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Belly Posted 19 years ago
Grammar

Relative clause

If you write:

The thing which happens to you will happen to me

Can I rewrite like this: The thing happening to you will happen to me ?

And how about:

The thing which happened to you will happen to me

Can I write like the sentence in green above?
  

Top answer

Belly If you write: The thing which happens to you will happen to me This is a fairly improbable sentence. This means that the 'thing' happens to you regularly. I would also prefer 'that' instead of 'which'.

— Yankee

  • Belly If you write: The thing which happens to you will happen to me This is a fairly improbable sentence.
  • This means that the 'thing' happens to you regularly.
  • I would also prefer 'that' instead of 'which'.
  • Can I rewrite like this: The thing happening to you will happen to me ?
  • " And how about: The thing which happened to you will happen to me OK, but I would prefer 'that' instead of 'which'.
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6 Answers
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Belly
If you write:

The thing which happens to you will happen to me This is a fairly improbable sentence. This means that the 'thing' happens to you regularly. I would also prefer 'that' instead of 'which'.

Can I rewrite like this: The thing happening to you will happen to me ?
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Also, the thing which or the thing that can be written as what.

What happens to you will happen to me.
What is happening to you will happen to me.
What happened to you will happen to me.

CJ
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So, how about:

The man who works for this company is very rich.

Can I write:

The man working for this company is very rich

?

And if I have:

The man who worked for this company was very rich.

Can I write:

The man working for this company was very rich

?
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Yes. You can do all that. They are grammatically correct.

CJ
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The man working in this company is very rich.

= The man who is/was working in this company is very rich.

The man working in this company was very rich.

= The man who is/was working in this company was very rich.

Are these expansions correct?
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It seems to me that the tense in the relative construction would naturally take its tense from the tense of the main clause, so the expansions are:

The man who is working in this company is very rich.
The man who was working in this company was very rich.

CJ
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