Crossing Cultures Noun Phrases Containing Relative Clauses

A relative clause gives extra information about nouns - how exactly does it do this? Unlike an adjective, which in English comes before the noun, relative clauses always follow the noun that they are defining or describing. In the following examples, the whole relative clause is in bold:

• I enjoyed the tour of the city that we went to last night.
• The book which I'm reading has everything you need to know about China.
• The people who I will be staying with are all old friends of mine.
• He hadn't met the man who would teach him to speak Italian.

The first thing to notice from these examples is that the relative clause can come both at the end and in the middle of the sentence. When it is in the middle oit is modifying the subject and when it is at the end it is modifying the object (the subject and object are underlined). The second point of interest is that the type of word that introduces the relative caluse is a relative pronoun (who,that,which etc.)