English Relative Clauses
Relative clauses in the English language are formed principally by means of relative pronouns. The basic relative pronouns are who, which, and that (who also has the derived forms whom and whose). Various grammatical and stylistic rules exist for determining which of the relative pronouns can be used in a given instance. In some cases (as in "This is the man I saw"), it is possible to omit the relative pronoun entirely.
English also uses free relative clauses, which have no antecedent – these can be formed with the pronoun what (as in "I like what you've done"), as well as with certain other forms such as who and whoever.
Read more about English Relative Clauses: Overview, Status of that, Free Relative Clauses, Non-finite Relative Clauses, Adverbial Types
Famous quotes containing the words english and/or relative:
“This seems a long while ago, and yet it happened since Milton wrote his Paradise Lost. But its antiquity is not the less great for that, for we do not regulate our historical time by the English standard, nor did the English by the Roman, nor the Roman by the Greek.... From this September afternoon, and from between these now cultivated shores, those times seemed more remote than the dark ages.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“In a country where misery and want were the foundation of the social structure, famine was periodic, death from starvation common, disease pervasive, thievery normal, and graft and corruption taken for granted, the elimination of these conditions in Communist China is so striking that negative aspects of the new rule fade in relative importance.”
—Barbara Tuchman (19121989)