In Unit Four, students looked at Defining and Non-defining Relative Clauses; however, students also need to be aware of how relative clauses are sometimes used in formal English, in either writing or formal speech. Read the following sentences and consider their structure:
- He had many ideas, none of which were very practical.
- The car has sensors with which it can anticipate a collision before it happens.
- The company held a brief meeting, the purpose of which was to announce the new head of marketing.
While most relative clauses begin with a relative pronoun, the formal structure is different. These clauses begin with a quantity expression, preposition or noun. The relative pronoun (which, whom, or whose) is now part of a phrase and, therefore, not the subject of the relative clause. These relative clauses should come immediately after the noun they are modifying.
Quantity Expressions
A quantity phrase with which or
| both some many none neither three most |
of | which whom |
- He had many ideas, none of which were very practical.
- In her morning class, there are 16 students, five of whom speak Russian fluently.
- The Skytrain station was crowded with people, most of whom had been waiting a long time and were beginning to lose patience
.
Prepositional Phrases
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