What is a relative pronoun?
A ‘pronoun’ is a word that replaces a noun. There are different kinds of pronouns – the ones we’re all familiar with are known as personal pronouns – include ‘Il’ ‘He’/It – which replace a masculine noun such as ‘l’homme’ or ‘le train’.
Here are some examples:
L’homme est grand – Il est grand
Le train roule rapidement - Il roule rapidement
So what is a relative pronoun?
Clearly it has to do with a word that replaces a noun – a pronoun - and it is ‘relative’, which simply means that it works to link or relate the noun that it replaces to another piece of information concerning that noun.
Grammar books will tell you that a relative pronoun introduces a clause that explains or describes a previously mentioned noun (or antecedent).
In other words a relative pronoun relates one piece of information to another piece of information.
In French there are two main relative pronouns, qui and que. The choice between qui and que in French depends solely on the grammatical role, subject or direct object, that the relative pronoun plays in the subordinate clause.
They are given these names because of the grammatical relationship they have to the other words in the sentence. Let’s take a look at these relationships, which are fundamental if we are to understand the sentence’s grammatical jigsaw puzzle, and make a decision about which piece to choose in our writing. Don’t worry, once we understand some basic things about how the grammatical units of a sentence fit together we will be able to decide quite easily.
Take the sentence:
- Il est dans le train – he is on the train
If we break this sentence down into its grammatical units we see that
Il is the subject of the sentence – that is, ‘Il’ is doing the action – being on the train
est is known as the verb phrase – the present tense of the verb être
This sentence is what is called a single clause – it has a subject and just one verb phrase
Now let’s make another sentence that adds some information about the train the man is on:
- le train part à midi
To find the subject we need to ask who or what is doing the action – here ‘le train’ is the subject – ‘le train’ is doing the action – leaving at midday
‘part’ is the verb phrase -the present tense of the verb ‘partir’
This sentence is called a single clause – that is it has a subject and just one verb phrase.
So now we have two sentences.
Il est dans le train – He is on the train
Le train part à midi – The train leaves at midday.
But we can make a single sentence from both of these clauses.
In English we would typically say:
He is on the train which leaves at midday.
In French we say:
Il est dans le train qui part à midi
‘Which’/'qui’ is the relative pronoun - in other words ‘qui’ relates the noun ‘le train’ from the first clause to a piece of further information about the train in the second clause. The second clause now becomes known as the relative clause. It is related to the first by a relative pronoun.
If we look at the relative clause and ask what the subject of the verb phrase ‘leaves’ now is, we can see that ‘qui’ is referring back to the train or subject that will be leaving, therefore we say that ‘qui’, standing in for the noun ‘train’, is performing the action – or controlling the verb – therefore ‘qui’ can also be called the subject relative pronoun. Briefly, as ‘qui’ replaces the ‘subject’ of the relative clause it is known as the ‘subject relative pronoun’.
- So what about que?
We’ve been talking about how grammatical subjects control the verb. Objects have a different relationship to the verb, instead of being the controllers of the verb, they are what the action of the verb is being done to: when a verb acts on a noun, that noun is called the object of the verb.
For example in the sentence:
Il est dans le train – ‘Il’ is the subject, ‘est’ is the verb and ‘le train’ is the object (the train is having the man’s action done to it)
Now let’s give some different information about the train
Ma soeur prend le train ce soir – my sister is taking the train this evening
In this sentence ‘ma soeur’ is the subject of the verb – she is doing the taking, and ‘prend’ is the verb phrase.What is the sister taking -she is taking ‘the train’. The train is not in control of the verb here, rather we say that it is the object of the verb, it is having the action done to it in a grammatical sense.
So how do we make one sentence from these two clauses:
In English we would say:
He is on the train which my sister is taking this evening
The grammatical function of ‘which’ is different than our first example. Let’s examine the phrase.
‘which’ still replaces the train to relate the second clause to the first. But if we look at the relative clause, we can see that ‘my sister’ is the subject of the verb ‘is taking’ and therefore ‘which’, replacing ‘the train’ is the object of the relative clause. Here ‘which’ is the relative object pronoun.
While often in English we do not use a different word to express this difference in the function of the relative pronoun, in French we express this difference. So, while we have seen that ‘qui’ replaces the noun which is the subject of the relative clause, we use ‘que’ when we want to replace the noun that is the object of the relative clause:
In French we say:
Il est dans le train que ma soeur prend ce soir.
To reiterate: ‘qui’ replaces the noun that is the subject of the verb in the relative clause, and is called the relative subject pronoun while ‘que’ replaces the noun that is the object of the verb in the relative clause and is called the relative object pronoun.
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