What is the difference in meaning between these two sentences and why should be even care? 1. My brother , who lives in Zadar, is a student. 2. My brother who lives in Zadar is a student. The speaker of the first sentence has ONE brother, the speaker of the second sentence has MORE THAN ONE brother. In both sentences, “who lives in Zadar” is a relative clause. 1. In the first sentence, the relative clause serves the purpose of giving the reader extra information about the subject (my brother). This is known as a NON-DEFINING RELATIVE CLAUSE. It is simply “plugged in” the sentence as extra information. Note that non-defining relative clauses are always separated by commas. Because non-defining relative clauses are not necessary, they can always be removed without hindering the comprehensibility of the sentence. Thus, removing the clause leaves us with “My brother is a student.” From this, we can conclude that the speaker has only one brother. !! We also NEVER use the relative pronoun THAT in NON- DEFINING RELATIVE CLAUSES 2. In the second sentence, the relative clause is a DEFINING RELATIVE CLAUSE. Defining relative clauses (surprisingly enough) provides essential information about the subject or object (i.e. the sentence NEEDS the clause - it cannot be removed/omitted). Thus, in this case, we can infer that the use of a defining relative clause serves to determine WHICH brother is a student. (ex: My brother who lives in Zadar is a student, and my brother who lives in Karlovac is a firefighter). In summation: Try to avoid mixing the two types of relative clauses up, especially if you go to a school with: GRAMMATICALLY CONSCIOUS BULLIES Your assignments: 1. Regardless of your learning style, you should definitely check the Grammar Reference in your Workbooks (page 121) and try to complete the two tasks. They key will be provided for you next week on 21 April. You don't have to submit anything, however, you CAN practice relative clauses (defining and non-defining) through these exercises (there are 3 exercise with an instant feedback and explanation): test-english.com/grammar-points/b1/defining-and-non-defining-relative-clauses/ 2. There's a presentation attached below this post, so I advise you go through it. If you are more of an audio-visual type of a student, definitely check the video below. ![]()
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