01/08/93	


                             CHAPTER 17

                       "The Relative Pronoun"

As has been the case in the last several chapters, this chapter
really doesn't confront the neophyte with a lot of new
grammatical concepts; it builds on knowledge already mastered.
Still it's going to take a little patience, but we'll go slowly.
Before we get to the relative pronoun per se, we're going to
clean up a syntactical point you've already been working with,
but may not have yet a firm conceptual understanding of.  Let's
look at what we mean by a "clause".

THE CLAUSE

You all remember the junior high school definition of a sentence:
it's a complete thought.  And by that we mean a thought which
includes a noun, either expressed or implied, and a verb, either
expressed or implied.  That is, a complete thought must involve
something which is doing something or which is being held up for
description: "The road is blocked"; "The tree fell down"; and so
on.

     Now, the human mind is a wonderful thing.  It reasons and
perceives dozens of different kinds relationships between events,
things, and ideas.  It arranges events and facts logically and
temporally, and in levels of priority.  That is to say, it takes
two or more things, things which are separate ideas, separate
visions, and weaves them together conceptually and linguistically
into what we "reasoning".  The way this reasoning is expressed in
language is called "syntax", which literally means "arranging
together"; putting together events and things and facts.  For
example, the two separate ideas or visions -- "the road is
blocked" and "the tree fell down" -- might have a causal
relationship, which the mind instantly recognizes and expresses
linguistically with an appropriate conjunction: "The road is
blocked because the tree fell down".  The conjunction "because"
in this example is spelling out the relationship the speaker
perceives between the two ideas.  It's arranging them into a
cause and effect relationship: that the tree fell down is a fact,
and because of that fact, the road is now blocked.

     Each thought, idea, or event, when it is expressed in
language, is a called a clause.  Hence the sentence "the road is
blocked because the tree fell" contains two "clauses": the fact
that the tree fell is expressed in one clause, and the fact that
the road is blocked forms another "clause".  It's possible for a
sentence to contain only one clause, as in "Roses are red".  It's
also possible for a sentence to contain an ungodly number of
clauses.  See whether you can spot all the clauses -- that is
separate thoughts -- in this sentence:

     "Since we are looking for the ideal orator, we must use
     our powers of oratory to portray a speaker free from
     all possible faults and endowed with every possible
     merit; for though it is undeniable that the large
     number of lawsuits, the great variety or public
     questions, the illiterate masses who make the audience
     of our public speakers, offer a field to ever the most
     defective orators, we will not for that reason despair
     of finding what we want" (Cicero, On the Orator, 26).

Let's back up and take a look at a string of unsubordinated
clauses. (The speaker's name is George.)

     "The dog is mean.  The dog lives next door.  One day
     the dog bit George.  George kicked the dog.  George's
     neighbor came out of the house.  George's neighbor owns
     the dog.  George's neighbor screamed at George.
     George's neighbor called the police.  The police came.
     The dog bit the police.  The police shot the dog.
     George is happy.  The dog is dead".

We don't talk like this because our language has developed a
whole system of conjunctions and pronouns which allows us (1) to
avoid all the unneeded repetition of nouns and (2) to make the
logical and temporal relationships between thoughts explicit.
There are a hundred ways to cast this string of events and facts
which make full use of range of linguistic apparatus English
makes available to us.  Here's only one:

     "The dog that lives next door is mean, and one day he
     bit me.  So I kicked him.  My neighbor, who owns the
     dog, came out of the house and screamed at me.  Then he
     called the police.  When they came, the dog bit them
     too, so they shot it.  I am happy the dog is dead".

You can see here all kinds of linkage between these thoughts, and
all kinds of different linguistic apparatus that makes it
possible.  The kind of linkage we're interested in now is the
"relative clause".  Let's look at how it's done.


ENGLISH RELATIVE CLAUSES

Here's a bare bones definition of a relative clause: "A relative
clause is a subordinate clause which acts like an adjective by
providing additional information about a noun in another clause".
Now here's an example showing the evolution of the relative
clause.

     CLAUSE 1:       "The five o'clock train is never on time".
     CLAUSE 2:       "Hundreds of people take the five o'clock
                     train".

The two clauses have something in common: the five o'clock train.
Two separate facts have been identified about this train: it's
never on time and hundreds of people take it.  A speaker may
arrange these two clauses however he wishes, subject only to the
idea he wished to convey to his listener.  If, for example, the
most important thing he wants his listener to know about the
train is that it is late all the time, clause 1 will have to be
logically and syntactically "superior" to the fact contained in
clause 2.  That is to say, the fact in clause 2 -- that hundreds
of people take the five o'clock train -- will be added simply as
additional information about the train.  In grammatical circles
we call the most important element in the sentence the "main" or
"ordinate" or "independent clause"; we call any other clause a
"subordinate" or "dependent clause", because it is, in a real
sense, a subordinate, a worker in the employment of the main
clause.

     So let's assume that the most important fact the speaker
wants to get across is contained in clause 1, and that clause 2
is going to be worked in only as subordinate material.  How is
this going to happen.

STEP 1:    Substitute "the five o'clock train" in clause 2 with
           the appropriate pronoun.  The pronoun will refer the
           listener to the noun stated in clause 1.

           CLAUSE 1:   "The five o'clock train is never on time".
           CLAUSE 2:   "Hundreds of people take it".

     Now hold on.  Why did we chose "it" as the appropriate
pronoun to reproduce "the five o'clock train" in clause 2?  Well,
the noun which the pronoun has to reproduce is singular in number
and inanimate, so "it" is the correct choice.  Next, what case is
"it" in?  Look, it's acting as the object of the verb "take" in
its clause, so "it" is in the objective (or accusative) case.
(This was just a review.  You already know that pronouns get
their number and gender from their antecedents, but get their
case from the way they're being used in their own clause.)

STEP 2:    Embed the subordinate clause into main clause.

           SENTENCE:   "The five o'clock train -- hundreds of
                       people take it -- is never on time".

We could almost stop here.  The two sentences have been merged
into one, and clause 2 has been subordinated to the idea in
clause 1.  That is to say, the structure of clause 1 forms the
main architecture of the new sentence.  But English developed a
further modification to work these two clauses into one sentence.
It replaces the pronoun of the subordinate clause with a pronoun
which indicates without a doubt that the clause coming up is
dependent, or subordinate to, the clause which has just been
interrupted.  We replace the pronoun with the relative pronoun
"who, which" in the proper case and move it to the beginning of
the clause.  Now the two clauses have been completely welded into
one sentence.

STEP 3:    Substitute and move the pronoun.

           SENTENCE:   "The five o'clock train, which hundreds of
                       people take, is never on time".

And there you have it.  Clause 2 has been fully incorporated into
the message of the first clause.  As soon as you read the
relative pronoun "which" in this sentence, your mind
automatically understands two things:

     (1)   the clause coming up is not as important as the clause
           you've just left and
     (2)   the clause coming up is going to give you more
           information about some thing in the main clause.

So this sentence is saying something like this: "the five o'clock
train -- which, by the by, hundreds of people take -- is never on
time".  And one last pesky question: what case is "which" in?
It's in the objective (or accusative) case because it is still
the object of the verb in the relative clause: "take".  Remember,
number and gender from the antecedent, but case from its clause.

Now let's go back to the two clauses when they were independent
thoughts.

     CLAUSE 1:    "The five o'clock train is never on time".
     CLAUSE 2:    "Hundreds of people take the five o'clock
     train".

It's also possible that main idea the speaker wishes to get
across is the fact contained in clause 2 and will have to
subordinate clause 1 into clause 2, in which case clause 2 will
provide the basic architecture for the new sentence.  Like this:
"Hundreds of people take the five o'clock train, which is never
on time".  Now what case is "which" in?  Look at the relative
clause.  If that doesn't help, look at the sentence from which
the relative clause evolved.  It came from clause 1, where "the
five o'clock train" was nominative.  The "which" is simply
standing in for it, so "which" must nominative.  And it is.


THE ENGLISH RELATIVE PRONOUN: CASE SYSTEM

We're going to look at several more examples of this in a second,
but for now I have a few more things to add about the English
relative pronoun.  Like the other pronouns in English, the
relative pronoun preserves three distinct case forms and even
distinguishes between animate and inanimate.  There is no
distinction between the numbers.

                  ANIMATE          INANIMATE

           Nom.    who              which
           Gen.    whose            whose
           Acc.    whom             which

Notes:

     (1)   Obviously, since English has lost its grammatical
           gender, the relative pronoun "who, whose, and whom" are
           only going to be used for living beings, usually only
           human beings, though sometimes for animals.
     (2)   A lot of people sniff at "whom" as archaic and elitist.
           That's possible, but I look at it this way: you should
           know how and when to use "whom" properly.  If you're in
           a situation where your audience will denounce your
           pretensions to aristocracy if you use "whom", then
           don't use it.  Don't go into a bar and say "Is this the
           same team whom the Packers beat last week?"  On the
           other hand, if your listener will dismiss you as a
           bumpkin and ignoramus if you say "These are the actors
           who I'd admire", then use "whom".  Knowing when to use
           "whom" correctly is like knowing the difference between
           a salad and oyster fork.  It's not knowledge that's
           useful every day of your life, but when you need it
           it's nice to have.  In any case, never use "whom" when
           you should use "who".  You'll outrage everyone.  If
           you're in doubt as to which to use, use "who".
     (3)   The nominative and accusative case of the relative
           pronoun "who, which" has been almost entirely replaced
           in colloquial English by "that":  "The boy that I
           saw.."., "The girl that plays basketball.."., The car
           that is in the garage..".
     (4)   English also has the option of omitting the relative
           pronoun altogether, and often it does: "The boy whom I
           saw is six feet tall" becomes "The boy I saw is six
           feet tall".  Latin doesn't have this option.  It must
           always use the relative pronoun.

DRILL

Combine these two English sentences into one.  Use the case
system of the relative pronoun, and indicate which number and
case the Latin equivalent would be in.

Examples:

A.   "George kicked the dog.  The dog lives next door".

     English:   "George kicked the dog that (which) lives next
                door".
     Latin:     nominative singular

B.   "The students don't like Latin.  The teachers gave the
     students a book".

     English:   "The girls, to whom the teacher gave a book, don't
                like Latin".
     Latin:     dative plural

1.   "They see the cars.  The cars belong to George".

     English:


     Latin:

2.   "George likes hard boiled eggs.  George's brother is in
     jail".

     English:


     Latin:

3.   "Many students are never prepared for class.  The professor
     is writing a very difficult final exam for the students".

     English:


     Latin:

4.   "The rocks fell off the cliff.  The rocks were very slick".

     English:


     Latin:

5.   "Betty avoids my brother.  My brother's hair is dyed
     pea-green".

     English:


     Latin:


THE LATIN RELATIVE PRONOUN

We've done all the difficult work.  You understand what a
relative clause is: (1) they are subordinate clauses; (2) they
are introduced by relative pronouns; (3) the relative pronoun
agrees in number and gender with its antecedent, but gets its
case from the way it's being used in its own clause; and (4) they
modify something in the main clause.  Now you have only to learn
the declensional system of the Latin relative pronoun and
practice with it.

     The Latin relative pronoun has a full declensional system.
That is to say, it has 30 separate forms: five cases in three
genders in both numbers.  The stem is "qu-" and it follows
basically the pattern set down by the pronouns "is, ea, id",
"ille, illa, illud", etc.  But there are some substantial
variations.  Here is the full pattern.  Look for regularities
first; then go back and collect the deviations.

                  MASCULINE   FEMININE   NEUTER

           Nom.      qui        quae      quod
           Gen.      cuius      cuius     cuius
           Dat.      cui        cui       cui
           Acc.      quem       quam      quod
           Abl.      quo        qua       quo

           Nom.      qui        quae      quae
           Gen.      quorum     quarum    quorum
           Dat.      quibus     quibus    quibus
           Acc.      quos       quas      quae
           Abl.      quibus     quibus    quibus

Let's start the close up examination by running down the
masculine forms first.

     (1)   The nominative case singular is a little unusual: qui,
           but most of the demonstratives and pronouns are odd in
           the nominative singular.
     (2)   The genitive and dative singulars (of the genders) use
           the predictable pronoun case endings "-ius" and "-i",
           but the stem has changed from "qu-" to "cu-".
     (3)   In the accusative singular you'd expect "quum" ("qu" +
           "um"); but no such luck: "quem" is the form.  The "-em"
           looks as if it's "borrowed" from the third declension,
           doesn't it.
     (4)   Things calm down for a while, but the dative and
           ablative plurals use the "-ibus" ending which they
           evidently import from the third declension.  Notice
           again that "quibus" is the form for all the genders in
           the dative and ablative plural.

Now let's have a look at the feminine.

     (1)   Nominative's odd: "quae" instead of "qua".  But so
           what?
     (2)   Genitive and dative singular: stem "cu-" + "-ius" and
           "-i".  Like the masculine.
     (3)   Finally, the dative and ablative plurals aren't "quis"
           but, like the masculine, "quibus".

And then the neuter.

     (1)   After having seen the masculine and feminine forms of
           the relative pronoun, the only truly unexpected quirk
           of the neuter is the nominative, hence also accusative,
           plural: you get "quae" instead of "qua".  Pay
           attention, now, the form "quae" can be any one of four
           possibilities: (a) feminine nominative singular; (b)
           feminine nominative plural; (c) neuter nominative
           plural; (d) neuter accusative plural.  Context will be
           your only guide.

Now try to write out the forms of the relative pronoun on your
own.

              MASCULINE          FEMININE              NEUTER

   Nom.    _______________    _______________      _______________

   Gen.    _______________    _______________      _______________

   Dat.    _______________    _______________      _______________

   Acc.    _______________    _______________      _______________

   Abl.    _______________    _______________      _______________


   Nom.    _______________    _______________      _______________

   Gen.    _______________    _______________      _______________

   Dat.    _______________    _______________      _______________

   Acc.    _______________    _______________      _______________

   Abl.    _______________    _______________      _______________


     Okay, now let's take apart a couple of Latin sentences with
relative clauses.  Translate these sentences, and tell me the
number gender and case of the relative pronouns.  Try following
these steps:

     (1)   Go slowly;
     (2)   First read the entire sentence and try to identify the
           main clause and the relative clause.  The relative
           clause will begin with the relative pronoun and
           probably end with a verb;
     (3)   After you've isolated the relative clause, forget it
           for a moment, and concentrate on translating the main
           clause -- the main clause is, after all, the most
           important thought in the sentence;
     (4)   Next, look at the relative pronoun and try to figure
           out it number and gender -- forget about the case for
           now.  You want to match up the relative pronoun with
           its antecedent, and the relative pronoun will agree
           with its antecedent in number and gender.
     (5)   After all that, then you're ready to translate the
           relative clause.  For that you'll need to know the case
           of the relative pronoun.  Look carefully, and use what
           you know about its gender and number to check off any
           multiple possibilities.
     (6)   The last step, then, after all the pieces of the
           sentence have been analyzed separately, is to put it
           all back together.
     (7)   Go slowly.

1.   "Vidi canem qui ex Asia venit". (canis, -is (m) "dog")

Translation:    __________________________________________________

Relative Pronoun:    __________

2.   "Vidi canes quos amas".


Translation:    __________________________________________________

Relative Pronoun:    __________

3.   "Puellae, quarum pater est parvus, sunt magnae".


Translation:    __________________________________________________

Relative Pronoun:    __________

4.   "Vidi pueros quibus libros dedistis".


Translation:    __________________________________________________

Relative Pronoun:    __________

5.   "Vidi pueros cum quibus venistis".


Translation:    __________________________________________________

Relative Pronoun:    __________

6.   "Civem quem miseratis laudaverunt".


Translation:    __________________________________________________

Relative Pronoun:    __________

Now let's do it the other way.

1.   "The tyrant destroyed the cities from which the citizens had
     fled".


     ____________________________________________________________

2.   "He came with the citizen to whom they had entrusted their
     lives".


     ____________________________________________________________

3.   "I saw the citizens with whom you had fled".


     ____________________________________________________________

4.   "They have the money with which the tyrant captured the
     city".


     ____________________________________________________________

5.   "The father whose sons were stupid came out of Asia".


     ____________________________________________________________


VOCABULARY PUZZLES

aut...aut                 It used like this: aut x aut y = either
                          x or y.

coepi, coepisse, coeptus  The first entry for this verb is the
                          perfect tense, first person singular.
                          The second is the perfect infinitive
                          (which you have seen yet), and the third
                          entry is the fourth principal part.  The
                          verb is listed this way because it has
                          no first principal part -- which mean
                          logically that "coepi" has no present
                          system tenses: no present, future, or
                          imperfect.  Another way to list this
                          verb would be: "----------, ----------,
                          coepi, coeptus".  Verbs which lack one
                          or more principal part are called
                          "defective verbs".  To say "I begin", "I
                          will begin", or "I was beginning", Latin
                          uses the first principal part of the
                          verb "incipio, -ere, -cepi, -ceptus.

