Finite Types
Relative clauses are a special class of dependent clause (also called "subordinate clause") that usually serve to modify a noun. In English, similarly to most other Indo-European languages, relative clauses are often introduced by one of the relative pronouns who, whom, whose, what, or which, or by the word that, which can be analyzed either as a relative pronoun or as a relativizer (complementizer)—see English relative clauses.
Reduced relative clauses, on the other hand, have no relative pronoun or complementizer introducing them. The example below contrasts an English non-reduced relative clause and reduced relative clause.
| Relative clause: | The man | who/whom/that I saw | was big. |
| Reduced relative clause: | The man | I saw | was big. |
Because of the omission of function words, the use of reduced relative clauses, particularly when nested, can give rise to sentences which, while theoretically correct grammatically, are not readily parsed by listeners. A well-known example put forward by linguists is "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo", which contains the reduced relative clause Buffalo buffalo buffalo (meaning "which buffalo from Buffalo (do) buffalo").
Read more about this topic: Reduced Relative Clause
Famous quotes containing the words finite and/or types:
“Put shortly, these are the two views, then. One, that man is intrinsically good, spoilt by circumstance; and the other that he is intrinsically limited, but disciplined by order and tradition to something fairly decent. To the one party man’s nature is like a well, to the other like a bucket. The view which regards him like a well, a reservoir full of possibilities, I call the romantic; the one which regards him as a very finite and fixed creature, I call the classical.”
—Thomas Ernest Hulme (1883–1917)
“He’s one of those know-it-all types that, if you flatter the wig off him, he chatter like a goony bird at mating time.”
—Michael Blankfort. Lewis Milestone. Johnson (Reginald Gardner)