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The choice of relative pronoun typically depends on whether the antecedent is human or non-human: for example, who and its derivatives (whom, whoever, etc.—apart from whose) are generally restricted to human antecedents, while which and what and their derivatives refer in most cases to things, including animals.
The English relative words are words in English used to mark a clause, noun phrase or preposition phrase as relative.The central relative words in English include who, whom, whose, which, why, and while, as shown in the following examples, each of which has the relative clause in bold:
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 ...
For example, in the relative clause "which Jack built," "which" is a pronoun functioning as the object of the verb "built." In the English language, the following are the most common relative pronouns: which, who, whose, whom, whoever, whomever, and that, though some linguists analyze that in relative clauses as a conjunction / complementizer.
In the first example, the restrictive relative clause who has been deceived specifies or defines the meaning of him in the independent clause, Let him complain. In the second example, the non-restrictive relative clause who have never known your family describes you in the independent clause, You see them standing around you. A noun clause is a ...
Notice that in a relative clause, the form depends on the role of the pronoun in the relative clause, not that of its antecedent in the main clause. For example, "I saw the man who ate the pie" – not "whom", since "who" is the subject of "ate" (original sentence, before being changed to a clause: "'He' ate the pie"); it makes no difference ...
Regular relative clauses are a class of dependent clause (or "subordinate clause") [1] that usually modifies a noun. [2] [3] They are typically introduced by one of the relative pronouns who, whom, whose, what, or which—and, in English, by the word that, [1] which may be analyzed either as a relative pronoun or as a relativizer; see That as relativizer.
The possessive form of who is whose (for example, the man whose car is missing); however the use of whose is not restricted to persons (one can say an idea whose time has come). The word that as a relative pronoun is normally found only in restrictive relative clauses (unlike which and who, which can be used in both restrictive and ...