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Understanding Relative Clauses in English

Relative clauses add additional information about a person or thing already mentioned. There are two main types: defining relative clauses which provide essential information, and non-defining relative clauses which provide non-essential information and use commas. The pronoun "whose" functions as a possessive relative pronoun, while "which" refers to animals and objects in relative clauses.

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44 views2 pages

Understanding Relative Clauses in English

Relative clauses add additional information about a person or thing already mentioned. There are two main types: defining relative clauses which provide essential information, and non-defining relative clauses which provide non-essential information and use commas. The pronoun "whose" functions as a possessive relative pronoun, while "which" refers to animals and objects in relative clauses.

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Fernanda Supe
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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RELATIVE CLAUSE

Relative or relative clause sentences are those that exercise the function of subordinate
with respect to a main sentence, adding more information about a thing or a person that
had already been mentioned before. For example:
The cushions that are on the couch are purple and green .
In this case, the main sentence would be The cushions are purple and green and the
secondary or subordinate The cushions are on the couch . To join both we use the
pronoun of relative that , which refers to cushions .

 There are two main types of relative sentences:

The cushions that are on the couch are purple and Green

It would be a Defining relative clause . These types of sentences give information


necessary to understand what we are referring to and do not have commas. This is the
case of the sentence in the previous example: if we omit the subordinate sentence, we no
longer know what cushions we are referring to.

 His boyfriend, who is from Madrid, is studying Maths

Belongs to Non-defining relative clauses (subordinate explanatory sentences). These


types of sentences provide additional information about the person or thing we are
referring to, but it is not essential to identify them. In this case they do have commas. If
we remove the relative sentence, it remains clear to which person we refer.

WHOSE
Finally, we have the pronoun whose , which we should not confuse with who since it
exercises the function of possessive. To identify it better, he thinks that in Spanish it
would be translated as whose, whose, whose or whose:
 Yesterday I met the girl whose sister is a supermodel.
 I knew the guy whose bike you bought.
 The farmer, whose name was Fred, sold us 10 pounds of potatoes.
 John works with that other chap whose name I can’t remember.
 This is the book whose title I couldn’t remember.
WHICH
We use which in relative clauses to refer to animals and to things:
We have seen a lot of changes which are good for business.
 The cruise ship, which will depart from Liverpool for a fifteen-night
Mediterranean cruise, returns to the Mersey on 29 September.
 She seemed more talkative than usual, which was because she was nervous.
 People think I sit around drinking coffee all day. Which, of course, I do.
 There are several small ponds in which a variety of fish live
 My bicycle, which I've had for more than ten years, is falling apart.

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