Learn English – Recognizing right relative pronouns for clauses

adjectivesgrammarrelative-clausesrelative-pronouns

I have read some grammar points about adjective clauses, but I still have problems recognizing the right choice in questions requiring them.

A Jekyll and Hyde is a person who has two personalities, one of —- is bad and the other good.
(I guess it should be whom but the answer is which.)

And I wonder if using relative pronouns in this paragraph is correct:

He invents a drug that (which?) can separate them. When he takes the drug, he becomes an evil version of himself, whom (that?) he calls Mr.Hyde.

Can someone please provide information, or resources to get better answers?

Best Answer

The relative pronoun who(m) refers to animate beings, like people or animals. Personalities, in the meaning it has in your example, means the characteristic traits of a person. A person's personality is not an animate being. You can't take it to the beach, for example, or feed it donuts. The personality of a person is an inanimate object (a thing). The relative pronoun which is used to represent inanimate things.

A defining relative clause gives us extra information which helps the listener to understand which things we are talking about:

The man who you saw yesterday is my best friend.

Here, who you saw yesterday tells us exactly which man we are talking about. A non-defining relative clause, on the other hand, gives us extra information about something or somebody we can already identify:

Your father, whom I've known for twenty years, is the most honest man I've ever met.

Here, the relative clause whom I've known for twenty years, is just giving the listener extra information. It is not helping the listener understand which of her fathers we are talking about!

The relative item that can be used for both things and people/animate beings. However it can only be used in defining relative clauses, and not non-defining ones:

Your father, that I've known for twenty years, is the most honest man I've ever met* [wrong]
The man that you saw yesterday is my best friend. [correct]
The sandwich that you bought looked very tasty. [correct]

That cannot occur after a preposition that has been moved to the front of the relative clause:

The man [of that you're talking] [wrong]
The table [at which you're sitting] is antique. [correct]

The options for your examples then are:

A Jekyll and Hyde is a person who has two pesonalities, one of which is bad and the other good.

and

He invents a drug which/that can separate them. When he takes the drug, he becomes an evil version of himself, who(m) he calls Mr. Hyde.

Doing Away with One’s Relatives

It appears _(that) your test-giver expects you to produce reduced relative clauses here. This is common, but by no means strictly necessary.

The first sentence supports these possible correct solutions:

All the students Dr. Freeman teaches do well in writing.
All the students that Dr. Freeman teaches do well in writing.
All the students whom Dr. Freeman teaches do well in writing.

The first solution above is the most common. the third the least. It is not that your proposed solution two is wrong, only that is less common than solution one is.

The second sentence supports these possible correct solutions, again ranked from most common to least:

The problem I had expected never occurred.
The problem that I had expected never occurred.
The problem which I had expected never occurred.

Your own proposed solution appears to have a spurious it at the end, which makes no sense here. It is otherwise fine, however.

Relative-pronoun Deletion

What is going on in all these situations is that the relative pronoun _{(that is)} connecting the relative clause to the noun phrase _(that) it applies to is usually omissible in English. Another way of saying this is that the zero relative pronoun is often allowed here.

This is perfectly natural and completely common, but it is never obligatory — despite possible protestations to the contrary from your instructor. I’m sure your instructor knows this, so I am guessing _(that) this was a test to see whether you knew how to delete relatives if you cared to.

Relative pronouns are who, whom, whose, that, and which. Since we are talking about clauses here, there must be both a subject and verb. The relative pronoun connects its relative clause to the noun phrase _(which) the clause modifies.

Object relatives

When the relative pronoun is serving as the object of its clause, as it is here, it can often be safely deleted — and usually is.

The bird that I saw in my courtyard interested me.
The bird which I saw in my courtyard interested me.
The bird I saw in my courtyard interested me.

Or with a phrase verb:

The bird that I was looking for appeared in my courtyard.
The bird which I was looking for appeared in my courtyard.
The bird I was looking for appeared in my courtyard.

Note that phrasal verbs can lead to unnatural pied piping, as it does here:

The bird for which I was looking appeared in my courtyard.

Or using a human/animate subject:

The man that I saw in my courtyard interested me.
The man which I saw in my courtyard interested me.
The man whom I saw in my courtyard interested me. (formally correct, but hard to get right)
The man who I saw in my courtyard interested me. (much more common)
The man I saw in my courtyard interested me.

Those are all perfectly fine, and all are encountered often enough in the wild, so to speak.

Subject relatives

When the relative pronoun is serving as the subject of its clause, it is not in general omissible, as this leads to ungrammatical forms unproduced by native speakers:

The bird that came to my courtyard interested me.
The bird which came to my courtyard interested me.
The bird *came to courtyard interested me. (NOT GRAMMATICAL!)

However, there is one special case that allows for the deletion of the relative pronoun serving as subject: if the verb it governs is a finite inflection of be. In that instance, the relative pronoun and the following be verb are both deleted. This is what linguists refer to as whiz-deletion — which has nothing to do with Gandalf falling into shadow in Moria, even if folks with the whine–wine merger might be momentarily misled. :-)

First, with a prepositional phrase:

The bird that was in my courtyard interested me.
The bird which was in my courtyard interested me.
The bird in my courtyard interested me.

Or with a human/animate agent:

The man that was in my courtyard interested me.
The man who was in my courtyard interested me.
The man in my courtyard interested me.

Second, with a past participle:

The bird that was perched in my courtyard interested me.
The bird which was perched in my courtyard interested me.
The bird perched in my courtyard interested me.

Or with a human/animate agent:

The man that was seated in my courtyard interested me.
The man who was seated in my courtyard interested me.
The man seated in my courtyard interested me.

Third, with a present participle:

The bird that was perching in my courtyard interested me.
The bird which was perching in my courtyard interested me.
The bird perching in my courtyard interested me.

Or with a human agent:

The man that was waiting in my courtyard interested me.
The man who was waiting in my courtyard interested me.
The man waiting in my courtyard interested me.

Whizzers Beware!

Note that whiz deletion can become awkward or even misleading when the relative clause is descriptive instead of restrictive:

My kitten Fluffy, who is always by my pillow when I wake up in the morning, was not there this morning.
My kitten Fluffy, always by my pillow when I wake up in the morning, was not there this morning.

Be careful with whiz deletion in those situations; it may or may not improve the reading.

Another source of trouble from overzealous whiz deletion derives from the participle–gerund duality in English. When there is a present participle involved, whiz deletion can sometimes lead to a misreading. Sometimes this is only on first read, but at other times it is always ambiguous.

This occurs because an -ing verb in English can serve equally well as a participle/adjective as it can a gerund/noun — and if it is a noun, then it can be the head of its own phrase.

It is easy enough to construct a garden path sentence that is misreadable, at least initially:

The genetic risk that is taking its toll here will not be seen for generations.
The genetic risk taking its toll here will not be seen for generations.

In the second version, the reader first construes the subject of the sentence to be risk taking, not risk by itself.

The careful writer avoids whiz deletions that imperil clarity, although the mischievous writer may have other goals.

Possessive relatives

No, these are not greedy family members. :) They are relative pronouns that connect their clauses back to the noun phrase in neither a subject nor an object way, but in a possessive way.

These possessive relatives are usually just whose, but may at times be of which instead. There is no difference between those two, though, because whose is not restricted to animate agents _(in) the way _(that) who and whom are.

One cannot delete possessive relatives at all, because the sentence becomes ungrammatical if one tries.

Compare valid sentences:

The man whose bird had escaped chased it into my courtyard.
A bird whose likes I had never seen appeared in my courtyard.
A bird the likes of which I had never seen appeared in my courtyard.

With ones rendered invalid once their relatives have been done away with:

*The man bird had escaped chased it into my courtyard.
*A bird likes I had never seen appeared in my courtyard.
*A bird the likes I had never seen appeared in my courtyard.

Learn English – Relative clauses: How do that-clauses differ from what-clauses

That and Which

Relative clauses with which or that usually modify nouns. The end result is that the original noun becomes one big Noun Phrase and functions just like a large noun.

Do you remember the volcano [which erupted whilst we were on holiday]?

Here we see the noun volcano being modified by which ... holiday. The whole Noun Phrase the volcano which erupted whilst we were on holiday has the function of Direct Object of the verb remember.

Notice that it is the word which that is the subject of which erupted whilst we were on holiday - not the word volcano. Rather, the word volcano is the antecedent for the pronoun which. This means that we interpret which within the clause through the word volcano which comes before it. In normal relative clauses, the pronoun which always has an antecedent. The relative word that, also appears in clauses in front of which there is some kind of noun as an antecedent:

Do you remember the volcano [that erupted whilst we were on holiday]?

So in both of these types of relatives clause we have an antecedent noun, which helps us interpret another element in the embedded relative clause.

What

If we compare the following sentences we''ll see that there's a very specific difference in relative clauses with what:

The things that she did were thoughtful and useful.
The things which she did were thoughtful and useful.
What she did was thoughtful and useful.

I liked the thing(s) which she did.
I liked the thing(s) that she did.
I liked what she did.

The big difference is that, as you can see, there's no antecedent noun for the relative clauses with what. The relative clauses with which/that all have the things as an antecedent. What takes the place of both the antecedent as well as the relative word.

The Examples

With regard to the Original Poster's examples:

1) He will do anything _ is needed.

Here we see that there is an antecedent noun phrase, anything. Therefore we need to use that or which:

He'll do anything that's needed.

[However, if we removed the noun phrase anything completely, then we could use what:

He'll do what's needed.]

2) They always ignore _ is so obvious.

Here there is no antecedent noun so we have to use what:

They always ignore what's so obvious.

3) All _ I have is yours.

Here we find an antecedent noun, the pronoun all. We cannot therefore use what, but must use that instead. We could use which but when the antecedent is a pronoun like this it is often better to use that.

All that I have is yours.

Regarding the Original Poster's last unnumbered example, consider the following:

I know what I think.

I know that I think.

The first sentence has a relative clause, what I think as a direct object. Within the relative clause itself, the object of think is understood as the item what.

The second sentence however does not have a relative clause. We know this is the case because there is no antecedent for that. The clause following know is a declarative content clause. The sentence has the same structure as I know that Yetis exist or I know that you like cheese.

In the second example,the clause that I think is the complement of the verb know. The verb think here has no object. The word that is a marker showing that the following clause is subordinate. In fact we can remove that entirely from the sentence and it will still be grammatical and still have the same meaning:

I know I think. Or at least I believe I do.

Conclusion

To sum up, if there is an antecedent noun in the main clause then that or which appears at the front of the relative clause. We find what when there is no antecedent.

Hope this is helpful!