Question

What are relative clauses and relative pronouns?

Answer 1

Hint: A pronoun is a term that replaces a noun (I, me, he, she, herself, you, it, that, they, each, few, many, who, whoever, whose, someone, everyone, etc.). The pronouns he and she replace Joe and Jill, respectively, in the phrase Joe spotted Jill and he waved at her.

Complete answer:
Relative pronoun: A relative pronoun is a term that connects a dependent (or related) sentence to an independent clause by introducing it. A clause that starts with a relative pronoun is ready to respond to inquiries like Which one? How many are there? or What type? All relative pronouns are who, whom, what, which, and that.

Because they identify or provide extra information about the subject of the independent sentence they relate to, relative clauses are sometimes known as adjective clauses. These sentences, like adjectives, characterise the subject in some way. Like conjunctions, relative pronouns are words that link clauses together—in this example, a relative clause to its main sentence. The sort of relative pronoun that is employed is determined by the type of noun being described.

Who: Refers to a person (as the verb's subject)
Whom: Refers to a person (as the verb's object)
Which: Refers to an animal or thing
What: Refers to a nonliving thing
That: Refers to a person, animal, or thing

Example:
Flowers were left for you by the woman who came to the door.
She eventually paid a visit to the coffee shop that had received so many positive ratings.


Relative clause: A relative clause is a subordinate clause that contains an element whose meaning is given by an expression that is grammatically dependent on the subordinate phrase. A relative clause is a set of words that includes a subject and a verb and 'relates' information about its antecedent.

A relative clause usually modifies a noun or noun phrase and employs a grammatical technique to show that one of the arguments in the relative clause has the same referent as the noun or noun phrase.
The subordinate clause "who wasn't there" is a relative clause in the sentence "I met a guy who wasn't there" because it modifies the noun guy and utilises the pronoun who to show that the same "guy" is referred to inside the subordinate clause.

The most common form of the relative clause is abounded relative clause, which qualifies an explicit element in the main sentence and refers back to that element via an explicit or implicit mechanism within the relative clause. A free relative clause lacks an explicit antecedent that is external to it. Instead of an argument in the matrix clause, the relative clause acts like one.

Note:
- When used to initiate a question, the pronouns who, whom, whose, and which also act as interrogative pronouns.
- Who, whom, which, whose, and what are the interrogative pronouns.
- The pronoun that also serves as a demonstrative pronoun, i.e., a term that stands in for a noun to indicate proximity in space or time.
- This, that, these, and those are demonstrative pronouns.