At its most basic, a clause is a grammatical unit that contains a subject and a verb. Clauses differ from sentences (which always contain at least one clause but usually contain more) and phrases (which do not have both a subject and a verb).
A defining clause, sometimes called a restrictive clause, gives essential information that defines or identifies the person, place, or thing being referred to. Without this information, we’d struggle to understand the sentence’s meaning.
A non-defining clause (non-restrictive clause) provides additional information about someone, somewhere, or something, but this information is unnecessary for the sentence to make sense. If the clause is removed, the sentence would still be grammatically correct, and the meaning wouldn’t change much, although we’d have less detail.
So, defining clauses contain vital information, and non-defining clauses add non-essential information. Let’s compare the two.
A relative pronoun is a type of pronoun that marks a relative clause. The most common relative pronouns are that, which, when, who, whose, and where. These pronouns change depending on what you’re talking about and whether you are referring to the subject, the object, or the possessive.
Non-defining clauses never use that.
Examples:
We can sometimes omit the relative pronoun (in the cases of who, that, and which) if it is followed by a subject, but we usually can’t after a verb.
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Example:
We can’t omit the pronoun “which” because the sentence would sound disjointed.
You will probably have already noticed that non-defining clauses are separated from the rest of the sentence by commas because they don’t contain essential information.
Defining clauses don’t need commas.
Defining clauses in speech often use that instead of who, so “the people who spoke no English got lost in London” would become “the people that spoke no English got lost in London” in speech. This doesn’t happen for non-defining clauses because they don’t use “that.”
In non-defining clauses, we usually pause before and after the non-defining clause (usually where the commas are). We don’t do this for defining clauses.
So, the key points are:
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