Talk:English relative clauses

Undiscussed kinds

It seems like there are some kinds of relative clauses that aren't discussed here:

1. Complete sentences, especially subjunctive-ish ones, used as relative clauses:
   • […] the age of 75 of my father, may he rest in peace, nor the age of […].^[1]
   • Well... my husband, bless his soul, is a […]^[2]
2. Relative clauses where the internal pronoun is not omitted:
   • [bad example removed, as it could be viewed as a normal relative clause]
   • Portman, who I wonder if she’ll ever better her role in Leon, is good here also, […]^[3]
   • The second message comes from a person who I don't know if the military is the right thing for them because they […]^[4]
3. Reduced relative clauses — there are other ways to analyze these, but this is a common one:
   • […] cause death in a small child wearing a shoulder/lap belt, however, […]^[5]
   • [not a real example] The window, left open in an attempt to let in fresh air, had let in the rain as well.
4. Fused/nominal relative clauses:
   • Will Scoble Do For Podcasting What He Did For Blogging?^[6]
   • The Mafia will help whoever can pay.^[7]
5. Delayed relative clauses:
   • [not a real example] A woman introduced herself whose name I don't remember.
   • Something there is that doesn't love a wall, / […]^[8]
6. Sentence-modifying relative clauses:
   • A judge rejected the claim, which is surprising since ’solidarity’ is […]^[9]
   • […] will prompt you to provide additional registration information, after which the information will be sent […]^[10]

Do any of these warrant mention in the article?

Ruakh 03:37, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

These are interesting, Ruakh. The last type, sentence modifying relative clauses, are important, and should certainly be in there. The rest is up for debate. I suspect that most of these are either not relative clauses in the traditiona sense (ror example I would see your "reduced relative clauses" as participle constructions, and the subjunctive "may he rest in peace" type are really interjections) or are just bad grammar, the results of people thinking on the hoof and producing spoken sentences which they would never write. Your "delayed relative clause" is a good example of this. Any native speaker who has thought about the sentence in advance would say "a woman, whose name I don't remember, introduced herself". But we don't plan sentences in advance in spoken language, so an afterthought gets tacked on the end and no-one cares that it is clumsy, we don't even notice until it is written down. --Doric Loon 09:33, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

So to summarize: #6 you think worth mentioning, the others not — #1 because you see such clauses as interjections rather than as relative clauses, #3 because you see such clauses as participle phrases rather than as relative clauses, #5 because you see such placements of relative clauses as ungrammatical, and #2 and #4 for unstated reasons? Ruakh 14:26, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Exactly, though #5 is really more clumsy than ungrammatical. In #2, I don't really understand how the child molester sentence is any different from any other relative clause, but the Portman sentence is ungrammatical because the who doesn't make sense as either subject or object of the verb. (The difference between #2(a) and #2(b) is that ask has quite a different valency from wonder.) #4 is similar to #6 and is worth including too: I actually thought this almost nominal use in the sense "that which" had been discussed in one of the wiki articles, but I can't find it now. So yes, please do write up #4 and #6. As for the others, I won't say don't mention them, but in the case of #1 and #3 you would need to find a source for some linguist who analyses them as relative clauses, because traditional grammar doesn't, and in the case of #2(b) and #5, you would want to say that these are non-standard occurrences which are observable as random variations in speech, and you would need to quote a real example of #5. --Doric Loon 16:37, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Re: #1: I always thought of them as relative clauses, but I don't know if that's a standard interpretation.

Re: #2(a): That's a good point; it's ambiguous between the two readings, and now that I think about it, your reading actually seems more likely. I've given a new, less ambiguous example.

Re: #2(b): You're right that it's not permitted by traditional grammar, but I'd hesitate to call it "ungrammatical" or a "random variation", as in my experience people produce it fairly often in certain contexts. There's no way for a relative pronoun to serve as the subject of an embedded clause that has an explicit complentizer or relative pronoun, so people often produce a relative clause with the "normal" pronoun re-inserted. For example, *"the woman, who I don't know who is, said she'd never come back" is impossible, so one common solution is to say ?"the woman, who I don't know who she is, said she'd never come back." Another is to do something like in #1: "the woman, I don't know who she is, said she'd never come back."

Re: #3: I don't think of them as relative clauses myself, but I know that to be a fairly standard way to interpret them; Googling "reduced relative clause", I find plenty of examples of this terminology: [11] [12] [13] [14].

Re: #4: Will do. :-)

Re: #5: This is comparatively difficult to find a real example for, since I can't think of any Google-searches that seem likely to pull up examples. (In the other cases, I tried various fragments that seemed relatively likely to occur in clauses of those types; but in this case, the clause is identical, simply postponed.) I'll see what I can do, though.

Re: #6: Will do. :-)

Ruakh 18:47, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

OK, I am now quite happy for you to include reduced relative clauses, though I think you should be careful to point out that this is not the only, probably not even the usual way to analyse them. If you can pin this analysis to one particular school of linguistics, that would be ideal. I still don't thik #2 is real English, though I acknowledge that the mangled sentences which we all sometimes produce when we aren't thinking clearly DO communicate and therefore are functionally real language and worth analysing. It would be interesting to know whether any of your special types are found in other languages, and how they are analysed there. Of course, #5 is perfectly normal in many languages; it is an oddity of English that we prefer the relative pronoun to be next to its antecedent. --Doric Loon 23:35, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I've thought of a real example of a delayed relative clause: the first two lines of Robert Frost's poem "Mending Wall". Does that count? —Ruakh_TALK 05:17, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Years later... ;-) Can anyone comment on a sentence like "The man who I believe is called Peter opened the door."? It seems less extraordinary to me than Ruakh's bullet point no. 2 (internal pronoun omitted) at the beginning of this section. Is there a grammatical term for the insertion of "I believe" in a relative clause like this? --Iovis Fulmen (talk) 12:35, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Grammatical gender

Check out Grammatical gender. English does have GG, however it is only reflected in pronouns; "who", "which", and "that" are clearly pronouns. "John" has a clear grammatical gender. GG does not have a 1-1 relation with biological sex, either, as there exist hermaphrodites, drag queens, etc., who challenge any concept of a purely biological gender. In any case, the usage of "who" mirrors the Dutch, which collapsed masculine and feminine into a common gender, and left the neuter gender alone. The former would take "who" as a relative pronoun, whereas the latter would take "which". samwaltz 17:09, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Ach, to quote briefly Gender, "In the social sciences, "gender" emphasizes a social, cultural, or psychological dimension, in contrast to biological sex. The discipline of gender studies investigates and theorizes on the nature of gender as a social construct." And yes, linguistics is a social science. samwaltz 17:14, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

You're right that he-vs.-she is actually a difference of sociocultural gender, not of strictly biological sex, but that's still irrelevant; it's not a difference of grammatical gender. Grammatical gender has to do with agreement — a noun has a specific gender if there are other words that have to agree with it in gender — but that's not the case in English. You seem to be under the impression that the choice between he and she has to do with the antecedent, but that's not true: it has to do with [the speaker's beliefs about] the referent. Consider the following exchange:

—That man over there with the red hair, what's his name?

—Uh … her name is Julie.

Now, an exchange like this is also possible in many languages that do have grammatical gender, because grammatical gender is often complicated by sociocultural gender; but in English it doesn't make sense to speak in those terms, because there's no case where grammatical gender "wins out" over sociocultural gender in determining agreement. (In languages that have grammatical gender, there are occasionally words that have a specific grammatical gender even when referring to someone of the opposite sociocultural gender, and a single entity might get different genders within the same sentence. This is impossible in English.)

—Ruakh_TALK 18:57, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

But words like "he" and "she" are not only reflective of grammatical gender, they have grammatical gender. We do not confuse "him" and "her" precisely because "he" and "she" have grammatical gender. Otherwise, it would be feasible to say "She is a great listener, which is why I like his company."

Of course, English also has a variety of positions (familial relations, professions, nobility, etc.) which have a distinct gender (father, princess, stewardess). The sentence "My father is coming over this weekend; she and I have a great relationship." is grammatically incorrect. I don't have to do a crotch check to know which pronoun to use; it is inherent in the noun. (And yes, I know a few people whose biological fathers are now female; in such cases, either a gender-non-specific noun, such as "parent" is chosen. Otherwise the sentence just feels as grammatically incorrect as a language with descriptive grammar will allow. samwaltz 19:32, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually, no. Rosie O'Donnell once had a (rather tasteless) joke to the effect of "I dated a transsexual. It didn't work out: I loved him, but couldn't stand her." The joke is grammatically correct and completely understandable. The reason we don't confuse "he" and "she" isn't that they have distinct grammatical genders, but rather that they reflect different sociocultural genders, and sociocultural gender is a major element of our social structure, if not all social structures. (I'm sure you're aware of studies demonstrating that people never confuse a man with a woman, even though they can confuse very dissimilar men and very dissimilar women. The only characteristic that's nearly as salient is age: people don't confuse the young with the old, either.) The problem with "My father is coming over this weekend; she and I have a great relationship" is strictly semantic: "father" is only used with men, and "she" only with women, so they can't have the same referent. —Ruakh_TALK 00:38, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I would be interested in knowing which studies you were speaking of. Did they never confuse known or unknown persons? I know out of personal experiences many cases in which unknown women have been mistaken for men and vice versa. Universal-Interessierter^de (talk (de)) 23:54, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

I absolutely agree with Ruakh. There seems to be some confusion here about what grammatical gender means. It is gender as a characteristic or category of a noun which can be entirely independent of its semantics. The fact that gender-semantics are complicated does not make English gender concepts independent of semantics. But when German makes a knife neuter, a fork feminine and a spoon masculine, this is not confused gender-semantics, it is the total absence of gender-semantics. Gender has become a purely formal category. --Doric Loon 12:44, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Hrm. Interesting. I'll be thinking about that for a while. Well, the page Grammatical gender is tagged as disputed/neutrality-check, so I don't mind letting go of that side fo the argument for a while. Could the term "sociocultural gender" be used in the article? In those regards, it would only be possible to use "who" as a relative pronoun for referents which typically take "he" or "she" as a subject pronoun? This, in fact, does not always concide with the humanness (humanity?) of the subject - it is perfectly acceptable to say "who" in reference to a klingon or other gendered mythological figure ("Our father, who art in heaven..."). I know, defining personhood is still generally in the realm of speculative fiction, so I can only rest on examples from the field, but again, referring to a robot as "he", "she", or "who" is usually related to its distinction from a dumb machine. Gender-attribution accompanies personhood in English. Whatever it is that "he"/"she" represents, whether grammatical gender, or sociocultural, is tied to our usage of "who". samwaltz 15:20, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh! I see what you're saying. (Sorry, I got distracted by the grammatical-gender thing and missed the main point.) Yes, it's definitely the case that he and she are used to indicate personhood and it is used to indicate non-personhood (which is why it, while technically a gender-neutral third-person singular personal pronoun, is not even remotely serviceable in a sentence like, *"Someone forgot to write its name on its paper"). And yes, this is definitely analogous to the difference between human and non-human pronouns elsewhere. (BTW, science fiction and fantasy aren't the only homes for non-human he and she; people who deal a lot with animals often use those pronouns for them, and seamen often refer to ships with feminine human pronouns.) I'll edit the article accordingly. —Ruakh_TALK 19:32, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Masefield quote

How would you analyse this line: "And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by"? I remember a school teacher of mine parodying Dryden's relative clause rule by saying that if we were to follow that, Masefield would have to have written "And all I ask is a tall ship and a star by which to steer her." But while his parody obviously involves a relative clause, I'm puzzled about what exactly the original is. IS it a zero relative? --Doric Loon 08:33, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

No, not a relative clause, just a normal infinitival clause. As I'm sure you've noticed, infinitival clauses can follow their implicit subjects ("someone to watch over me") or their implicit objects ("something to do"); Masefield's example is the latter case. I happen to think "a star by which to steer her" sounds fine, but Fowler points out that since *"someone who to watch over me" and *"something which to do" are ungrammatical, it doesn't make sense to insist upon the analogous "a star by which to steer her". ("[…] Fowler considers 'a good land to live in' grammatically superior to 'a good land in which to live', since one cannot say *'a good land which to inhabit'."^[15]) —Ruakh_TALK 20:10, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. The way the old rule was usually formulated was that one shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition (or as another parody put it: "a preposition is the very worst word to end a sentence with"), and it is only now that it strikes me that this is a far broader prohibition than just that they shouldn't end a relative clause. Course, no-one believes this rule nowadays anyway, but that doesn't stop it being interesting. --Doric Loon 16:59, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

P-stranding can also occur due to the fronting of a question word ("What is he talking about?"), or due to a passive-voice transformation ("That hasn't been talked about.") That said, saying it shouldn't end a sentence is neither broader or narrower; it forbids "That's something to think about", but permits "That's something we need to talk about, sir." :-P —Ruakh_TALK 19:01, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

POV Pushing: Which and That

My attempts to remove the unreferenced POV from the "Which and That" section keep being reverted. The edits should stand for the following reasons:

"This latter rule is a relatively recent invention" -- Both "relative" and "recent" are POV. Relative to what? Recent compared to what? All the reader needs to know is when and by whom the rule was recommended; let the reader decide for themselves if this makes it "relatively recent."

"as is still the case today." All this really says is that the editor who wrote this sentence agrees with Fowler's 1926 statement and thinks it is still true--hardly NPOV, and totally irrelevant to the article.

--Margareta 01:03, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's so POV as it is obvious and well known; but I think the current text (after your last edits) is acceptable. —Ruakh_TALK 02:21, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree it would be correct to say that the convention is frequently disregarded--and in fact it would be easy to give a reference for such a statement (e.g., see the most recent Strunk & White). What was POV about the earlier wording was its assertion that neither most nor the best writers use the convention, as Fowler stated in 1926. I don't agree that this latter is "obvious and well known" today.--Margareta 01:36, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I think it sounds ok as it is but just want to add a comment about "well-known". I'm British and an English teacher. Through years of teaching I had never come across this rule until MS Word grammar checker started objecting, and then a fellow Wiki editor "corrected" one of my edits. In fact, in British English, we use "which" in preference to "that" in formal texts, so the usage would be the exact opposite. I'll add that info. Gailtb 11:44, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Change of plan - decided not to add my comment about British English without a reference. Gailtb 11:46, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

There is actually already a comment in the section about the distinction between British and American English. And I liked your edits over in Restrictiveness.--Margareta 01:36, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

i am a native speaker of british english, and i have always used "which" far more than my current perhaps american influenced grammar text permits, so i was quite pleased to read the above. in any case i feel "which" is "better" very often as it suggests various choices, unspoken alternatives, whereas that also has meaning as an opposite to "this" where it is often used simply as a pointer i.e. "that is the door to the house" cf "there is the the door to the house" or indeed "that is the door which leads to happiness" here it is clear that "that" is primarily the pointer and "which" is the relating of the door to what lies beyond it, in other words other doors lead elsewhere. reversing the words gives "which is the door that leads to happiness" - on its own this has to be a question surely. and if it is a clause then in fact both orders or none will mean the same but there is a different emphasis. this is funny:-

-over there is the glass door, which is the door that leads to happiness
-over there is the glass door which leads to happiness - then talk of more doors
-over there is the glass door that leads to happiness - i think tends to be no more doors mentioned or relevant
or if they are the list is humdrum - that, that, that
-there is the glass door to happiness
-over there that is the glass door, which is that door which leads to happiness!!!!! etc etc

"that" is also less meaningful as both who and which can be substituted by it. i think i use "which" almost as much as i can; i tend to use "that" for clause substitution, however, ie "that's why i went there" cf "which is why i went there" perhaps because of the easier contraction with "thats"(!)?

well this is common usage type material, can anyone write something referenced to back this up or otherwise that could go on the page? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.27.221.233 (talk) 14:14, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

This review of Strunk & White http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar/25497 by Geoffrey K. Pullum has a paragraph saying that White introduced the rule that "which" should not be used in "restrictive relative clause" and White edited out passages in earlier editions of the book where Strunk had used "which" that way. - Tashiro (talk) 02:27, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

That reviewer makes some good points, but he is wrong to credit White with this rule. The rule was clearly stated in Fowler's The King's English, published in 1906. I believe that Fowler himself invented the rule, although he presents it as his attempt to revive an ancient rule that had fallen into disuse. Certainly this rule did not exist in the 19th century; whether it actually existed before that is something that a better historian than I will need to verify. — Lawrence King ^(talk) 02:39, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Number

"If the machine reads what look like two answers."

or

"If the machine reads what looks like two answers."

Which is right and why? I think the first one is right because the antecedent to the word "what" is "answers" which is plural. My content editor says otherwise. Anyone know where I can find a legitimate source to prove one or the other right. Arthurian Legend (talk) 14:27, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

One question would clear this up: How many answers is the machine actually reading? If the machine is reading one answer that looks (notice the singular verb) like two answers, then "looks" is correct. If the machine is reading three or more answers that look like two, "look" is correct. As you said, the use of "look" or "looks" would depend on whether "what" were referring to something singular (one answer) or something plural (more than two answers). From the context, it is impossible to know whether "what" is singular or plural. Try rephrasing the sentence. For example, you could say, "If the machine reads one answer that looks like two answers" or "If the machine reads three answers that look like two answers." You could also add the word "would" to eliminate the subject-verb agreement problem: "If the machine reads what would look like two answers."75.91.99.235 (talk) 20:59, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

"Whoever" and "whomever"

This article was cited by one reader who commented in a discussion on the New York Times website. I commented in response that the Wikipedia article didn't really answer the question.

The "After Deadline" blog on the Times website "examines questions of grammar, usage and style...." In the January 6, 2009 entry, "Language and Disabilities", the third segment, under the heading of "The Case of the Puzzling Case", considered this sentence:

Whomever Gov. David A. Paterson appoints to succeed Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton most likely gets to keep the seat without having to seek election until 2010, instead of having to run next year.

At issue was whether the first word should be "Whomever" or "Whoever".

Some readers thought that the pronoun was the subject of the sentence and so should be the nominative "Whoever". In Comment #42, reader Liz responded that the subject was the entire clause, a nominal relative clause, and she linked to our article to support her view. She concluded that "Whomever" was correct.

I've read the article and I don't think it addresses the point. The question of what case to use for pronouns in clauses of this type seems to be reasonably related to the overall subject of the article, so if the grammar mavens who edit here want to tackle the dispute, go ahead. For what it's worth, the comments on the Times blog were divided. JamesMLane t c 22:49, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Misleading line

I would like to remove this line:

Linguists have objected to others' prescription of such invented rules.

The line implies that it is a general consensus among linguists that the rule is invented and therefore bad. However, the source isn't an article discussing linguists' expert opinions on this matter; it's an essay about writing. It claims, in passing, that "most linguists" think the rule is "silly," and criticizes one specific person who "never met a rule [he] didn't like." This particular post is written by one person. Right now the page won't load, but the writer does seem to be an academic of some kind. For now, I've changed the phrasing to reduce the NPoV, but I'd like to remove the line entirely. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:16, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Looked it up elsewhere. Dr. Zwicky is a professor of linguistics. Language Log is a blog (see WP:BLOGS) ...but one written by professionals ...but not written in a professional style ...but does it need to be? ...but he only mentions the material used in the article in passing. Thoughts? Since the article does not specifically describe the rule as "others' proscription of invented rules," does this constitute OR? Something's not right here but I'm not sure what. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:33, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Okay, that should do for now. I changed the phrasing, took out the weasel words, and mentioned Dr. Zwicky specifically. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:36, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

References

Dryden

The text says that Dryden said preposition stranding is bad grammar. This needs a citation. I don't know about Dryden, but the reason I am wary is that the same claim is often made about Robert Lowth, and when you look into it you find Lowth only ever said that preposition stranding sounds more informal and chatty than the formal-sounding alternative - something nobody would seriously doubt. Lowth then went on to use preposition stranding himself in his next sentence. In other words, all he did was draw attention to differences in register. He formulated no prescriptive rule. He was later villified for this rule, though, and for comments he never made about split infinitives, etc. etc. These early writers, who were the first to reflect on the nature of English and did the groundwork which we take for granted, did sometimes get it wrong, but we should be very wary of implying that they are reactionary fools, especially if we haven't taken the trouble to read their books. If Dryden did say this, we need a citation, and my bet is that when the cite is found, we will find it is much more nuanced than this article implies. --Doric Loon (talk) 10:36, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Say it, sing it, stitch it on a pillow. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:30, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

"Use" of relative clauses?

This article is not about the uses to which relative clauses are put; it's about grammatical usage pertaining to relative clauses. They seem to be different things.

Bathrobe (talk) 09:04, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Passive zeros

I am not sure about the part of the article on zero relatives which speaks of these as passives, with the auxiliary verb omitted as well as the relative:

Jack built the house that was sold yesterday

Jack built the house Ø sold yesterday.

I am not convinced that the latter does derive from the former. I would have thought, rather, that "sold" is here more like a passive adjective than anything else. Can we have a reference for this analysis from a reputable syntax source? --Doric Loon (talk) 10:16, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Interesting point. You're right that the zero passive clause can just as easily be seen as a participle being used purely as an adjective. This is made even more persuasive by the "absence" of the auxiliary verb.

From this perspective, the garden path sentence given as an example in this section ("The horse raced past the barn fell.") results from the fact that the word "raced" serves as both the simple past indicative active and the past passive participle of "to race". A verb that has different forms for the past and for the participle could be used unambiguously in such a case -- e.g., "The kite flown in Australia places first" is not garden path, because it can't be confused with "The kite flew in Australia places first".

But before removing it, someone should check the reference already cited in this section (footnote 7) to see if this book indeed categorizes the passive examples as zero relatives. Does anyone have this book? — Lawrence King ^(talk) 20:57, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Definition

Will someone please tell me where in this article is a definition of the English Relative Clause? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.83.88.21 (talk) 21:57, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Passive participle

The article says Jack built the house Ø sold yesterday is an example of a zero relative pronoun with the was suppressed. Of course, a much easier and more intuitive and historically accurate way to look at that sentence is that that house is modified by a passive participle, sold, and a passive participle is a kind of adjective, and an adjective needs no relative pronoun, but if it has one, it certainly does not omit the verb. Rwflammang (talk) 00:35, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree that it is not necessary (or really appropriate) to regard the postpositive participial modifier of a noun phrase as a reduced relative clause, but some people - including the author of the cited source - do seem to analyse it (vaguely) in that way. I would prefer it if the article made that clear that the omission of a defining relative pronoun is one thing and the "omission" of the auxilliary be is something else, and not universally analysed in terms of a reduced relative clause. If this analysis (reduced relative includes omission of auxiliary) is used, the section title is also incorrect, because we are not just talking about a zero pronoun.

If we analyse postpositive participial phrases as reduced relative clauses, there are a number of other problems. We should presumably regard "the house sitting on the hill" in the same way as "the house built on the hill", in which case, the sentence The zero relative pronoun cannot be the subject of an active voice verb in the relative clause. is not correct. The sentence is, of course, correct if we talk of reduced relative clauses and zero relative pronouns only when solely the relative pronoun is omitted. We also have the problem of analysing "the person chosen as the winner" and "the person lucky enough to be chosen as the winner" in completely different ways - or regarding the omission of who is preceding an adjective like lucky as another example of a reduced relative clause.--Boson (talk) 10:27, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, I think this should just be removed from the article. Linguists are always playing around with new ways to analyise things - that's their job and there would be no progress if they didn't try it - so obviously there will be isolated texts - even ones by very renowned linguists - which suggest very unorthodox things. It is not helpful in a wiki article on a grammatical phenomenon to try to cover all of these. It is not normal to regard these passive constructions as relatives. This is not the place to present that idea. --Doric Loon (talk) 14:37, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree. —Ruakh_TALK 03:41, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Non-restrictive that and preceding comma (removal of the word "generally")

Though I agree that both exceptions are very unusual, I think we need a word like "generally" to make the statement less categorical, and I think we should perhaps use a phrase like "edited prose in contemporary English " rather than "formal American English". I don't think the literature supports a categorical statement that non-restrictive that is (universally regarded as) ungrammatical in formal English (including literary English) – even American English. This would imply rejection of actual examples as ungrammatical rather than just professed support for a general precriptivist how-to recommendation.

1. As regards the preceding comma, I agree that that is generally not preceded by a comma. However, there is no grammatical rule requiring the absence of a preceding comma – for instance one placed there to delimit essential information added as an afterthought or to indicate a series (e.g. "Is this the man that troubled the earth, that shook kingdoms . . . ?").
2. As regards "non-restrictive" that, I agree that it is unusual in contemporary English prose, but this

• is a fairly recent phenomenon that does not apply to a large body of literature – that is written in modern English and is still read;
• does not apply to poetry (and similar literary writing where prosody is important) .

I am thinking of examples mentioned in linguistic discussions (e.g. by Huddleston and Pullum) such as:

• "Twisted roots, terribly gnarled like the rheumatic hands of a very old man, had continually snagged at my thick woollen shirt -- and deep holes, that had once contained the roots of these now degraded forest giants, were dangerously hidden by concealing growth."
• "The smell, that I was to know so well for so long, almost overwhelmed me."
• " The lawn, that ran back to an impressive house, was immense, the grass blades as small and fine as pine needles."
• "The patas monkey, that spends almost all of its time in open grassland, adopts just such tactics, standing up on its hind legs whenever it is alarmed."
• "His heart, that had lifted at the sight of Joanna, had become suddenly heavy at the sight of Ramdez thumping after her with the women."
• "February, that in other years held intimations of spring, this year prolonged the bitter weather."

I think these are examples of formal (literary) use that are not categorically rejected as ungrammatical by the language community.

There is also a general problem with the term "restrictive", which means that that is quite frequently used with "integrated" relative clauses that are not strictly restrictive in the normal sense of the word. --Boson (talk) 01:02, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Boson: thank you for your reply---and for so agreeably conveying instructive information. I am in the dilemma of 1/ being impressed with all your excellent argument, and 2/ of the mind that the present text (admittedly largely mine) does speak correctly for using---whenever and at the writer’s choice---both the prescriptivist ‘rule’ (ie, “formal American English”) as well as other styles [no preceding comma here please, <--(sorry!)  :-) ] that may or may not conform to said “formal American English”.

For example, certainly I acknowledge the excellence of all your (dot) points #2; my take is that the authors (as independent paragons all) are electing to conform to the style or rule of their choice---or, mindful now of poetry and ‘high prose’, to their own personal and inimitable style, eg e. e. cummings.

To your assessment at opening, I see the current text as not implying bad things on --or rejecting, or castigatin'-- any literature as “ungrammatical”; I had no such intent. But, ‘I can see (barely) now’ that others (esp. linguists and scholars) might view it such.

To your point #1 I agree, and thus my dilemma.

Acknowledging my bias tells me I may be reading ‘the back of my forehead’ vs what the words-on-page actually say to the objective or more skilled observer. So I shall welcome the edits you mention above; and I’m grateful for your patience and expertise afforded me.Jbeans (talk) 02:49, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Deleting Goold Brown and Professor Fowler history

Hello Boson and thank you; I agree that deleting material here is an improvement, not only for clarity of the new facts, but for the better readability of the text. But there is loss of valuable history here---the references to the (uncoordinated) efforts of Goold Brown and the reverend Professor Fowler as presented to the reader---if it is not restored elsewhere. Granted the material is parenthetical here but… but IMO it in certainly worth keeping on the page somewhere. (I’m caught up is another page right now, but would hope to revisit this item with you later/soon.) Best regards--Jbeans (talk) 12:25, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Sorry about that! My deletion was accidental. I reworded the text before and after that passage and somehow it got lost in the process. I have restored it where it was for the time being. --Boson (talk) 14:18, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Sexist example!

She is a woman on whom to rely; He is the man whom to beat.

So, does it imply that while women are good to rely, men are only good to be beaten?

No IdreamofJeanie (talk) 11:21, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

"with who"?

Jack is the boy with who Jenny fell in love (colloquial; or not okay);

"Colloquial"? Seriously? Are there people who actually say this? Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 03:13, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

The way which you should hold them

The Cambridge Grammar of the english Language, page 224, reads

Complements are most often NPs, and conversely NPs are usually complements. Some NPs can occur with adjunct function, but they tend to belong to very restricted semantic types, mainly time or manner.

A distinctive property of such NPs is that they cannot be replaced by personal pronouns: They saw her then/*it, You should hold them so/*it.

Similarly there are no corresponding relatives with which: the way that/∗which you should hold them.

Yet, I do not understand the reason why the way which you should hold them is wrong, that is what relation "similarly" marks in the paragraph. --Backinstadiums (talk) 11:47, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Agreement in person with the antecedent

Does that always work or just if the antecedent could grammatically be the subject of that verb in the relative clause? "I, who am X, say Y", but what about "She asks me, who am Z"? Possible? I am struggling to understand such possible agreements, for in my language, relative pronouns (tend to) always govern the third person if they are the grammatical subject of a sentence, unless you use a combination of relative pronoun and personal pronoun. But at least I myself would often avoid such relative clauses by using an independant main clause or adding a noun phrase or demonstrative pronoun to the personal pronoun as an apposition which then will govern the relative clause in the third person. 2A0A:A541:F78F:0:D830:148B:C1C7:B983 (talk) 13:22, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi, in your example, it should be She asks me who I am. But that isn't actually a relative clause; it's an indirect question.

Your question relates to relative pronouns for which the antecedent is in the first or second person. Although it's possible to say I, who am Scottish, believe Nessie is real, I think this is a very unusual construction in the first person singular, and I would prefer to say I, being Scottish... You get it in the plural (They will not grow old as we who are left grow old) and in the second person (Our father, who art in Heaven,...; Here's a question for those of you who are too young to remember dial telephones).

But of course, the "you" and "we" forms of the verb are identical to the "they" forms, so there is no difficulty there, and "thou" is completely antiquated. So it's not really a problem. Don't overthink it. Doric Loon (talk) 13:56, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

If your interpretation of my sentence does not result in a relative clause, might it possibly be a misinterpretation? Let me proceed with your "scottish" example: "I, who am Scottish, believe ...", but would the following be possible "She asks me, who am Scottish, what I think about ..."? In German, one may phrase it "Sie fragt mich, der ich Schotte bin, was ich über ... denke." Another sentence might be "Das hat sie ausgerechnet mich gefragt, der gar nicht aus Schottland stammt.", using the third person.

Interesting, that the relative clause in the vocative phrase uses "art", although the pronoun "thou" is not there at all, neither inside nor outside the relative clause. The traditonal German translation was "Vater unser, der du bist im Himmel", used until mid of 20th century, before being replaced by the more daily phrasing "Vater unser im Himmel" without any relative clause. 2A0A:A541:F78F:0:D830:148B:C1C7:B983 (talk) 16:00, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi, yes, you've got it. I did misunderstand your example. It is possible that it used to be correct to say She asks me, who am Scottish, what I think about ... - but I suspect most English speakers today would feel it is antequated, and would prefer me who is. I personally wouldn't say either, since there are much more natural ways to say it: She asked me as a Scotsman what I think.... I found this forum post, which reaches the same conclusion: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/362949/me-who-is-or-me-who-am

Like you, I had the German construction in mind, where the personal pronoun is repeated in the relative clause, ich ..., der ich etc. There's nothing quite like that in English, which is a shame, because it is very elegant. Doric Loon (talk) 16:57, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

"Adverbials" are not adverbial?

The first paragraph/bullet under the "Adverbials" section seems a bit confused and/or contradictory, and as far as I can see none of the examples given contain any adverbs at all. In fact, it starts out explicitly talking about "clauses modifying a noun", which would make them, by definition, adjectival, not adverbial. For example, in "Here's the place [where] I live", there are no adverbs at all in that sentence. "[where] I live" is an adjectival relative clause modifying the noun "place". (Note: even if you get rid of "the place" and make it "Here is where I live", it is still not an adverb. Then it is actually a fused relative clause, acting as a noun instead.) This first bullet point really seems like it belongs somewhere else? Foogod (talk) 16:44, 9 August 2024 (UTC)