Talk:Relative clause

Hebrew commas
User:Shlomital, I reverted your deletions on Hebrew punctuation, as what you deleted was not wrong and not insignificant. If you'd like to clarify it or add to it, go ahead, but it's simply wrong to say (as your edit summary implied) that commas are never used for restrictive clauses. You can note changing tendencies, recommendations of the Hebrew Academy (if it addressed this issue), but plenty of people still use commas in their restrictive clauses - indeed, from what I've seen, many more do than do not - and it's not appropriate to simply delete reference to that. Ruakh 04:41, 13 May 2005 (UTC)


 * User:Ruakh, the quote is "relative clauses in Modern Hebrew are always set off with commas", and the text afterwards is dependent on it. It is factually incorrect. It would be irresponsible of me to leave it standing. I keep track of the decisions of the Hebrew Academy. In 1994, the Hebrew Academy made sweeping changes in the punctuation, replacing the German rules with English rules. As a result, it is no longer legal to put commas around restrictive relative clauses. That's how things are, that's the truth. Those people who still use commas round restrictive clauses are behind the times, and acting contrary to the new rules of the Hebrew Academy. I will leave the section as it is, being tired of those back-and-forth redactions, but any decision on your part to stick to your revision will be academic irresponsibility. --Shlomital 15:00, 2005 May 13 (UTC)


 * Sorry, but "Modern Hebrew" does not necessarily/exclusively mean the Hebrew of the Hebrew Academy. What you say is definitely worth note, and the article should definitely be edited to reflect this additional information. But it's important to note the older rules, especially since many or most people still follow the older rules. Ruakh 15:19, 13 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I was just going to say the best compromise would be to mention both the old rules and the new ones, but you beat me to it. The section is now factually correct. --Shlomital 15:47, 2005 May 13 (UTC)


 * I'm glad that you're happy with the result, but I feel compelled to note: in my very first comment above, which I added within ten minutes of the first time I reverted your deletion, I said that you should add the Academy rules, just that you shouldn't remove all of what was already there. I wish you'd read what I wrote more carefully, rather than jumping to anger.


 * That said, I'm glad we have a more agreeable, more informative article now, thanks to the information you provided. I appreciate it. Ruakh 16:09, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Language ordering
Either the Arabic section should be moved first to conform to the alphabetical order of the other languages, or a new ordering scheme should be used. If you do move the Arabic section first, then you'll want to move some of the explanation from the Hebrew section to the Arabic section, and have Hebrew refer to Arabic, rather than the other way around. Ruakh 04:41, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Japanese?
I don't speak a word of Japanese, so I'm on wobbly ground here, but the explanations provided under those examples make me wonder whether they are relative clauses at all. In German you can avoid a relative clause by using an adjectival construction (instead of "the house that Jack built" you can say "the by-Jack-built house"). This is not a relative, though it carries the same meaning. It sounds to me like those Japanese examples are doing something similar. If not, the explanation needs to be better. --Doric Loon 07:02, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * They are relative clauses.
 * ex.
 * kuroi neko (lit. is-black cat = a cat that is black)
 * kurokatta neko (lit. was-black cat = a cat that was black)
 * kao ga kuroi neko (lit. face SUBJ is-black cat = a cat whose face is black)
 * kuro-neko (lit. black cat = a black cat, a compound of two nouns)


 * In an SOV language like Japanese, which almost always has case markers and allows OSV too, a relative clause can be put before a noun without a relative pronoun because a verb in the middle of a sentence is clearly in a relative clause.
 * (SV)SOV: S of the sentence has a relative clause
 * (OV)SOV: ditto
 * O(SV)SV: ditto
 * O(OV)SV: ditto
 * S(SV)OV: O of the sentence has a relative clause
 * S(OV)OV: ditto
 * (SV)OSV: ditto
 * (OV)OSV: ditto
 * In an SVO language like English, relative pronouns are necessary.
 * SVOVO: S(VO)VO? or SVO(VO)?
 * S(SV)VO: a relative pronoun is unnecessary (as in "The man I saw bought a hat.")
 * SVO(SV): ditto
 * - TAKASUGI Shinji 09:44, 2005 Apr 18 (UTC)


 * Re: your German example: Well, you can do that in English, too: "the house that Jack built" is the same as "the house built by Jack" or even "the Jack-built house," except that the first gives a tense (since built is a past-tense verb), while the second and third do not (since built is a past participle, suggesting aspect but not tense; I could write, "When they are forty, Jack and Jill will each build a house. The Jack-built house will be blue; the Jill-built, green"). If Japanese uses an actual verb in its relative clauses (as opposed to a verbal adjective), then I'd be inclined to accept them as relative clauses. (Of course, since Wikipedia is not a home for a original research, I guess it doesn't matter what we'll accept, but what scholars accept.) Ruakh 14:08, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * It is an actual verb that Japanese uses. The only special thing about it is that it must be in the plain form (Shinji will correct me if I'm wrong). I'm not sure how to properly translate "The Jack-built house will be blue" contrastively, but "The house that Jack will build" is Jack ga tsukuru uchi, with Jack ga tsukuru "Jack will build" as a modifier. Cf Jack ga uchi o tsukuru "Jack will build a house" -- the verb is the same. --Pablo D. Flores 14:59, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * It must be in the nonpast (plain) form if it means nonpast, like Jack ga tsukuru uchi (the house(s) that Jack builds/will build, nonpast) as opposed to Jack ga tsukutta uchi (the house(s) that Jack built, past).


 * The important thing is, the only possible translation of the cat that is black is kuroi neko in Japanese, though it looks like black cat literally.


 * By the way, in Japanese grammar, adjective means verb-like words that correspond to adjectives in European languages. They are distinguished from verbs because in Japanese adjectives end with -i while verbs end with -u.  Therefore, in this sense, adjectives in world languages may or may not be combined with a copular verb.  Adjectives, broadly defined, are a vague part of speech between verbs and nouns.  In Mandarin, there are few differences between verbs and adjectives.  In Ainu, there is no difference and you can say they are all verbs. See also SIL glossary of linguistic terms - What is an adjective? - TAKASUGI Shinji 17:17, 2005 Apr 18 (UTC)


 * Well, my question has certainly been answered by Takasugi Shinji's detaild explanation. Please put some of that in the article.  It really IS interesting.--Doric Loon 18:44, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Without having noticed this discussion, I added some relevant information to the article that I found useful when learning about relative clauses in Japanese. It should be noted that the forms are considered different, as I understand, when acting like a verb or a relative clause. In modern Japanese these are identical in the plain form but historically they were separate. In verbs, the difference was as such: 　"死ぬ　人" or "shinu hito" meaning "person who dies" in modern Japanese would be "しぬる　人" or "shinuru hito" in old Japanese. In the terminal form both old and modern Japanese agree with: "人が　死ぬ. " or "hito-ga shinu." meaning "The person dies.". For adjectives the difference was as such: 　"よい　人" or "yoi hito" meaning "good person" in modern Japanese would be "よき　人" or "yoki hito" in old Japanese. In the terminal form these become: "人が　よい. " or "hito-ga yoi." meaning "The person is good." in modern Japanese or "人が　よし. " or "hito-ga yoshi" in old Japanese. This is where the Japanese expression "よしっ!"　(I think that is how it is spelled) or "yosh!" comes from. I may add this too later when I have time. I am new to this wiki thing so I hope this has been relevant.--Allan (talk) 21:15, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Please don't add any of that, since it has nothing to do with relative clauses.  Я Madler גם זה יעבור R  03:04, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Moving things back to Relative pronoun
While I did (and do) support the move from relative pronoun to relative clause, I think we should move some things back to relative pronoun. For example, I think the section on English really should explain only the following:


 * That relative clauses in English are usually indicated by relative pronouns, though sometimes simply by word order; and that in the latter case, the clauses are called contact clauses.
 * What it means for a relative clause to be restrictive (with a note that this term can apply to adjectives in general, not just to relative clauses); that commas are used around non-restrictive relative clauses, but not restrictive ones.
 * That choice of relative pronoun is governed by whether the antecedent is human, by whether the clause is restrictive, and by the role played by the relative pronoun in the relative clause. (The article should then link to Relative pronoun or whatnot.)
 * That when the relative pronoun is the object of a preposition, the preposition can stand with the pronoun or separately.
 * How to determine whether the relative pronoun can be suppressed.

and leave the rest to relative pronoun.

The French, German, and Spanish sections can all be shortened considerably, as they really only need to mention the use or non-use of commas, and what factors affect choice of relative pronoun (without going into detail about which relative pronouns are used in which circumstances).

The Hebrew section should be modified to emphasize the dual nature of asher and she- as relative pronouns and relativizers.

What do you all think? Ruakh 15:50, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * To be honest, I was happier when the whole thing was under "relative pronoun". Most of what I contributed was about the pronouns, because at that time that was what the article title asked for.  Now it is under "relative clause" people are complaining it is too pronoun-oriented.  They may be right, but that pronoun stuff is important.
 * You have to ask who this article is for. When I wrote all that stuff about English useage, I was aware that a typical reader might be one of my students who are struggling with English and come here asking for clear information on how to use relative pronouns - which are very difficult for foreign learners.  I realise that other readers will be looking for more theoretical, linguistic explanations.  I suspect it will be difficult really to please both groups in one article.  However, splitting into a "pronoun" article and a "clause" article doesn't really solve that problem, and means any reader is going to have to go to both places to get a whole picture.  What I WOULD be happy with is moving the English section to a new artile on "English relative clauses" (or pronouns? whatever!) which means the general article could have less of an English bias and could go into linguistic theory without learners being left unhelped.  --Doric Loon 18:53, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, the problem is that the main, non-English-centric topic really is relative clause, but most of the subtleties and intricacies in English relative clauses pertain to the choice of relative pronoun. I think that it's impossible to provide any sort of whole picture in one article, because English's entire concept of relative clauses is tied to the rest of its syntax; but I do think relative clause should give enough background on relative clauses in general that the information at relative pronoun on choice of pronoun will give the reader enough information. For that matter, I'd imagine that an E.S.L. student coming from an Indo-European background probably won't even need much explanation on relative clauses in general, and will benefit from the condensation of the relative-pronoun-specific information into one article, whereas an E.S.L. student coming from a language that uses relativizers or no word will benefit from separating the overall explanation of relative clauses from the detailed explanation of choice of relative pronoun. Ruakh 22:43, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * And I do think it might be a good idea to have a separate article for the intricacies of English itself, especially given the amount of divergence between prescriptivists and descriptivists in this area, and given the variation between different dialects and registers. Ruakh 22:45, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Mea culpa! Relative clause has too much information on pronouns, and relative pronoun is now a stub. I'm of the opinion that an article on relative clauses should not include a large section on English usage, since this is not a tutorial or a reference English grammar but an international encyclopedia. See also Countering Systemic Bias. I strongly support the idea of having an article on English relative clauses, focused on usage, without theoretical explanations of restrictiveness etc. --Pablo D. Flores 01:17, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

OK, you've gone ahead and done this, and the resulting split looks fine, except:
 * why do we need that stub article on "relative pronoun" at all? Unless someone is planning on doing something with it, make it a redirect.
 * restrictiveness is too important for English relatives for us to leave it unremarked in the English article. Either move "restrictiveness in English" to the English article, or have it in both places.
 * I don't know why some of you are so hung-up on the term "restrictive" that you are suppressing other terminologies. Most of the grammar books I have worked with (I cited Thompson and Martinet before) talk about "defining" and "non-defining" relative clauses in English, which I personally find far more helpful.  Please reinstate this as an alternative term.  --Doric Loon 13:57, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Relative pronoun is IMHO no longer a stub. Restrictiveness should be explained here as well as at English relative clauses, but most of the information in the "Restrictiveness in English" subsection is only needed at the latter. Restrictive is the term English grammarians have traditionally used, so I think it should be given as the main term, though I definitely think that defining should be given as an alternative term. I don't know why it was removed in the first place. Ruakh 17:05, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Well no, you've written relative pronoun almost from scratch since I saw it - it was a one-liner when I said it was a stub. Now it's fine.  As far as restrictiveness is concerned, I have discovered there was already a dedicated article on this: restrictive clause.  It was a bit thin, so I have modified it to fit in with what we have been doing here, and have cross-referenced.  That should solve the problem of variation of terminology, and we can get away with using just "restrictive" in most other places.  I have moved the section "restrictiveness in English" from this article to the English relative clauses article, where it really belongs - that makes sense, I think.  So is everybody happy now?  --Doric Loon 18:32, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Archive1
For older discussion, see Talk:Relative clause/Archive1. Topics discussed there include:


 * Whether that is a relative pronoun, and how best to explain in the article that this is a matter of debate among linguists.
 * Whether &lt;preposition&gt; + who is ever heard (or how often it is heard) in actual speech or writing.
 * Contact clauses where an internal subject is suppressed (e.g., "the man (who) Jack believes will be king").
 * Whether (none) should be included in the article's table of English pronouns, and if so, in which cells. (Note: the table now uses Ø instead of (none), but the question is the same.)
 * In "from which I come" and "which I come from," which clause shows the preposition having moved, and which shows it being left in place. (Or, how best to rephrase the article so as to avoid the issue entirely.)
 * The use of commas around relative clauses in German, and how best to express it in the article.
 * Whether the article had an anti-traditional-grammar POV, and if so, how to neutralize it.
 * Such terms as "relative determiner" and "relative pro-form," and how and whether they should be used in the article.
 * Whether to move relative pronoun to relative clause. (Note: the page was later moved, which is why you see it here.)
 * Whether any languages have distinct relative pronouns (that is, relative pronouns that are never used other than as relative pronouns), whether that's common, and whether and how to mention this in the article.

Note: if you feel the above summary to be non-NPOV in describing any of the discussions, or if there's a point of discussion that I missed, please feel free to modify the summary. Also, if there's a discussion that you think was still active (or that you want to re-activate), please feel free to move it back here from the archive. Thanks! Ruakh 14:52, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Ruakh, for providing a table of contents here for the archived material. Usually I find that archives' existence is mentioned but without the contents being given, which discourages people from even looking at them. Duoduoduo (talk) 16:47, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

A few points
1. "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." First, I think using the term 'main clause' here is misleading - a relative clause is by definition (as far as I can tell!) never a main clause, at least in the usage with which I am familiar. I think either 'relative clause' or just 'clause' would be better. Second, the term 'argument' does not generally include temporal phrases such as 'the day' or locative/directional phrases such as 'the place' (which are normally called adjuncts), and therefore this definition would suggest that "the day I met him" or "the place I met him" are not possible. I suppose the other reading of the sentence is that the whole noun phrase+relative clause can itself be any argument of the clause containing it, but I don't think this is what was intended, especially given what is said in the sentence following it.

2. "A restrictive (or defining, or integrated) relative clause is one that restricts the reference of the noun it modifies, that is, that makes it definite." How does it make it definite? The 'phrase' "man I saw yesterday" is surely not definite, and yet this consists of a noun plus a relative clause restricting its reference. Adding 'the' would of course make it definite, but adding 'a' would not. If anything, the RC restricts the set of entities to which the phrase could possibly refer.

3. "The main clause in (2) could stand by itself and still convey part of the meaning. The main clause in (1) cannot stand by itself and give the same information, since the point of the relative clause is precisely to define the antecedent." Removing the relative clauses from these sentences has precisely the same effect in both cases: (1') "Jack built the house" and (2') "Jack built a big house". I don't think the RRC defines the antecedent in any way that the NRRC does not. I can see the point of what is being said; I just don't think it's very precise.

4. I think the use of the term 'relative pronoun' is a bit confusing here. (I was certainly confused!) It seems to cover two distinct items here: true relative pronouns (the wh-words) and complementisers ('that'). I realise that this is very much a 'generative' perspective, but I think it would be unwise to ignore it in a serious article on grammar (and it is quite well-motivated).

I would make changes, but I thought I'd ask for your thoughts on these things first, as I may have missed something. Thanks. Matve 11:42, 10 April 2006 (UTC)


 * All sounds good to me, but then I'm looking at it from a generative perspective too. It seems to be a general fact on Wikipedia that grammar articles are worded so as to wind up generativists (e.g. I never managed to convince a guy on Gerund that present participles weren't adjectives). Cadr 14:53, 10 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Heh, that was me. I think the issue is that we define adjective differently; you define it as "a word that behaves syntactically the same way that big does", whereas I define it as "a word, phrase, or clause that describes or modifies a noun." (The latter is certainly the traditional definition; if you can show that the former has become the standard definition in linguistics, then I will of course concede.) Ruakh 16:30, 10 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, I agree that it's mostly a definitional question. However, if your definition of adjective covers the present participle in a sentence such as "I was reading", I don't see why it shouldn't cover the verb in a sentence such as "I read". Both seem to meet your definition of adjective to an equal extent. So, for the purposes of describing the distribution of present participles, describing them as adjectives isn't any help. For other purposes (I'm not sure what purpose word classes are supposed to have in traditional grammar, since they don't seem to be required to make definite predictions about distributions), saying that present participles are adjectives might work fine. Cadr 21:49, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand your objection no. 1, Matve. The antecedent of the relative pronoun is not in the relative clause, it is in the main clause. Of course a relative clause cannot itself be a main clause. But it refers back to a main clause. The antecedent is part of the main clause, and is usually either the subject or the object thereof. I do agree that I am not thrilled about the word argument, which is used in a technical way most readers will not understand. But I think you are underestimating the difference between a relative clause which restricts/defines and one which does not. To me they are worlds apart. --Doric Loon 16:18, 10 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Re 1: Yes, I know that the antecedent of the relative clause is in the main clause - or in fact the 'next highest clause'. The problem is that one sentence suggests we are talking about the verbal arguments of the main clause, and the next sentence suggests we are talking about the verbal arguments of the relative clause:


 * "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. However, many languages do not have the possibility, or a straightforward syntactic pattern, to relativise arguments other than the core ones (subject and direct object)." [my italics]


 * Of course, it is coherent to talk about the main clause and then the relative clause in turn. But the structure of the paragraph suggests a different reading: that although it is possible in theory for any argument to be relativised (i.e. any position within the relative clause), many languages can only relativise subject and object (which is true, as described by the Keenan-Comrie Accessibility Hierarchy). On this reading, the 'main clause' bit sticks out like a sore thumb. At the very least there is a lack of clarity.


 * Re 2: I'm not sure the problem is that the argument is too technical; it's that it's too vague. I think it's interesting that you write "restricts/defines" as if they are identical, which they surely aren't. A restrictive relative clause restricts by definition, but any type of (dependent) relative clause defines, unless we make clear what is meant by 'define'. Even a simple copular sentence defines: e.g., "A guitar is a six-stringed instrument". I accept that terminology is a minefield in these matters, but the point is that I'm not sure what the objection to the objection really is! Anyway, thanks for replying to my original post. Matve 20:16, 10 April 2006 (UTC)


 * The antecedent of the relative clause can in theory be the subject of the main clause. The antecedent is not a part of the the relative clause. The antecedent can in theory be the subject of the main clause. What is wrong with that?"He (antecedent), who likes cat, is my brother."Here, "He" is the antecedent, and is the subject of the main clause. --Yejianfei (talk) 11:25, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Irish examples
In the Irish examples, both DIR-REL and IND-REL is 'a'. Of course this could be correct, but it seems a little odd to maintain (other than for diachronical reaons) a distinction between the two if the form is the same for both. Can anyone shed some light on this? Jalwikip (talk) 18:54, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Synchronically, the direct "a" triggers lenition of a following consonant, while indirect "a" triggers eclipsis of a following sound (see Irish initial mutations). For example, "a language I understand" is teanga a thuigim with lenition of tuigim ("I understand") to thuigim after the direct relative particle, while "a language in which I understand a few words" is teanga a dtuigim cúpla focal inti with eclipsis of tuigim to dtuigim after the indirect relative particle. Also, some irregular verbs make a distinction between "independent" and "dependent" forms (a topic I keep meaning to write an article on, but haven't yet); direct "a" takes the "independent" form while indirect "a" takes the "dependent" form. For example, "The man I saw" is An fear a chonaic mé with the independent form chonaic of the verb for "saw", while "The man whose son I saw" is An fear a bhfaca mé a mhac with the dependent form bhfaca of the verb for "saw". —Angr 19:16, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * This is rather fascinating, and although perhaps not all for this article, it should be included somewhere. Thanks for the quick reply. Jalwikip (talk) 20:13, 10 December 2008 (UTC) EDIT: I see there's some of this at the Irish syntax page. I should read all that :).

copyedit necessary
This needs copyediting, and AFAIK what it says is true of Swedish too:

''In other Germanic languages, a relative pronoun is always necessary. In English, however, it may be suppressed in a restrictive clause (as in "The man we met was very friendly"), provided it would not serve as the subject of the main verb. When this is done, if in the unsuppressed counterpart the relative pronoun is the object of a preposition in the relative clause, then said preposition is always "stranded" in the manner described above; it is never moved to the start of the clause.'' --Espoo (talk) 14:38, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Definition of relative clauses?

 * "A relative clause is a subordinate clause that modifies a noun."

What about "I know who said that"? There is a relative pronoun, so it is a relative clause, but in the role of an object instead of an attribute ("modifying a noun"). This article seems to be about attributive relative clauses. (I have to add that I am a native German speaker – is the term used differently in English?)

As an aside: Even if we are talking about attributive relative clauses here, what about "He to whom I have written..."? That's a clause modifying a pronoun, no? --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 19:55, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
 * There's no relative pronoun in "I know who said that". Who in that sentence is an interrogative pronoun being used in an indirect question. But you're right about "He to whom I have written"; we should change the definition to "...a subordinate clause that modifies a noun phrase". Another example showing that relative clauses modify whole noun phrases is "the black panther in the tree, which is about to pounce". +Angr 21:07, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
 * My German grammar (not the newest one: Duden Grammatik, 3rd ed. 1973) states in §1346, 'Die Einleitewörter des Relativsatzes in der Rolle eines Satzgliedes sind die Relativpronomen "wer" und "was": Wer wagt, gewinnt. Er tat, was ich wollte.' My humble translation: 'The introductory words of a relative clause in the role of a sentence element are the relative pronouns "who" and "what": Who dares, wins. [not really grammatical in English] He did what I wanted.'
 * Are these (especially the second example) considered indirect questions in English, or noun phrases, or what? In German, this type of dependent clause contrasts with the conjunctional clauses the role of a sentence element, introduced with 'dass, ob, wie' / 'that, whether, how' (the latter only in certain circumstances), like 'Er wusste, dass er blass wurde.' / 'He knew that he was going pale.'
 * Anyway, I'll change the lead sentence as you proposed and add the examples. Perhaps you could have a look at my edit? Thanks, ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 11:34, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
 * "Er tat, was ich wollte" and "Wer wagt, gewinnt" are headless relative clauses, i.e. relative clauses whose antecedent is understood and "built in" - you can think of these as paraphrases of "Er tat das Ding, das ich wollte" and "Der Mensch, der wagt, gewinnt". The article should definitely have a discussion of headless relatives like these. For your example "I know who said that", I assumed you meant "Ich weiß, wer das gesagt hat". That's an indirect question. If you meant "Ich kenne den, der das gesagt hat", then it's ungrammatical English but would be a headless relative if it were grammatical. It would have to be "I know whoever said that". +Angr 15:35, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I understand what a headless relative clause is. The notion seems a bit strange, though, as if saying that "I saw the red-nosed reindeer" was a headless apposition where the head "Rudolph" is left out, instead of just calling it a direct/accusative object. But I won't argue; you are the grammarian here :-) I'll have to find out whether the Duden changed its classification of dependent clauses in a newer edition. Thanks for your trouble, ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 09:09, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

2012-2-12 Since the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language is cited elsewhere in the article (on the question of whether "that" is a relative pronoun or just a general clause subordinator), it might be worth mentioning that they don't regard participial noun-modifiers (e.g. in "The man walking home saw me" or "The man struck by a car saw me") as relative clauses. They explain why on p1265 - there is no relative pronoun or missing "that" involved and no way of supplying one without supplying a finite verb as well. On the other hand, they do recognise infinitival relative clauses (e.g. "a man in whom to confide", "a brush to paint with"), yet there is no mention of those in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.209.132.179 (talk) 23:06, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

"old" and "new" analyses
The standard analysis of relative clauses as I learned it separates the strategies into two classes, one describing the relative pronoun or other means of joining the two clauses, and the other describing how the role of the shared noun is indicated in the embedded clause. This is what is found (AFAIK) in the standard textbooks on linguistic typology (e.g. Bernard Comrie, Jae Jung Song, etc.). I don't know where the existing ("old") analysis in this page comes from, which describes four main types with no separation of the two strategies. I think it's clearer in any case to separate them, and so I added this analysis (the "new" one) as the first one described. I left the "old" one in place afterwards, esp. since it contains some interesting details. But eventually this should be fixed up. Benwing (talk) 07:41, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

BTW, I think some fact checking may be needed of the "old" analsis. For example, it says (or rather, said) this:
 * Relative pronouns in the strict sense are almost entirely confined to European languages, where they are widespread except among the most conservative Celtic family.

First, I have a hard time believing that relative pronouns are really almost missing in non-European languages. Certainly, Classical Arabic has a relative pronoun (although it may not be "strict" in the sense that there is no case marking of the embedded role on the relative pronoun — there is only case marking on the dual, and it agrees with the role in the matrix clause; but, spoken English also has no case marking of the relative pronoun, since few people say "whom" and hardly any of those use it in a prescriptively "correct" way, Latin-style). Secondly, Celtic is hardly "most conservative" among IE languages (hence, I removed this peacock term entirely). Third, other branches lack Latin-style relative pronouns (e.g. the Indo-Aryan languages, with correlative pronouns). Benwing (talk) 07:51, 30 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Bc bc of my health insurance insurance 2001:4C4C:19DF:4600:5C15:81AE:8B3C:9852 (talk) 10:14, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Definition of "complementizer" and analysis of "that"
The section "Strategies for joining the relative clause to the main clause" says


 * "The following are some of the common strategies for joining the two clauses [relative clause and main clause]: Use of an indeclinable particle (a complementizer) inserted into the sentence....for example, in English with the word that ("the main that I saw")"

Two things puzzle me about this passage. First, it implies to me that "indeclinable particle" and "complementizer" are synonyms, whereas the lede of the article complementizer defines "complementizer" as "a syntactic category (part of speech) roughly equivalent to the term 'subordinating conjunction' in traditional grammar." These seem to conflict, since particles are a broader concept than subordinating conjunctions.

Second, the passage in the present article treats "that" as something other than a relative pronoun in "the main that I saw", relative pronouns being covered in the next paragraph after this passage, as a different strategy. I'd never heard of that treatment before, but according to this discussion in the archives of this talk page (dated 19 and 20 Mar 2005), there is a strand of thought that advocates that treatment. But without further explanation, the passage's assumption that that treatment is correct (and implicitly uncontroversial) will be confusing to someone who is used to analyzing it as a relative pronoun.

Can someone (1) justify or change the phrase "indeclinable particle", and (2) put in something about the fact that this treatment of "that" (a) exists in the literature and (b) is not universally accepted? Duoduoduo (talk) 16:47, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Politeness and relative clauses
The article states that languages with many politeness distinctions allow more gaps than languages without this politeness distinction. It doesn't seem likely to me that these two phenomena are connected so I added a "citation needed". --Merijn2 (talk) 17:07, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

English vs. other Germanic languages
The article states:
 * In other Germanic languages, a relative pronoun is always necessary. In English, however, it may be suppressed in a restrictive clause (as in "The man [whom] we met was very friendly"), provided it would not serve as the subject of the main verb (the relative pronoun is mandatory in "He is the person who saw me"). When the relative pronoun is omitted, if in the unsuppressed counterpart the relative pronoun is the object of a preposition in the relative clause, then said preposition is always "stranded" in the manner described above ("That is the doctrine I believe in"); it is never moved to the start of the clause (so "That is the doctrine in I believe" never occurs).

This is not true — the equivalent Swedish phrase, "mannen [som] vi mötte var väldigt vänlig", is perfectly valid. Am I missing something here...? ✎ HannesP · talk 19:15, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Definition of relative clause again
The first sentence currently says "A relative clause is a subordinate clause that modifies a noun phrase, most commonly a noun. But I don't believe this is an adequate definition. For example, in the sentence Lightning struck the church three times, which tested his belief that God controls the weather, I would say that which...weather is a relative clause (yet it does not modify a noun), while that...weather is NOT a relative clause (yet it is a subordinate clause and DOES modify a noun or noun phrase, namely belief or his belief). Victor Yus (talk) 18:49, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Complementizer is not the same as relativizer
I've changed the link of "complementizer" to "relativizer". The two are not the same. A relativizer introduces relative clauses, a complementizer introduces complement clauses. I think that the confusion comes from the fact that, in English, the relativizer "that" has the same form as the complementizer "that". I can give some examples of languages in which the relativizer is a different word than complementizers. 95.93.17.94 (talk) 18:07, 9 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Your statement about English somewhat debatable: the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language argues that the "that" in "the book that I read" (which you would call a "relativizer") is in fact the same "that" as the "that" in "I heard that the book was good" (which you would call a "complementizer"), and not merely two distinct uses having the form. But I agree with your edit: even if in English there's no distinction, there are languages where there is one, and "relativizer" is the better term to use in a cross-linguistic claim. —Ruakh TALK 02:51, 11 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree. I think the arguments in favor of that as a relativizer (when used to introduce a relative clause) are a bit stronger than those in favor of it as a complementizer. However, one has to acknowledge that it straddles the two syntactic classes. --Tjo3ya (talk) 17:13, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Should this be geared to the level of most readers, in others words, should it be simpler?
I like grammar and I understand most of this article, but I believe most people would not because they wouldn't understand all the grammar terms. I'd like to simplify the article. I know I'm supposed to be bold, but I'd also like to be polite. Any thoughts on this proposal? DBlomgren (talk) 09:03, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I'd support making it more accessible, as long as all the existing information is retained somewhere for those who are able to understand it. Victor Yus (talk) 09:20, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I have long wanted to redo this article, but the size of the job is daunting. If you want to give it a go, I can support the effort by providing feedback. I suggest redoing one section at a time and posting each section immediately so I and others can provide feedback. --Tjo3ya (talk) 14:53, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

The "A free relative clause" section
The notion underlying the "A free relative clause" is a head-scratcher. If we assume that a relative clause is a subordinate clause that modifies the noun to which it relates, and there is no noun referent, there can be no justifying what as a relative pronoun in the "I like what I see" example or any similar examples. In my view, (a) "What I see" merely functions as the target of the verb, "like," in the given example, and (b) "what" function as a garden-variety pronoun. IMHO, the entire "A free relative clause" section ought to be deleted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kent Dominic (talk • contribs) 02:44, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
 * This is known as fused relative constructions. It is a relative clause where the antecedent is omitted. "What" means "the thing that".  Therefore, it is a relative clause. The object, or the antecedent, is omitted. --Yejianfei (talk) 11:32, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm not questioning the meaning. I'm criticizing the utility of the linguistic typology. Originally, "relative" applied solely to the word, "that," in order to distinguish its pronominal use from its demonstrative use. If we get to the point of saying "what" is a free relative pronoun that means "the thing that," it requires relating a "free" relative pronoun to an elided "bound" relative pronoun and the whole discussion seems a bit absurd. In an example such as "This (demonstrative pronoun) is (copula/stative verb) where (adverb) I live," I consider it ridiculous to parse it instead as "This (demonstrative pronoun) is (copula/stative verb) where I live (free relative clause)" as if "where" is a free relative pronoun that stands for "the place that/the place in which." To put it in Middle English, "That (demonstrative pronoun) place (noun) I live is there," or in stilted Modern English "Where (adverb) I live is there," there's no free relative anything. Back to the original example: "I like (transitive verb) what I see (nominal clause)" suffices as "what (pronoun)" = "the thing or things that."
 * Even so, I'm sure some linguist somewhere is ready to contrive the term, free relative pronominal adverb, as applied to "I like what I see, really. Sheesh. --Kent Dominic 02:52, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Errors in gloss of Chinese example
In one of the examples for the section on Chinese, there seems to be a few words missing in interlinear glosses (i.e. in the example with "（用）今天赢来的钱来付房租"). Here, "来" is matched with fu4 and "pay," when those should actually be under "付." The "来" could actually just be removed entirely; it seems to me that it may have been added by an editor, who forgot to doublecheck it with the other rows of the grid, and thus creating this error. Another mistake is that in the Chinese version, "房租" is together, while in the English annotations "房" and "租" are separate ("house" and "rent").

Also, I believe that the translation is a bit off; the translation given in the article is "'the won-today money pays the rent' or 'the money that was won today pays the rent,'" though this is nonsensical; a more accurate and logically correct translation (in the case where 用 is present) would be "use won-today money pay rent" or "to use the money that was won today to pay the rent." This brings me to my next point: here, "用" is necessary. Without it, the phrase is just an object with a verb. If one were to translate it, they would probably translate it as "the money that was won today pays the rent," which, well, happens to be what is written in the article, and like how I said above, it's a nonsensical phrase. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Your + 're (talk • contribs) 02:16, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Lehmann citation is wrong/misleading
The citation for Lehmann's Der Relativsatz is:

Lehmann, Christian (1984). Der Relativsatz [Relative Clauses]. Language universals series; vol. 3 (in German). Tübingen: G. Narr. p. 438.

In fact, p. 438 is the very last page of Lehmann's book. So when the article says:

In other languages, relative clauses may be marked in different ways: they may be introduced by a special class of conjunctions called relativizers, 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.

and cites Lehmann for this information, there is no way of finding where in the 438 pages of this book the information is given. Unless Darigon Jr., who added the source, can provide pages on which this information is to be found, I will delete the source from the article. Bathrobe (talk) 19:27, 20 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Would you consider replacing it with a different citation? WALS agrees with the information, citing Lehmann 1984: https://wals.info/chapter/s8 and https://wals.info/chapter/122. Another candidate: https://wals.info/chapter/90 Femke 01 (talk) 15:24, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
 * The paragraph gives three examples of how relative clauses are "marked":
 * 1. Introduced by a special class of conjunctions called relativizers.
 * 2. The main verb of the relative clause may appear in a special morphological variant.
 * 3. A relative clause may be indicated by word order alone.
 * These three are not properly followed up or illustrated in the rest of the article, nor are they properly sourced (the reference to Lehmann notwithstanding).
 * Your first WALS link refers to Lehmann's "prenominal", "postnominal", "circumnominal" classification. It also refers to "relative pronoun" and "gapping". This is insufficient to justify the content of the paragraph.
 * Your second WALS link refers to how the relativised position is indicated inside the relative clause ("relative pronoun", "nonreduction", "pronoun retention"). This does not provide a basis for the content of the paragraph.
 * The third WALS link is a classification of types, again focussing on "prenominal", "postnominal", "circumnominal" ("internally-headed"), as well as non-embedded types. It does add an (in the context) rather tangential note "that languages vary as to whether relative clauses involve forms of verbs that also occur in main clauses", which covers the main verb of the relative clause may appear in a special morphological variant.
 * None of the three links explicitly justify the statement that a relative clause may be indicated by word order alone.
 * The paragraph in question, which was present before the vague Lehmann reference was inserted by user Darigon Jr, gives no examples to illustrate what it is talking about and does not appear to represent any particular classification. If it were properly sourced and illustrated with examples it would be a useful and interesting part of the article. As it stands, it is simply a random, slightly baffling, essentially unsourced collection of suggestive statements that doesn't lead anywhere. Bathrobe (talk) 19:22, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
 * The paragraph in question was inserted by user Ruakh on 22 April 2005 with the explanation: "Added detail to first paragraph (should reduce non-NPOV)". It went:
 * "In other languages, relative clauses may be introduced by a special class of conjunctions called relativizers, or may be indicated by word order alone. In some languages, more than one of these may be possibilities."
 * On the same day, user MarkSweep elaborated on this as follows:
 * "In other languages, relative clauses may be marked in different ways: they may be introduced by a special class of conjunctions called relativizers; 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; and others yet do not employ relative pronouns or relativization marks at all."
 * Again on the same day, user Pablo-flores asked this:
 * "Is this so really? There should be examples of that".
 * User Ruakh responded: -  "Yes, and there are examples of that; see . (At least, I assume that's what the person who wrote that sentence meant. I suppose it's possible that he meant that you can't even identify relative clauses in some languages, but that seems unlikely.)"
 * It was much later that user Darigon Jr. added a reference to Lehmann, without indicating where in Lehmann this information was given.
 * Since it is an unsourced fragment inserted at a very early stage in the history of the article, and appears to have been kept purely through inertia, despite a huge amount of material being added and English relative clauses being moved to an article of its own, I suggest that the paragraph should be entirely deleted. Bathrobe (talk) 21:01, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Or expanded properly to take account of the rest of the article. Bathrobe (talk) 21:02, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Exactly, since the information is correct and relevant. There are lots of sources for examples if you google relativization typology. Borrowing from WALS saves time, but it may be over-cited already. Femke 01 (talk) 08:20, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I do not understand why you say the information is correct and relevant, after I specifically pointed out how poor it is. It is a skimpy leftover from a much earlier article. It is barely relevant to this article (it was included to counterbalance a heavy bias towards English -- no longer relevant since English now has its own article) and fails to summarise anything much at all. The article itself dutifully presents various aspects of relative clauses, but it is poorly structured and reads like a confusing patchwork. This little paragraph doesn't summarise anything, is confusing, and the so-called "source" is an ad hoc addition. From whatever angle you look at it, it is a poor excuse at classifying relative clauses and would be better left out. A decent summary (and if you actually read the literature, not just WALS, you might find how hard it would be to create one) would be far more useful. Bathrobe (talk) 10:33, 22 February 2024 (UTC)


 * But if you just delete half of the introduction, the article will appear even more like a patchwork. I hear what you say and I agree that the article could be improved (as it is always) but I am unbiased in terms of not having contributed to it. Nonetheless, relativization is in my field of expertise or what I have studied, and to me the information seems fine even if the same might be expressed differently. Lehmann 1984 is also a classic authoritative source. I will not be stopping you if you delete it, though, so it is up to you. Femke 01 (talk) 14:00, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * if you just delete half of the introduction, the article will appear even more like a patchwork.
 * Actually, the first problem is the opening definition, which is from a grammar of English. There are other definitions that try (not always successfully) to cover relative clauses from a wider linguistic viewpoint, including (for instance) Hindi and Walbiri (Warlpiri).
 * A quick and incomplete note on a few random ways of indicating relative clauses (namely the use of relativisers, special verb forms, and, er, "word order", which appears to mean that sentences are just thrown into prenominal position) is a poor addition to the lede. It is also clearly referring to the familiar type of externally-headed, embedded relative clause and lacks a wider perspective.
 * As to the source, of course Lehmann is a classic. But to be properly sourced you need page numbers. Lehmann is very long. Where exactly did he provide a basis for what is stated in that paragraph?
 * On both of these counts this paragraph is sorely lacking. I do not think it is salvageable in its current form. In fact, the entire lede really needs to be rewritten and properly sourced.
 * Bathrobe (talk) 18:29, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * True.  ~  Femke 01 (talk) 18:59, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Section structure confuses me: role in higher-ranking and in lower-ranking clause
The current article contains:

”English can relativize all positions in the hierarchy. Here are some examples of the NP and relative clause usage from English: […] 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 section containing this text begins with focussing on the role in the higher-ranking clause and then shifts focus to that in the lower-ranking clause. Even the introduction to the examples in […] seems to refer to the role in the higher-ranking clause.

But … the first groep of examples does not seem to vary with respect to the role of the relativized entity in the higher-ranking clause. Rather, it seems to focus om the role in the lower-ranking clause. That confuses me.

Only the second group of examples in […] seems to focus on role differences in the higher-ranking clause.

I think the text could do with a more explicit distinction between the clause rank the roles in which are discussed.Redav (talk) 10:21, 6 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Correction: Also the second group focusses on therole in the lower-ranking clause.
 * Addition: I was expecting examples like:
 * The A, who is standing, gives him the B of the C for the D.
 * The A gives him, who came first, the B of the C for the D.
 * The A gives him the B, which is lying on the table, of the C for the D.
 * The A gives him the B of the C, who looks unhappy, for the D.
 * The A gives him the B of the C for the D, whom we are now looking for.
 * One might think of:
 * “The man gives him the book of the writer for (i.e. on behalf of; as a favour to) the mayor.”
 * I would say this covers the roles of subject, indirect, direct object, genitive and oblique object / benefactive in the higher-ranking clause.Redav (talk) 10:47, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
 * The article uses the wording “to relativize (on)”. I have understood the direct (or prepositional) object of this verb as the entity in the higher-ranking clause that is referred to in the lower-ranking clause. If, conversely, the intended object is the entity in the lower-ranking clauses that refers to an entity in the higher-ranking clause, the use of the wording “to relativize” confuses me.Redav (talk) 10:55, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I think I can now see my mistaken understanding of “to relativize”.
 * Nevertheless, because of the structuring of the section, I still expected examples similar to the ones I have provided as well as and preceding the examples such as are in the article text.Redav (talk) 11:04, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Gapping in languages with relative pronouns or adverbs, and pragmatic word order?
Can you really say that such languages (like German, or even stronger Classical Latin) do employ gapping? Since these languages do include the argument in question in the relative clause by employing the relative pronoun or relative adverb, and there is no fix position for that argument in the remaining parts of the clause, I do not see where should be a gap in such clauses. 2A0A:A541:F78F:0:D830:148B:C1C7:B983 (talk) 15:00, 22 May 2024 (UTC)