Purdue University North Central Writing
Center Handout
Relative
Clauses
1.
Combining short, simple sentences allows you to write without needless
repetition. Writing about the technological development of prehistoric
peoples, for instance, you might begin a paragraph with these two statements:
The Cro Magnons developed a spear-throwing device.
The spear-throwing device improved the range of their weapons by 30
yards.
Since
the phrase “spear-throwing device” occurs in both sentences, you can combine
the two by replacing the repeated phrase with that:
The Cro Magnons developed a spear-throwing device that
improved the range of their weapons by 30 yards.
Because
the two ideas are now linked within a single sentence, they seem more closely
related than before. By combining
the sentence with that, you have shown
more directly that the spear-throwing device improved the range of the Cro
Magnons’ weapons.
2.
Words like which, who, whom, that, and whose
are called relatives, and the new
structure created from the second sentence is a relative clause. That
replaces nouns that refer to things and animals.
Who replaces nouns that refer to people, such as “peasant
farmers” in the following:
The peasant farmers still work in the ancient ways of their ancestors.
The peasant farmers till the Nile Delta.
The peasant farmers who till the Nile Delta still
work in the ancient ways of their ancestors.
In
the following sentence, the relative clause begins with whom:
The women whom Gloria Steinem
addressed support the Equal Rights Amendment.
The
relative whom is optional; without whom,
the sentence will sound less formal.
The women Gloria Steinem addressed support the Equal Rights Amendment.
3.
In fact, that is the most
versatile of the relatives, since it can replace nouns that refer to either
people or things. A person can be
either a that or a who. A thing, on the
other hand, is always a that.
Dogs and cats aren’t people, but they aren’t quite things either.
Is an animal a what or a who?
If the
animal is anonymous, or we don’t use the name,
it’s a that:
There’s the dog that won the Frisbee competition.
If the animal has a name, he or she is a who:
Morris is a cat who know what he likes.
4.
Whose replaces possessive nouns--nouns that take an apostrophe, like child’s
in the next example:
The policeman picked up the child.
The child’s arm was broken.
The policeman picked up the child whose
arm was broken.
5.
Note that commas change the meaning of relative clauses:
The governors who took bribes from construction companies misused the
public trust.
The governors, who took bribes from construction companies, misused the
public trust.
The
first sentence, without commas, implies that only some of the governors took
bribes from construction companies and thereby misused the public trust. The second sentence, with commas, states that all of the
governors took bribes from construction companies and that all of them misused
the public trust.
The first sentence is an example of a restrictive clause, and the second
is an example of a non-restrictive clause.
6.
Relative clauses can also strengthen paragraph structure:
The Norway rat is regarded by experts as the most destructive mammal on
earth and the most adaptive to changing situations and environments.
It abounds in the debris of North American cities, resisting all attempts
to control it. The Norway rat
actually reached this country on the ships of many nations.
The
final sentence is out of place, disrupting the continuity of the paragraph. It adds defining information about the Norway rat; the focus
of the paragraph is on the pest’s adaptability, not on its origin.
Making the final sentence into a relative clause modifying the term
Norway rat will lessen its importance and tighten the structure of the
paragraph, keeping it focused on one central point:
The
Norway rat, which actually reached this country on the ships of many nations, is
regarded by experts as the most destructive mammal on earth and the most
adaptive to changing situations and environments.
It abounds in the debris of North American cities, resisting all attempts
to control it.
Adapted from Woe is I by Patricia T.
O’Connor and The Writer’s Options by Daiker, Kerek, and Moreberg