You’re most welcome, Ivan! It will indeed take some doing to read and internalize all those Forum postings on relative clauses that I listed, so take your time.
Meanwhile, let’s examine this very interesting grammar question of yours: “Are there relative clauses with antecedents referring to time, place, and manner?” You were specifically wondering if the clauses introduced by the words “where,” “when,” and “why” in the following sentences can be considered as relative clauses:
1. “Can you show me the place
where Jane lives?”
2. “I’ll never forget the evening
when Jane came to my house.”
3. “That’s the reason
why Jane came here.”
My offhand answer is a categorical no. In English, clauses with antecedents referring to time, place, and manner are by convention not classified as relative clauses for a very good reason; only clauses introduced by the relative pronouns “who,” “which,” “that,” “whom,” “whoever,” “whomever,” “whatever,” or “whichever” are considered as relative clauses. On the other hand, clauses introduced by the function words “where,” “when,” or “why” are considered simply as subordinate clauses; these three function words are not considered as relative pronouns but simply as plain subordinating conjunctions, or subordinators for short.
The next question that obviously will come to mind is this: Precisely what is it that makes the function words “when,” “where,” and “why” not relative pronouns but just plain subordinators?
To clearly appreciate the difference, let’s start with the concept and structure of what’s known in English as a
complex sentence. By definition, a complex sentence is one that has an independent clause and at least one dependent clause; an independent clause, as we know, makes a complete thought and can stand alone as a sentence, but a dependent clause—even if it does have a subject and a verb like the independent clause—doesn’t make a complete thought and can’t stand alone as a sentence. The functional link between the independent clause and the dependent clause is a
subordinating conjunction.
(For a detailed discussion of the various conjunctions and the kinds of sentences in English, check out
“Lesson #6 - The Six Basic Logical Relationships in Language” in the Forum.)
Let’s now take a look at this example of a complex sentence using a typical subordinating conjunction: “The students stopped playing
because they were already tired.” Here, the independent clause is “the students stopped playing” and the dependent clause is “because they were already tired.” The function word “because” permanently marks the clause “because they were already tired” as a dependent clause
because it disables that clause from making a complete thought. Function words that do this are known as subordinating conjunctions or subordinators, and to this class of conjunctions belong the function words “when,” “where,” and “why” along with the following most common subordinators for time, place, and causation:
Time subordinators: “when,” “before,” “after,” “during,” “until,” “as long as,” “whenever”
Place subordinators: “where,” “wherever”
Causation subordinators: “why,” “because,” “since,” “as,” “so that”
(As you’ll find out in your readings, there are many, many more of these subordinators in English and it would unduly delay this discussion if I were to list them here.)
Let’s take a look next at two examples of a complex sentence using a relative pronoun:
“We solved the problem
that has troubled us for many days now.”
“Police detained the official
whom the complainants accused of scandalously amassing illegal wealth.”
It should be immediately clear that the relative pronouns “that” and “whom” also link a dependent clause to an independent clause; as such, they are functionally also subordinating conjunctions or subordinators. In the first sentence above, in particular, “that” links the dependent clause “that has troubled us for many days now” to the independent clause “we solved the problem”; that dependent clause functions as an adjective modifying the direct object of the independent clause. In the second sentence, on the other hand, “whom” links the dependent clause “whom the complainants accused of scandalously amassing illegal wealth” to the independent clause “police detained the official”; in that dependent clause, the relative pronoun “whom” refers back to the direct object of the independent clause and makes it both the subject and receiver of the action in the dependent clause.
When we closely examine the two complex sentences above, however, we will notice that the function words “that” and “who” are doing something more than just link the dependent clause to the independent clause: they are also acting either as the subject or object of the verb in the relative clause. This is a special extra function that’s not performed by the subordinating conjunctions; indeed, unlike the true relative pronouns “that” and “who” (and “which” as well), all that’s done by “where,” “when,” and “why” (and by all the rest of the ordinary subordinating conjunctions) is to establish the logical linkage between the independent clause and the dependent clause—nothing more.
This, then, is precisely why the dependent clauses introduced by the words “where,” “when,” and “why” in the following sentences that you presented can’t be considered as relative clauses:
1. “Can you show me the place
where Jane lives?”
2. “I’ll never forget the evening
when Jane came to my house.”
3. “That’s the reason
why Jane came here.”
In Sentence 1 above, the subject of the dependent clause is “Jane”; the subordinator “where” doesn’t serve as the subject of the dependent clause but only functionally links it to the independent clause to establish the sense of the complex sentence. The same analysis holds for Sentences 2 and 3, where “Jane” is likewise the subject of their respective dependent clauses, not the subordinators “when” and “why.” In short, none of the dependent clauses of the three complex sentences you presented has the special added attributes of relative clauses.
Based on the above analysis, we can now safely make the generalization that clauses introduced by the function words “where,” “when,” and “why” are not relative clauses at all but simply ordinary subordinate clauses. Indeed, only clauses introduced by the relative pronouns “who,” “which,” “that,” “whom,” “whoever,” “whomever,” “whatever,” or “whichever” can qualify as
true relative clauses.
This has been a rather long analysis, but I hope it has adequately answered your particularly tough and complex question about what makes relative clauses distinct from the usual run of subordinate clauses.
