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  #1 (permalink)  
Old 26-Mar-2006, 02:21
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lisa*** is on a distinguished road
Default relative pronouns

good day!
The man who lives next door has a good sense of humour.
subject=man
thus, it is not possible for us to omit the relative pronoun "who"
The man who I wanted to meet got sick.
subject=I
object=the man
thus, it is possible for us to omit the relative pronoun "who"
On the other hand,
I want a man who has a good sense of humour.
subject= I
object =man
In this case, i find it difficult to explain why it is impossible to omit the
relative pronoun even if the man is object of the sentence.
are we really focused on which is the subject and the object, or the word order ?
please enlighten me.
thank you!
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Old 26-Mar-2006, 11:53
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Default Re: relative pronouns

Lisa, it's possible to omit "who" in this sentence:

The man I wanted to meet got sick. <grammatical>

Below, "who" functions as a subject. It's the subject of "lives" and "has",

The man who lives next door has a good sense of humour.
I want a man who has a good sense of humour.

In short, it's not possible to omit a relative pronoun if it functions as a subject.

Hope that helps.
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Old 24-Jul-2007, 20:37
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Default Re: relative pronouns

Hello...
I want a man who has a good sense of humour.
As you said, "I" is the subject of the matrix clause and "man: is the Object.
In that sentence you can not ommit the relative pronoun who because it is subject of the subordinate relative clause /
You can use "that" instead of who but you need a relative pronoun there for sure.
Hope this help/
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