Indo-European languages English In English, a relative clause follows the noun it modifies. It is generally indicated by a relative pronoun at the start of the clause, although sometimes simply by word order. If the relative pronoun is the object of the verb in the relative clause, it comes at the beginning of the clause even though it would come at the end of an independent clause ("She is the woman
whom I saw", not "She is the woman I saw
whom"). The choice of relative pronoun can be affected by whether the clause modifies a human or non-human noun, by whether the clause is restrictive or not, and by the role (subject, direct object, or the like) of the relative pronoun in the relative clause. • For a human antecedent, "who", "whom", or "that" is usually used ("She is the person
who saw me", "He is the person
whom I saw", "He is the person
that I saw"). For a non-human antecedent, only "that" or "which" is used. • For a non-human antecedent in a non-restrictive clause, only "which" is used ("The tree,
which fell, is over there"); while either "which" or "that" may be used in a restrictive clause ("The tree
which fell is over there", "The tree
that fell is over there")but some styles and prescriptive grammars require the use of "that" in the restrictive context. • Of the relative pronoun pair "who" and "whom", the
subjective case form ("who") is used if it is the subject of the relative clause ("She is the police officer who saw me"); and, in formal usage, the
objective case form ("whom") if it is the object of the verb or preposition in the relative clause ("She is the police officer whom I saw", "She is the police officer whom I talked to", "She is the officer to whom I talked"); but in informal usage "whom" is often replaced by "who". In English, as in some other languages (such as French; see below),
non-restrictive relative clauses are set off with commas, but restrictive ones are not: • "I met a woman and a man yesterday. The woman,
who had a thick French accent, was very tall." (non-restrictive—does not narrow down who is being talked about) • "I met two women yesterday, one with a thick French accent and one with a mild Italian one. The woman
who had the thick French accent was very tall." (restrictive—adds information about who is being referred to) The status of "that" as a relative pronoun is not universally agreed. Traditional grammars treat "that" as a relative pronoun, but not all contemporary grammars do: e.g. the
Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (pp. 1056–7) makes a case for treating "that" as a subordinator instead of a relative pronoun; and the
British National Corpus treats "that" as a subordinating conjunction even when it introduces relative clauses. One motivation for the different treatment of "that" is that there are differences between "that" and "which" (e.g., one can say "in which" but not "in that", etc.).
French The system of relative pronouns in
French is in similar in many ways to the system in English, but typically does not distinguish between human and non-humans. When the pronoun is to act as the subject of the relative clause, '
is generally used, though ' may be used instead for precision. This is less common than the use of '''' with direct objects, however, since many common verbs in French, but not regular verbs or the imperfect tense, have different forms even in speech depending on the grammatical number of their third person subjects. :'
("I saw the man who''' is there.") :'
("I saw the city that''' is there.") Contrary to English, the relative pronoun can never be omitted in French, not even when the relative clause is embedded in another relative clause. :'
("Here is what
I think Ø
happened.") [literally: "Here is that which
I think that''' happened."] When the pronoun is to act as the direct object of the relative clause, '''' is generally used. :'
("I saw the man whom''' you met.") :'
("I went to the store that''' he likes.") As mentioned before, '''', which is inflected for grammatical gender and number, is sometimes used in order to give more precision. For example, any of the following is correct and would translate to "I talked to his/her father and mother, whom I already knew": :'
[literally: "that which''' I already knew"] :'
[literally: "those which''' I already knew"] :'
[literally: "that''' I already knew"] However, in the first sentence, the clause refers only to the mother; in the second, it refers to both parents; and in the third, as in the English sentence, it could refer either only to the mother, or to both parents. When the pronoun is to act in a possessive sense, where the preposition
de (of/from) would normally be used, the pronoun '''' ("whose", "of which", "of whom") is used, but does not act as a
determiner for the noun "possessed": :'
("I spoke with a woman whose
son I work with.") [literally: "I spoke with a woman of whom''' the son is my colleague."] This construction is also used in non-possessive cases where the pronoun replaces an object marked by '''': :'''' ("That's the thing
of which I spoke.") More generally, in modern French, '''' can signal the topic of the following clause, without replacing anything in this clause: :'''' ("That's a thing
about which I believe that it is important.") When the pronoun is to act as the object of a preposition (other than when '
is used), ' is generally used, though '''' can be used if the antecedent is human. :'
("These are people that
can be depended on
.") [literally: "on those which''' one can depend"] :'''' :'
("This is a table Ø
you can put a lot of things on
.") [literally: "on that which''' one can put many things"] :''C'est une table sur qui on peut mettre beaucoup de choses.'' There exists a further complication when the antecedent is a non-human
indefinite pronoun. In that case, '
cannot be used because it must agree in gender with its head, and an indefinite pronoun has no gender. Instead, ', which usually means "what", is used. :'
("This is obviously something that
he has thought a lot about'''.") :''C'est manifestement quelque chose à laquelle il a beaucoup réfléchi.'' The same happens when the antecedent is an entire clause, also lacking gender. :'
("He told me to get lost, to which''' I replied that...") The preposition always appears before the pronoun, and the prepositions '
and ' (at/to) contract with '
to form ' and '
, or with ' to form '
and '. Many '''' questions in French underlyingly use relative clauses. :'
("Who do I see over there?") [literally: "Who is that which''' I see over there?"] :'
("What can I do?") [literally: "What is that which''' I can do?"] :'
("What broke?") [literally: "What is that which''' is broken?"]
German of
German restrictive relative clausesAside from their highly inflected forms,
German relative pronouns are less complicated than English. There are two varieties. The more common one is based on the definite article
der,
die,
das, but with distinctive forms in the genitive (
dessen,
deren) and in the dative plural (
denen). Historically this is related to English
that. The second, which is more literary and used for emphasis, is the relative use of
welcher,
welche,
welches, comparable with English
which. As in most
Germanic languages, including Old English, both of these varieties inflect according to gender, case and number. They take their gender and number from the noun which they modify, but the case from their function in their own clause. :
Das Haus, in dem ich wohne, ist sehr alt. ::The house in which I live is very old. The relative pronoun
dem is neuter singular to agree with
Haus, but dative because it follows a preposition in its own clause. On the same basis, it would be possible to substitute the pronoun
welchem. However, German uses the uninflecting
was ('what') as a relative pronoun when the antecedent is
alles,
etwas or
nichts ('everything', 'something', 'nothing'). :
Alles, was Jack macht, gelingt ihm. ::Everything that Jack does is a success. In German, all relative clauses are marked with commas. Alternatively, particularly in formal registers, participles (both active and passive) can be used to embed relative clauses in adjectival phrases: :
Die von ihm in jenem Stil gemalten Bilder sind sehr begehrt ::The pictures he painted in that style are highly sought after :
Die Regierung möchte diese im letzten Jahr eher langsam wachsende Industrie weiter fördern ::The government would like to further promote this industry, which has grown rather slowly over the last year. Unlike English, which only permits relatively small participle phrases in adjectival positions (typically just the participle and adverbs), and disallows the use of direct objects for active participles, German sentences of this sort can embed clauses of arbitrary complexity.
Spanish Latin In
Latin, relative clauses follow the noun phrases they modify, and are always introduced using relative pronouns. Relative pronouns, like other pronouns in Latin, agree with their antecedents in
gender and
number, but not in
case: a relative pronoun's case reflects its role in the relative clause it introduces, while its antecedent's case reflects the antecedent's role in the clause that contains the relative clause. (Nonetheless, it is possible for the pronoun and antecedent to be in the same case.) For example: :
Urbēs, quae sunt magnae, videntur. (The
cities,
which are large, are being seen.) :
Urbēs, quās vīdī, erant magnae. (
The cities, which I saw, were large.) In the former example,
urbēs and
quae both function as
subjects in their respective clauses, so both are in the nominative case; and due to gender and
number agreement, both are feminine and plural. In the latter example, both are still feminine and plural, and
urbēs is still in the nominative case, but
quae has been replaced by
quās, its accusative-case counterpart, to reflect its role as the
direct object of
vīdī. For more information on the forms of Latin relative pronouns,
see the section on relative pronouns in the article on Latin declension.
Ancient Greek Ancient Greek follows (almost) the same rules as Latin. {{fs interlinear|lang=grc|indent=3 However, there is a phenomenon in Ancient Greek called
case attraction, where the case of the relative pronoun can be "attracted" to the case of its antecedent. {{fs interlinear|lang=grc|indent=3 In this example, although the relative pronoun should be in the accusative case, as the object of "obtain", it is attracted to the genitive case of its antecedent ("of the freedom..."). The Ancient Greek relative pronoun ὅς, ἥ, ὅ (
hós, hḗ, hó) is unrelated to the Latin word, since it derives from
Proto-Indo-European : in
Proto-Greek,
y before a vowel usually changed to
h (
debuccalization).
Cognates include
Sanskrit relative pronouns
yas, yā, yad (where
o changed to short
a). The Greek definite article ὁ, ἡ, τό (
ho, hē, tó) has a different origin, since it is related to the Sanskrit
demonstrative sa, sā and
Latin is-tud. Information that in English would be encoded with relative clauses could be represented with complex participles in Ancient Greek. This was made particularly expressive by the rich suite of participles available, with active and passive participles in present, past and future tenses. This is called
the attributive participle.
Serbo-Croatian Serbo-Croatian uses exactly the same principle as Latin does. The following sentences are the Latin examples translated to Serbo-Croatian (the same sentences apply to the Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin standard variants of the
pluricentric language): {{interlinear|indent=3 {{interlinear|indent=3 of
relativizers in
Serbo-CroatianIn the first sentence,
koji is in the
nominative, and in the second
koje is in the
accusative. Both words are two case forms of the same
relative pronoun, that is inflicted for
gender (here: masculine),
number (here: plural), and
case. An alternative relativizing strategy is the use of the non-declinable word
što 'that' to introduce a relative clause. This word is used together with a
resumptive pronoun, i.e. a
personal pronoun that agrees in gender and number with the
antecedent, while its case form depends on its function in the relative clause. The resumptive pronoun never appears in subject function. {{interlinear|indent=3 Relative clauses are relatively frequent in modern Serbo-Croatian The most frequently used relative pronoun is
koji. There are several ongoing changes concerning
koji. One of them is the spread of the genitive-accusative
syncretism to the masculine inanimate of the pronoun. The cause lies in the necessity to disambiguate the
subject and the
object by
morphological means. The nominative-accusative syncretism of the form
koji is inadequate, so the genitive form
kojeg is preferred: {{interlinear|indent=3 {{interlinear|indent=3
Celtic languages The
Celtic languages (at least the modern
Insular Celtic languages) distinguish two types of relative clause: direct relative clauses and indirect relative clauses. A direct relative clause is used where the relativized element is the subject or the direct object of its clause (e.g. "the man
who saw me", "the man
whom I saw"), while an indirect relative clause is used where the relativized element is a genitival (e.g. "the man
whose daughter is in the hospital") or is the object of a preposition (e.g. "the man
to whom I gave the book"). Direct relative clauses are formed with a
relative pronoun (unmarked for case) at the beginning; a gap (in terms of syntactic theory, a
trace, indicated by (
t) in the examples below) is left in the relative clause at the pronoun's expected position. ;Irish {{interlinear|indent=3|abbreviations=DIR:direct ;Welsh {{interlinear|indent=3|abbreviations=DIR:direct The direct relative particle "a" is not used with "mae" ("is") in Welsh; instead the form "sydd" or "sy'" is used: {{interlinear|indent=3|abbreviations=DIR:direct There is also a
defective verb "piau" (usually lenited to "biau"), corresponding to "who own(s)": {{interlinear|indent=3|abbreviations=DIR:direct Indirect relative clauses are formed with a
relativizer at the beginning; the relativized element remains
in situ in the relative clause. ;Irish {{interlinear|indent=3|abbreviations=IND:indirect ;Welsh {{interlinear|indent=3|abbreviations=IND:indirect Although both the Irish relative pronoun and the relativizer are 'a', the relative pronoun triggers lenition of a following consonant, while the relativizer triggers eclipsis (see
Irish initial mutations). Both direct and indirect relative particles can be used simply for emphasis, often in answer to a question or as a way of disagreeing with a statement. For instance, the Welsh example above, "y dyn a welais" means not only "the man whom I saw", but also "it was the man (and not anyone else) I saw"; and "y dyn y rhois y llyfr iddo" can likewise mean "it was the man (and not anyone else) to whom I gave the book".
Semitic languages Hebrew In
Biblical Hebrew, relative clauses were headed with the word
asher, which could be either a
relative pronoun or a
relativizer. In later times,
asher became interchangeable with the prefix
she- (which is also used as a conjunction, with the sense of English
that), and in
Modern Hebrew, this use of
she- is much more common than
asher, except in some formal, archaic, or poetic writing. In meaning, the two are interchangeable; they are used regardless of whether the clause is modifying a human, regardless of their grammatical case in the relative clause, and regardless of whether the clause is restrictive. Further, because Hebrew does not generally use its word for
is,
she- is used to distinguish adjective phrases used in epithet from adjective phrases used in attribution: :''Ha-kise l'-yad-ekh.
("The chair is next to you." - lit.'', "The-chair [is] next-to-you.") :''Ha-kise
she-l'-yad-ekh shavur.
("The chair next to you is broken."—lit.'', "The-chair
that-[is]-next-to-you [is] broken.") (This use of
she- does not occur with simple adjectives, as Hebrew has a different way of making that distinction. For example,
Ha-kise adom means "The chair [is] red", while ''Ha-kis'e ha-adom shavur'' means "The red chair is broken"—literally, "The chair the red [is] broken.") Since 1994, the official rules of Modern Hebrew (as determined by the
Academy of the Hebrew Language) have stated that relative clauses are to be punctuated in Hebrew the same way as in English (described above). That is, non-restrictive clauses are to be set off with commas, while restrictive clauses are not: :
Ha-kise, she-at yoshevet alav, shavur. ("The chair,
which you are sitting on, is broken.") :
Ha-kise she-at yoshevet alav shavur. ("The chair
that you are sitting on is broken.") Nonetheless, many speakers of Modern Hebrew still use the pre-1994 rules, which were based on the German rules (described above). Except for the simple adjective-phrase clauses described above, these speakers set off all relative clauses, restrictive or not, with commas: :
Ha-kise, she-at yoshevet alav, shavur. ("The chair
that you are sitting on is broken,"
or "The chair,
which you are sitting on, is broken.") One major difference between relative clauses in Hebrew and those in (for example) English is that in Hebrew, what might be called the "regular" pronoun is not always suppressed in the relative clause. To reuse the prior example: :
Ha-kise, she-at yoshevet alav, shavur. (
lit., "The chair,
which you are sitting
on it, [is] broken.") More specifically, if this pronoun is the subject of the relative clause, it is always suppressed. If it is the direct object, then it is usually suppressed, though it is also correct to leave it in. (If it is suppressed, then the special preposition
et, used to mark the direct object, is suppressed as well.) If it is the object of a preposition, it must be left in, because in Hebrew—unlike in English—a preposition cannot appear without its object. When the pronoun is left in,
she- might more properly be called a
relativizer than a relative pronoun. The
Hebrew relativizer she- 'that' "might be a shortened form of the Hebrew relativizer
‘asher 'that', which is related to
Akkadian ‘ashru 'place' (cf. Semitic *
‘athar). Alternatively,
Hebrew ‘asher derived from
she-, or it was a convergence of Proto-Semitic
dhu (cf. Aramaic
dī) and
‘asher [...] Whereas
Israeli she- functions both as
complementizer and relativizer,
ashér can only function as a relativize."
Arabic Literary Arabic In
Modern Standard and
Classical Arabic there is a relative pronoun (in Arabic: )
allaḏī (masculine singular), feminine singular
allatī, masculine plural
allaḏīna, feminine plural
allawātī, masculine dual
allaḏānī (nominative) /
allaḏayni (accusative and genitive), feminine dual
allatānī (nom.) /
allataynī (acc. and gen.). Its usage has two specific rules: it agrees with the antecedent in gender, number and case, and it is used only if the antecedent is definite. If the antecedent is indefinite, no relative pronoun is used. The former is called
jumlat sila (conjunctive sentence) while the latter is called
jumlat sifa (descriptive sentence). {{fs interlinear|lang=ar|indent=3 {{fs interlinear|lang=ar|indent=3
Colloquial Arabic In Colloquial Arabic the multiple forms of the relative pronoun have been levelled in favour of a single form, a simple conjunction, which in most dialects is
illi, and is never omitted. So in Palestinian Arabic the above sentences would be: •
alwalad illi shuftō fi (a)ssaff embārih ghāyeb alyōm •
hāda (i)l-walad illi shuftō fi (a)ssaff embārih As in Hebrew, the regular pronoun referring to the antecedent is repeated in the relative clause - literally, "the boy whom I saw
him in class..." (the
-hu in ''ra'aituhu
and the -ō
in shuftō''). The rules of suppression in Arabic are identical to those of Hebrew: obligatory suppression in the case that the pronoun is the subject of the relative clause, obligatory retention in the case that the pronoun is the object of a preposition, and at the discretion of the speaker if the pronoun is the direct object. The only difference from Hebrew is that, in the case of the direct object, it is preferable to retain the pronoun rather than suppress it.
Japonic languages Japanese Japanese does not employ relative pronouns to relate relative clauses to their antecedents. Instead, the relative clause directly modifies the noun phrase as an
attributive verb, occupying the same syntactic space as an attributive adjective (before the noun phrase). {{fs interlinear|indent=3 {{fs interlinear|indent=3 {{fs interlinear|indent=3 In fact, since so-called
i-adjectives in Japanese can be analyzed as intransitive stative verbs, it can be argued that the structure of the first example (with an adjective) is the same as the others. A number of "adjectival" meanings, in Japanese, are customarily shown with relative clauses consisting solely of a verb or a verb complex: {{fs interlinear|indent=3 {{fs interlinear|indent=3 Often confusing to speakers of languages which use relative pronouns are relative clauses which would in their own languages require a preposition with the pronoun to indicate the semantic relationship among the constituent parts of the phrase. {{fs interlinear|indent=3 Here, the preposition "in" is missing from the Japanese ("missing" in the sense that the corresponding postposition would be used with the main clause verb in Japanese). Common sense indicates what the meaning is in this case, but the "missing preposition" can sometimes create ambiguity. In this case, (1) is the context-free interpretation of choice, but (2) is possible with the proper context. Without more context, both (1) and (2) are equally viable interpretations of the Japanese sentence.
Caucasian languages Georgian In
Georgian, there are two strategies for forming relative clauses. The first is similar to that of English or Latin: the modified noun is followed by a relativizer that inflects for its embedded case and may take a postposition. The relativized noun may be preceded by a determiner. {{fs interlinear|indent=3 {{fs interlinear|indent=3 {{fs interlinear|indent=3 A second, more colloquial, strategy is marked by the invariant particle რომ
rom. This particle is generally the second word of the clause, and since it does not decline, is often followed by the appropriately cased third-person pronoun to show the relativized noun's role in the embedded clause. A determiner precedes the relativized noun, which is also usually preceded by the clause as a whole. {{fs interlinear|indent=3 {{fs interlinear|indent=3 Such relative clauses may be internally headed. In such cases, the modified noun moves into the clause, taking the appropriate declension for its role therein (thus eliminating the need for the third person pronouns in the above examples), and leaves behind the determiner (which now functions as a pronoun) in the matrix clause. {{fs interlinear|indent=3
Austronesian languages Indonesian Indonesian, a
zero-copula language that does not mark verb tense, allows a variety of types of relative clause, normally restrictive. They are usually introduced by the relative pronoun
yang, which stands for "who"/"which"/"what"/"that". {{interlinear|number=(1)
Yang is not allowed as the object of a relative clause, so that Indonesian cannot exactly reproduce structures such as "the house that Jack built". Instead, a passive form of construction must be used: {{interlinear|number=(2) Relative clauses with no antecedent to
yang are possible: {{interlinear|number=(3) {{interlinear|number=(4)
Tagalog Tagalog uses the
gapping strategy to form relative clauses, with the
complementizer,
na /
=ng 'that', separating the head, which is the noun being modified, from the actual relative clause. In (1a) below,
lalaki 'man' serves as the head, while
nagbigay ng bigas sa bata 'gave rice to the child' is the relative clause. {{interlinear|number=(1) a. {{interlinear|number=b. The gap inside the relative clause corresponds to the position that the noun acting as the head would have normally taken, had it been in a
declarative sentence. In (1a), the gap is in subject position within the relative clause. This corresponds to the subject position occupied by
ang lalaki 'the man' in the declarative sentence in (1b). There is a constraint in Tagalog on the position from which a noun can be relativized and in which a gap can appear: A noun has to be the subject within the relative clause in order for it to be relativized. The phrases in (2) are ungrammatical because the nouns that have been relativized are not the subjects of their respective relative clauses. In (2a), the gap is in direct object position, while in (2b), the gap is in indirect object position. {{interlinear|number=(2) a. {{interlinear|number=b. The correct Tagalog translations for the intended meanings in (2) are found in (3), where the verbs have been passivized in order to raise the logical direct object in (3a) and the logical indirect object in (3b) to subject position. (Tagalog can have more than one
passive voice form for any given verb.) {{interlinear|number=(3) a. {{interlinear|number=b. Tagalog relative clauses can be left-headed, as in (1a) and (3), right-headed, as in (4), or internally headed, as in (5). {{interlinear|number=(4) {{interlinear|number=(5) a. {{interlinear|number=b. In (4), the head,
lalaki 'man', is found after or to the right of the relative clause,
nagbigay ng bigas sa bata 'gave rice to the child'. In (5), the head is found in some position inside the relative clause. When the head appears to the right of or internally to the relative clause, the complementizer appears to the left of the head. When the head surfaces to the left of the relative clause, the complementizer surfaces to the right of the head. There are exceptions to the subjects-only constraint to relativization mentioned above. The first involves relativizing the
possessor of a noun phrase within the relative clause. {{interlinear|number=(6) In (6), the head,
bata 'child', is the owner of the injured finger. The phrase
ang daliri 'the finger' is the subject of the verb,
nasugatan 'was injured'. Another exception involves relativizing the
oblique noun phrase. {{interlinear|number=(7) a. {{interlinear|number=b. {{interlinear|number=c. {{interlinear|number=d. When an oblique noun phrase is relativized, as in (7a),
na 'that', the complementizer that separates the head from the relative clause, is optional. The relative clause itself is also composed differently. In the examples in (1a), and in (3) to (6), the relative clauses are simple declaratives that contain a gap. However, the relative clause in (7a) looks more like an
indirect question, complete with the
interrogative complementizer,
kung 'if', and a pre-verbally positioned
WH-word like
saan 'where', as in (7b). The sentence in (7c) is the declarative version of the relative clause in (7a), illustrating where the head,
ospital 'hospital', would have been "before" relativization. The question in (7d) shows the direct question version of the
subordinate indirect question in (7b).
Hawaiian Relative clauses in
Hawaiian are avoided unless they are short. If in English a relative clause would have a copula and an adjective, in Hawaiian the antecedent is simply modified by the adjective: "The honest man" instead of "the man who is honest". If the English relative clause would have a copula and a noun, in Hawaiian an appositive is used instead: "Paul, an apostle" instead of "Paul, who was an apostle". If the English relative pronoun would be the subject of an intransitive or passive verb, in Hawaiian a participle is used instead of a full relative clause: "the people fallen" instead of "the people who fell"; "the thing given" instead of "the thing that was given". But when the relative clause's antecedent is a person, the English relative pronoun would be the subject of the relative clause, and the relative clause's verb is active and transitive, a relative clause is used and it begins with the relative pronoun
nana:
The one who me (past) sent = "the one who sent me". If in English a relative pronoun would be the object of a relative clause, in Hawaiian the possessive form is used so as to treat the antecedent as something possessed:
the things of me to have seen = "the things that I saw";
Here is theirs to have seen = This is what they saw".
Andean languages Aymara {{interlinear|indent=3
Chinese Mandarin In
Mandarin Chinese, the relative clause is similar to other adjectival phrases in that it precedes the noun that it modifies, and ends with the relative particle
de (的). If the relative clause is missing a subject but contains an object (in other words, if the verb is transitive), the main-clause noun is the implied subject of the relative clause: {{fs interlinear|lang=zh|indent=3 If the object but not the subject is missing from the relative clause, the main-clause noun is the implied object of the relative clause: {{fs interlinear|lang=zh|indent=3 If both the subject and the object are missing from the relative clause, then the main-clause noun could either be the implied subject or the implied object of the relative clause; sometimes which is intended is clear from the context, especially when the subject or object of the verb must be human and the other must be non-human: {{fs interlinear|lang=zh|indent=3 But sometimes ambiguity arises when it is not clear from the context whether the main-clause noun is intended as the subject or the object of the relative clause: {{fs interlinear|lang=zh|indent=3 However, the first meaning (in which the main-clause noun is the subject) is usually intended, as the second can be unambiguously stated using a passive voice marker: {{fs interlinear|lang=zh|indent=3 Sometimes a relative clause has both a subject and an object specified, in which case the main-clause noun is the implied object of an implied preposition in the relative clause: {{fs interlinear|lang=zh|indent=3 It is also possible to include the preposition explicitly in the relative clause, but in that case it takes a pronoun object (a
personal pronoun with the function of a relative pronoun): {{fs interlinear|lang=zh|indent=3 Free relative clauses are formed in the same way, omitting the modified noun after the particle
de. As with bound relative clauses, ambiguity may arise; for example, "eat (particle)" may mean "that which is eaten", i.e. "food", or "those who eat".
Creoles Hawaiian Creole English In
Hawaiian Creole English, an English-based
creole also called Hawaiian Pidgin or simply Pidgin, relative clauses work in a way that is similar to, but not identical to, the way they work in English. As in English, a relative pronoun that serves as the object of the verb in the relative clause can optionally be omitted: For example, {{interlinear|indent=3 can also be expressed with the relative pronoun omitted, as {{interlinear|indent=3 However, relative pronouns serving as the subject of a relative clause show more flexibility than in English; they can be included, as is mandatory in English, they can be omitted, or they can be replaced by another pronoun. For example, all of the following can occur and all mean the same thing: {{interlinear|indent=3 {{interlinear|indent=3 {{interlinear|indent=3
Gullah In
Gullah, an English-based creole spoken along the southeastern coast of the United States, no relative pronoun is normally used for the subject of a relative clause. For example: {{interlinear|indent=3 {{interlinear|indent=3 ==See also==