Talk:Relative pronoun

The need for a separate article
Last year this article was redirected to Relative clause after some discussion. I've turned Relative pronoun into a stub now, and placed "Relative clause" in the Systemic Bias list. I did this because a number of languages do not employ relative pronouns for relative clauses. --Pablo D. Flores 15:10, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Makes sense. I also think some content from relative clause should be moved back here, as discussed at talk:relative clause. Ruakh 04:03, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Inclusion of Greater Linguistic Issues
Linguists such as Kayne and Bianchi have suggested that relative pronouns are actually determiners that are stranded when the relativized noun phrase is raised from the embedded clause. Should this discussion be included here or is this too technical? (P.S. I'm all for this page remaining separate.) Straughn 22:25, 20 March 2006 (UTC)


 * If the theory has been published in peer-reviewed journals, and is not out of date, then it does make sense to mention it briefly and provide a link to one or two relevant peer-reviewed articles. Unless this is a very widely-accepted theory, though (and I'm not commenting on whether it is — I really have no idea), I don't think we should give too much space to it.


 * Incidentally, if there are any notable competing theories, then we should probably mention those as well.


 * Ruakh 00:29, 21 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks to all who made this article so great. I had to do a teaching unit about relative pronouns, this helped so much. Thanks! BobafettH23

no hagais caso de la informació del wikipedia
hacerme caso a mi los talkative pronouns son lo peor —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.6.227.242 (talk) 16:02, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

What about 'where'?
I think 'where' is also used as a relative pronoun on occasion, like in "the land of Mordor where the shadows lie". Is there a reason why it is not included with the others here, and why this is not mentioned on wiktionary.org?--Cancun771 (talk) 21:19, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

'where' is a relative adverb. relative pronouns - who, which, that (also, whoever, whichever). relative adverbs - when (for time), where (place or location), why (reason), how. any one of these may introduce a relative (adjective) clause. the pronoun has a dual role, acting as an introduction to a relative clause, while at the same time taking a role in the clause. 'this is the house that Jack built.' 'that' introduces the subordinate clasue 'that Jack built' it also has a place in the clause, being the direct object of the clause. to see this, one must re-arrange the clause to 'Jack built that'.

back to relative adverbs... 'where the shadows lie' 'where the shadows lie' functions as an adjective (describing Mordor, a noun). so, even though 'where' is adverbial in nature, it is introducing an adjective (relative) clause. it is therefore called an relative adverb, to signify it is an adverb introducting an adjective clause, rather than its normal function. ps - do not confuse relative pronouns with adjective pronouns. adjective pronouns are only adjectives: one, many, few, same, such, other, etc., as well as the demonstratives (this, that, these, those). 'that', being such a flexible word, fits into multiple groupings, depending on its use. when it introduces a clause and has a part in the grammar of that clause, it is relative. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.6.248.150 (talk) 20:41, 13 October 2010 (UTC) 24.6.248.150 (talk) 20:49, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Welsh and Chinese have no relative pronouns?
Welsh is given here as an example of a language which does not have relative pronouns, but from my knowledge this is incorrect (though it may be a question of terminology). The relative pronoun is a (e.g. ef yw'r dyn a ddaeth i'm gweld "he is the man who came to see me"). This is both etymologically and functionally a relative pronoun and is described as such in grammars, though it also functions as a preverbal particle without relative meaning - it also has cognates in other Celtic languages (e.g. Gaelic which does not use the particle a).

Unless a citation is provided in support of the assertion that Welsh has no relative pronouns, I will remove the example on the basis that a is called a 'relative pronoun' in "A Welsh Grammar" by Stephen J Williams (Prifysgol Cymru, 1980). In any case, it might be better to find an example which more emphatically doesn't use relative pronouns (e.g. one which uses inflexion like Gaulish, though that's not a very good example either). Psammead (talk) 16:02, 2 December 2011 (UTC)


 * The last paragraph of the article also says that Mandarin has no relative pronouns. Actually, it has de, which Li and Thompson call a nominalizer. Without objection, I'll delete this assertion. As Psammead says, it would be nice to put in an airtight example of a language with no relative pronouns. Duoduoduo (talk) 16:46, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Whom you saw
Is it too pedantic (or just incorrect) to suggest that the first example should be "whom you saw"? (Especially in a grammar article? :-) ) I don't think "to see" is a copular verb, so there should be a direct object in the objective case.

Diagrammatically, "I met the {you saw whom} man." 211.63.151.142 (talk) 00:28, 26 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Certainly, in the kinds of English that use "whom", it would be correct to do so in that example. But most registers of English don't require "whom". Perhaps it would be better to use an example with "which" instead, to avoid the problem. Victor Yus (talk) 08:53, 26 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Apart from that, the phrase "the man who(m) you saw" is not a complete sentence. I have replaced it with a better example - one which we used years back. --Doric Loon (talk) 16:50, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Subhect-verb agreement
Do "who" or "that" or "which" (as subjects) take first- or second-person verbs? "You, who have been, are no longer" or "You, who has been, are no longer"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.18.231.42 (talk) 09:32, 20 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I think the answer to this question belongs in English relative clauses. --Boson (talk) 12:06, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

This page in other languages
I believe the Dutch version of this page is Betrekkelijk voornaamwoord. Maybe this could be looked into (by someone who knows how to add it to the Languages-section in the sidebar ^^). 84.107.138.62 (talk) 14:31, 15 June 2014 (UTC)


 * ✅. I would have thought a bot would have done that, since both were linked to other languages. --Boson (talk) 15:04, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Uncorrected vandalism
This article was vandalized several weeks ago, but it still has some uncorrected errors. The text should be "the house that Jack built" instead of "the house that kannan built." Jarble (talk) 22:02, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Reverted. Nardog (talk) 22:03, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

About my edits from moments ago
I no longer use the terms, "relative pronoun" and "relative clause" except when offering clarification either in cases when someone else introduces the terms or to provide a historical perspective. Namely, in early modern English, the "relative" aspect pertaining to the application of a relative pronoun bore little resemblance to its persistent application nowadays. For instance, in the early 15th century, it was common to use an OSV structure say about a house in a distal context: "That I built, the house yonder" rather than to use the emerging SVO structure: "I built that, the house yonder." In both cases, however, "that" was construed as a pronoun relative to "house."

Thus, in 15th century grammar, the word "relative" (i.e. as a newly coined adjective rather than as the well-established noun in its familial sense) to describe the nexus between certain substitute words (i.e. pronouns; theretofore called "relatives") and their referents regardless of case, including demonstratively in the subjective case (That I built" yonder), in the objective case ("I built that yonder") and in the nascent proliferation of "that" in an adjectival case ("I built that house yonder"). Before the SVO structure gained predominance by the mid-16th century, the "relative" term adhered to the adjectival use of the "that" NOT because of some grammatically pedological reason but because it adhered to the evolution of early modern English usage in a sentence like, "This is the house, that I built" (with comma/pause included) to the contemporary modern English iterations, e.g. "This is the house that I built."

In short, the "relative" in the "relative pronoun" terminology has its historical roots based in etymology instead of any linguistical theory of syntax. From a interlingual perspective on modern syntax, "This is the house that I built" contains a conjunction, not a pronoun. From a functionalist perspective, EVERY pronoun is "relative" in the sense that it relates to SOME anaphoric, cataphoric, or extratextual referent. (E.g. "It is raining," from a 15th century point of view, contains the relative pronoun, "it," wherein "it" is relative to (i.e. relates to) "water droplets from clouds."

To the sentimental English language grammarians who obstinately cling to the use of "relative pronoun" as term that links to a "relative clause," good luck trying to distinguish a word that conjoins an adjectival clause (e.g. "This is the tree that I planted") versus a word that conjoins an adjectival phrase (e.g. "This is the tree that was planted") and why we can elide a so-called "pronoun" from the former sentence but not from the latter. (HINT: In virtually every language, conjunctions are arbitrary vis-à-vis syntactic structure nonessential to meaning; object pronouns and subject pronouns are syntactically and semantically essential to the clauses in which they occur.)

To the phrase grammar enthusiasts who claim, "This is the tree that I planted" is tantamount to (a) "I planted that" or (b) "I planted that tree," I'm open to revisionist theories about how - syntactically speaking - conjunctions, object pronouns, and determiners are basically all the same. Kent Dominic 04:00, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

Critical analysis of the "relative pronoun” term
As you may have noticed, I made significant changes to relative pronoun article. The thing that prompted my edits stemmed from a section that had asserted the following:


 * In linking a subordinate clause and a main clause, a relative pronoun functions similarly to a subordinating conjunction. Unlike a conjunction, however, a relative pronoun does not simply mark the subordinate (relative) clause, but also plays the role of a noun within that clause. For example, in ... "This is the house that Jack built," the pronoun "that" functions as the object of the verb "built.”

The argument that a relative pronoun “plays the role of a noun within that (subordinate/relative) clause” rests on a linguistic premise that is tenuous at best. The problem arises from assumptions implicit in the character of the word “that” as a pronoun rather than a conjunction. Consider the rationale in the following examples: When the logic implicit in the section that I edited is applied to the second example immediately above, one must conclude the relative pronoun, “that” plays the role of a noun within the “that I’m late” clause. Such a conclusion is nonsensical. In summary, linguistic commentators are misguided when persistently using the relative pronoun term in an attempt to identify words (or phrases) that perform a conjoining function within a sentence. They are correct to use "relative pronoun" (or a cognate pronominal term) only when the pronoun occurs parenthetically, e.g.: Conversely, the following sentences employ conjunctions, NOT relative pronouns:
 * ”Wait for me if I’m late,” wherein “if” is incontrovertibly a conjunction.
 * ”Wait for me on the condition that I’m late,” wherein the sense of “on the condition that” equates to “if.”
 * The movie, which I saw yesterday, was quite good.
 * My sister, who is a dancer, is considered avant-garde.
 * Milwaukee, where I was born, is located in Wisconsin.
 * The movie which I saw yesterday was quite good.
 * My sister who is a dancer is considered avant-garde.
 * The city where I was born is located in Wisconsin.Kent Dominic 17:23, 2 February 2020 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kent Dominic (talk • contribs)
 * As far as I know, a conjunction is defined as something invariable, and indicating the function of the subclause with regard to the main clause or head noun. One can consider "that" as a conjunction, as it is invariable for subject and object, not marking different types of antecedents and is colloquially even used for adverbials, is always placed at the beginning of the subclause (preposition stranding necessary) and does not show the inflection of the demonstrative pronoun "that" (which has the plural "those"). But it stems from a pronoun, its precedessors in Old English used to have a ppronominal inflection, and Traditional grammar that established the analysis as a pronoun was based on Latin grammar. And Latin grammar does not know relative clauses with a gap for the antecedent, Latin relativizers (words that introduce relative clauses) always indicate the syntactical function of the antecedent in the relative clause, showing the form and function of pronouns or adverbs. But the other words which are used for English relative clauses do indicate the syntactical function of the antecedent they relate to, and they are employed obviously based on the question whether an adverb (be it demonstrative or interreogative) or a noun or pronoun would take this position in an independant sentence. And the relative pronouns, which are used when an independant clause would employ a noun or pronoun, do even show some kind of declension: "which" = inanimate, nominative (subject) and objective (direct object, indirect object, with prepositions); "who" = animate, nominative (subject), now often replacing "whom" as well; "whose" = possessive, always used with animate antecedent, disputed use with inanimate antecedents; "whom" = animate, onjective case (direct object, indirect object, with prepositions), now often replaced by "who". (Further "on the condition that I am late" does not even employ any relative clause at all, "I am late" is a complete sentence, which is linked by the conjunction "that" with the noun "condition" as the latter's definition (what condition? = "that I am late").) --2A0A:A541:F78F:0:D830:148B:C1C7:B983 (talk) 14:19, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

What is a relative pronoun
Please tell me what it js 2601:248:8381:8870:F506:592A:9179:141 (talk) 00:02, 7 December 2021 (UTC)