186 Chapter 11 Relative clauses[7] a. a key [which he says shefoundJ
ii a. some boys [who he says saw her]b. a key [(that) he says she fo und_]
b. some boys [(that) he says _ saw her]In [i] R is object offo und, and the fo und clause is a content clause functioning as
complement of says: "He says she found R". We understand that he says she
found some key, and that's the key the whole NP refers to.
In [ii] R is subject of the embedded saw clause: "He says R saw her". Note that the
that is omissible in [iib]: this differs from [6i] above in that the R element is sub
ject not of the relative clause itself but of the content clause embedded within it.The relative phrase
We turn now to a more complex kind of relative construction found only in the wh
type. It is illustrated in [S]:
[8] i She hasn't been able to contact [the people whose house she 's renting].
ii Th is is [the article from which they were fJuoting).
iii He set us [a problem the answer to which can be fo und in the textbook].The doubly underlined expressions here contain not just the relative pronouns
whose and which, but other material as well. We need therefore to distinguish
between two concepts:
the relative phrase - the constituent occupying initial position in the clause;
the relativised element - the element that is anaphorically related to the head
noun, the element we have been representing as R.In earlier examples such as some friends [who saw her], the relative phrase consists
solely of the relativised element (i.e. who), but in [S] this is not so: the relative
phrase is the one marked by double underlining, while the relativised element is just
whose or which. It is just the latter, not the whole relative phrase, that is anaphori
cally related to the head noun.
In [i], for example, it is just whose, not whose house, that has people as its
antecedent. We can represent the clause as "she's renting R's house", with R
anaphorically related to people. We understand that she's renting some people's
house and she hasn't been able to contact these people.
Similarly, in [ii-iii] the head nouns article and problem are antecedent just for
the pronoun which. We have, for [ii], "they were quoting from R" - i.e. they were
quoting from some article and this is it. And, for [iii], "the answer to R can
be found in the textbook" - i.e. the answer to some problem can be found in the
textbook and he set us this problem.For [Sii-iii], but not for [Si], there are other versions in which less material is
fronted, so that the relative phrase is a smaller constituent:
[9] i * She hasn't been able to contact [the people whose she 's renting house].
ii This is [the article which they were fJuoting from].
iii He set us [a problem to which the answer can be fo und in the textbook].