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Relative clauses

A relative clause gives extra information about nouns - how exactly does it do this? Unlike an adjective, which in English comes before the noun, relative clauses always follow the noun that they are defining or describing. In the following examples, the whole relative clause is in bold:

·           I enjoyed the concert that we went to last night.

·           The book which I'm reading comes from the library.

·           The people who you met at the party are all old friends of mine.

·           He hadn't met the man who I was talking about.

The first thing to notice from these examples is that the relative clause can come both at the end and in the middle of the sentence. The second point of interest is the type of word that can introduce a relative clause, in these instances, which, who and that - in this context these words are known as relative pronouns.

We can opt to use that where we might sometimes use which or who, as you can see from these sentences modified from the ones above:

·           The book that I'm reading comes from the library.

·           The people that you met at the party are all old friends of mine.

·           He hadn't met the man that I was talking about.

You may also have noticed that there is another relative clause construction that can be applied to all the above examples - the relative pronoun can be left out with no obvious change in meaning.

·           I enjoyed the concert we went to last night.

·           The book I'm reading comes from the library.

·           The people you met at the party are all old friends of mine.

·           He hadn't met the man I was talking about.

But what about the following sentences?

·           I can't find my notebook that contains all my addresses.

·           She has never met the lecturer who is leading today's seminar.

·           The tall man who was standing by the bar is my uncle.

·           The newspaper which first reported the incident is being sued.

Again, the relative clause can occupy the same positions as before, but try to take out the relative pronoun this time and compare the results. You should find that they do not produce acceptable English sentences. Can you see why?

Subject and object relative clauses

The answer is that in the first set of four sentences the relative pronoun is the object of the relative clause, like this:

·           I enjoyed the concert. We went to the concert last night.

·           The book comes from the library. I'm reading the book.

·           The people are all old friends of mine. You met the people at the party.

·           He hadn't met the man. I was talking about the man.

In each case the sentence which becomes the relative clause is shown second and adds extra information to the subject or the object of the first (main clause) sentence.

With this type of clause we can choose either to use the relative pronouns or to omit them. In fast colloquial speech, omission is the norm, whereas in written English we tend to leave them in.

In the second set of four sentences, however, the subject or the object of the main clause is the subject of the relative clause:

·           I can't find my notebook. My notebook contains all my addresses.

·           She has never met the lecturer. The lecturer is leading today's seminar.

·           The tall man is my uncle. The tall man was standing by the bar.

·           The newspaper is being sued. The newspaper first reported the incident.

In these cases we cannot leave out the relative pronoun and expect a fully coherent sentence to remain. However, as with object relative clauses we can use that instead of which or who.

·           She has never met the lecturer that is leading today's seminar.

·           The tall man that was standing by the bar is my uncle.

·           The newspaper that first reported the incident is being sued.

So, when you first see a relative clause it is a good idea to decide whether you are looking at subject relative clause or an object relative clause.

Source : https://www.tesol-direct.com/guide-to-english-grammar/relative-clauses