Relative clauses

Question

Central Park, which has some good jogging trails, is beautiful and green.

Central Park, where you can jog around the trails, is beautiful and green.

Where and which both introduce the relative clause. Where and which both refer back to the subject of the sentence "Central Park". In English grammar, "which" is a relative pronoun and "where" is not. I've sometimes seen "where" called a pro-adverb. Why is this, when they both perform an almost identical function?

Cool Breeze · Accepted Answer

Anyone can use any grammatical terms to refer to grammatical phenomena. Some terms are almost universally accepted, some are used by a handful of people only. Actually, discrepancies are not at all uncommon. For instance, he is usually called the subject in the following sentence.

He was seen at the station.

Yet in actual fact he is the object of seeing. He did not perform the seeing at all. He is simply called the subject because in an affirmative clause the subject normally precedes the main verb and in addition to that, was is the correct conjugated form of to be after he. In many other languages, Finnish for example, the object form of he (in English: him) is required in a sentence like the one above.

In other words, terminology and actual usage don't always go hand in hand.

By the way, Central Park is the subject of the main clause only (Central Park is beautiful and green.) The subordinate relative clause has a subject of its own: which (or: you).

Cheers
CB

Anonymous · Answer

>Some terms are almost universally accepted, some are used by a handful of people only

Bump. Thanks for the answer, but it didn't really answer my question.

The question is why is it universally accepted that "which" is a relative pronoun in the above sentence, but "where "isn't? On what criteria. I ask because they seem to fulfill the same function.

CalifJim · Answer

why is it universally accepted that "which" is a relative pronoun in the above sentence, but "where "isn't? On what criteria.

which replaces a noun. where does not.
That is, which can be used as a subject or object within its clause; where can be used only as an adverb of place within its clause.

CJ

Cool Breeze · Answer

I intended to give you an answer, but I suppose I put it in too vague terms. CalifJim has already given you a very good answer, and I could agree with him, but I'll give you another one.

There are no universally accepted criteria for grammatical terms and classification. The field is a free-for-all. All can have their own criteria. With regard to your sentence: I have seen grammar books in which where is called a relative pronoun in similar sentences. It's up to the person. He can use any term he wants to describe the relations of linguistic components in a sentence. If he does not like the word sentence, he can discard it and employ his own word. There is no law that forbids the use of any grammatical term, and believe me, there is no agreement either.

If a person's only experience of grammar is what he was taught in high school, he may well live his whole life under the illusion that grammar is an exact science like mathematics and everybody agrees on everything. That is not true. Many grammarians want to view language through their own glasses and use their own terms to describe it. It may make them feel important, perhaps even superior to other grammarians. They think they have a 'better' term for something, and use the term.

Perhaps one of the best-known unconventional grammarians is Noam Chomsky. If you are interested in his transformational grammar, you will find plenty of information about it on the net.

Cheers
CB

Relative clauses

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