English Relative Clauses - Non-finite Relative Clauses

Non-finite Relative Clauses

Certain non-finite clauses (also called infinitive or participial clauses or phrases) can be classified as relative clauses. These include:

• infinitive clauses with an explicit relative pronoun (generally used with a fronted preposition): She is the woman on whom to rely.
• infinitive clauses having a zero object argument and qualifying an element that serves as the antecedent of that argument: He is the man to beat Ø; She is the woman to rely on Ø.
• past participle clauses having a zero object argument and qualifying an element that serves as the antecedent of that argument: The body found Ø here yesterday has now been identified. These have been called "reduced object relative passive clauses", and have been an object of psycholinguistic research in the area of sentence processing; see Reduced relative clause: Non-finite types.
• present participle clauses having a zero subject argument and qualifying an element that serves as the antecedent of that argument: The man Ø sitting on the bank was fishing. These are least likely to be classified as relative clauses.