Relative Pronouns – Using ‘That’ vs ‘Where’ in Relative Clauses

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Sentence one: "This is the place that I remember."
Sentence two: "This is the place where we first met."

Why do we use "that" and not "where" in sentence one?
Why do we use "where" and not "that" in sentence two?

Thank you.

Best Answer

The phrases, "that I remember" and "where we first met" are relative clauses. Relative clauses combine two clauses together by reusing part of the main clause in the relative clause.

The words "that" and "where" replace the reused part of the sentence. "That" replaces a noun, and "where" replaces an adverbial phrase of location.

"This is the place that I remember" can be broken up into two sentences:

This is the place. (from the main clause)

I remember the place. (from the relative clause)

In the relative clause, "the place" is a noun, so we replace it with "that".

"This is the place where we first met" can also be broken up into two sentences:

This is the place. (from the main clause)

We first met in the place. (from the relative clause)

In the relative clause, "in the place" is an adverbial of location (not a noun), so we replace it with "where".

Now, let's say we choose to use "that" instead of "where" in the second example sentence, like this:

"This is the place that we first met."

Let's break it up into two sentences again:

This is the place.

We met the place.

"We met the place" means we didn't meet each other, but somehow two people met a location, which is nonsense.

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