RELATIVE CLAUSES What is defining and non-defining? 💥

hello I'm teacher Robin welcome to another live-streaming class today we're going to be talking about defining versus non defining relative clauses so if you want to learn more about this topic keep watching and if you want to participate during the class if you have a question or something you want to add you can write in the comments ok and I'll be checking your comments throughout the class so let's get started with our topic for today first let's define what is a relative clause ok a relative Clause adds relatively important information about the subject or object of the sentence it is usually placed immediately after the noun to which they refer and it is introduced by a relative pronoun or adverb okay so we'll start with defining relative clauses okay what does a defining relative clause mean a defining relative Clause provides information that is indispensable essential to identify the subject or object of the sentence okay you need this information in the sentence without this clause the sentence completely changes its meaning okay it always comes immediately after the subject or the object and is introduced by a relative pronoun alright so let's see some examples let's start with the relative clause of the subject so if the subject is a person then we use the relative clauses who or that if the subject is a thing we can use the relative clauses which are also that okay for example the man who is talking to Ann is my math teacher the book which was published last year would be perfect for your exam so can you see how this information within the clause is essential because here we don't know which man the person is talking about unless we say who is talking to an otherwise it could be any man we don't know and the same goes for the book the book which was published last year so this gives you specific information that is essential to understand the rest of the sentence okay so what if the relative clause is of the object okay so if the person is the object if the object is a person then we use who whom or that if it is the thing we use which or that for example the girl who you met this morning is my cousin the book which I am reading is absolutely wonderful okay so here we have which so followed by an object that is why we need to use this this relative clause okay now let's move on to possessive relative clause okay in the possessive we use the relative clause whose okay note wh Oh se not apostrophe s whose alright let's see an example I have a friend whose dog won a prize in a competition okay so you're describing this friend and the dog belongs to the friend so you use this possessive relative clause alright there is an exception when the subject to the relative clause is also the object of the sentence the relative pronoun may be omitted okay so you can use it in the sentence or not so let's see an example here she is the girl he was talking about this is the skirt I bought last week so here we've removed the relative pronoun so it could be this is the girl who he was talking to or this is the skirt that I bought last week but because the subject and the object are the same we do not need to include the relative pronoun okay so I see some people are joining us today at F Paul a deal and Alonso so thank you for joining I hope that you are enjoying the class someone asks how can i watch the class with subtitles so the thing about live streaming is that it is live so we cannot include subtitles but fully even if you don't understand everything in the class you can pick up a little bit and remember these videos when they are finished we'll go to our video section of our Facebook page so there you can find all of our previous videos if you want to watch them again okay someone asked why aren't we using whom I'll get to that later because we have to go back so at the end of the class I will explain that okay so now let's talk about non defining relative clauses so remember we said that defining relative clauses are essential to maintain the meaning of the sentence so non defining clauses provide additional information about the subject or the object of the sentence but it is not essential excuse me to identify the subject or the object it does not change the meaning of the sentence so you can include it it's additional information but it's not you can still understand the meaning without it and we use these relative pronouns separated by commas so that's one way that you know that it's non defining is that you'll find it separated by commas so let's look at some examples okay relative Clause of the subject if the subject is a person we use who if the subject is the thing we use which for example Mary who was my classmate graduated last year okay so here we could also say Mary graduated last year we still understand the meaning but here we add additional information she happens to be this person's classmate so we say oh it's interesting but I understand the sentence if we exclude this information as well okay relative Clause of the object if the object is a person we use the pronouns who or whom if the object is a thing we use the pronoun which for example dr. Smith who I consider to be a very professional person is retired now so this extra information is expressing your personal opinion about this person so actually we don't necessarily need it the sentence we could say dr. Smith is retired now and maybe it doesn't matter how you feel about this person so depending on who you're talking to we can include this information or you can leave it up okay possessive relative clause so we use again who's for example Judy whose children are still going to school is a young and dynamic lady so here this information about Judy's children is not essential to maintain the meaning of the sentence we could say judy is a young and dynamic lady and also she has children who are still going to school so this information is kind of additional okay note in a non defining clause the relative pronoun must always be used so here we cannot eliminate it with non defining you have to to keep it in the sentence and it is not possible to use the relative pronoun that in a non defining clause okay so you would never see comma that okay so that's always going to go with defining clauses all right let's see a comparison here just to show you how important or the difference between defining and not defining here we have the same sentence but the clause is used differently for example if this sentence were using a defining clause darío sister who works at the GP is named Gloria okay so in this case we can infer that dario has more than one sister so which sister are we talking about the one who works at the GP okay if we were using this as a non defining clause we could separate it with commas we could say Dario's sister who works at the GP is named Gloria so in this case we assumed that Daria only has one sister and the sisters name is Gloria so we could also say Dario's sisters named Gloria and here we add the additional information that she works at the GP Oh okay so now that we have reviewed defining versus non defining clauses I'm going to ask you to participate in the comments I have two questions for you or two examples that I want you to practice so write a sentence using a defining relative clause and write a sentence using a non-defining relative clause so it could be something similar to what I just showed you where it's the same example but the cost changes whether you put commas or not for something like that or you could choose two completely different different sentences okay so as you're doing that let me just tell you a little bit about our course here at abba we have a complete course from beginners to business level our course has 144 units each unit features a short film a video class explaining the grammar and then exercises for you to for you to practice your all of your skills reading writing listening and speaking so if you want more information about our course lab English you can visit abba English comm and there you can subscribe as a premium or a free student so you'll find more information on our website in addition to our course we have many other resources for free that you can use like our blog our aperture kn'l there you can find articles about grammar culture English for business travel so all kinds of information you might want to look up and we are also active on all of the social media networks Facebook YouTube Twitter and Instagram so I encourage you to check those out if you haven't already okay oh sorry I need to answer your questions now so someone asked about the difference between who and whom okay so we use whom when someone is receiving an action for so for example to whom did you give a book I gave the book to Paul for example okay so we only use it when the person is receiving in action otherwise with you're just describing a person the person who I gave the book to is Paul the person to whom I gave the book is Paul so can you see the difference hopefully that's a little clearer now uh no okay Freeman has put an example the girl whom you met this morning is my cousin no here we would say the girl who you met this morning okay so if you're describing we use who if you're talking about receiving in action we use whom alright and then says insightful lesson can you make it available for us in PowerPoint okay we will keep that in mind for the future good suggestion okay as more people are writing comments I want to tell you about next week's class we're going to be talking about phrasal verbs for studying so there are hundreds and hundreds of phrasal verbs in the English language and the best thing to do is to memorize them a few at a time so what we've done in some of our previous live-streaming classes is to group them according to the context or the subject so we've done phrasal verbs at the office phrasal verbs for business etc so next week we're going to be talking about phrasal verbs for studying alright let me check a few more comments before we finish the class Darwin and Encarnacion says shout out to me hello thank you for joining I hope that this class has been useful for you I hope you learned something today please feel free to write suggestions as we are in the new year January we would love to hear your suggestions for future classes so please if there's something that we haven't done or that you would like to review please let us know in the comments as well and if I didn't answer your question live I will be checking the comments later on today so please feel free to keep writing practicing those examples right an example of a defining and a non defining clause okay so thank you again for joining have a great rest of your day and I'll see you next time bye

Channel: ABA English

Views: 61,088

Keywords: relative clauses, relative clauses in english grammar, defining and non defining relative clauses, defining relative clauses, non defining relative clauses, relative pronouns, english class, english grammar, learn english

Id: QR4wbMO3GIk

Length: 12min 53sec (773 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 24 2019