Editing Relative clause (section)

====German====
[[File:Intonation of German restrictive relative clauses.jpg|thumb|350px|right|[[Intonation (linguistics)|Intonation]] of [[German language|German]] [[#Restrictive and non-restrictive|restrictive relative clauses]]]]Aside from their highly inflected forms, [[German language|German]] relative pronouns are less complicated than English. There are two varieties. The more common one is based on the definite article ''der'', ''die'', ''das'', but with distinctive forms in the genitive (''dessen'', ''deren'') and in the dative plural (''denen''). Historically this is related to English ''that''. The second, which is more literary and used for emphasis, is the relative use of ''welcher'', ''welche'', ''welches'', comparable with English ''which''. As in most Germanic languages, including Old English, both of these varieties inflect according to gender, case and number. They take their gender and number from the noun which they modify, but the case from their function in their own clause.

:''Das Haus, in dem ich wohne, ist sehr alt.''
::The house in which I live is very old.

The relative pronoun ''dem'' is neuter singular to agree with ''Haus'', but dative because it follows a preposition in its own clause. On the same basis, it would be possible to substitute the pronoun ''welchem''.

However, German uses the uninflecting ''was'' ('what') as a relative pronoun when the antecedent is ''alles'', ''etwas'' or ''nichts'' ('everything', 'something', 'nothing').

:''Alles, was Jack macht, gelingt ihm.''
::Everything that Jack does is a success.

In German, all relative clauses are marked with commas.

Alternatively, particularly in formal registers, participles (both active and passive) can be used to embed relative clauses in adjectival phrases:

:''Die von ihm in jenem Stil gemalten Bilder sind sehr begehrt''
::The pictures he painted in that style are highly sought after
:''Die Regierung möchte diese im letzten Jahr eher langsam wachsende Industrie weiter fördern''
::The government would like to further promote this industry, which has grown rather slowly over the last year.

Unlike English, which only permits relatively small participle phrases in adjectival positions (typically just the participle and adverbs), and disallows the use of direct objects for active participles, German sentences of this sort can embed clauses of arbitrary complexity.