Arelative pronoun is apronoun that marks arelative clause. An example is the wordwhich in the sentence "This is the house which Jack built." Here the relative pronounwhich introduces the relative clause, which modifies the nounhouse. A relative pronoun plays the role of a noun phrase within that clause. For example, in the relative clause "which Jack built," "which" is a pronoun functioning as theobject of the verb "built."
In the English language, the following are the most common relative pronouns:which,who,whose,whom,whoever,whomever, andthat, though some linguists analyzethat in relative clauses as aconjunction /complementizer.
The element in the main clause that the relative pronoun in the relative clause stands for (house in the above example) is theantecedent of that pronoun. In most cases the antecedent is a nominal (noun or noun phrase), though the pronoun can also refer to a wholeproposition, as in "The train was late, which annoyed me greatly", where the antecedent of the relative pronounwhich is the clause "The train was late" (the thing that annoyed me was the fact of the train's being late).
In afree relative clause, a relative pronoun has no antecedent: the relative clause itself plays the role of the co-referring element in the main clause. For example, in "I like what you did",what is a relative pronoun, but without an antecedent. The clausewhat you did itself plays the role of a nominal (the object oflike) in the main clause. A relative pronoun used this way is sometimes called afused relative pronoun, since the antecedent appears fused into the pronoun (what in this example can be regarded as a fusion ofthat which).
Only about 7% of the languages around the world have relative pronouns.[1] For example,Mandarin Chinese does not have relative pronouns at all and forms relative clauses (or their equivalents)by different methods.
Even within languages that have relative pronouns, not all relative clauses contain relative pronouns. For example, in the English sentence "The man you saw yesterday was my uncle", the relative clauseyou saw yesterday contains no relative pronoun. It can be said to have a gap, orzero, in the position of the object of the verbsaw.
Other arguments can be relativised using relative pronouns:
In some languages withgender,number, and noundeclensions—such asGerman,Serbo-Croatian,Hindi, andLatin—the relative pronoun agrees with its antecedent in gender and number, while itscase indicates its relationship with the verb in the relative or main clause.[2] In some other languages, the relative pronoun is an invariable word.
Words used as relative pronouns often originally had other functions. For example, the Englishwhich is also aninterrogative word. This suggests that relative pronouns might be a fairly late development in many languages.[3] Some languages, such asWelsh, have no relative pronouns. In some languages such asHindi, the relative pronouns are distinct from the interrogative pronouns.[4]
In English, different pronouns are sometimes used if the antecedent is a human being, as opposed to a non-human or an inanimate object (as inwho vs.that).
With the relative pronouns, sentences (1) and (2) would read like this:
In sentences (3) and (4), the wordsthat andwho are the relative pronouns. The wordthat is used because the bank is a thing; the wordwho is used because the teller is a person. Alternatively,which is often used indefining (orrestrictive) relative clauses in either case. For details seeEnglish relative clauses.
