1

Consider the following text. Identify subordinate clauses and state their type (the structural
classification) and function (the functional classification):
a) Those were the abilities that she marked down in her favour. None of them seemed exactly to
the point when faced with the hard fact that she now found herself in possession of close to three
hundred acres, a house, a barn, outbuildings, but no idea what to do with them. It gave her
pleasure to play on the piano, but she did realize that she could not weed a row of young bean
plant without pulling half of them out along with the ragweed.
b) She blew the paper to dry it and then scanned over what she had written with a critical eye.
She mistrusted her handwriting, for no matter how she tried, she had never\ mastered the flowing
whorls and arcs of fine penmanship. The characters her hand insisted on forming were instead
blocky and as dense as runes.
c) I am coming home one way or another, and I do not know how things might stand between us.
I first thought to tell in this letter what I have done and seen so that you might judge me before I
return. But I decided it would need a page as broad as the blue sky to write that tale, and I have
not the will or the energy. Do you recall that night before Christmas four years ago when I took
you in my lap in the kitchen by the stove and you told me you would forever like to sit there and
rest your head on my shoulder? Now it is a bitter surety I my heart that if you knew what I have
seen and done, it would make you fear to do such again. (Charles Frazier – Cold Mountain)

Combine the following sentences so as to get relative attributive clauses (some of the sentences
can be combined in two ways):
1. She came to London. I went to London, too.
2. John told his friend a story about the king. The king was just passing by.
3.They met those students. None of the students agreed with them.
4. I bought Jim a book. He liked that book.
5. I introduced him to Jim. He told Jim everything about his plans.
6. Susan wants to meet Jane. She doesn’t know anything about Jane.
7. I had a book. I lost the book’s cover.
8. This is my husband. I love my husband very much.
9. The students like their teacher. Any of the students would answer to questions.
10. The students like theirteacher. All of them would answer their teacher’s questions.

Write a sentence as similar as possible to the given one. Use the word in capitals without
changing it:
1. Whose is the car which is blocking the street? WHOM
2. This is the town in which Charles Dickens was buried. WHERE
3. It was silly of him to tell her the secret. WHICH
4. He’s the author who received the prize. WHO
5. These are people about whom we cannot tell much. WHO
6. That couple had their child abducted by terrorists. WHOSE
7. It was such a pity that you couldn’t join the party. WHICH
8. To whom are you writing this letter? WHO
9. This is the guy that they first met in Monte Carlo. WHOM
10. These are the tulips that were awarded the big prize. TO
11. A lot of tourists went on a trip to Delphi; most of them were from England. WHOM
 2

Identify the relative clauses stating their type in the sentences below:
1.This is the village where I spent my youth.
2. Did he mention the time when the plane will take off?
3. Did they tell you the reason why they all left?
4. Shakespeare, who is a genius, is a great playwright.
5. The advantage of the supermarket is that you can buy what you want at a place where you can
park your car.
6. On the day on which this occurred I was away.
7. He cannot have been more than twenty when we first met.
8. I have met him where I least expected.
9. She, on whom nobody could depend, was the one we all welcomed and admired.
10. They are what their parents made them, however sad this may be.

Analyse the function of the relative clause and of the relative pronoun that introduces it:

1. What I’m saying is, we all have to come to some terms.

2. This is where we talk money.
3. What Inman remembered was this passage, which Monroe had repeated four times at dramatic
intervals throughout the sermon: “That which shows God in me, fortifies me. That which shows
God out of me, makes me a wart and a wen.”
4. The words of the hymn seemed to look with passionate yearning to a time when they would be
immersed in an ocean of love.
5. It was one job of his to think about why man was born to die.
6. Where he was from, the word river meant rocks and moss and the sound of white water
moving fast under the spell of a great deal of collected gravity.
7. It seemed a thing of such wonder to Ada, who had not witnessed many dawns.
8. When Ada remarked that at least they could rest when winter came, Ruby said, Oh, when
winter comes we’ll mend the fence and piece quilts and fix what’s broke around here, which is a
lot.
9. The rudeness of eating, of living, that’s where Ruby seemed to aim Ada every day that first
month.
10. Ruby counted her first victory when Ada succeeded in churning cream to butter. Her second
victory was when she noted that Ada no longer always put a book in her pocket when she went
out to hoe the fields.
11. It was not until Ruby was nearly grown that it occurred to her to wonder what kind of woman
her mother had been to have married such a man as Stobrod.
12. Whatever his fate was, he had left Ruby high and dry.
13. Ruby said she had learned what little she knew in the usual way. (…) Partly, though, she
claimed she had just puzzled out in her own mind how the world’s logic works.
(Charles Frazier – Cold Mountain)