Writing - Relative Clauses overview

Hey guys, this is Alex, thanks for clicking, and welcome to this lesson on relative clauses.

Now relative clauses are largely useful for English writing.

They are used in spoken English as well, but most of the time the examples that you're

going to see today are very useful for writing.

So if you're doing your TOEFL exam, if you're writing an essay for university, these are

some tips on how to use relative clauses.

Now on the board we have two sentences, and these are the two kinds of relative clauses.

So the first example says, "My sister, who is from Chicago, visited me last weekend."

And the second one says, "My sister, who is from Chicago, visited me last weekend."

Now you see that the only difference between these two sentences is the comma, right?

Is there a difference in meaning between these two sentences when we put commas in this relative

clause?

This is the relative clause, "My sister, who is from Chicago," you are giving more information

about your sister, just like you're giving more information about your sister here.

What is the difference in meaning between these two sentences?

In this one, do I have one sister, or do I have many sisters?

Well, in this case, this actually means that I have many sisters, and you are referring

to, or I am referring to, the one who is from Chicago.

"My sister, who is from Chicago, visited me last weekend," okay?

So this is called an identifying clause.

In some grammar books, in some writing books, this will also be called a restrictive clause.

So it all means the same thing, it's just a different way of calling it identifying

or restrictive.

The reason we call this an identifying clause is because it identifies the subject.

So "My sister" is the subject, I am giving more information about my sister, and I am

saying, "Well, my sister, who is from Chicago, visited me last weekend."

So this is actually the complete subject, okay?

In this case, do I have one sister, or do I have more than one sister?

"My sister, who is from Chicago, visited me last weekend."

In this situation, I only have one sister.

The reason we have "who is from Chicago," well, there is no reason.

We don't have to put this in this sentence for this sentence to make sense.

You could say, "My sister visited me last weekend," and the meaning would be the same.

So this is just extra information, okay?

So this is an identifying clause, this is a non-identifying clause, okay?

So just to review what we've done so far, we have "My sister, who is from Chicago, visited

me last weekend."

I am providing direct information about which sister I'm talking about.

This is the complete subject, "My sister, who is from Chicago," identifies which sister

I'm talking about.

I have more than one sister, I am talking about the one from Chicago.

In this case, I said, "My sister," and I'm giving more information.

So this is a non-identifying clause.

This is not essential information.

It's extra information about my sister, my one sister, right?

And I'm putting it in between the full sentence here, "My sister visited me last weekend,"

but I want to give you more information about my sister, so I put comma, use a non-identifying

clause, "Who is from Chicago," and complete the sentence with, "Visited me last weekend."

The commas are very important in non-identifying clauses.

Now let's look at the relative pronouns that we use with different types of relative clauses.

Now we're going to look at the relative pronouns that we use in relative clauses.

So here we have some sentences.

We're going to go through them and underline the relative pronouns.

So here, "The girl who won the lottery was on TV."

Easy enough to identify the relative pronoun, "Who," "The girl who won the lottery was on

TV."

"The teacher whom I spoke to didn't like me."

"Whom."

"The movie which I saw last weekend was excellent."

"Which."

And "The car that I bought is red."

"The car that I bought is red."

"James Cameron, whose movies are popular, is a great action director."

Okay, so these relative pronouns, these ones specifically, "Who," "Whom," and "Whose,"

when we want to give more information about people, okay, we use "Who," "Whom," and "Whose."

We use "Who" when the subject does the action, okay, the girl who won the lottery, she won

the lottery, she played it.

So we use "Who" for person doing the action.

We use "Whom," "The teacher whom I spoke to didn't like me."

"I spoke to the teacher," "The teacher received the action," person receiving the action.

At the bottom here we have "Whose movies are popular," "The movies of James Cameron," right?

So we use "Whose" for possessive, okay?

"Which" and "That" we use for things, okay?

So "The movie," "The car," you can say "The table," okay, "The school."

Anytime you're talking about things, we use "Which" or "That."

So these are used for things.

Now, the funny thing about "Whose" is that we also use it to talk about possessives for

things, okay?

We don't have a possessive for things like "Witches," okay?

So for example, if you want to say that a movie had a lot of excellent actors and you

want to say that the movie made 50 billion dollars, which is a lot of money, actually

that's not realistic.

Let's say 50 million dollars, okay?

You can say "The movie whose actors were all excellent made 50 million dollars."

Now I know it doesn't really sound comfortable, and this is why I said that relative clauses

are largely used in the written word, okay?

There's one more quick thing that I have to talk about with you in regards to "Which"

and "That" and identifying and non-identifying clauses.

Okay, so for "Which" and "That," specifically with identifying and non-identifying clauses,

there are a couple of things you need to be aware of.

The first sentence, "I saw a car which was white," or "I saw a car that was white."

For an identifying clause, you can use "Which" or "That," okay?

Both are okay.

However, if you are adding a non-identifying clause where you are giving extra information

that is not necessary after a comma, you must use "Which."

So for example, "She went into the apartment," this is the sentence, "I want to give more

information about the apartment.

She went into the apartment, which had blue walls," okay?

So if you are using a non-identifying clause, you must use "Which" when you are giving more

information about a thing, okay?

I know this is a lot of information, so please check out www.engvid.com and do the quiz under

this video.

Good luck, guys, and take care.