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From: stevemac@bud.indirect.com (Steve MacGregor)
Subject: Classification of Relative Pronouns
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Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 04:46:49 GMT
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According to Mark Barton <mbarton@icrr.u-tokyo.ac.jp>:

>As I understand things, a relative pronoun is a word such as "that",
"which", "who" etc, which forms the subject [or object] of a relative
clause, e.g.  "This is the car *that* I bought yesterday." The question
is, can these words also be classified as subordinating conjunctions?

  No, because they are not conjunctions.  In expressions such as the 
above, the relative pronoun is =part= of the subordinate clause.  Here, 
"that" is the object of the verb "bought" in the clause "that I bought 
yesterday", and refers to the word "car".  Note that you can omit the 
subordinate clause altogether and still have a sentence, because it 
behaves like an adjective modifying the antecedent:  "This is the car."
  The only subordinating conjunction I know of is "that".  For example, 
"I know *that* you bought a car yesterday."  It is placed before a 
clause, and then it and the clause as a unit can be used as an object 
(or occasionally the subject) in the main clause.

> If not, is there a convenient term which includes both, i.e. is there a
>term for the class of words which mark non-principal clauses? 

  Not that I know of.  There are too many ways to mark a non-principal 
clause.

                                --=<*>=--

  Want to have some fun?

  "I think that that that that man bought was overpriced."
             ^    ^    ^    ^
             |    |    |    |
             |    |    |     \__ demonstrative adjective
             |    |     \__ relative pronoun
             |     \__ demonstrative pronoun
              \__ subordinating conjunction

-- 
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