restrictions on relative pronouns

[sweetpumpkin]

Hi,

I have a question about the usage of relative clauses. Here are two sentences and I want to connect to one another with the relative pronoun, 'who'.

The man is my nephew. He is standing under the tree.

In this case, you can technically make two complex sentences with 'who'.

1) The man is my nephew who is standing under the tree.
2) The man who is standing under the tree is my nephew.

As you see, the first one is semantically and grammatically weird. I and my colleagues discussed it and we had some results:

a. In both 1) and 2), 'my nephew who is standing under the tree', 'The man who is standing under the tree' can be replaced 'him' and 'He', respectively. Then 1) would be 'The man is him', and 2) would be 'He is my nephew.' The changed 1) is weird while the other sounds good. That's why 1) is wrong.

b. 1) is originally 2), 'The man who is standing under the tree is my nephew.'. But the subject then becomes too heavy. So the relative clause goes to the end of the sentence.

What do you think? I don't know exactly why 1) is wrong. Please answer me in an easy way. Thank you in advance,

sweetpumpkin

[Yankee]

Hi SP

I agree with you that sentence 1 is awkward. I'm not sure that I understood your question/comment about 'him', but I think I did.
I disagree that the word 'who' could be replaced by 'him' (i.e. 'whom') in that sentence. The word 'who' serves as the subject of a clause. In other words, it is not grammatically correct to say 'Him is standing under the tree.'

'Who is standing under the tree' should identify which man you are referring to, and presumably not which nephew.

Sentence 2 is far more typical, and and the grammar is fine. It would also be quite typical to reduce it to this:
- The man standing under the tree is my nephew.
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_________________
Amy
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ESL teacher, translator, and a native speaker of American English

[Torsten]

Hi Molly,

I'd rather you remove your latest post as it does not contribute to answering Sweetpumpkin's question.

Thanks,
Torsten
_________________
Test Of English for International Communication
TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[Molly]

If you don't understand the relevance of my reply, you must act accordingly, Torsten.

I'd say that would be the first time I've seen you do your job as moderator.