We use relative clauses to give additional information about something without

starting another sentence. By combining sentences with a relative clause, your text
becomes more fluent and you can avoid repeating certain words.

How to Form Relative Clauses Level 2

Imagine, a girl is talking to Tom. You want to know who she is and ask a friend
whether he knows her. You could say:

A girl is talking to Tom. Do you know the girl?

That sounds rather complicated, doesn't it? It would be easier with a relative
clause: you put both pieces of information into one sentence. Start with the most
important thing you want to know who the girl is.

Do you know the girl

As your friend cannot know which girl you are talking about, you need to put in the
additional information the girl is talking to Tom. Use the girl only in the first
part of the sentence, in the second part replace it with the relative pronoun (for
people, use the relative pronoun who). So the final sentence is:

Do you know the girl who is talking to Tom?

The relative pronouns:
The relative pronouns are:

Subject

Object

Possessive

who

whom, who

whose

which which whose

that

that

We use who and whom for people, and which for things.
We use that for people or things.

We use relative pronouns to introduce relative clauses, which tell us more about
people and things.

2. Relative clauses to postmodify a noun

We use relative clauses to postmodify a noun - to make clear which person or thing
we are talking about. In these clauses we can have the relative pronoun who,
which, whose or that

as subject (see Clauses Sentences and Phrases)

Isnt that the woman who lives across the road from you?
The police said the accident that happened last night was unavoidable
The newspaper reported that the tiger which killed its keeper has been put down.

WARNING:
The relative pronoun is the subject of the clause.
We do not repeat the subject:

*The woman who [she] lives across the road

*The tiger which [it] killed its keeper

as object of a clause (see Clauses, Sentences and Phrases)

Have you seen those people who we met on holiday?
You shouldnt believe everything that you read in the newspaper.
The house that we rented in London was fully furnished.
The food was definitely the thing which I enjoyed most about our holiday.

- Sometimes we use whom instead of who when the relative pronoun is the object:

Have you seen those people whom we met on holiday?

- When the relative pronoun is object of its clause we sometimes leave it out:

Have you seen those people we met on holiday?

You shouldnt believe everything you read in the newspaper.
The house we rented in London was fully furnished.
The food was definitely the thing I enjoyed most about our holiday.

WARNING:
The relative pronoun is the object of the clause.
We do not repeat the object:

Have you seen those people who we met [them] on holiday?

The house that we rented [it] in London was fully furnished.

The food was definitely the thing I enjoyed [it] most about our holiday.

as object of a preposition. When the relative pronoun is the object of a preposition

we usually put the preposition after the verb.:
You were talking to a woman >>> Who was the woman who you were talking to?
My parents live in that house >>> Thats the house that my parents live in.
You were talking about a book. I havent read it. >>> I havent read the book which
you were talking about.

- When the relative pronoun is the object of a preposition we usually leave it out:

Who was the woman you were talking to?

Thats the house my parents live in.

- Sometimes we use whom instead of who:

Who was that woman whom you were talking about.

- When we use whom or which the preposition sometimes comes at the beginning
of the clause:

I havent read the book about which you were talking.

- We can use the possessive form, whose, in a relative clause:

I always forget that womans name >>> Thats the woman whose name I always
forget.
I met a man whose brother works in Moscow.

3. Times and places

We also use when with times and where with places to make it clear which time or
place we are talking about:

England won the world cup in 1996. It was the year when we got married.
I remember my twentieth birthday. It was the day when the tsunami happened.
Do you remember the place where we caught the train?
Stratford-upon-Avon is the town where Shakespeare was born.

... but we can leave out the word when:

England won the world cup in 1996. It was the year we got married.
I remember my twentieth birthday. It was the day the tsunami happened.