by Alan Townend- Sentence Relative
Compare:
«He showed me a photo that upset me.»
«He tore up the photo, which upset me.» - Relative and infinitive
«He was unhappy unless he had someone with whom to argue.» - Whose can refer to people or things and can be the subject of a
clause, the object of a verb or the object of a preposition. - Instead of whose, of which can be used.
- What
Compare:
«I gave her the money that she needed.»
«I gave her what she wanted.»
Now read the story and see how many examples of the pronoun you
can find.
Relatives
I hope you know what I'm talking about. I could be talking about
«who», «which», «whose» and so on, or I could be talking about
aunts, uncles and cousins. That's the trouble with English. One word
can have two quite different meanings. Well, in this short piece I'm
going to talk about both — that is primarily aunts, uncles and so on
and with a bit of luck the other «relatives» should be there too.
Anyhow, there are those members of the family whom you regard as
part of the family and it never occurs to you that the chap whom you
call Dave is also someone to whom you could give the title «uncle».
You know him so well that it never occurs to you that he is in fact a
relative. Then there are those that you only see on special occasions,
which don't take place very often like weddings and funerals. In the
former you're usually enjoying yourself so much that you don't take
much notice of them and in the latter you hardly talk to anyone
because it's a time when you don't talk much to anyone and a place
where you don't normally go out of your way to be sociable.
Then there is that special category of relatives which you hardly ever
consider and whose names you only vaguely remember because they
did something terrible or left the country in a hurry or who have
funny ways which most of us can't accept.
I had one like that, an aunt whose name was Enid. In fact whenever
I hear the name spoken or read it in a book, I always conjure up in
my mind that aunt who must have been the strangest member that
my family has produced. As a child I had heard stories about her that
may or may not have been true. The best one I remember was when
she ended up in hospital with a broken leg. Apparently she was very
proud of her house, which she kept in an immaculate condition, and
in this particular incident that illustrates her eccentricity, she had
seen a mess on one of the rugs she kept in her sitting room. As she