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I am researching the use of relative pronouns and most websites, including the British Council, list only:

who, whom, which, that, and whose

What about here?

That's the house where I grew up.

January is when we go on vacation.

That broken window is why you are grounded.

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SurvMach
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  • Because where, when, and why have very limited use as relative pronouns. They are most common in headless relative clauses (or disjunctive embedded question complement clauses, depending), like the last two examples you give, which are pseudo-cleft constructions derived from We go on vacation in January and You are grounded because of the broken window in order to emphasize the last NPs, not to identify them the way an a restrictive relative clause does. It's not unusual for oblique wh-words to have limited usage; how may not be used as a relative pronoun at all. – John Lawler Nov 05 '13 at 19:23
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    By the way, the proper way to "research relative pronouns" is not to search websites or the British Council or other Authorities, but rather to assemble a corpus of English sentences and see how the relative pronouns are used or not used in them. – John Lawler Nov 05 '13 at 19:26
  • @John Lawler Thanks John. What changes here "January is the month when we go on vacation." and here? "The broken window is the incident why you are grounded." – SurvMach Nov 05 '13 at 19:30
  • When can only be used to start a relative clause modifying a time word, and where a place word; why can be used only if reason is the antecedent. That's why these pronouns are used so comparatively often to mark headless clauses; there are so few antecedents they can have that they can be safely implied and therefore not expressed. – John Lawler Nov 05 '13 at 19:39
  • And I find *The broken window is the incident why you are grounded ungrammatical; reason is the only NP that would work for me. Zero is also acceptable instead of an NP antecedent, of course. – John Lawler Nov 05 '13 at 19:48
  • @John Lawler Kudos. I though reason and tried to avoid the collocation. Got two for one there... – SurvMach Nov 05 '13 at 20:00

2 Answers2

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Notice how what is also missing from that list.

What she said is true = that which she said is true.

They apparently only include relative pronouns that usually refer to an explicit antecedent, as opposed to those that usually include their antecedents, as do what (always) and where (usually). It is just a matter of definition. In your examples, those words clearly function as relative pronouns.

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  • Would you give me an example with two clauses? – SurvMach Nov 05 '13 at 19:37
  • What is excluded from relative clause service, but still exists as a headless relative/embedded question marker. As does how -- This is how you do it. In addition, clauses that would be headed by where, when, and how (if relative pronouns were allowed in the construction) also occur in relative infinitives: the place (where) to do it, the time (when) to do it, the way (*how) to do it. – John Lawler Nov 05 '13 at 19:45
  • @JohnLawler: In German, they generally use the relative pronoun wo "where" to refer to an antecedent that is a time, like am Tage wo..., whereas Dutch prefers dat. – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Nov 05 '13 at 20:14
  • @SurvMach: An example of what, exactly? – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Nov 05 '13 at 20:15
  • @Cerberus Never mind. I misread your comment – SurvMach Nov 05 '13 at 21:12
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In comments, John Lawler wrote:

Because where, when, and why have very limited use as relative pronouns. They are most common in headless relative clauses (or disjunctive embedded question complement clauses, depending), like the last two examples you give, which are pseudo-cleft constructions derived from We go on vacation in January and You are grounded because of the broken window in order to emphasize the last NPs, not to identify them the way an a restrictive relative clause does. It's not unusual for oblique wh-words to have limited usage; how may not be used as a relative pronoun at all.

By the way, the proper way to "research relative pronouns" is not to search websites or the British Council or other Authorities, but rather to assemble a corpus of English sentences and see how the relative pronouns are used or not used in them.

When can only be used to start a relative clause modifying a time word, and where a place word; why can be used only if reason is the antecedent. That's why these pronouns are used so comparatively often to mark headless clauses; there are so few antecedents they can have that they can be safely implied and therefore not expressed.

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