Editing Relative clause (section)

====English====
{{main|English relative clauses}}
In English, a relative clause follows the noun it modifies. It is generally indicated by a relative pronoun at the start of the clause, although sometimes simply by word order. If the relative pronoun is the object of the verb in the relative clause, it comes at the beginning of the clause even though it would come at the end of an independent clause ("She is the woman ''whom'' I saw", not "She is the woman I saw ''whom''").

The choice of relative pronoun can be affected by whether the clause modifies a human or non-human noun, by whether the clause is restrictive or not,<ref>{{cite book |last=Kordić |first=Snježana |author-link=Snježana Kordić |editor1-last=Suprun |editor1-first=Adam E |url-status=live |editor2-last=Jachnow |editor2-first=Helmut |title=Slavjano-germanskie jazykovye paralleli/Slawisch-germanische Sprachparallelen |series=Sovmestnyj issledovatel'skij sbornik slavistov universitetov v Minske i Bochume |publisher=Belorusskij gosudarstvennyj universitet |page=165 |language=de |chapter=Pronomina im Antezedenten und Restriktivität/Nicht-Restriktivität von Relativsätzen im Kroatoserbischen und Deutschen |trans-chapter=Pronouns in antecedents and restrictive / non-restrictive relative clauses in Serbo-Croatian and German |chapter-url=http://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/426662.PRONOMINA_IM_ANTEZEDENT.PDF |location=Minsk |year=1996 |oclc=637166830 |ssrn=3434472 |id={{CROSBI|426662}} |archive-date=29 August 2012 |archive-url=https://www.webcitation.org/6AHPw0DET?url=http://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/426662.PRONOMINA_IM_ANTEZEDENT.PDF |access-date=14 July 2019}}</ref> and by the role (subject, direct object, or the like) of the relative pronoun in the relative clause.

*For a human antecedent, "who", "whom", or "that" is usually used ("She is the person ''who'' saw me", "He is the person ''whom'' I saw", "He is the person ''that'' I saw"). For a non-human antecedent, only "that" or "which" is used.
*For a non-human antecedent in a non-restrictive clause, only "which" is used ("The tree, ''which'' fell, is over there"); while either "which" or "that" may be used in a restrictive clause ("The tree ''which'' fell is over there", "The tree ''that'' fell is over there"){{mdash}}but some styles and prescriptive grammars require the use of "that" in the restrictive context.
*Of the relative pronoun pair "who" and "whom", the ''subjective'' case form ("who") is used if it is the subject of the relative clause ("She is the police officer who saw me"); and, in formal usage, the ''objective'' case form ("whom") if it is the object of the verb or preposition in the relative clause ("She is the police officer whom I saw", "She is the police officer whom I talked to", "She is the officer to whom I talked"); but in informal usage "whom" is often replaced by "who".

In English, as in some other languages (such as French; see below), [[restrictiveness|non-restrictive]] relative clauses are set off with commas, but restrictive ones are not:

*"I met a woman and a man yesterday. The woman, ''who had a thick French accent'', was very tall." (non-restrictive—does not narrow down who is being talked about)
*"I met two women yesterday, one with a thick French accent and one with a mild Italian one. The woman ''who had the thick French accent'' was very tall." (restrictive—adds information about who is being referred to)

The status of "that" as a relative pronoun is not universally agreed. Traditional grammars treat "that" as a relative pronoun, but not all contemporary grammars do: e.g. the [[Cambridge Grammar of the English Language]] (pp.&nbsp;1056–7) makes a case for treating "that" as a subordinator instead of a relative pronoun; and the [[British National Corpus]] treats "that" as a subordinating conjunction even when it introduces relative clauses. One motivation for the different treatment of "that" is that there are differences between "that" and "which" (e.g., one can say "in which" but not "in that", etc.).