under the table with four curved legs', but 1 is also fine.
Hope this helps.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello again Shoaib50,
It's grammatically possible to say something like 'The man kept his bag, which was red, under the table'. I wouldn't use a relative clause after 'under the table' to refer to the bag, because it could be difficult to know what its antecedent is.
The last sentence you ask about is not grammatically correct. You'd have to put the relative clause closer to the antecedent ('My uncle, who I borrowed money from, lives in Germany.').
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Yigitcan,
'Who' is not correct in your first example. I'm not sure where the question is from, but the person who wrote the key clearly made a mistake. If the question is from our site then please let us know where it is so that we can correct the error.
'Where' is correct in your second example. The meaning is similar to 'the place in which'.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello camillemw,
Yes, it is correct, though most people just say 'The people he remembers' or 'The people who he remembers'. The relative pronoun is often omitted when it's the object of a verb in the relative clause.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Ahmeds230,
You can use 'where' provided you don't use 'to':
When you use 'to', you need to use a pronoun such as 'which', but you need to add more information:
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Ahmeds230,
As I said, after the preposition 'to' you need a pronoun rather than the adverb 'where', so that option is not possible.
'Which' can follow a preposition, but it is a pronoun which needs a referent. In other words, there must be a context which identifies the places referred to by 'which'. For example:
Without a context like this, I would say that 'which' does not make sense.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team