In this short video we'l be discussing restrictive vs non-restrictive relative
clauses.
When we discuss restrictive and non restrictive relative clauses, were not
discussing new types of relative clauses, but were discussing the different
meanings in relative clauses. Knowing the difference between these two,
restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses will help you to understand when
to include commas and when to exclude commas in your sentence with a
relative clause.
So, let's take a look at restrictive relative clauses first. So, restrictive
relative clauses provide information in the relative clause
that's needed to identify which specific noun you're describing.
We can use the relative pronouns 'who' 'which' 'whom' 'that' and 'whose' so we can use
all of them, and for restrictive relative clauses we do not use commas.
So, let's take a look at several examples we have the sentences "There are 100
students in the classroom."
"The student who is majoring in psychology is from Saudi Arabia."
We could also use 'that' in this relative clause. Of course, this relative clause is
describing this subject "the student", but notice we do not use commas around this
relative clause, and the reason why is that we need this information
"who is majoring in psychology" to determine which student we're talking
about.
So, in other words, if we take out this relative clause,
the sentence is not going to make sense. So, we imagine there are 100 students in
a classroom, and we're talking about one particular student. If we say
the student is from
Saudi Arabia will have no idea who we're talking about in a class of a hundred
students, but if we add this restrictive relative clause "who is majoring in
psychology",
we can pick out the one student, the one that's majoring in psychology, and this
student is the student from Saudi Arabia.
So, we need this information to pick out which students we're talking about.
Here's another example "The student whom you mentioned yesterday is an excellent
artist."
We could also say "The student that you mentioned yesterday is an excellent
artist."
So again, we need this relative clause to identify which student we are talking
about. If we take out the relative clause we end up with the sentence "The student
is an excellent artist."
We have no idea which student is being talked about.
So, we need this information to determine which specific student we're talking
about. Another example, "The student whose art you enjoy is transferring to the
Art Center College of Design."
So again, we can use the relative pronoun 'whose' "whose art you enjoy" is the
relative clause that specifies which student we're talking about. If we take
out this relative clause, we're left with the sentence "The student is transferring
to the Art Center College of Design." The grammar is correct, but now we don't know
which student were talking about.
So, we need this adjective (relative) clause and the information in this adjective (relative) clause to
identify which student.
The other type of relative clause we're talking about is the
non-restrictive relative clause, and non-restrictive relative clauses provide
information in the relative clause
that's just extra information. It's not needed to identify the noun you're
describing, and with the non-restrictive relative clauses, we can use the relative
pronouns 'who' 'which' 'whom' and 'whose' If you notice in this list,
we don't have 'that', and we can use 'that' in a non-restrictive relative clause.
Also, we use commas to separate non-restrictive relative clauses from
the rest of the sentence.
So, let's look at a couple of examples. We have the first sentence,
"Santa Monica College, which is a community college in Southern California,
attracts many international students."
So, notice that we have this relative clause "which is a community college in
Southern California"
It's describing Santa Monica College, but we have commas around this
adjective clause, and again the reason why we have commas around this adjective
clause is that we don't really need this information in the relative clause. We
can very easily take out this information, and we're left with the
sentence
"Santa Monica College attracts many international students"
We don't need this information to identify which Santa Monica College.
There's only one Santa Monica College, so it's extra information.
Let's take a look at the next one.
"Harvard College, which is located on the east coast of the United States, is often
ranked as the number one university in the world."
We have a relative clause "which is located on the east coast of the United
States", and this is a non-restrictive relative clause.
We have commas around it, and again this is because we can take out the relative
clause,
and we have a sentence that still makes sense.
We get "Harvard College is often ranked as the number one university in the
world."
We don't need this extra information to identify which Harvard College
there's only one Harvard College in the world. And, here's one last example. "Barack
Obama whom you met yesterday is the President of the United States."
So again, we have a object relative Clause here but we put commas around it
because it's not really important information.
There's only one Barack Obama so the sentence would make perfect sense even
if it just said "Barack Obama is the President of the United States." The
information in the relative clause is not important.
And the last one,
"Oscar Peterson, whose music i love, passed away in 2007."
So, we have a possessive relative clause "whose music I love".
It's set off by commas because it's non-restrictive. We don't need the
information in this relative clause for the sentence to make sense.
We can very easily say "Oscar Peterson passed away in 2007."
There's only one Oscar Peterson that most people know is a famous musician, so
we don't need to have this extra information,
"whose music i love".