Microsoft Word Theoretical Course of English Grammar

Nino Kirvalidze
78
this type of relative clauses restricts the possible set of the class of things just to the subset that 
the speaker wants to talk about. For example: 
I met the students who had not read the book
(the head noun is in bold type, the relative clause is underlined). In this sentence the speaker 
implies that he didn’t just meet the students, he met a specific subset of students – only those 
ones who hadn’t read the book.
The descriptive relative clause exposes some characteristic of the antecedent as such. It
should be noted, that the antecedent in descriptive relative clauses is always preceded by the 
indefinite article 
a/an.
For instance, in the complex sentence - “At last we found a place 
where 
we could make a fire
.”- the relative clause is descriptive.
The continuative relative clause gives some additional information about the antecedent, 
thus developing the chain of situations denoted by the sentence as a whole. Since the antece-
dent in the continuative relative clause is usually represented by a proper name which refers to 
a concrete individual, it can be left out without destroying the meaning of the sentence. This 
can be tested easily if we replace relative subordinator by the coordinative conjunction 
and
+ 
personal pronoun. Cf.: “I phoned to Mr. Smith, who recognized me at once and invited me to 
his office.” 

“I phoned to Mr. Smith, and he recognized me at once and invited me to his 
office.”
The appositive relative clause refers to a substantive antecedent of abstract semantics, de-
fining or clarifying its concrete meaning in the context. Therefore, appositive clauses are nearer 
to restrictive clauses than the rest of relative clauses. According to the type of the antecedent 
(i.e. head noun), all the appositive clauses fall into three groups: 
a. appositive clauses which modify abstract nouns like 
fact, idea, question, suggestion, 
news, information
, etc. Cf.:
“The news 
that John had married Helen
made a stir among their friends.” 
“The fact that he has lost all his money is a great shock for him.” 
b. appositive clauses which modify abstract names of adverbial relations, such as 
time, 
moment, place, condition, purpose
, etc. which are usually preceded by the definite ar-
ticle 
the:
“We saw him at the moment 
(when)
he was opening the door
.”

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Theoretical Course of English Grammar 
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