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Escaped Relatives

Who steals my purse steals trash

Unfortunately, not all relative clauses stay neatly lodged in the postmodifying slot after the noun they modify. Sometimes they escape to the end of the sentence, where they may even follow some noun they obviously don't modify. This allows one to avoid excessively long subject noun phrases with too much stuff between the simple subject (head noun) and the verb with which it is supposed to agree.

Heavy Subjects. In theory, an English noun phrase could be infinitely long, with postmodifiers tacked on to each other in an endless chain, like one of those fractions whose decimal points stretch out into infinity--the technical term here is recursive. We can take a childish pleasure in such sentences:

(1) This is the cat that ate the rat that ate the ...
In sentence (1), the chain of restrictive relative clauses is set at the end of the sentence. When they come earlier in the sentence, however, they are a good deal less lovable. Because English has denuded itself of most inflections, our ability to understand English sentences depends a good deal on word order. Excessively long noun phrases, especially those which are or include clauses, can interfere with our ability to do so. They are particularly noxious in the subject position, since they contain verbs which we might mistake for the main verbs, and even more so when combined with smaller predicates:
(2) The handyman who cleans our gutters out every fall is here.

Extraposed Relative Clauses. In such sentences, a big fat subject sits atop a poor little predicate, squashing the life out of it. English allows us to extrapose the relative clauses which create the problem, moving them to a new position at the end of the main clause, where they may or may not sound better:

(3) The handyman is here who cleans our gutters out every fall.
(4) An idea occurs to me which with God's blessing may put us right.
(5) Now some players are available which play both CDs and MP3 formats.

Extraposition of relative clauses out of subject noun phrases is the most common form. Extraposition from elsewhere in a clause is acceptable but often at least as awkward as leaving an over-sized relative clause where it is. As sentence (6) shows, relative clauses can even be extraposed out of oversized indirect objects of sentences with ditransitive verbs like give, though sentence (7) seems a preferable solution in this case and others involving over-sized indirect objects:

(7) The city gave a big tax break to the company which promised to build a manufacturing plant here.
(6) The city gave the company a big tax which promised to build a manufacturing plant here a big tax break.
The verb in sentence (8) is a complex transitive verb, taking both a direct object and an object complement. Extraposition out of an over-sized direct object, as in sentence (9), makes the object complement (happy less of an after-thought but may not make the sentence more readable. Another stylistic option is such cases is to invert the normal order of the direct object, as in sentence (10):
(8) She will surely make the man who marries her happy.
(9) She will surely make the man happy who marries her.
(10) She will surely make happy the man who marries her.

In speech we sometimes tack on extraposed relative clauses as a sort of afterthought. In writing, they sound formal at best and just plain awkward at worst. Use them only when they are obviously clearer than the more usual sentence order.

Sentential Relative Clauses. Extraposed relative clauses can sometimes be confused with another kind of relative clause which occurs at the end of sentences and has no nearby noun phrase antecedent, the sentential relative clause. These relatives modify the entire preceding clause, not just some noun phrase in it. They serve the function of the disjuncts (or sentence adverbials) we discussed under "Adverbials," commenting on the preceding statement, rather than being part of it. While most kinds of sentence adverbials come at the beginning of a sentence, these sentential relative clauses come after the clause to which they refer. They are usually punctuated with a comma or dash in front of them. Because clauses aren't living creatures, these relatives are headed by which rather than who. The usual form is the simple which, as in (11) below. It can also be used in various combination forms as in (12) or even (13):

(12) The lark is on the wing, which is normal for larks.
(13) He may yet be elected president, in which case I am moving to Canada.
(14) They lost badly, which result pleased me no end.

Exercise 1: Recognizing Sentential Relatives

Say whether the following unpunctuated sentences have sentential relative clauses:
2.01 Harriet said I was the best kisser ever which I of course believed.
2.02 It was probably the best kiss which she had that week.
2.03 Even so Harriet was the first which is why I remember her so vividly.
2.04 I have no idea which girl I kissed next.
2.05 A merciful memory has blotted out a great many memories which would embarrass me.
2.06 I believe in fact that a bad memory is a great asset.
2.07 Cornerbacks cannot dwell on plays which found them out of position.
2.08 They need to stay immersed in the present which requires their complete attention.
2.09 Dwelling on past mistakes would only weaken morale and attention which would lead to more errors.
2.10 There will be time enough to review them on film next week which will be tough enough on the ego.
2.11 No good could come of recalling my love-life post-Harriet which was not that lively anyway.
2.12 I cannot even remember the first time I got to "first base" the definition of which seems to have changed radically since my youth in any case.
2.13 It wasn't with Harriet I know for at heart she was as naive as I was which was quite a bit.

Nominal Relative Clauses. In the exercise above, the relative clauses at the end of sentences are all either postmodifying relative clauses (adjectivals modifying a noun) or sentential relatives (adverbials commenting on the preceding clause). To make life just a bit harder, relative clauses can also serve nominal functions in a sentence, with the important exception of those headed by the relative pronoun that. Verbs like know and wonder regularly take such nominal relatives as their direct objects:

(13) I know who my friends are.
(14) I wonder which excuse he will give this time.

Nominal relatives (also known as free relatives) can also occur as subjects of sentences. In such cases, it is not hard to distinguish them from other uses of relative clauses, but they can be mistaken for questions, since the WH-pronouns used in relative clauses can serve as interrogative pronouns as well. Relative pronouns like whoever and whichever may be somewhat clearer in some such cases.

(15) Who steals my purse steals trash.
(16) Which team will win is hard to say.
(17) Whoever steals my purse steals trash.
(18) Whichever team will win is fine by me.

Exercise 3: Nominal Relatives

Do the following sentences have nominal (free) relatives. If so, what function are they serving?
3.01 Who would have thought it?
3.02 She had dumped a man who was clearly too good for her.
3.03 I wondered who was taking my place.
3.04 Which was to blame was not the question.
3.05 Who was dumping who was what concerned me most.
3.06 Who did she think she was.
3.07 People want to know which one dumped the other.
3.08 Who gets dumped is trash.
3.09 Which of my friends already knew seemed pretty important.
3.10 Whoever gets their story in first has a great advantage.

A Nominal Relative Tree. We'll draw the PS for a nominal relative like sentence (3) in pretty much the same way as for a post-modifying relative, except that the CP of which it is a part is now the whole of the subject NP rather than a complement within it:

Just for the Record--Extraposed Nominal Relatives. Nominal relatives can also be extraposed. We'll discuss how this is done a bit later.

How Much of This Will be on the Test?
This completes our discussion of relative clauses. You should be able to identify any relative clauses in a sentence and say whether they are restrictive relative clauses in a normal postmodifying position, non-restrictive relative clauses in a normal postmodifying position, extraposed relative clauses, sentential relative clauses, or nominal relative clauses (free relatives) serving as a subject or direct object. Any other terms used here can be looked up in the Glossary.