Grammar Terms: Modal Verbs and Clauses

A relative pronoun is a little word that starts a relative clause. A relative clause is a part of a sentence that tells you more about a noun, and it cannot stand alone as its own sentence.

The most common relative pronouns are who, whom, whose, that, and which.

Look at this sentence: The girl who won the race is my friend. The words who won the race are the relative clause. They tell you more about the noun girl. The word who is the relative pronoun, and it points back to girl. The noun it points back to is called the antecedent.

Here is another one: I lost the book that you lent me. The relative clause is that you lent me, and the relative pronoun is that. It points back to book.

Use who and whom for people. Use which for things. Use that for people or things. Use whose to show that something belongs to someone, like this: the boy whose dog ran away.

When you read a sentence, try to find the relative pronoun first. Then the words that come after it are usually the relative clause.

Sometimes a writer wants to squeeze an extra bit of information into a sentence. This extra detail is called a parenthesis. It is interesting, but the sentence would still make sense without it.

You can mark a parenthesis in three ways: with commas, with brackets, or with dashes.

Commas are the quietest choice. The extra detail slips in gently: My brother, who is ten, loves football.

Brackets (also called parentheses) make the detail feel like a whisper or an aside: My brother (he is ten) loves football.

Dashes make the detail stand out, like a little drumroll: My brother, well, actually with dashes it looks like this: My brother - the tall one - loves football. Dashes shout the extra detail a bit louder than commas do.

All three do the same job. They wrap around the parenthesis so the reader knows it is extra. The writer picks the one that matches the feeling they want. Quiet and smooth? Use commas. A quiet aside? Use brackets. Bold and attention grabbing? Use dashes.

Parentheses are the curved brackets that look like this: ( ). One of them on its own is called a parenthesis.

Writers use a pair of parentheses to tuck in extra information. This could be a little explanation, a fun fact, or a detail that is nice to know but not needed. The sentence must still be complete and correct if you cover up what is inside the brackets.

Try it: Our class hamster (his name is Biscuit) sleeps all day. Take away his name is Biscuit and you still have a proper sentence: Our class hamster sleeps all day. That is the test for a parenthesis.

You can also use brackets for things like dates or translations: William Shakespeare (1564 to 1616) wrote many famous plays.

Here is a tip. If the whole sentence is inside brackets, the full stop goes inside too. If the brackets sit inside a bigger sentence, the full stop goes outside, after the last bracket.

A clause is a group of words with a subject and a verb. Some clauses can stand alone as a sentence. Those are called independent clauses. Others cannot stand alone. Those are called dependent clauses, and they need to be joined to an independent clause to make a full sentence.

There are three handy types of dependent clause to know.

A noun clause does the job of a noun. It can be the thing a sentence is about: What you said made me happy. The words what you said act like one big noun.

A relative clause describes a noun, and it starts with a relative pronoun like who, that, or which: The cake that we baked was delicious. The words that we baked tell you more about the cake.

An adverbial clause tells you when, where, why, or how something happens: We cheered when the team scored. The words when the team scored tell you when we cheered.

Find the subject and verb first, then ask what job the clause is doing.

You already know that relative pronouns like who and which can start a relative clause. There are three more words that can do this job, and they are called relative adverbs. They are when, where, and why.

When tells you about time: I remember the day when we first met. The words when we first met are a relative clause telling you more about the day.

Where tells you about a place: This is the park where I learned to ride my bike. The clause where I learned to ride my bike tells you more about the park.

Why tells you about a reason: Tell me the reason why you are smiling. The clause why you are smiling tells you more about the reason.

Relative adverbs work just like relative pronouns. They join a describing clause onto a noun. The difference is that they answer the questions when, where, or why about that noun.