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A relative clause is a
clause In language, a clause is a constituent that comprises a semantic predicand (expressed or not) and a semantic predicate. A typical clause consists of a subject and a syntactic predicate, the latter typically a verb phrase composed of a verb with ...
that modifies a
noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...
or
noun phrase In linguistics, a noun phrase, or nominal (phrase), is a phrase that has a noun or pronoun as its head or performs the same grammatical function as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently oc ...
Rodney D. Huddleston, Geoffrey K. Pullum, ''A Student's Introduction to English Grammar'', CUP 2005, p. 183ff. and uses some grammatical device to indicate that one of the arguments in the relative clause refers to the noun or noun phrase. For example, in the sentence ''I met a man who wasn't too sure of himself'', the subordinate clause ''who wasn't too sure of himself'' is a relative clause since it modifies the noun ''man'' and uses the pronoun ''who'' to indicate that the same "man" is referred to in the subordinate clause (in this case as its subject). In many European languages, relative clauses are introduced by a special class of
pronoun In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not co ...
s called ''
relative pronoun A relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause. It serves the purpose of conjoining modifying information about an antecedent referent. An example is the word ''which'' in the sentence "This is the house which Jack built." Here the ...
s'', such as ''who'' in the example just given. In other languages, relative clauses may be marked in different ways: they may be introduced by a special class of conjunctions called ''
relativizer In linguistics, a relativizer (abbreviated ) is a type of conjunction that introduces a relative clause. For example, in English, the conjunction ''that'' may be considered a relativizer in a sentence such as "I have one that you can use."Fox, Bar ...
s'', the main verb of the relative clause may appear in a special morphological variant, or a relative clause may be indicated by word order alone. In some languages, more than one of these mechanisms may be possible.


Types


Bound and free

A bound relative clause, the type most often considered, qualifies an explicit element (usually a
noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...
or
noun phrase In linguistics, a noun phrase, or nominal (phrase), is a phrase that has a noun or pronoun as its head or performs the same grammatical function as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently oc ...
) appearing in the main clause, and refers back to that element by means of some explicit or implicit device within the relative clause. The relative clause may also function as an ''embedded clause'' within a main (or higher-level) clause, thereby forming a ''matrix sentence''.Matrix Sentence, ''http://www.glossary.sil.org/term/matrix-sentencer'' The noun in the main clause that the relative clause modifies is called the ''
head A head is the part of an organism which usually includes the ears, brain, forehead, cheeks, chin, eyes, nose, and mouth, each of which aid in various sensory functions such as sight, hearing, smell, and taste. Some very simple animals may ...
noun'', or (particularly when referred back to by a relative pronoun) the '' antecedent''. For example, in the English sentence "The person whom I saw yesterday went home", the relative clause "whom I saw yesterday" modifies the head noun ''person'', and the relative pronoun ''whom'' refers back to the referent of that noun. The sentence is equivalent to the following two sentences: "I saw a person yesterday. The person went home." The shared argument need not fulfill the same role in both clauses; in this example the same person is referred to by the subject of the matrix clause, but the
direct object In linguistics, an object is any of several types of arguments. In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a transitive verb typically distinguishes between its subject and any of its objects, which can include but ...
of the relative clause. A free relative clause (or fused relative), on the other hand, does not have an explicit antecedent external to itself. Instead, the relative clause itself takes the place of an argument in the matrix clause. For example, in the English sentence "I like what I see", the clause ''what I see'' is a free relative clause, because it has no antecedent, but itself serves as the
object Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an ...
of the verb ''like'' in the main clause. Alternatively, one could argue that the free relative clause has a zero as its antecedent.


Restrictive and non-restrictive

Bound relative clauses may or may not be
restrictive In semantics, a modifier is said to be restrictive (or ''defining'') if it restricts the reference of its head. For example, in "the red car is fancier than the blue one", ''red'' and ''blue'' are restrictive, because they restrict which cars ''c ...
. A restrictive relative clause is a relative clause that functions as a restrictive modifier. A non-restrictive relative clause is a relative clause that is not a restrictive relative clause. Whereas a ''non-restrictive'' or ''non-defining'' relative clause merely provides supplementary information, a ''restrictive'' or ''defining'' relative clause modifies the meaning of its head word (restricts its possible referent). For example: *''The person who lives in this house has not been seen for days.'' This contains the restrictive relative clause ''who lives in this house'', which modifies the meaning of ''person'' and is essential to the sentence. If this clause were omitted, it would no longer be known which person is being referred to, and the remaining part would not really make sense. *''The mayor, who lives in this house, has not been seen for days.'' This contains a non-restrictive relative clause since this provides supplementary information about the mayor but is not essential to the sentence. If this clause were omitted, it would still be known who is meant (the mayor), and the remaining part would still make sense. In speaking, it is natural to make slight pauses around non-restrictive clauses, and in English this is shown in writing by
comma The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark () in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline ...
s (as in the examples). However, many languages distinguish the two types of relative clauses in this way only in speaking, not in writing. Another difference in English is that only restrictive relative clauses may be introduced with ''that'' or use the "zero" relative pronoun (see
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 rules an ...
for details). A non-restrictive relative clause may have a whole sentence as its antecedent rather than a specific noun phrase; for example: *''The cat was allowed on the bed, which annoyed the dog.'' Here, ''which'' refers not to the bed or the cat but to the entire
proposition In logic and linguistics, a proposition is the meaning of a declarative sentence. In philosophy, " meaning" is understood to be a non-linguistic entity which is shared by all sentences with the same meaning. Equivalently, a proposition is the no ...
expressed in the main clause, namely the situation of the cat being allowed on the bed.


Finite and non-finite

Relative clauses may be either finite clauses (as in the examples above) or non-finite clauses. An example of a non-finite relative clause in English is the
infinitive clause Infinitive (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a linguistics term for certain verb forms existing in many languages, most often used as non-finite verbs. As with many linguistic concepts, there is not a single definition applicable to ...
''on whom to rely'', in the sentence "She is the person on whom to rely".


Formation methods

Languages differ in many ways in how relative clauses are expressed: #How the role of the shared noun phrase is indicated in the embedded clause. #How the two clauses are joined together. #Where the embedded clause is placed relative to the head noun (in the process indicating which noun phrase in the main clause is modified). For example, the English sentence "The person that I saw yesterday went home" can be described as follows: #The role of the shared noun in the embedded clause is indicated by ''gapping''; that is, a gap is left in the object position after "saw", implying that the shared noun phrase ("the person") is to be understood to fill that gap and to serve as the object of the verb "saw". #The clauses are joined by the ''complementizer'' "that". #The embedded clause is placed ''after'' the head noun "the person". The following sentences indicate various possibilities (only some of which are grammatical in English): *"The person
hat I saw yesterday A hat is a head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorporate mecha ...
went home". (A ''complementizer'' linking the two clauses with a ''gapping'' strategy indicating the role of the shared noun in the embedded clause. One possibility in English. Very common cross-linguistically.) *"The person saw yesterdaywent home". (Gapping strategy, with no word joining the clauses—also known as a
reduced relative clause A reduced relative clause is a relative clause that is ''not'' marked by an explicit relative pronoun or complementizer such as ''who'', ''which'' or ''that''. An example is the clause ''I saw'' in the English sentence "This is the man ''I saw''. ...
. One possibility in English. Used in
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
when the head noun is indefinite, as in "a person" instead of "the person".) *"The person hom I saw yesterdaywent home". (A
relative pronoun A relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause. It serves the purpose of conjoining modifying information about an antecedent referent. An example is the word ''which'' in the sentence "This is the house which Jack built." Here the ...
indicating the role of the shared noun in the embedded clause—in this case, the direct object. Used in formal English, as in
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
,
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...
or
Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
.) *"The person
een by me yesterday Een ːnis a village in the Netherlands. It is part of the Noordenveld municipality in Drenthe. History Een is an ''esdorp'' which developed in the middle ages on the higher grounds. The communal pasture is triangular. The village developed dur ...
went home". (A
reduced relative clause A reduced relative clause is a relative clause that is ''not'' marked by an explicit relative pronoun or complementizer such as ''who'', ''which'' or ''that''. An example is the clause ''I saw'' in the English sentence "This is the man ''I saw''. ...
, in this case passivized. One possibility in English.) *"The person hat I saw him yesterdaywent home". (A complementizer linking the two sentences with a
resumptive pronoun A resumptive pronoun is a personal pronoun appearing in a relative clause, which restates the antecedent after a pause or interruption (such as an embedded clause, series of adjectives, or a wh-island), as in ''This is the girli that whenever it ra ...
indicating the role of the shared noun in the embedded clause, as in
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
,
Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
or
Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
.) *"The person
hat him I saw yesterday A hat is a head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorporate mecha ...
went home". (Similar to the previous, but with the resumptive pronoun fronted. This occurs in modern
Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
and as one possibility in modern
Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
; the combination ''that him'' of complementizer and resumptive pronoun behaves similar to a unitary relative pronoun.) *"The saw yesterdays person went home". (Preceding relative clause with gapping and use of a possessive particle—as normally used in a
genitive construction In grammar, a genitive construction or genitival construction is a type of grammatical construction used to express a relation between two nouns such as the possession of one by another (e.g. "John's jacket"), or some other type of connection ( ...
—to link the relative clause to the head noun. This occurs in many Sino-Tibetan languages and possibly developed from "relative clause + noun" > "nominalized clause + noun" > "genitive construction".) *"The saw yesterdayperson went home". (Preceding relative clause with gapping and no linking word, as in
Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...
or Mongolian.) *"The person f my seeing yesterdaywent home". ( Nominalized relative clause, as in Turkish.) *"
hich person I saw yesterday Ij ( fa, ايج, also Romanized as Īj; also known as Hich and Īch) is a village in Golabar Rural District, in the Central District of Ijrud County, Zanjan Province, Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also ...
that person went home". (A ''correlative'' structure, as in
Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...
.) *" saw the person yesterdaywent home." (An ''unreduced, internally headed'' relative clause, as in
Tibetan Tibetan may mean: * of, from, or related to Tibet * Tibetan people, an ethnic group * Tibetan language: ** Classical Tibetan, the classical language used also as a contemporary written standard ** Standard Tibetan, the most widely used spoken dial ...
or
Navajo The Navajo (; British English: Navaho; nv, Diné or ') are a Native American people of the Southwestern United States. With more than 399,494 enrolled tribal members , the Navajo Nation is the largest federally recognized tribe in the United ...
.)


Strategies for indicating the role of the shared noun in the relative clause

There are four main strategies for indicating the role of the shared noun phrase in the embedded clause. These are typically listed in order of the degree to which the noun in the relative clause has been reduced, from most to least: # Gap strategy or gapped relative clause # Relative pronoun # Pronoun retention # Nonreduction


Gapped relative clause

In this strategy, there is simply a gap in the relative clause where the shared noun would go. This is normal in English, for example, and also in Chinese and Japanese. This is the most common type of relative clause, especially in verb-final languages with prenominal relative clauses, but is also widespread among languages with postnominal externally headed relative clauses. There may or may not be any marker used to join the relative and main clauses. (Languages with a case-marked relative pronoun are technically not considered to employ the gapping strategy even though they do in fact have a gap, since the case of the relative pronoun indicates the role of the shared noun.) Often the form of the verb is different from that in main clauses and is to some degree nominalized, as in Turkish and in English
reduced relative clause A reduced relative clause is a relative clause that is ''not'' marked by an explicit relative pronoun or complementizer such as ''who'', ''which'' or ''that''. An example is the clause ''I saw'' in the English sentence "This is the man ''I saw''. ...
s. In non-verb-final languages, apart from languages like
Thai Thai or THAI may refer to: * Of or from Thailand, a country in Southeast Asia ** Thai people, the dominant ethnic group of Thailand ** Thai language, a Tai-Kadai language spoken mainly in and around Thailand *** Thai script *** Thai (Unicode block ...
and
Vietnamese Vietnamese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia ** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam. * Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam ** Overse ...
with very strong politeness distinctions in their grammars, gapped relative clauses tend, however, to be restricted to positions high up in the accessibility hierarchy. With obliques and genitives, non-verb-final languages that do not have politeness restrictions on pronoun use tend to use pronoun retention. English is unusual in that ''all'' roles in the embedded clause can be indicated by gapping: e.g. "I saw the person who is my friend", but also (in progressively less accessible positions cross-linguistically, according to the '' accessibility hierarchy'' described below) "... who I know", "... who I gave a book to", "... who I spoke with", "... who I run slower than". Usually, languages with gapping disallow it beyond a certain level in the accessibility hierarchy, and switch to a different strategy at this point.
Classical Arabic Classical Arabic ( ar, links=no, ٱلْعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ, al-ʿarabīyah al-fuṣḥā) or Quranic Arabic is the standardized literary form of Arabic used from the 7th century and throughout the Middle Ages, most notab ...
, for example, only allows gapping in the subject and sometimes the direct object; beyond that, a resumptive pronoun must be used. Some languages have no allowed strategies at all past a certain point—e.g. in many Austronesian languages, such as Tagalog, all relative clauses must have the shared noun serving the subject role in the embedded clause. In these languages, relative clauses with shared nouns serving "disallowed" roles can be expressed by passivizing the embedded sentence, thereby moving the noun in the embedded sentence into the subject position. This, for example, would transform "The person who I gave a book to" into "The person who was given a book by me". Generally, languages such as this "conspire" to implement general relativization by allowing passivization from ''all'' positions — hence a sentence equivalent to "The person who is run slower than by me" is grammatical. Gapping is often used in conjunction with case-marked relative pronouns (since the relative pronoun indicates the case role in the embedded clause), but this is not necessary (e.g. Chinese and Japanese both using gapping in conjunction with an indeclinable complementizer).


Relative pronoun type

This is a type of gapped relative clause, but is distinguished by the fact that the role of the shared noun in the embedded clause is indicated indirectly by the case marking of the marker (the
relative pronoun A relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause. It serves the purpose of conjoining modifying information about an antecedent referent. An example is the word ''which'' in the sentence "This is the house which Jack built." Here the ...
) used to join the main and embedded clauses. All languages which use relative pronouns have them in clause-initial position: though one could conceivably imagine a clause-final relative pronoun analogous to an adverbial subordinator in that position, they are unknown. Some languages have what are described as "relative pronouns" (in that they agree with some properties of the head noun, such as number and gender) but which do not actually indicate the case role of the shared noun in the embedded clause.
Classical Arabic Classical Arabic ( ar, links=no, ٱلْعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ, al-ʿarabīyah al-fuṣḥā) or Quranic Arabic is the standardized literary form of Arabic used from the 7th century and throughout the Middle Ages, most notab ...
has "relative pronouns" which are case-marked, but which agree in case with the ''head'' noun. Case-marked relative pronouns in the strict sense are almost entirely confined to
European languages Most languages of Europe belong to the Indo-European language family. Out of a total European population of 744 million as of 2018, some 94% are native speakers of an Indo-European language. Within Indo-European, the three largest phyla are Rom ...
, where they are widespread except among the Celtic family and Indo-Aryan family. The influence of Spanish has led to their adaption by a very small number of
Native American languages Over a thousand indigenous languages are spoken by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. These languages cannot all be demonstrated to be related to each other and are classified into a hundred or so language families (including a large numbe ...
, of which the best known are the
Keresan languages Keres (), also Keresan (), is a Native American language, spoken by the Keres Pueblo people in New Mexico. Depending on the analysis, Keres is considered a small language family or a language isolate with several dialects. The varieties of each ...
.


Pronoun retention type

In this type, the position relativized is indicated by means of a
personal pronoun Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as ''I''), second person (as ''you''), or third person (as ''he'', ''she'', ''it'', ''they''). Personal pronouns may also take dif ...
in the same syntactic position as would ordinarily be occupied by a noun phrase of that type in the main clause—known as a ''
resumptive pronoun A resumptive pronoun is a personal pronoun appearing in a relative clause, which restates the antecedent after a pause or interruption (such as an embedded clause, series of adjectives, or a wh-island), as in ''This is the girli that whenever it ra ...
''. It is equivalent to saying "The woman who I saw her yesterday went home". Pronoun retention is very frequently used for relativization of inaccessible positions on the accessibility hierarchy. In
Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
and
Classical Arabic Classical Arabic ( ar, links=no, ٱلْعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ, al-ʿarabīyah al-fuṣḥā) or Quranic Arabic is the standardized literary form of Arabic used from the 7th century and throughout the Middle Ages, most notab ...
, for example, resumptive pronouns are required when the embedded role is other than the subject or direct object, and optional in the case of the direct object. Resumptive pronouns are common in non-verb-final
languages of Africa The languages of Africa are divided into several major language families: * Niger–Congo or perhaps Atlantic–Congo languages (includes Bantu and non-Bantu, and possibly Mande and others) are spoken in West, Central, Southeast and Southern ...
and Asia, and also used by the Celtic languages of northwest Europe and
Romanian Romanian may refer to: *anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania **Romanians, an ethnic group **Romanian language, a Romance language *** Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language ** Romanian cuisine, tradition ...
("Omul pe care l-am văzut ieri a mers acasă"/"The man who I saw him yesterday went home"). They also occur in deeply embedded positions in English, as in "That's the girl that I don't know what she did",. although this is sometimes considered non-standard. Only a very small number of languages, of which the best known is
Yoruba The Yoruba people (, , ) are a West African ethnic group that mainly inhabit parts of Nigeria, Benin, and Togo. The areas of these countries primarily inhabited by Yoruba are often collectively referred to as Yorubaland. The Yoruba constitute ...
, have pronoun retention as their sole grammatical type of relative clause.


Nonreduction type

In the nonreduction type, unlike the other three, the shared noun occurs as a ''full-fledged noun phrase'' in the embedded clause, which has the form of a full independent clause. Typically, it is the head noun in the main clause that is reduced or missing. Some languages use relative clauses of this type with the normal strategy of embedding the relative clause next to the head noun. These languages are said to have ''internally headed'' relative clauses, which would be similar to the (ungrammatical) English structure " ou see the girl over thereis my friend" or "I took ou see the girl over thereout on a date". This is used, for example, in
Navajo The Navajo (; British English: Navaho; nv, Diné or ') are a Native American people of the Southwestern United States. With more than 399,494 enrolled tribal members , the Navajo Nation is the largest federally recognized tribe in the United ...
, which uses a special relative verb (as with some other Native American languages). A second strategy is the ''correlative''-clause strategy used by
Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...
and other
Indo-Aryan languages The Indo-Aryan languages (or sometimes Indic languages) are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. As of the early 21st century, they have more than 800 million speakers, primarily ...
, as well as Bambara. This strategy is equivalent to saying "Which girl you see over there, she is my daughter" or "Which knife I killed my friend with, the police found that knife". It is "correlative" because of the corresponding "which ... that ..." demonstratives or "which ... she/he/it ..." pronouns, which indicate the respective nouns being equated. The shared noun can either be repeated entirely in the main clause or reduced to a pronoun. There is no need to front the shared noun in such a sentence. For example, in the second example above, Hindi would actually say something equivalent to "I killed my friend with which knife, the police found that knife". Dialects of some European languages, such as Italian, do use the nonreduction type in forms that could be glossed in English as "The person just passed us by, she introduced me to the chancellor here." In general, however, nonreduction is restricted to verb-final languages, though it is more common among those that are
head-marking A language is head-marking if the grammatical marks showing agreement between different words of a phrase tend to be placed on the heads (or nuclei) of phrases, rather than on the modifiers or dependents. Many languages employ both head-marking ...
.


Strategies for joining the relative clause to the main clause

The following are some of the common strategies for joining the two clauses: *Use of an indeclinable particle (specifically, a
relativizer In linguistics, a relativizer (abbreviated ) is a type of conjunction that introduces a relative clause. For example, in English, the conjunction ''that'' may be considered a relativizer in a sentence such as "I have one that you can use."Fox, Bar ...
) inserted into the sentence, placed next to the modified noun; the embedded clause is likewise inserted into the appropriate position, typically placed on the other side of the complementizer. This strategy is very common and arguably occurs in English with the word ''that'' ("the woman that I saw"), though this interpretation of "that" as something other than a relative pronoun is controversial (see below). In the modern
varieties of Arabic The varieties (or dialects or vernacular languages) of Arabic, a Semitic language within the Afroasiatic family originating in the Arabian Peninsula, are the linguistic systems that Arabic speakers speak natively. There are considerable variati ...
(using ''illi'' placed after the modified noun); in
Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...
(using ''de'' placed before the modified noun). *Use of a
relative pronoun A relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause. It serves the purpose of conjoining modifying information about an antecedent referent. An example is the word ''which'' in the sentence "This is the house which Jack built." Here the ...
. Prototypically, a relative pronoun agrees with the head noun in gender, number, definiteness, animacy, etc., but adopts the case that the shared noun assumes in the ''embedded'', not matrix, clause. This is the case in a number of conservative European languages, such as
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
,
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...
and
Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
. Many languages also have similar linking words commonly termed "relative pronouns" that agree in some way with the head noun, but do not adopt the case role of the embedded clause. In English, for example, the use of ''who'' vs. ''which'' agrees with the animacy of the head noun, but there is no case agreement except in the formal English contrast ''who'' vs. ''whom''. Similarly, in
Classical Arabic Classical Arabic ( ar, links=no, ٱلْعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ, al-ʿarabīyah al-fuṣḥā) or Quranic Arabic is the standardized literary form of Arabic used from the 7th century and throughout the Middle Ages, most notab ...
, there is a relative pronoun that agrees in number, gender,
definiteness In linguistics, definiteness is a semantic feature of noun phrases, distinguishing between referents or senses that are identifiable in a given context (definite noun phrases) and those which are not (indefinite noun phrases). The prototypical d ...
''and'' case with the head noun (rather than taking the case role of the noun in the embedded clause). Languages with prototypical relative pronouns typically use the gapping strategy for indicating the role in the embedded clause, since the relative pronoun itself indicates the role by its case. (
Classical Arabic Classical Arabic ( ar, links=no, ٱلْعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ, al-ʿarabīyah al-fuṣḥā) or Quranic Arabic is the standardized literary form of Arabic used from the 7th century and throughout the Middle Ages, most notab ...
, where the case marking indicates something else, uses a
resumptive pronoun A resumptive pronoun is a personal pronoun appearing in a relative clause, which restates the antecedent after a pause or interruption (such as an embedded clause, series of adjectives, or a wh-island), as in ''This is the girli that whenever it ra ...
.) Some linguists prefer to use the term ''relative pronoun'' only for the prototypical cases (but in this case it is unclear what to call the non-prototypical cases). *Directly inserting the embedded clause in the matrix clause at the appropriate position, with no word used to join them. This is common, for example, in English (cf. "The person I saw yesterday went home"), and is used in
Classical Arabic Classical Arabic ( ar, links=no, ٱلْعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ, al-ʿarabīyah al-fuṣḥā) or Quranic Arabic is the standardized literary form of Arabic used from the 7th century and throughout the Middle Ages, most notab ...
in relative clauses that modify indefinite nouns. *By nominalizing the relative clause (e.g. converting it to a participial construction). Generally, no relative pronoun or complementizer is used. This occurs, for example, in
reduced relative clause A reduced relative clause is a relative clause that is ''not'' marked by an explicit relative pronoun or complementizer such as ''who'', ''which'' or ''that''. An example is the clause ''I saw'' in the English sentence "This is the man ''I saw''. ...
s in English (e.g. "The person seen by me yesterday went home" or "The person planning to go home soon is my friend"). Formal German makes common use of such participial relative clauses, which can become extremely long. This is also the normal strategy in Turkish, which has sentences equivalent to "I ate the potato of Hasan's giving to Sina" (in place of "I ate the potato that Hasan gave to Sina"). This can be viewed as a situation in which the "complementizer" is attached to the verb of the embedded clause (e.g. in English, "-ing" or "-ed" can be viewed as a type of complementizer).


Position of the head noun with respect to the relative clause

The positioning of a relative clause before or after a head noun is related to the more general concept of branching in linguistics. Languages that place relative clauses after their head noun (so-called ''head-initial'' or ''VO'' languages) generally also have adjectives and genitive modifiers following the head noun, as well as verbs preceding their objects. French,
Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
and
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
are prototypical languages of this sort. Languages that place relative clauses before their head noun (so-called ''head-final'' or ''OV'' languages) generally also have adjectives and genitive modifiers preceding the head noun, as well as verbs following their objects. Turkish and
Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...
are prototypical languages of this sort. Not all languages fit so easily into these categories. English, for example, is generally head-first, but has adjectives preceding their head nouns, and
genitive construction In grammar, a genitive construction or genitival construction is a type of grammatical construction used to express a relation between two nouns such as the possession of one by another (e.g. "John's jacket"), or some other type of connection ( ...
s with both preceding and following modifiers ("the friend of my father" vs. "my father's friend").
Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...
has the ''VO'' order, with verb preceding object, but otherwise is generally head-final. Various possibilities for ordering are: *Relative clause following the head noun, as in English, French or
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
. *Relative clause preceding the head noun, as in Turkish,
Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...
, or
Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...
. *Head noun ''within'' the relative clause (an ''internally headed'' relative clause). An example of such a language is
Navajo The Navajo (; British English: Navaho; nv, Diné or ') are a Native American people of the Southwestern United States. With more than 399,494 enrolled tribal members , the Navajo Nation is the largest federally recognized tribe in the United ...
. These languages are said to have nonreduced relative clauses. These languages have a structure equivalent to " saw the person yesterdaywent home". *Adjoined relative clause. These languages have the relative clause completely outside the main clause, and use a correlative structure to link the two. These languages also have nonreduced relative clauses.
Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...
, the most well-known such language, has a structure similar to "Which person I saw yesterday, that person went home" or (without fronting of the relativized noun in the relative clause) "I saw which person yesterday, that person went home". Another example is Warlpiri, which constructs relative clauses of a form similar to "I saw the man yesterday, which he was going home". However, it is sometimes said these languages have no relative clauses at all, since the sentences of this form can equally well translate as "I saw the man who was going home yesterday" or "I saw the man yesterday when/while he was going home".


Accessibility hierarchy

The antecedent of the relative clause (that is, the noun that is modified by it) can in theory be the subject of the main clause, or its object, or any other
verb argument In linguistics, an argument is an expression that helps complete the meaning of a predicate, the latter referring in this context to a main verb and its auxiliaries. In this regard, the '' complement'' is a closely related concept. Most predicates ...
. In many languages, however, especially rigidly
left-branching In linguistics, branching refers to the shape of the parse trees that represent the structure of sentences. Assuming that the language is being written or transcribed from left to right, parse trees that grow down and to the right are ''right-branc ...
,
dependent-marking language A dependent-marking language has grammatical markers of agreement and case government between the words of phrases that tend to appear more on dependents than on heads. The distinction between head-marking and dependent-marking was first explored ...
s with prenominal relative clauses, there are major restrictions on the role the antecedent may have ''in the relative clause''. Edward Keenan and
Bernard Comrie Bernard Sterling Comrie, (; born 23 May 1947) is a British-born linguist. Comrie is a specialist in linguistic typology, linguistic universals and on Caucasian languages. Early life and education Comrie was born in Sunderland, England on 23 ...
noted that these roles can be ranked cross-linguistically in the following order from most accessible to least accessible: :Subject > Direct Object > Indirect Object > Oblique > Genitive > Object of comparative Ergative–absolutive languages have a similar hierarchy: :
Absolutive In grammar, the absolutive case (abbreviated ) is the case of nouns in ergative–absolutive languages that would generally be the subjects of intransitive verbs or the objects of transitive verbs in the translational equivalents of nominative ...
> Ergative > Indirect Object > etc. (same as above) This order is called the accessibility hierarchy. If a language can relativize positions lower in the accessibility hierarchy, it can always relativize positions higher up, but not vice versa. For example, Malagasy can relativize only subject and Chukchi only absolutive arguments, whilst
Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...
can relativize absolutives, ergatives and indirect objects, but not obliques or genitives or objects of comparatives. Similar hierarchies have been proposed in other circumstances, e.g. for pronominal reflexes.
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
can relativize all positions in the hierarchy. Here are some examples of the NP and relative clause usage from English: Some other examples: Languages that cannot relativize directly on noun phrases low in the accessibility hierarchy can sometimes use alternative voices to "raise" the relevant noun phrase so that it can be relativized. The most common example is the use of
applicative voice The applicative voice (; abbreviated or ) is a grammatical voice that promotes an oblique argument of a verb to the core object argument. It is generally considered a valency-increasing morpheme. The Applicative is often found in agglutinative ...
s to relativize obliques, but in such languages as Chukchi antipassives are used to raise ergative arguments to absolutive. For example, a language that can relativize only subjects could say this: *The girl ho likes mecame to visit. But not: *The girl hom I likecame to visit. *The girl hom I gave a rose tocame to visit. *The girl hom I watched a movie withcame to visit. *The girl hose father I knowcame to visit. *The girl hom I know the father ofcame to visit. (''equivalent to previous'') *The girl hom I am taller thancame to visit. These languages might form an equivalent sentence by
passivization A passive voice construction is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many languages. In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the ''theme'' or ''patient'' of the main verb – that is, the person or thing t ...
: *The girl ho was liked by mecame to visit. *The girl ho was given a rose by mecame to visit. *The girl ho was watched a movie with by mecame to visit. *The girl ho was known the father of by mecame to visit. *The girl ho was been taller than by mecame to visit. These passivized sentences get progressively more ungrammatical in English as they move down the accessibility hierarchy; the last two, in particular, are so ungrammatical as to be almost unparsable by English speakers. But languages with severe restrictions on which roles can be relativized are precisely those that can passivize almost any position, and hence the last two sentences would be normal in those languages. A further example is languages that can relativize only subjects and direct objects. Hence the following would be possible: *The girl
ho I like Ho (or the transliterations He or Heo) may refer to: People Language and ethnicity * Ho people, an ethnic group of India ** Ho language, a tribal language in India * Hani people, or Ho people, an ethnic group in China, Laos and Vietnam * Hiri Mo ...
came to visit. The other ungrammatical examples above would still be ungrammatical. These languages often allow an oblique object to be moved to the direct object slot by the use of the so-called ''
applicative voice The applicative voice (; abbreviated or ) is a grammatical voice that promotes an oblique argument of a verb to the core object argument. It is generally considered a valency-increasing morpheme. The Applicative is often found in agglutinative ...
'', much as the
passive voice A passive voice construction is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many languages. In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the ''theme'' or ''patient'' of the main verb – that is, the person or thing t ...
moves an oblique object to the subject position. The above examples expressed in an applicative voice might be similar to the following (in not necessarily grammatical English): *The girl ho I gave a rosecame to visit. *The girl
ho I with-watched a movie Ho (or the transliterations He or Heo) may refer to: People Language and ethnicity * Ho people, an ethnic group of India ** Ho language, a tribal language in India * Hani people, or Ho people, an ethnic group in China, Laos and Vietnam * Hiri Mo ...
came to visit. *The girl
ho I (of-)know the father Ho (or the transliterations He or Heo) may refer to: People Language and ethnicity * Ho people, an ethnic group of India ** Ho language, a tribal language in India * Hani people, or Ho people, an ethnic group in China, Laos and Vietnam * Hiri Mo ...
came to visit. *The girl ho I out-tallcame to visit. Modern grammars may use the accessibility hierarchy to order productions—e.g. in Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar the hierarchy corresponds to the order of elements on the ''subcat'' list, and interacts with other principles in explanations of binding facts. The hierarchy also figures in Lexical Functional Grammar, where it is known as Syntactic Rank or the Relational Hierarchy.


Examples


Indo-European languages


English

In English, a relative clause follows the noun it modifies. It is generally indicated by a relative pronoun at the start of the clause, although sometimes simply by word order. If the relative pronoun is the object of the verb in the relative clause, it comes at the beginning of the clause even though it would come at the end of an independent clause ("She is the woman ''whom'' I saw", not "She is the woman I saw ''whom''"). The choice of relative pronoun can be affected by whether the clause modifies a human or non-human noun, by whether the clause is restrictive or not, and by the role (subject, direct object, or the like) of the relative pronoun in the relative clause. *For a human antecedent, "who", "whom", or "that" is usually used ("She is the person ''who'' saw me", "He is the person ''whom'' I saw", "He is the person ''that'' I saw"). For a non-human antecedent, only "that" or "which" is used. *For a non-human antecedent in a non-restrictive clause, only "which" is used ("The tree, ''which'' fell, is over there"); while either "which" or "that" may be used in a restrictive clause ("The tree ''which'' fell is over there", "The tree ''that'' fell is over there")but some styles and prescriptive grammars require the use of "that" in the restrictive context. *Of the relative pronoun pair "who" and "whom", the ''subjective'' case form ("who") is used if it is the subject of the relative clause ("She is the police officer who saw me"); and, in formal usage, the ''objective'' case form ("whom") if it is the object of the verb or preposition in the relative clause ("She is the police officer whom I saw", "She is the police officer whom I talked to", "She is the officer to whom I talked"); but in informal usage "whom" is often replaced by "who". In English, as in some other languages (such as French; see below),
non-restrictive 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 rules an ...
relative clauses are set off with commas, but restrictive ones are not: *"I met a woman and a man yesterday. The woman, ''who had a thick French accent'', was very tall." (non-restrictive—does not narrow down who is being talked about) *"I met two women yesterday, one with a thick French accent and one with a mild Italian one. The woman ''who had the thick French accent'' was very tall." (restrictive—adds information about who is being referred to) The status of "that" as a relative pronoun is not universally agreed. Traditional grammars treat "that" as a relative pronoun, but not all contemporary grammars do: e.g. the
Cambridge Grammar of the English Language ''The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language'' (''CGEL'') is a descriptive grammar of the English language. Its primary authors are Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum. Huddleston was the only author to work on every chapter. It was publi ...
(pp. 1056–7) makes a case for treating "that" as a subordinator instead of a relative pronoun; and the
British National Corpus The British National Corpus (BNC) is a 100-million-word text corpus of samples of written and spoken English from a wide range of sources. The corpus covers British English of the late 20th century from a wide variety of genres, with the intention ...
treats "that" as a subordinating conjunction even when it introduces relative clauses. One motivation for the different treatment of "that" is that there are differences between "that" and "which" (e.g., one can say "in which" but not "in that", etc.).


French

The system of relative pronouns in French is as complicated as, but similar in many ways to, the system in English. When the pronoun is to act as the direct object of the relative clause, ' is generally used, although ', which is inflected for grammatical gender and number, is sometimes used in order to give more precision. For example, any of the following is correct and would translate to "I talked to his/her father and mother, whom I already knew": :' :' :' However, in the first sentence, "whom I already knew" refers only to the mother; in the second, it refers to both parents; and in the third, as in the English sentence, it could refer either only to the mother, or to both parents. When the pronoun is to act as the subject of the relative clause, ' is generally used, though as before, ' may be used instead for greater precision. (This is less common than the use of ' with direct objects, however, since verbs in French often reflect the grammatical number of their subjects.) Contrary to English, the relative pronoun can never be omitted in French, not even when the relative clause is embedded in another relative clause. :Here is what I think Ø happened. :' (literally: "Here is what I think that happened.") When the pronoun is to act in a possessive sense, where the preposition ''de'' (of/from) would normally be used, the pronoun ' ("whose") is used, but does not act as a
determiner A determiner, also called determinative (abbreviated ), is a word, phrase, or affix that occurs together with a noun or noun phrase and generally serves to express the reference of that noun or noun phrase in the context. That is, a determiner m ...
for the noun "possessed": :' ("I spoke with a woman whose son I work with." - ''lit.'', "I spoke with a woman ''of whom'' the son is my colleague.") This construction is also used in non-possessive cases where the pronoun replaces an object marked by ': :' ("That's the man of whom I spoke.") More generally, in modern French, ' can signal the topic of the following clause, without replacing anything in this clause: :' ("That's a man about whom I believe that he must make a lot of money.") When the pronoun is to act as the object of a preposition (other than when ' is used), ' is generally used, though ' can be used if the antecedent is human. :' ("These are people that can be depended on.") iterally: "on whom one can depend":' :' ("This is a table on which you can put a lot of things") :*''C'est une table sur qui on peut mettre beaucoup de choses.'' There exists a further complication when the antecedent is a non-human indefinite pronoun. In that case, ' cannot be used because it must agree in gender with its head, and an indefinite pronoun has no gender. Instead, ', which usually means "what", is used. :' ("This is obviously something that he has thought a lot about .") :*''C'est manifestement quelque chose à laquelle il a beaucoup réfléchi.'' The same happens when the antecedent is an entire clause, also lacking gender. :' ("He told me to get lost, to which I replied that ...") The preposition always appears before the pronoun, and the prepositions ' and ' (at/to) contract with ' to form ' and ', or with ' to form ' and '.


German

Aside from their highly inflected forms,
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...
relative pronouns are less complicated than English. There are two varieties. The more common one is based on the definite article ''der'', ''die'', ''das'', but with distinctive forms in the genitive (''dessen'', ''deren'') and in the dative plural (''denen''). Historically this is related to English ''that''. The second, which is more literary and used for emphasis, is the relative use of ''welcher'', ''welche'', ''welches'', comparable with English ''which''. As in most Germanic languages, including Old English, both of these varieties inflect according to gender, case and number. They take their gender and number from the noun which they modify, but the case from their function in their own clause. :''Das Haus, in dem ich wohne, ist sehr alt.'' ::The house in which I live is very old. The relative pronoun ''dem'' is neuter singular to agree with ''Haus'', but dative because it follows a preposition in its own clause. On the same basis, it would be possible to substitute the pronoun ''welchem''. However, German uses the uninflecting ''was'' ('what') as a relative pronoun when the antecedent is ''alles'', ''etwas'' or ''nichts'' ('everything', 'something', 'nothing'). :''Alles, was Jack macht, gelingt ihm.'' ::Everything that Jack does is a success. In German, all relative clauses are marked with commas. Alternatively, particularly in formal registers, participles (both active and passive) can be used to embed relative clauses in adjectival phrases: :''Die von ihm in jenem Stil gemalten Bilder sind sehr begehrt'' ::The pictures he painted in that style are highly sought after :''Die Regierung möchte diese im letzten Jahr eher langsam wachsende Industrie weiter fördern'' ::The government would like to further promote this industry, which has grown rather slowly over the last year Unlike English, which only permits relatively small participle phrases in adjectival positions (typically just the participle and adverbs), and disallows the use of direct objects for active participles, German sentences of this sort can embed clauses of arbitrary complexity.


Spanish


Latin

In
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
, relative clauses follow the noun phrases they modify, and are always introduced using relative pronouns. Relative pronouns, like other pronouns in Latin, agree with their antecedents in
gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures u ...
and
number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
, but not in case: a relative pronoun's case reflects its role in the relative clause it introduces, while its antecedent's case reflects the antecedent's role in the clause that contains the relative clause. (Nonetheless, it is possible for the pronoun and antecedent to be in the same case.) For example: :''Urbēs, quae sunt magnae, videntur. (''The cities, which are large, are being seen.'') :''Urbēs, quās vīdī, erant magnae.'' (''The cities, which I saw, were large.'') In the former example, ''urbēs'' and ''quae'' both function as subjects in their respective clauses, so both are in the nominative case; and due to gender and
number agreement In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two" or "three or more"). English and other languages present number categories of ...
, both are feminine and plural. In the latter example, both are still feminine and plural, and ''urbēs'' is still in the nominative case, but ''quae'' has been replaced by ''quās'', its accusative-case counterpart, to reflect its role as the
direct object In linguistics, an object is any of several types of arguments. In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a transitive verb typically distinguishes between its subject and any of its objects, which can include but ...
of ''vīdī''. For more information on the forms of Latin relative pronouns, ''see'' the section on relative pronouns in the article on Latin declension.


Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...
follows (almost) the same rules as Latin. However, there is a phenomenon in Ancient Greek called ''case attraction'', where the case of the relative pronoun can be "attracted" to the case of its antecedent. In this example, although the relative pronoun should be in the accusative case, as the object of "obtain", it is attracted to the genitive case of its antecedent ("of the freedom..."). The Ancient Greek relative pronoun ὅς, ἥ, ὅ (''hós, hḗ, hó'') is unrelated to the Latin word, since it derives from
Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-E ...
: in
Proto-Greek The Proto-Greek language (also known as Proto-Hellenic) is the Indo-European language which was the last common ancestor of all varieties of Greek, including Mycenaean Greek, the subsequent ancient Greek dialects (i.e., Attic, Ionic, Ae ...
, ''y'' before a vowel usually changed to ''h'' (
debuccalization Debuccalization or deoralization is a sound change or alternation in which an oral consonant loses its original place of articulation and moves it to the glottis (usually , , or ). The pronunciation of a consonant as is sometimes called aspir ...
).
Cognate In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words in different languages that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymology, etymological ancestor in a proto-language, common parent language. Because language c ...
s include
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
relative pronouns ''yas, yā, yad'' (where ''o'' changed to short ''a''). The Greek definite article ὁ, ἡ, τό (''ho, hē, tó'') has a different origin, since it is related to the Sanskrit demonstrative ''sa, sā'' and
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
''is-tud''. Information that in English would be encoded with relative clauses could be represented with complex participles in Ancient Greek. This was made particularly expressive by the rich suite of participles available, with active and passive participles in present, past and future tenses. This is called the attributive participle.


Serbo-Croatian

Serbo-Croatian Serbo-Croatian () – also called Serbo-Croat (), Serbo-Croat-Bosnian (SCB), Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS) – is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and ...
uses exactly the same principle as Latin does. The following sentences are the Latin examples translated to Serbo-Croatian (the same sentences apply to the Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin standard variants of the
pluricentric language A pluricentric language or polycentric language is a language with several interacting codified standard forms, often corresponding to different countries. Many examples of such languages can be found worldwide among the most-spoken languages, inc ...
): In the first sentence, ''koji'' is in the
nominative In grammar, the nominative case (abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or (in Latin and formal variants of Engl ...
, and in the second ''koje'' is in the
accusative The accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘the ...
. Both words are two case forms of the same
relative pronoun A relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause. It serves the purpose of conjoining modifying information about an antecedent referent. An example is the word ''which'' in the sentence "This is the house which Jack built." Here the ...
, that is inflicted for
gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures u ...
(here: masculine),
number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
(here: plural), and case. An alternative relativizing strategy is the use of the non-declinable word ''što'' 'that' to introduce a relative clause.ContentsSummary
This word is used together with a
resumptive pronoun A resumptive pronoun is a personal pronoun appearing in a relative clause, which restates the antecedent after a pause or interruption (such as an embedded clause, series of adjectives, or a wh-island), as in ''This is the girli that whenever it ra ...
, i.e. a
personal pronoun Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as ''I''), second person (as ''you''), or third person (as ''he'', ''she'', ''it'', ''they''). Personal pronouns may also take dif ...
that agrees in gender and number with the antecedent, while its case form depends on its function in the relative clause. The resumptive pronoun never appears in subject function. Relative clauses are relatively frequent in modern Serbo-Croatian since they have expanded as attributes at the expense of the
participle In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from ...
s performing that function. The most frequently used relative pronoun is ''koji''. There are several ongoing changes concerning ''koji''. One of them is the spread of the genitive-accusative
syncretism Syncretism () is the practice of combining different beliefs and various school of thought, schools of thought. Syncretism involves the merging or religious assimilation, assimilation of several originally discrete traditions, especially in t ...
to the masculine inanimate of the pronoun. The cause lies in the necessity to disambiguate the subject and the
object Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an ...
by morphological means. The nominative-accusative syncretism of the form ''koji'' is inadequate, so the genitive form ''kojeg'' is preferred:


Celtic languages

The
Celtic languages The Celtic languages ( usually , but sometimes ) are a group of related languages descended from Proto-Celtic. They form a branch of the Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward ...
(at least the modern
Insular Celtic languages Insular Celtic languages are the group of Celtic languages of Brittany, Great Britain, Ireland, and the Isle of Man. All surviving Celtic languages are in the Insular group, including Breton, which is spoken on continental Europe in Brittany, ...
) distinguish two types of relative clause: direct relative clauses and indirect relative clauses. A direct relative clause is used where the relativized element is the subject or the direct object of its clause (e.g. "the man ''who'' saw me", "the man ''whom'' I saw"), while an indirect relative clause is used where the relativized element is a genitival (e.g. "the man ''whose'' daughter is in the hospital") or is the object of a preposition (e.g. "the man ''to whom'' I gave the book"). Direct relative clauses are formed with a
relative pronoun A relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause. It serves the purpose of conjoining modifying information about an antecedent referent. An example is the word ''which'' in the sentence "This is the house which Jack built." Here the ...
(unmarked for case) at the beginning; a gap (in terms of syntactic theory, a
trace Trace may refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * ''Trace'' (Son Volt album), 1995 * ''Trace'' (Died Pretty album), 1993 * Trace (band), a Dutch progressive rock band * ''The Trace'' (album) Other uses in arts and entertainment * ''Trace'' ...
, indicated by (''t)'' in the examples below) is left in the relative clause at the pronoun's expected position. ;Irish ;Welsh The direct relative particle "a" is not used with "mae" ("is") in Welsh; instead the form "sydd" or "sy'" is used: There is also a defective verb "piau" (usually lenited to "biau"), corresponding to "who own(s)": Indirect relative clauses are formed with a
relativizer In linguistics, a relativizer (abbreviated ) is a type of conjunction that introduces a relative clause. For example, in English, the conjunction ''that'' may be considered a relativizer in a sentence such as "I have one that you can use."Fox, Bar ...
at the beginning; the relativized element remains ''in situ'' in the relative clause. ;Irish ;Welsh Although both the Irish relative pronoun and the relativizer are 'a', the relative pronoun triggers lenition of a following consonant, while the relativizer triggers eclipsis (see
Irish initial mutations Irish, like all modern Celtic languages, is characterized by its initial consonant mutations. These mutations affect the initial consonant of a word under specific morphological and syntactic conditions. The mutations are an important tool ...
). Both direct and indirect relative particles can be used simply for emphasis, often in answer to a question or as a way of disagreeing with a statement. For instance, the Welsh example above, "y dyn a welais" means not only "the man whom I saw", but also "it was the man (and not anyone else) I saw"; and "y dyn y rhois y llyfr iddo" can likewise mean "it was the man (and not anyone else) to whom I gave the book".


Semitic languages


Hebrew

In
Biblical Hebrew Biblical Hebrew (, or , ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanite branch of Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Israel, roughly west of ...
, relative clauses were headed with the word ''asher'', which could be either a
relative pronoun A relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause. It serves the purpose of conjoining modifying information about an antecedent referent. An example is the word ''which'' in the sentence "This is the house which Jack built." Here the ...
or a
relativizer In linguistics, a relativizer (abbreviated ) is a type of conjunction that introduces a relative clause. For example, in English, the conjunction ''that'' may be considered a relativizer in a sentence such as "I have one that you can use."Fox, Bar ...
. In later times, ''asher'' became interchangeable with the prefix ''she-'' (which is also used as a conjunction, with the sense of English ''that''), and in
Modern Hebrew Modern Hebrew ( he, עברית חדשה, ''ʿivrít ḥadašá ', , '' lit.'' "Modern Hebrew" or "New Hebrew"), also known as Israeli Hebrew or Israeli, and generally referred to by speakers simply as Hebrew ( ), is the standard form of the He ...
, this use of ''she-'' is much more common than ''asher'', except in some formal, archaic, or poetic writing. In meaning, the two are interchangeable; they are used regardless of whether the clause is modifying a human, regardless of their grammatical case in the relative clause, and regardless of whether the clause is restrictive. Further, because Hebrew does not generally use its word for ''is'', ''she-'' is used to distinguish adjective phrases used in epithet from adjective phrases used in attribution: :''Ha-kise l'-yad-ekh.'' ("The chair is next to you." - ''lit.'', "The-chair snext-to-you.") :''Ha-kise she-l'-yad-ekh shavur.'' ("The chair next to you is broken."—''lit.'', "The-chair that- snext-to-you sbroken.") (This use of ''she-'' does not occur with simple adjectives, as Hebrew has a different way of making that distinction. For example, ''Ha-kise adom'' means "The chair sred," while ''Ha-kis'e ha-adom shavur'' means "The red chair is broken"—literally, "The chair the red sbroken.") Since 1994, the official rules of Modern Hebrew (as determined by the
Academy of the Hebrew Language The Academy of the Hebrew Language ( he, הָאָקָדֶמְיָה לַלָּשׁוֹן הָעִבְרִית, ''ha-akademyah la-lashon ha-ivrit'') was established by the Israeli government in 1953 as the "supreme institution for scholarship on t ...
) have stated that relative clauses are to be punctuated in Hebrew the same way as in English (described above). That is, non-restrictive clauses are to be set off with commas, while restrictive clauses are not: :''Ha-kise, she-at yoshevet alav, shavur.'' ("The chair, which you are sitting on, is broken.") :''Ha-kise she-at yoshevet alav shavur.'' ("The chair that you are sitting on is broken.") Nonetheless, many speakers of Modern Hebrew still use the pre-1994 rules, which were based on the German rules (described above). Except for the simple adjective-phrase clauses described above, these speakers set off all relative clauses, restrictive or not, with commas: :''Ha-kise, she-at yoshevet alav, shavur.'' ("The chair that you are sitting on is broken," ''or'' "The chair, which you are sitting on, is broken.") One major difference between relative clauses in Hebrew and those in (for example) English is that in Hebrew, what might be called the "regular" pronoun is not always suppressed in the relative clause. To reuse the prior example: :''Ha-kise, she-at yoshevet alav, shavur.'' (''lit.'', "The chair, which you are sitting on it, sbroken.") More specifically, if this pronoun is the subject of the relative clause, it is always suppressed. If it is the direct object, then it is usually suppressed, though it is also correct to leave it in. (If it is suppressed, then the special preposition ''et'', used to mark the direct object, is suppressed as well.) If it is the object of a preposition, it must be left in, because in Hebrew—unlike in English—a preposition cannot appear without its object. When the pronoun is left in, ''she-'' might more properly be called a
relativizer In linguistics, a relativizer (abbreviated ) is a type of conjunction that introduces a relative clause. For example, in English, the conjunction ''that'' may be considered a relativizer in a sentence such as "I have one that you can use."Fox, Bar ...
than a relative pronoun. The
Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
relativizer In linguistics, a relativizer (abbreviated ) is a type of conjunction that introduces a relative clause. For example, in English, the conjunction ''that'' may be considered a relativizer in a sentence such as "I have one that you can use."Fox, Bar ...
''she-'' 'that' "might be a shortened form of the Hebrew relativizer ''‘asher'' 'that', which is related to
Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to: * Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire * Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language * Akkadian literature, literature in this language * Akkadian cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo- syllabi ...
''‘ashru'' 'place' (cf. Semitic *''‘athar''). Alternatively,
Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
''‘asher'' derived from ''she-'', or it was a convergence of Proto-Semitic ''dhu'' (cf. Aramaic ''dī'') and ''‘asher'' ..Whereas
Israeli Israeli may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the State of Israel * Israelis, citizens or permanent residents of the State of Israel * Modern Hebrew, a language * ''Israeli'' (newspaper), published from 2006 to 2008 * Guni Israeli ...
''she-'' functions both as
complementizer In linguistics (especially generative grammar), complementizer or complementiser (glossing abbreviation: ) is a functional category (part of speech) that includes those words that can be used to turn a clause into the subject or object of a s ...
and relativizer, ''ashér'' can only function as a relativize."


Arabic


=Literary Arabic

= In Modern Standard and
Classical Arabic Classical Arabic ( ar, links=no, ٱلْعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ, al-ʿarabīyah al-fuṣḥā) or Quranic Arabic is the standardized literary form of Arabic used from the 7th century and throughout the Middle Ages, most notab ...
there is a relative pronoun (in Arabic: ) ''allaḏī'' (masculine singular), feminine singular ''allatī'', masculine plural ''allaḏīna'', feminine plural ''allawātī'', masculine dual ''allaḏānī'' (nominative) / ''allaḏayni'' (accusative and genitive), feminine dual ''allatānī'' (nom.) / ''allataynī'' (acc. and gen.). Its usage has two specific rules: it agrees with the antecedent in gender, number and case, and it is used only if the antecedent is definite. If the antecedent is indefinite, no relative pronoun is used. The former is called ''jumlat sila'' (conjunctive sentence) while the latter is called ''jumlat sifa'' (descriptive sentence).


=Colloquial Arabic

= In Colloquial Arabic the multiple forms of the relative pronoun have been levelled in favour of a single form, a simple conjunction, which in most dialects is ''illi'', and is never omitted. So in Palestinian Arabic the above sentences would be: * ''alwalad illi shuftō fi (a)ssaff embārih ghāyeb alyōm'' * ''hāda walad illi shuftō fi (a)ssaff embārih'' As in Hebrew, the regular pronoun referring to the antecedent is repeated in the relative clause - literally, "the boy whom I saw him in class..." (the ''-hu'' in ''ra'aituhu'' and the ''-ō'' in ''shuftō''). The rules of suppression in Arabic are identical to those of Hebrew: obligatory suppression in the case that the pronoun is the subject of the relative clause, obligatory retention in the case that the pronoun is the object of a preposition, and at the discretion of the speaker if the pronoun is the direct object. The only difference from Hebrew is that, in the case of the direct object, it is preferable to retain the pronoun rather than suppress it.


Japonic languages


Japanese

Japanese does not employ relative pronouns to relate relative clauses to their antecedents. Instead, the relative clause directly modifies the noun phrase as an
attributive verb An attributive verb is a verb that modifies (expresses an attribute of) a noun in the manner of an attributive adjective, rather than express an independent idea as a predicate. In English (and in most European languages), verb forms that can be u ...
, occupying the same syntactic space as an attributive adjective (before the noun phrase). In fact, since so-called ''i-adjectives'' in Japanese are technically intransitive stative verbs, it can be argued that the structure of the first example (with an adjective) is the same as the others. A number of "adjectival" meanings, in Japanese, are customarily shown with relative clauses consisting solely of a verb or a verb complex: Often confusing to speakers of languages which use relative pronouns are relative clauses which would in their own languages require a preposition with the pronoun to indicate the semantic relationship among the constituent parts of the phrase. Here, the preposition "in" is missing from the Japanese ("missing" in the sense that the corresponding postposition would be used with the main clause verb in Japanese) Common sense indicates what the meaning is in this case, but the "missing preposition" can sometimes create ambiguity. In this case, (1) is the context-free interpretation of choice, but (2) is possible with the proper context. Without more context, both (1) and (2) are equally viable interpretations of the Japanese.


Caucasian languages


Georgian

In
Georgian Georgian may refer to: Common meanings * Anything related to, or originating from Georgia (country) ** Georgians, an indigenous Caucasian ethnic group ** Georgian language, a Kartvelian language spoken by Georgians **Georgian scripts, three scrip ...
, there are two strategies for forming relative clauses. The first is similar to that of English or Latin: the modified noun is followed by a relativizer that inflects for its embedded case and may take a postposition. The relativized noun may be preceded by a determiner. A second, more colloquial, strategy is marked by the invariant particle რომ ''rom''. This particle is generally the second word of the clause, and since it does not decline, is often followed by the appropriately cased third-person pronoun to show the relativized noun's role in the embedded clause. A determiner precedes the relativized noun, which is also usually preceded by the clause as a whole. Such relative clauses may be internally headed. In such cases, the modified noun moves into the clause, taking the appropriate declension for its role therein (thus eliminating the need for the third person pronouns in the above examples), and leaves behind the determiner (which now functions as a pronoun) in the matrix clause.


Austronesian languages


Indonesian

Indonesian Indonesian is anything of, from, or related to Indonesia, an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. It may refer to: * Indonesians, citizens of Indonesia ** Native Indonesians, diverse groups of local inhabitants of the archipelago ** Indonesian ...
, a zero-copula language that does not mark verb tense, allows a variety of types of relative clause, normally restrictive. They are usually introduced by the relative pronoun ''yang'', which stands for "who"/"which"/"what"/"that". ''Yang'' is not allowed as the object of a relative clause, so that Indonesian cannot exactly reproduce structures such as "the house that Jack built". Instead, a passive form of construction must be used: Relative clauses with no antecedent to ''yang'' are possible:


Tagalog

Tagalog uses the gapping strategy to form relative clauses, with the
complementizer In linguistics (especially generative grammar), complementizer or complementiser (glossing abbreviation: ) is a functional category (part of speech) that includes those words that can be used to turn a clause into the subject or object of a s ...
, ''na'' / ''=ng'' 'that', separating the head, which is the noun being modified, from the actual relative clause. In (1a) below, ''lalaki'' 'man' serves as the head, while ''nagbigay ng bigas sa bata'' 'gave rice to the child' is the relative clause. The gap inside the relative clause corresponds to the position that the noun acting as the head would have normally taken, had it been in a
declarative sentence In linguistics and grammar, a sentence is a linguistic expression, such as the English example "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." In traditional grammar, it is typically defined as a string of words that expresses a complete thought, ...
. In (1a), the gap is in subject position within the relative clause. This corresponds to the subject position occupied by ''ang lalaki'' 'the man' in the declarative sentence in (1b). There is a constraint in Tagalog on the position from which a noun can be relativized and in which a gap can appear: A noun has to be the subject within the relative clause in order for it to be relativized. The phrases in (2) are ungrammatical because the nouns that have been relativized are not the subjects of their respective relative clauses. In (2a), the gap is in direct object position, while in (2b), the gap is in indirect object position. The correct Tagalog translations for the intended meanings in (2) are found in (3), where the verbs have been passivized in order to raise the logical direct object in (3a) and the logical indirect object in (3b) to subject position. (Tagalog can have more than one
passive voice A passive voice construction is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many languages. In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the ''theme'' or ''patient'' of the main verb – that is, the person or thing t ...
form for any given verb.) Tagalog relative clauses can be left-headed, as in (1a) and (3), right-headed, as in (4), or internally headed, as in (5). In (4), the head, ''lalaki'' 'man', is found after or to the right of the relative clause, ''nagbigay ng bigas sa bata'' 'gave rice to the child'. In (5), the head is found in some position inside the relative clause. When the head appears to the right of or internally to the relative clause, the complementizer appears to the left of the head. When the head surfaces to the left of the relative clause, the complementizer surfaces to the right of the head. There are exceptions to the subjects-only constraint to relativization mentioned above. The first involves relativizing the possessor of a noun phrase within the relative clause. In (6), the head, ''bata'' 'child', is the owner of the injured finger. The phrase ''ang daliri'' 'the finger' is the subject of the verb, ''nasugatan'' 'was injured'. Another exception involves relativizing the
oblique Oblique may refer to: * an alternative name for the character usually called a slash (punctuation) ( / ) * Oblique angle, in geometry *Oblique triangle, in geometry *Oblique lattice, in geometry * Oblique leaf base, a characteristic shape of the b ...
noun phrase. When an oblique noun phrase is relativized, as in (7a), ''na'' 'that', the complementizer that separates the head from the relative clause, is optional. The relative clause itself is also composed differently. In the examples in (1a), and in (3) to (6), the relative clauses are simple declaratives that contain a gap. However, the relative clause in (7a) looks more like an indirect
question A question is an utterance which serves as a request for information. Questions are sometimes distinguished from interrogatives, which are the grammar, grammatical forms typically used to express them. Rhetorical questions, for instance, are inte ...
, complete with the
interrogative An interrogative clause is a clause whose form is typically associated with question-like meanings. For instance, the English sentence "Is Hannah sick?" has interrogative syntax which distinguishes it from its declarative counterpart "Hannah is ...
complementizer, ''kung'' 'if', and a pre-verbally positioned
WH-word An interrogative word or question word is a function word used to ask a question, such as ''what, which'', ''when'', ''where'', ''who, whom, whose'', ''why'', ''whether'' and ''how''. They are sometimes called wh-words, because in English most ...
like ''saan'' 'where', as in (7b). The sentence in (7c) is the declarative version of the relative clause in (7a), illustrating where the head, ''ospital'' 'hospital', would have been "before" relativization. The question in (7d) shows the direct question version of the
subordinate A hierarchy (from Greek: , from , 'president of sacred rites') is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) that are represented as being "above", "below", or "at the same level as" one another. Hierarchy is an important ...
indirect question in (7b).


Hawaiian

Relative clauses in Hawaiian are avoided unless they are short. If in English a relative clause would have a copula and an adjective, in Hawaiian the antecedent is simply modified by the adjective: "The honest man" instead of "the man who is honest". If the English relative clause would have a copula and a noun, in Hawaiian an appositive is used instead: "Paul, an apostle" instead of "Paul, who was an apostle". If the English relative pronoun would be the subject of an intransitive or passive verb, in Hawaiian a participle is used instead of a full relative clause: "the people fallen" instead of "the people who fell"; "the thing given" instead of "the thing that was given". But when the relative clause's antecedent is a person, the English relative pronoun would be the subject of the relative clause, and the relative clause's verb is active and transitive, a relative clause is used and it begins with the relative pronoun ''nana'': ''The one who me (past) sent'' = "the one who sent me". If in English a relative pronoun would be the object of a relative clause, in Hawaiian the possessive form is used so as to treat the antecedent as something possessed: ''the things of me to have seen'' = "the things that I saw"; ''Here is theirs to have seen'' = This is what they saw".


Andean languages


Aymara


Chinese


Mandarin

In
Mandarin Chinese Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language of ...
, the relative clause is similar to other adjectival phrases in that it precedes the noun that it modifies, and ends with the relative particle ''de'' (的). If the relative clause is missing a subject but contains an object (in other words, if the verb is transitive), the main-clause noun is the implied subject of the relative clause: If the object but not the subject is missing from the relative clause, the main-clause noun is the implied object of the relative clause: If both the subject and the object are missing from the relative clause, then the main-clause noun could either be the implied subject or the implied object of the relative clause; sometimes which is intended is clear from the context, especially when the subject or object of the verb must be human and the other must be non-human: But sometimes ambiguity arises when it is not clear from the context whether the main-clause noun is intended as the subject or the object of the relative clause: However, the first meaning (in which the main-clause noun is the subject) is usually intended, as the second can be unambiguously stated using a passive voice marker: Sometimes a relative clause has both a subject and an object specified, in which case the main-clause noun is the implied object of an implied preposition in the relative clause: It is also possible to include the preposition explicitly in the relative clause, but in that case it takes a pronoun object (a
personal pronoun Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as ''I''), second person (as ''you''), or third person (as ''he'', ''she'', ''it'', ''they''). Personal pronouns may also take dif ...
with the function of a relative pronoun): Free relative clauses are formed in the same way, omitting the modified noun after the particle ''de''. As with bound relative clauses, ambiguity may arise; for example, "eat (particle)" may mean "that which is eaten", i.e. "food", or "those who eat".


Creoles


Hawaiian Creole English

In
Hawaiian Creole English Hawaiian Pidgin (alternately, Hawaiʻi Creole English or HCE, known locally as Pidgin) is an English-based creole language spoken in Hawaiʻi. An estimated 600,000 residents of Hawaii speak Hawaiian Pidgin natively and 400,000 speak it as a sec ...
, an English-based creole also called Hawaiian Pidgin or simply Pidgin, relative clauses work in a way that is similar to, but not identical to, the way they work in English.Sakoda, Kent, and Siegel, Jeff. ''Pidgin Grammar'', Bess Press, 2003: pp. 102ff. As in English, a relative pronoun that serves as the object of the verb in the relative clause can optionally be omitted: For example, can also be expressed with the relative pronoun omitted, as However, relative pronouns serving as the subject of a relative clause show more flexibility than in English; they can be included, as is mandatory in English, they can be omitted, or they can be replaced by another pronoun. For example, all of the following can occur and all mean the same thing:


Gullah

In
Gullah The Gullah () are an African Americans, African American ethnic group who predominantly live in the South Carolina Lowcountry, Lowcountry region of the U.S. states of Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina, within the coastal plain ...
, an English-based creole spoken along the southeastern coast of the United States, no relative pronoun is normally used for the subject of a relative clause. For example:


See also

*
Long-distance dependencies In linguistics, a discontinuity occurs when a given word or phrase is separated from another word or phrase that it modifies in such a manner that a direct connection cannot be established between the two without incurring crossing lines in the ...
*
Reduced relative clause A reduced relative clause is a relative clause that is ''not'' marked by an explicit relative pronoun or complementizer such as ''who'', ''which'' or ''that''. An example is the clause ''I saw'' in the English sentence "This is the man ''I saw''. ...


References

*
Rodney Huddleston Rodney D. Huddleston (born 4 April 1937) is a British linguist and grammarian specializing in the study and description of English. Huddleston is the primary author of '' The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language'' (), which presents a com ...
and Geoffrey K. Pullum (2002). ''The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language''. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. . *A.J.Thomson & A.V.Martinet (4th edition 1986). ''A Practical English Grammar''. Oxford University Press. . §72-85. (For the basic "rules" of the English relative pronoun in a presentation suitable for foreign learners.) * Keenan & Comrie, "Data on the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy",
Language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
, vol. 55, No. 2 (Jun., 1979), pp. 333–35


External links


SIL Glossary of linguistic terms - What is a relative clause?Relative Clause: Does it specify which one? Or does it just describe the one and only?''Using relative clauses''
by Jennifer Frost {{DEFAULTSORT:Relative Clause Linguistic typology Syntax Generative syntax Clauses Grammatical construction types