Relative clauses

Relative clauses

1. The clauses of relative or relative clauses are those that exercise the function of subordinate with respect to a main clause, adding more information about a thing or a person that had already been mentioned before. For instance: The cushions that are on the couch are purple and green.

   • In this case, the main sentence would be The cushions are purple and green and the secondary or subordinate The cushions are on the couch. To unite both we use the relative pronoun that, which refers to cushions.

2. There are two main types of relative clauses:

   • The cushions that are on the couch are purple and green It would be a Defining relative clause (specific subordinate clause). These types of sentences give information necessary to understand what we are referring to and do not have commas. This is the case of the sentence in the previous example: if we omit the subordinate sentence, we no longer know which cushions we are referring to.
   • His boyfriend de él, who is from Madrid, is studying Maths It belongs to Non-defining relative clauses (explanatory subordinate clauses). These types of sentences provide additional information about the person or thing to which we refer, but it is not essential to identify it. In this case they do have commas. If we remove the relative clause, it is still clear who we are referring to.

3. Who : This pronoun is used only to refer to people. It can act as subject or object of the sentence. The woman who works at my office is very efficient. Mark’s brother, who is 18, has just started University.

   • Which Unlike who, this pronoun only works for things and animals. It can also be the subject or object of the sentence. The book which I read last week is very interesting. The cat, which is very friendly, is called Tom.
   • Whom We don't want to miss the relative pronoun whom. Although it is little used, it can be very useful in formal contexts. In addition, it is ideal to demonstrate your command of English. The pronoun whom replaces people when they are not the subject of the sentence but are the ones who receive it. That is to say: To whom it may concern. - To whom it concerns / interests (a useful formula to start a formal email). Whom does he love? - Who does he love?

4. That This is a pronoun that can be applied both to refer to people and things. Therefore, you can use it to substitute both who and which if the context allows it. The woman that works at my office is very efficient. The book that I read last week is very interesting.

   • Whose Finally, we have the pronoun whose, which we should not confuse with who since it acts as a possessive. To better identify it, think that in Spanish it would be translated as whose, whose, whose or whose: Yesterday I met the girl whose sister is a supermodel. I knew the guy whose bike you bought.