Относительные местоимения: функции и особенности использования

Type of pronoun that marks a relative clause
A relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause. An example is the word which in the sentence "This is the house which Jack built." Here the relative pronoun which introduces the relative clause, which modifies the noun house. A relative pronoun plays the role of a noun phrase within that clause. For example, in the relative clause "which Jack built," "which" is a pronoun functioning as the object of the verb "built." In the English language, the following are the most common relative pronouns: which, who, whose, whom, whoever, whomever, and that, though some linguists analyze that in relative clauses as a conjunction / complementizer.

The element in the main clause that the relative pronoun in the relative clause stands for (house in the above example) is the antecedent of that pronoun. In most cases the antecedent is a nominal (noun or noun phrase), though the pronoun can also refer to a whole proposition, as in "The train was late, which annoyed me greatly", where the antecedent of the relative pronoun which is the clause "The train was late" (the thing that annoyed me was the fact of the train's being late). In a free relative clause, a relative pronoun has no antecedent: the relative clause itself plays the role of the co referring element in the main clause. For example, in "I like what you did", what is a relative pronoun, but without an antecedent. The clause what you did itself plays the role of a nominal (the object of like) in the main clause. A relative pronoun used this way is sometimes called a fused relative pronoun, since the antecedent appears fused into the pronoun (what in this example can be regarded as a fusion of that which).

Only about 7% of the languages around the world have relative pronouns. For example, Mandarin Chinese does not have relative pronouns at all and forms relative clauses (or their equivalents) by different methods. Even within languages that have relative pronouns, not all relative clauses contain relative pronouns. For example, in the English sentence "The man you saw yesterday was my uncle", the relative clause you saw yesterday contains no relative pronoun. It can be said to have a gap, or zero, in the position of the object of the verb saw.